Romp for ZOMP as ZEISS backs £2m seed round

Cambridge University spin-out ZOMP has raised £2m seed cash as it develops new imaging technology for the life science sector. The funding has been co-led by ZEISS Ventures, Foresight WAE Technology and BGF.

ZOMP is developing LightGate - a 3D imaging flow cytometer that enables highly accurate quantative imaging of millions of cells in a single experiment.

The startup, based at the Maxwell Centre in Cambridge, is using the cash to develop a minimum viable product and identify optimal customer applications.

ZOMP CEO, Professor Steven Lee said: “Companies should do more than make money, they should make people excited about the future.

“Cellular biology has been traditionally described by 3 key pillars: genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. We would argue there’s a fourth, and that’s how things are organised in 3D space. This is why ZOMP’s three cofounders are extremely excited to be working with ZEISS, creating the instruments that will allow our customers to see inside cells at the population scale.”

Gerrit Schulte, Head of ZEISS Ventures, added: ““ZOMP's innovative technology has the potential to disrupt the current flow cytometry market due to its ability to capture not only binary information about cells, but also morphological and spatial information at a single cell level. 

“In the future, image-based cell sorting will enable new experiments in life science and biotechnology applications. ZEISS Ventures is very pleased to support ZOMP's journey not only with financial resources, but also with our know-how in imaging and image analysis.”

Dr Kevin O’Holleran, ZOMP’s CTO said: “With ZOMP’s cutting-edge imaging flow cytometry technology and ZEISS’s experience in bioimaging product development we quickly found that ZEISS and ZOMP make an excellent match. We’re very excited about this partnership and look forward to developing our technology as part of ZEISS Ventures portfolio.”

Co-founder and CCO, Gillies Kleboe added: “We wanted a name that could eventually become a verb, like ‘Google’ or ‘Shazam.’ Interestingly, ZOMP is also the name of a colour which turns out to be very similar to the traditional Cambridge Blue, it was too good not to use! In a few years time researchers who need complex imaging of a high quantity of cells might be saying ‘Just ZOMP it!’”