Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Oxford Nanopore Technologies develops and commercializes nanopore-based electronic single-molecule sensing technology for real-time DNA and RNA sequencing. The company was founded in 2005 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, drawing on decades of nanopore research, and now employs more than 1,000 people. Its headquarters are at the Oxford Science Park in the United Kingdom, with further sites in Cambridge (UK), New York, Cambridge (Massachusetts), San Francisco, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Japan, Germany, France and India.

The product portfolio spans two principal sequencing systems. MinION is a portable, pocket-sized device for real-time DNA and RNA sequencing; PromethION is a high-throughput benchtop and production-scale nanopore sequencing system. Both rest on the same underlying sensing principle: individual molecules passing through a protein nanopore are read electronically, one strand at a time.

Technical work at the company covers nanopore science, molecular biology, bioinformatics, engineering, electronics and manufacturing, alongside applications support and commercialisation. The workforce is interdisciplinary and globally distributed. Customers are present in more than 125 countries, and the technology has featured in over 20,000 peer-reviewed publications. Industries served include scientific research, healthcare, biotechnology, environmental applications and industry.

Information on the company and its products is published at nanoporetech.com.