Company history

Oxford Nanopore Technologies was spun out from the University of Oxford in 2005. Until May 2008, the company was named Oxford NanoLabs Ltd. Oxford Nanopore employs a team of more than 300 people including scientists, engineers, informaticians, manufacturing and commercial specialists. Headquartered in Oxford, UK, the Company also has employees in Cambridge (UK), New York and Boston.

The company was founded by Dr Gordon Sanghera, Dr Spike Willcocks and Professor Hagan Bayley, who is currently Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford, with seed funding from IP Group plc. Since 2008 the Company has also been working with collaborators at Harvard, Boston University and the University of California Santa Cruz and now includes a broad intellectual property position for the use of nanopores in molecular analysis and specifically DNA sequencing.

Gordon Sanghera has been CEO since the Company's foundation. He brings his experience of combining biological and electronic technologies and working across all disciplines at a senior level in a technology company.  He previously delivered blood glucose-sensing products to the market, a technology that has transformed the lives of diabetes patients worldwide. Gordon now leads an experienced management team towards the development and commercialisation of a disruptive technology platform for the analysis of biological molecules.

In 2008, Dr John Milton and Clive G. Brown joined the executive management team, bringing previous experience of having developed DNA sequencing technology at Solexa, which was acquired and commercialised by Illumina.

In July 2009, the Company relocated to the Oxford Science Park. Our premises at Edmund Cartwright House were inaugurated by the UK Science and Innovation Minister, Lord Drayson. In 2011, an additional 7,000 square feet on the Oxford Science Park was opened and a new Cambridge office was also opened.

In February 2012 at the AGBT conference, Oxford Nanopore presented a variety of nanopore DNA 'strand sequencing' and protein-analysis data, and an overview of the hardware and software behind the GridION and MinION systems. These data included small genomes that had been sequenced using the Company's technology over the sense and antisense strands, showing tens of kilobases in single reads. This was the first nanopore sequence data to be shown worldwide since the technique was first theoretically proposed in 1996.

In spring 2014, the MinION Access Programme (MAP) was commenced; early access users were invited to contribute a refundable $1,000 deposit to use the MinION in its earliest stages of release.   Over the subsequent months, performance and processes were improved and publications on the technology started to emerge.

In October 2014, at the ASHG conference, the PromethION was presented for the first time. PromethION is a tablet-sized benchtop instrument giving users the choice of the number of samples and the number of nanopores being used for a particular experiment, ranging from individual samples at a time to multiple samples in parallel.  Specifications of the device can be found here.

In May 2015, the first nanopore sensing conference was convened (London Calling) where users of MinION technology gathered to hear from 20 speakers and additional abstracts from numerous other MAP participants across a range of applications.  MinION became commercially available at this time and the MinION Access Programme became the Nanopore community.

In July 2015, the PromethION Access Programme was opened for registration.

In November 2015, Professor Hagan Bayley retired from the Board.

In November 2015, MinION users gathered at the first Nanopore Community Meeting in New York.

In May 2016, the second London Calling conference was convened.  A series of announcements were made including the full availability of the new R9 nanopore with improved performance. The mobile phone compatible, pipeline product SmidgION was announced.

In September 2016, Oxford Nanopore held a technical update, announcing new product upgrades to the MinION.

In October 2016, Oxford Nanopore announced that the early queue for the PromethION Early Access Programme was now full and announced transition to a more mature phase of the programme. 

In October 2016, registration for the VolTRAX Introduction Programme was announced

In December 2016, the second Nanopore Community Meeting was held. During this meeting, three groups presented or released the first human genomes to be sequenced on the handheld MinION.

In February 2017, the GridION X5 was announced; a desktop system integrating five MinION Flow Cells with integrated compute function, that can be used to offer nanopore sequencing as a service. 

In May 2017, the GridION X5 started shipping and the company introduced 1D squared, a new method of sequencing that gives a boost in accuracy while keeping simple library prep processes.

In June 2017, Oxford Nanopore launched its RNA sequencing solutions. This provides the only direct, real time RNA sequencing technology and additional cDNA analysis.

In October 2018, Oxford Nanopore announced its entry into the Chinese market, having appointed a distributor and established its first sales to customers.

In December 2017-January 2018, the PromethION Early Access Programme started to deliver very high throughput DNA sequencing with nanopore technology

In March 2018, Oxford Nanopore announced that it will be opening a new high tech manufacturing facility to address growing global demand for nanopore technology

To follow all our news updates, visit the News page.

Applications and publications

In the early days of MinION usage, many users of the technology were exploring pathogens/small genomes, environmental sequencing and developing tools for nanopore analysis.  As the community has grown, the performance of nanopore sequencing has evolved dramatically and with the addition of GridION and PromethION to the instrument portfolio, this has evolved to include a larger number of researchers working in plant genetics, human genetics, clinical research, transcriptomics and other larger scale projects. As Flongle comes online in 2018 this will also expand to rapid, smaller tests.

Read more about the applications here, or review publications here. 

