When Dr Jelle Penders and colleagues from Prof Dame Molly Stevens’ team at Imperial College London decided to commercialize their research, they turned to Prior Scientific to help develop their concept into a marketable product.

SPARTA Biodiscovery is a successful start-up company that grew out of research at Imperial College, London. SPARTA® stands for ‘Single Particle Automated Raman Trapping Analysis’. In simple terms, it uses light to determine the composition of a particle by looking at the fingerprint generated by the molecules inside. By shining a laser into a sample, it ‘traps’ a single particle, and, by analyzing the signal emitted, confirms the nature and chemical composition of the particle.

During the research phase at Imperial College, Prior Scientific supplied components for the project. However, the move toward realizing a fully commercial product began with a basic drawing of the prototype the research team had created. Prior’s brief was to turn this into a viable product using our commercial and engineering expertise to complement SPARTA’s specialist scientific knowledge.

As with any brief, our engineering team started by analyzing the requirements to determine:

• What could be achieved using existing parts or technologies?
• What third-party components need integrating?
• What elements of the new design will need innovation?

SPARTA required a blending of all three approaches.