Vortex

Vortex Biosciences is an company operating commercially at the junction of the rapidly growing liquid biopsy, cell analytics and oncology markets. Vortex mission is to be the innovation leader in the CTC capture technology that improves therapeutic decisions and saves lives.

Vortex has developed a “no touch” microfluidic chip technology which captures intact, label-free and pure circulating tumour cells (CTCs) from blood, with high yields. These CTCs can then be analysed using a range of downstream workflows that help characterise them. This will provide researchers and clinicians with access to critical insights from whole cancer cells that underpin one of the main causes of metastasis, treatment resistance and disease recurrence. As the next phase of growth, Vortex will set up CTC Centres of Excellence with an associated lab services business to serve biopharma customers. This will help deliver a step change in the use of CTCs to inform oncology treatment and monitoring. Longer term, Vortex will look to build on academic and industry engagement to open an interface into clinical health systems around the world.

Originally a spin-out from University of California, Los Angeles, Vortex is now dually based in Cambridge, UK and the Bay Area, US, with a growing international customer base using its automated VTX-1 instrument and generating recurring revenues from disposable cartridges.