Technology progress so far

Continuous integration for continuous performance improvement

MinION was launched into the MinION Access Programme in Spring 2014 and made commercially available in May 2015. The Nanopore Community has grown around the two phases of MinION availability.

Oxford Nanopore delivers continual improvement where all parts of the technology are shipped, improved and developed. The format of the hardware, software and chemistry changes on a regular basis (often over weeks rather than months). This iterative improvement process will continue throughout the lifetime of all Oxford Nanopore products.

Updates across different parts of the technology can combine to produce specific, measurable improvements. This has been achieved through a combination of software updates, changes in the library preparation kits and protocols, changes in the flow cell design and changes in the flow cell chemistries.

Examples of developments to date include:

Library preparation kits

• These have been updated several times during the Nanopore Community, and additional kits and protocols have been introduced to enable new applications, for example cDNA sequencing and barcoding of genomic DNA and amplicons. Changes have also contributed towards improving the accuracy of sequence data.
• We have also made several changes to our library preparation kits to improve the user experience. These include reducing the number of steps and consequently the time taken, and improving robustness and performance.  The Rapid Sequencing kit prepares a library in five minutes.
• VolTRAX, an automated library preparation device, has shipped to first users (November 2017)

MinION flow cells, containing the bespoke nanopore sensor and associated chemistries

• Three new versions of these flow cells have been delivered to date that increase yield by delivering more working nanopores per flow cell. 
• In the summer of 2016, 'R9' was released to supercede the previous R7. This was designed to improve  sequencing accuracy. Running at speeds of 250+ bases per second per nanopore it was designed to increase the speed of data generation and therefore yield of a flow cell.
• In October 2016, new flow cells containing R9.4 were shipped, increasing sequencing speeds to 450 bases per second and enabling 10Gb DNA sequencing data to be obtained from a MinION Flow Cell.  
• In May 2017, R9.5 was shipped, to be compatible with the new 1D squared method of sequencing. Oxford Nanopore is at this stage producing more than 20Gb from a single Flow Cell.
• Continuous improvements to all parts of the technology including the software continue to be delivered

The MinION device

• In May 2015 the second version of the device, the MinION MkI was introduced. The MinION MkI was a full production device featuring improvements of performance and ease of use.
• In May 2016, the MinION Mk 1B was introduced. Preparing for future iterations of nanopore chemistry it included improvements such as greater temperature control of the flow cell.

Speed of individual nanopore processing

Faster processing speed results in greater yield of data per unit of time. Speed is affected by multiple factors including buffers, temperature and the motor enzyme deployed

• During the first year of the Nanopore Community, Oxford Nanopore recommended a speed of around 30 bases per second per nanopore
• By 2015 users could run at 70bps. 
• With the introduction of R9 in the summer of 2016, DNA was passed through the nanopore at 250+bps
• From October 2016, processing speeds have been 450 bases per second
• The electronics of the MinION are designed for as much as 1,000 bases per second, for further capacity for yield improvements

Flow cells: Duration of use

• The MinION does not have a fixed run time; users may run the instrument for as long as it takes to accumulate sufficient data for their needs. The total available life time of a flow cell does not need to be consumed in a single experiment. In the Nanopore Community, later releases of flow cells have been run for longer periods of time resulting in increased overall yields.

The instrument control software (MinKNOW)

• New versions of MinKNOW have been released to improve MinION performance for all applications. For example, adjusting the frequency of data sampling can improve yield and accuracy.
• Most recently, MinKNOW now allows local basecalling.
• In February 2017, MinKNOW 1.4.2 was released, enabling larger data yields

Other devices

Based on electronics rather than optics, nanopore technology can scale to any size:

• Following on from the success of the MinION, the GridION X5 was launched in 2017. This can run up to five MinON Flow Cells with onboard compute
• The PromethION is now available and offers nearly 300 times the power of a MinION except modular and on-demand. The PromethION is designed to operate up to 48 Flow Cells individually or together
• The Flongle will be introduced in 2018, for rapid, smaller tests
• Oxford Nanopore continues to develop SmidgION, a smartphone sequencer

Analysis tools

• Oxford Nanopore provides signal processing and base-calling tools, but file formats are documented and participants can write their own data analysis tools or modify the scripts provided in the GitHub repository. Sources for any software are provided on an ‘as-is’ and ‘without warranties’ basis
• Basecalling is performed locally.  New and evolved analysis algorithms and other updates have been made to basecalling, enabling high accuracy raw and consensus data
• Nanopore Community participants have developed a variety of tools for nanopore data analysis
• A range of analysis workflows are provided to users, using the EPI2ME platform from Metrichor Ltd. These include workflows to perform real time species identification, real time analysis of antimicrobial resistance markers, exome mapping and more.
• Oxford Nanopore is introducing MinIT, a preconfigured accessory designed to run MinION and perform analyses, as an alternative to a laptop

Knowledge and support

We provide the latest information on how to use the products via the Nanopore community website, which also serves as a forum for MinION users to share information.