ULiège spin-off LiveDrop raises €2.3m in funding
LiveDrop, a spin-off from the University of Liege, has just closed a €2.3 million round of financing to commercialise a high-tech instrument for sorting biological cells. ModaFlowTM, which is based on droplet microfluidic technology, enables biological cell sorting and analysis at the single-cell level. This is a fast-growing and very promising technology that confirms the potential of ULiège in the field of microfluidics.
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ncorporated from a "First-Spin-off" valorisation project of the Walloon Region, LiveDrop is the result of research carried out within the Microfluidics Lab (School of Engineering / Aerospace & Mechanics Research Unit) of the University of Liège. LiveDrop is based on the development of high-tech instruments for the detection and selection of high-potential living biological cells. “We are working in particular on cells that produce therapeutic antibodies, rare immune cells, cancer cells and stem cells," explains Stéphanie van Loo, founder and CEO of LiveDrop and a former researcher at the ULiège Microfluidics Lab. We are talking here about fragile cells that are difficult to manipulate with conventional techniques such as multi-well plates and flow cytometers.”
ModaFlowTM , the first instrument developed by LiveDrop, is based on droplet microfluidic technology. It involves the production of tiny water droplets (sub-nanolitre volume) in oil. Once formed, these droplets are conveyed into the microscopic channels of a microfluidic chip. Biological cells of interest are then encapsulated, manipulated, detected and selected at high speed. “We can reach more than a million encapsulated cells per day," explains Tristan Gilet, head of the Microfluidics Lab at ULiège. The droplet microfluidic technology, which we have been developing for many years in the lab, offers the opportunity to carry out analyses at the scale of a single cell and at very high speed, which is necessary to enable researchers to analyse millions of cells from biological samples (tumour biopsy, blood sample, mouse immune cells, etc.)."
Microscopic pneumatic valves open and close to direct each droplet.
LiveDrop's clients are biotech companies, R&D departments of (bio)pharmaceutical companies, research centres and academic laboratories active in cell biology, oncology, immunotherapy and cell therapy, regenerative medicine and stem cells, etc.
The funds raised by LiveDrop amount to €2.3 million, of which €1.4 million came from the private fund Innovation Fund, the institutional funds Noshaq and W.IN.G., the Liège company Trasis and the Martial family. The public funds include subsidies from the Walloon Region. “Everyone is convinced of the high potential of these technologies," concludes Stéphanie van Loo. This fundraising demonstrates the enthusiasm and confidence of the stakeholders who believe in our vision and our project. Thanks to this fundraising, we have already started to recruit a strong team to accelerate the new developments of the ModaFlowTM instrument and respond to the demands of the company's customers and collaborators.” With this round of financing, LiveDrop confirms the technological potential in the field of microfluidics at the University of Liege and its desire to use these developments more widely in life sciences research.
About LiveDrop
The LiveDrop project is based on nearly 10 years of research conducted by Stéphanie van Loo and Professor Tristan Gilet at the ULiège Microfluidics Lab. This research includes a doctoral thesis, a "First Spin-Off" valorization project, and numerous collaborations. During her thesis, Stéphanie van Loo developed this droplet microfluidic technology starting from an empty room. She then transformed the test bench she had developed for her research into an integrated instrument called ModaFlowTM, giving biotechnology players instant access to droplet microfluidics. About ten scientific collaborators and first customers are already using the ModaFlow™. The company's goal is to commercialise this instrument so that every laboratory can take advantage of the power of droplet microfluidics for its "single-cell" and cell sorting applications. LiveDrop won the GSK meets Universities award in 2020 and has been incubated at WSL since 2021.
"The success of this project once again demonstrates the importance of the maturation tools (here, FSO and POC funding) available to project leaders to support the development of their projects and guarantee the viability of their technologies. It is essential to continue to deploy these tools in the process of commercializing research results so that the teams can remove technological barriers and the projects can reach a higher level of maturity on the TRL and CRL scales (Technology Readiness Level and Customer Readiness Level respectively) in order to arouse the interest of industry and partners. For LiveDrop, this translates into a significant fundraising, a sign of investors' confidence in the technology and its potential. The creation of this spin-off, at the crossroads of engineering and life sciences, illustrates once again that the synergy of funding for maturation and support structures is an undeniable asset for university research, if it is given the means to stand out, to play a key role in regional economic development," emphasizes Didier Mattivi, Director of the Administration of Research, Innovation and Valorization at the University of Liege.
About the ULiège Microfluidics Lab
The Microfluidics Lab is a laboratory of the Aerospace and Mechanics Department (School of Engineering) at the University of Liège. The research of this group focuses on the experimental study of microscopic flows in the presence of interfaces (droplet impacts in natural environments, capillary phenomena) and their application for the design of microfluidic devices.
