MoA Technology moves to Oxford Science Park
MoA Technology has moved to the Bellhouse Building, the new facility recently opened at the Oxford Science Park.
The first of more than 100 companies focused on cutting-edge technologies re-located to the Science Park in 2018. Now more than 3,500 people work there across areas including immunology, artificial intelligence and systems biology.
The Bellhouse Building is the most recently completed of three buildings that comprise the Magdalen Centre, one of the biggest innovation centres in the UK. The facility provides laboratory and office space for small to medium sized businesses.
MoA Tech’s CEO, Dr Virginia Corless, said: “Re-locating to the Magdalen Centre puts MoA Tech at the heart of a vibrant community of innovation.”
Dr Shuji Hachisu, Chief Technology Officer, added: “Our new facilities give us the room we need to grow as our pipeline of new herbicide chemistry fills.”
The relocation follows the news in April of new investors funding MoA Technology with a further £5 million extension to the company’s Series A funding round. Shanghai-based Bits x Bites and BGF, based in the UK and Ireland, have joined earlier investors bringing the total raised to around £12 million.
Currently employing 25 staff, and expecting to expand further in the coming months, MoA Technology was spun-out from Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences in 2018. Using its three innovative herbicide discovery platforms, the company aims to develop natural and synthetic chemistries that will provide excellent, sustainable and economic weed control in a broad range of crops.
The company uses a plant-led approach and artificial intelligence to pinpoint and elucidate an abundance of new herbicidal modes of action, which are the key to solving the herbicide resistance challenge now threatening the agricultural industry. Used together in sequence, its platforms can quickly and cost-effectively find the safe weed control solutions farmers need.
Rory Maw, Bursar of Magdalen College & Interim MD of The Oxford Science Park, said, ‘As our first plant sciences-based occupier, MoA Technology is a great addition to the innovation mix on the Park. We welcome it to the Bellhouse Building where it will be located alongside Enara Bio and Sitryx.’
Investors in MoA Technology include BGF, Shanghai-based Bits x Bites, Oxford Sciences Innovation and Parkwalk Advisers. MoA Technology is the fifth company to graduate from the Oxford BioEscalator to The Oxford Science Park, and is one of several OSI investee companies to be located there.
