10th March 2015

Geldards Supports Welsh Life Sciences BioWales Dragon’s Den

Leading law firm Geldards has presented Cotton Mouton Diagnostics (CMD) with a cash prize of £3,000 to support their innovative technology that will help diagnose infectious diseases.

CMD, a South Wales-based start-up company, specialises in point of care diagnostics to help deliver personalised medicine and was awarded the funding after pitching their business idea to a high profile panel which was chaired by Professor Sir Chris Evans at last week’s BioWales Conference.

CMD’s innovative technology uses the cotton-mouton magneto optic effect to observe changes in the rotational behaviour of magnetic nanorod reporters. The technique has been successfully field tested as a malaria diagnostic.

Andrew Evans, a Partner at Geldards, explained: “CMD were worthy winners of the award and we hope the investment they have gained will enable them to bring this exciting and potentially life-saving innovation to market.”

Applicants for the award had to submit a two minute video explaining how their idea was innovative, what commercial potential it has, their plan for funding and how they would be able to bring it to market.

A shortlist of six businesses made it through to the final which formed part of the programme at the BioWales conference, held at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

CMD was selected after pitching their idea to a panel which also included Chair of the Life Sciences Hub Wales Professor Chris McGuigan and former Apprentice winner Ricky Martin.

Jenna Bowen of CMD commented: “We’re delighted to have won on the day amid such tough competition. We’ll make good use of this investment and would like to thank Geldards and the panel for selecting CMD after an exciting pitch process.

“We now hope to move our technology on from the academic stage to first round investment with a commercial goal being to supply a portable low cost reader, targeting point of care diagnosis of infection in primary and secondary care.”

Andrew Evans added: “The life sciences industry represents one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in Wales and it’s vital that innovative ideas continue to receive support.

“As a firm we focus on adding value to the industry areas that we work in and lending our support to this event underlines Geldards’ continued commitment to the life sciences sector.”