Semarion

Semarion is a University of Cambridge spin-out from the Cavendish Laboratory combining materials engineering and cell biology to tackle fundamental bottlenecks in drug discovery. The company was co-founded in 2018 to address a core problem in pharmaceutical research: adherent cells — used in 80–90% of all in vitro drug discovery assays — are slow, manual, and difficult to automate using conventional methods. Semarion's platform offers a step-change in how these cells are prepared, stored, and assayed.

The company's proprietary SemaCyte® microcarrier technology transforms adherent cells into assay-ready, barcoded liquid reagents. These ultra-miniaturised, magnetically steerable wells carry small colonies of adherent cells and can be frozen, stored, and dispensed directly into standard 384-well plates using existing liquid handling tools. By facilitating workflow automation, assay miniaturisation, and cell multiplexing, SemaCytes can reduce preparation times by up to 20-fold, cut cell use by up to 100-fold, and generate results two to ten times faster than current approaches.

Semarion has raised over £4 million in funding from Parkwalk Advisors, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet Capital, and angel investors, and is in active pilot partnerships with top-tier pharmaceutical and biotech companies including AstraZeneca. The company has won the SLAS Europe Ignite Award and the Business Weekly Pathfinder Award, and is on track to convert its pilot engagements into commercial revenue ahead of a planned Series A in late 2026.