Verdel charges $289,000

Verdel Instruments, a UK-based mass spectrometry equipment producer spun out of University of Warwick, has received more than £230,000 ($289,000) in a seed round backed by government research grant body Innovate UK, Mirage News reported today.
The round also featured Longwall Ventures, a venture capital firm primarily focused on early-stage investments in the healthcare, science and engineering spaces.
Founded in July 2018, Verdel Instruments has devised a benchtop lab instrument that gives researchers the ability to conduct two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS), an analytical procedure measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of ions to identify the elements and impurities of a given sample.
Verdel’s approach works by discharging electric pulses to manipulate ions held in a linear ion trap, before scattering the ions in combination with ultraviolet lasers and fast mass analysers to assemble the mass spectrum diagram.
The technique could fulfil applications in pharmaceutical research and food safety testing, by offering greater speed, specificity and sensitively than the 2DMS tools routinely used at present.
Crucially, Verdel’s instrument is able to process multiple complex samples in a single operation, preventing data losses suffered by rotating components during a standard 2DMS investigation.
The technology grew out of research conduced by Peter O’Connor, a professor of analytical chemistry at University of Warwick’s Department of Chemistry.
O’Connor said: “Two-dimensional mass spectrometry is an incredible tool that allows researchers to get structural information from mixtures of components. We have been working on 2DMS for about eight years using an expensive, high-resolution mass spectrometer, and have now solved some key issues to enable its broader uptake as a benchtop instrument.”