Lino Biotech closes seed financing round with top-class investors

Lino Biotech AG has licensed the technology to further develop and commercialize Focal Molography. The company, incorporated in March 2020 and now backed by High-Tech Gründerfonds and the Roche Venture Funds offers industry partners and researchers a unique way to study molecular interactions in living cells and crude biosystems. Importantly, its broad application spectrum can for the first time, measure drug binding to transmembrane proteins while simultaneously observe intracellular signaling. Additional applications can be found in bioprocessing.

“Experiments with pharma partners have highlighted the value of Focal Molography. However, we are still at the beginning to understand the value of Molography for different industries. For example, we currently evaluate the potential of monitoring multiple parameters in bioreactors as well as another pharma case of measuring high-affinity drug-target interactions in real-time over several days. Two very different applications for different customers that both seem feasible with the technology at hands”, explains Mirko Stange, CEO of lino Biotech.

A nanotechnology-based method

In short, focal molography is a nanotechnology-based method that cleverly combines photolithography, molecular self-assembly and state-of-the-art optical technology. It is a truly interdisciplinary technology, inspired by physics, tailored for biology and implemented for biomolecular interaction analysis.

Central to the technology is a biological surface structure termed mologram, which is part of lion Biotech’s patented sensor chip. Bound biomolecules on the mologram function as “detectives” that recognize the target analyte in the sample through molecular recognition and selective binding and thereby emit a light signal.

This signal indicates the exact measure of binding affinity between recognition site and analyte. Multiple molograms can be assembled on a tiny chip, meaning that multiple parameters can be measured swiftly, with great selectivity and sensitivity.