Verdel Instruments relocates to Oxfordshire's Milton Park

Oxfordshire's Milton Park has a new occupant in the shape of Warwick university spinout Verdel Instruments, which has relocated from Surrey.

Verdel specialises in so-called total correlation mass spectrometry (TOC-MS), which allows for the analysis of a substance’s composition, including compounds in food, the environment and biopharmaceuticals.

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It has eased laboratory and R&D space at 154 Brook Drive, where it hopes to develop and scale the cutting-edge technology.

"Milton Park has already proven to be an established innovation community to expand our network with like-minded organisations. The new connections we’ve made while at the Park have helped us to develop our technology even further and given us opportunities to collaborate with the University of Oxford to analyse human lipids in greater detail," said Tim Wilson, CEO at Verdel Instruments.

Tom Booker, commercial manager at specialist property firm MEPC Milton Park, added: "We’re thrilled to welcome Verdel to Milton Park, giving them the opportunity to work alongside our growing community of biotech innovators such as Living Optics and aVaxziPen.

"Part of our mission is to provide occupiers like Verdel the right environment and tailored space to attract talent and expertise, while also giving them the flexibility to grow and adapt quickly, surrounded by other like-minded companies."

Standard mass spectrometers typically only analyse one molecular component at a time whereas Verdel’s novel technique can analyse everything in a complex sample with a single injection, speeding up the delivery of richer insight.

Aside from drug discovery, it could prove useful in analysing wastewater to monitor drugs or pathogens in a population.

It could also assist in the field of lipidomics; an emerging method of quantifying all lipid (fatty compounds that perform a variety of bodily functions) molecules produced by cells, tissues or organisms.

Milton Park is held in the MEPC Milton LP joint venture partnership for two long term pension fund shareholders and operated by MEPC Ltd, the specialist real estate development and asset operating platform within Federated Hermes.