By Kara Carlson

@karacarlson2

Posted Oct 16, 2019 at 3:39 PM   

Lantha Inc., a chemical testing startup spun out of the University of Texas, has raised $2.6 million to help launch its first commercial product.


The Austin-based company debuted in July, based on technology that came out of UT research. The funding round was led by the Goose Society of Texas, a Houston-based venture capital investment group.


The funding will go toward finalizing development of Lantha’s commercial product, as well as hiring staff and expanding intellectual property. The company says it hopes to roll out its first commercial product in early 2020.


Lantha is working to commercialize a chemical sensor that is able to detect parts-per-million concentrations of various chemicals. The sensor has the potential for use in a variety of fields, including detection of chemical isotopes, pharmaceuticals, computer chip manufacturing, the oil and gas industry and the defense industry, according to the company. It’s also more portable and less expensive than comparable products, according to the company.


The lanthanide-based metal organic framework that makes the sensor possible was discovered in the lab of UT chemistry professor Simon Humphrey. UT and Humphrey co-own a patent on the material, and will license it to Lantha.


Humphrey, who will act as chief technology officer for the startup, said the material is like porous honeycomb on the molecular level that lets it drag in different solvents, liquids and vapors. His lab discovered the material illuminates in the presence of certain chemicals.


“We didn’t really know for the first year what we had was so valuable,” Humphrey said.


The sensor uses paper strips, much like the ones used in a high school chemistry class or pH testing in swimming pools. The strips are coated in the material so when a sample is applied, it illuminates. A photo is then snapped and analyzed for a specific color signature and intensity to tell the user exactly what is present. Results can come back in minutes, according to the company.


Humphrey said the sensor can detect the one neutron difference between regular water (H2O) and heavy water (D2O), which is produced in nuclear reactions. Or it could detect if fuel is pure with no traces of water, which could be bad for an airplane’s engine.


The testing equipment can be sold on a rent-to-own basis for a few hundred dollars a month, according to the company. Similarly capable equipment requires specialized training and can cost several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to Lantha.


Lantha chairman and CEO Rob Toker said the sensor lowers the barriers for industries needing to perform those types of tests.


“Our test kits are field deployable, so they’re portable. And it’s cheap and you don’t need specialized training to go run those tests,” Toker said.


The company will focus on commercialization in a few select markets for now, but the sensor has potential for hundreds of uses, Toker said.


“We think it has the potential to really change quite a lot of the industry dynamic,” Toker said.






Monday, 14 October 2019  Marc G Airhart  


Lantha’s sensors can quickly and cheaply identify a wide range of chemicals in an uncharacterized sample. Each chemical produces a unique eight-factor signature of color and brightness that can be used to identify it and quantify concentrations. Credit: Sam Dunning and David Steadman.

A tech startup that spun out of The University of Texas at Austin, Lantha Inc., has successfully completed its first round of venture capital investments, securing $2.6 million from the GOOSE Society of Texas and other investors. The company is commercializing a novel chemical sensor invented at UT Austin that holds promise to dramatically lower costs and return faster results compared with other analytical tools. The innovation could have applications as diverse as the detection of chemical isotopes, quality control testing of feedstocks in manufacturing computer chips and pharmaceuticals, and detecting contamination in drinking water.


"The new funding will enable us to expand our workforce and further develop the handheld device that allows our tests to be performed remotely in virtually any location on the globe without having to send samples off to a laboratory," said chemistry associate professor Simon Humphrey, who led the research at UT Austin and serves as the chief technology officer of Lantha Sensors.


The new lanthanide-based metal organic framework materials that form the basis of the new sensors were discovered in Humphrey's lab and form the basis of this next generation of rapid chemical sensors.


Humphrey said the company plans to begin selling its sensor system in spring 2020.


Lantha Sensors' handheld reader and single-use, disposable solid-state sensors are faster, cheaper and easier to use than traditional analytic tools such as NMR, FTIR and Karl Fischer titration, and they are just as accurate. The sensor system can detect parts-per-million concentrations of various chemicals, from harmful volatile organic compounds such as benzene to cyanide to glyphosate (Round Up) to trace water that can harm sensitive chemical and fuel systems. Before the development of Lantha Sensors' system, these tests were very expensive, if not impossible, outside centralized laboratories using specialized equipment operated by highly trained chemists and technicians.


Lantha Sensors was formed in July 2019 with team members Rob Toker (chairman and chief executive officer), Sam Dunning (vice president, technology development), Eric Sikma (adviser), and Jeff Smisek (board member), formerly CEO of United and Continental Airlines.


"This exemplifies the commercial potential for innovative research that is achieved by students, postdocs and faculty at The University of Texas at Austin," said Van Truskett, director for technology innovation development at UT Austin's Office of Technology Commercialization.


The GOOSE Society of Texas is a Houston-based investment group established in 2005 that has invested more than $50 million in early stage startups. The Lantha Sensors investment represents the first time GOOSE has funded technology coming out of UT Austin.


Humphrey and UT Austin share joint patents on the sensor material and on the process of analyzing results, which are licensed exclusively to Lantha Inc.


The University of Texas at Austin is committed to transparency and disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest. The investigator who led this research, Simon Humphrey, shares joint patents with the university on the sensor material described in this news release, and he has submitted required financial disclosure forms with the university.

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