1. Home
  2. Investments
  3. Axion Biosystems

Instruments for customers in biopharma and academia

Axion at a glance

Axion Biosystems (“Axion”) is a global life science tools business headquartered in the US that develops, produces, and markets BEA (Bioelectronic Assay) and live-cell imaging instruments for customers in biopharma and academia. Axion’s products enable scientists to understand cell function in real-time, enabling research and the development of new therapies across various pharmaceutical segments (e.g., cell and gene therapies).

Sector
Life Sciences tools
Location
United States
Employees
232
Investment theme
Changing Demographics

Key developments in 2023

Axion has successfully launched two new products during 2023: Maestro Tray Z, a high-throughput live-cell analysis platform, and Omni PRO 12, an automated, high-throughput live-cell imaging platform. The company continued to grow top-line and improve the gross margins on the back of higher productivity. Julien Bradley was hired as the new CEO to continue to build on Axion’s strong foundation and accelerate the commercial momentum.

What are the challenges Axion addresses

  • 1in 6

    deaths are due to Cancer globally, making it one of the leading causes of death worldwide.

  • ~$ 1.3bn

    average cost of getting a new drug onto the market.

How does Axion help?

Reality today

The live-cell perspective is not fully integrated in the development of therapies and scientists need better tools to understand cell function to target diseases and drive patient outcomes.

Axion approach

Axion enables multi-dimensional, inter­operable live-cell analysis to improve drug discovery and development, driving breakthroughs in cell and gene therapies, ultimately leading to superior health outcomes.

Aspirational future

Faster, more accurate and cost-efficient drug discovery and development for precision medicine through real-time understanding of cell functioning and enablement of cutting-edge fields within biotechnology and medicine that address various medical conditions such as cancer, genetic disorders, and autoimmune diseases.

Who is impacted?

Researchers and biopharma are impacted directly by gaining insights through more effective tools that increase the understanding of cell functions. Patients are impacted indirectly through breakthroughs in treatment developments.

Contribution

Axion enables academia and biopharma to gain insights into cell function, and thereby contributes to speeding up the time and increasing the quality of critical drug development.

Risks

Axion’s impact depends partly on how its customers in academia and biopharma choose to use its tools. Engaging with customers can help to ensure that the research and innovation it enables translates into patient outcomes downstream.

SDG alignments

  • Good health
  • Innovation and infrastructure

KPI reporting

Number of publications

Change from '22-'23: 15%

2023
204
2022
178
2021
158

Number of publications measures the quantity of publications produced using Axion’s products, indicating contribution to research output on cell functioning.

Number of systems sold to Cell Gene Therapy (“CGT”) companies

Change from '22-'23: 23%

2023
27
2022
22
2021
12

Number of systems sold to CGT companies measures the enablement of companies operating in this cutting-edge field of biotechnology.

Number of experiments run

Change from '22-'23: 8%

2023
853k
2022
790k
2021
652k

Number of experiments run quantifies the total count of scientific or research experiments­ conducted within a year, using Axion’s technology.