MaxWell Biosystems raises 4 million Swiss francs

Sensirion, a digital microsensor specialist, has announced it participated in a Series A financing round of MaxWell Biosystems, which was founded in Zurich in 2016. With this investment, Dr Matthias Streiff from Sensirion will be joining the Board of MaxWell Biosystems. Dr Streiff says this will enable Sensirion to not only “accelerate the scale-up of MaxWell Biosystems’ production capabilities, but also to provide significant commercial insight through our strategic leadership”. 

MaxWell Biosystems has secured a total of 4 million francs from Sensirion and other investors. This injection of funds will enable MaxWell Biosystems to further industrialize and scale-up the production of their multiwell high-density microelectrode array plates, as MaxWell Biosystems confirms in its press release. The company develops and commercializes cell imaging systems. At the core of its technology is a custom designed microsensor with thousands of tiny electrodes simultaneously sensing the small electrical signals of neuronal cells. With these systems, users can advance the understanding of the brain’s function and accelerate the development of drugs targeting the brain.

Sensirion Holding AG manufactures environmental sensors and digital microsensors and systems for gases and liquids. These sensors are used in the automotive, medical, industrial, and consumer end markets. Sensirion and MaxWell Biosystems have a long common history. According to the press release, the two spin-offs from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) envision a long-term partnership.

“With this partnership, we are now a huge step closer to empowering our customers with a drastically increased experimental throughput,” said Jan Müller, CTO and president of the Board of MaxWell Biosystems. This is “very crucial to achieve high statistical significance and at the same time to reduce time and efforts”.