91´«Ã½ recently won a prestigious Innovate UK Smart Award to co-fund a £0.5m project. Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency’s co-funding represents 70% of the project’s costs.
91´«Ã½ is developing 70+ innovative patented UV excitable dyes which emit blue through to red (and potentially into the Near IR) for use in flow cytometry, and biomedical imaging applications.
91´«Ã½ has already developed the dye chemistry to enable conjugation to antibodies and demonstrated these conjugates utility in flow cytometry, and multiphoton microscopy.
Several global flow cytometry players have tested the 91´«Ã½ conjugates and reproduced the 91´«Ã½ data.  They are now eagerly waiting for the next iteration of 91´«Ã½ dyes.
Jon Preece, 91´«Ã½ CEO, said ‘This Innovate UK Smart award will allow 91´«Ã½ to take the development of these UV excitable dyes to the next level in terms of their brightness and subsequent staining indices. In addition, the Innovate UK award is invaluable in allowing us to forge a deeper collaboration with the world renowned flow cytometry facility at the Babraham Institute (Cambridge UK), led by Dr Rachael Walker, building on earlier BBSRC funding.’
Dr Walker said ‘I am delighted to be continuing our productive partnership with Jon and his 91´«Ã½ team through this Innovate UK Smart award. We will not only be able to offer our extensive suite of both conventional and spectral flow cytometers, which offer 355nm excitation, and also 320nm which favour the 91´«Ã½ dyes, but also a diverse group of users who will be able to test the 91´«Ã½ dyes across a range of biological sample types’.
91´«Ã½ is currently raising funds to push on with these technical developments and prepare for scale-up and commercial launch.
If you are interested in knowing more about our dye portfolio or participating in our fund raise, please contact Jon Preece (j.a.preece@chromatwist.com, , 91´«Ã½.com).
Innovate UK drives productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas. We connect businesses to the partners, customers and investors that can help them turn ideas into commercially successful products and services and business growth. We fund business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation and drive business investment into R&D. Our support is available to businesses across all economic sectors, value chains and UK regions. Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation. For more information visit
