New US headquarters opened by mass photometry pioneers Refeyn

Refeyn, the company behind pioneering mass photometry technologies, has officially opened its new 10,000 sq. ft. US Headquarters and Customer Interaction Center in Waltham’s Biotech Hub in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. Refeyn CEO Gerry Mackay – along with two members of the sales team and one of the company’s co-founders, Prof. Philipp Kukura – helped to cut the ribbon at the opening event. Philipp Kukura led the research team that invented mass photometry, a unique light-based bioanalytical tool for rapid, single-particle analysis. The ceremony was attended by senior representatives from neighboring biotech companies in the Boston area, as well as Refeyn customers and employees.

The grand opening is a significant milestone in the rapid growth of Refeyn since it was spun out of Oxford University just six years ago. Hundreds of its instruments are now used globally for applications in scientific discovery, R&D, and therapeutics production, with more applications being cited regularly. As Philipp Kukura commented at the opening event, “In the early days, mass photometry’s potential was obvious and the key question wasn’t ‘What can mass photometry do?’ but ‘What can mass photometry not do?’ It is amazing to witness the opening of Refeyn’s state-of-the-art US HQ today, having started in an early 19th century building above a burger joint in central Oxford, which feels like only yesterday.”

With the opening of our new US HQ, the success of Refeyn and mass photometry is evident as we now have over 180 employees globally and are currently recruiting more to support our expanding US customer-base from our new facility. Furthermore, with over 300 scientific papers to date citing mass photometry, this literature highlights the ever-growing capabilities of this unique technology as it is increasingly adopted in life science laboratories around the world.”

Gerry Mackay, CEO, Refeyn

Serving as Refeyn’s US Customer Interaction Center, alongside offices, meeting and training rooms, the leading-edge laboratory space in the new HQ now enables customers across North America to visit to run samples and test applications. Refeyn is working to achieve sustainability certification for this laboratory space, which includes a BSL-2 lab, service center, R&D center and applications lab. The new site also facilitates instrument maintenance, customer training sessions, and workshops that all serve to ensure excellence in support for Refeyn’s customers across North America and beyond.

The US HQ grand opening followed the successful third annual Mass Photometry Summit 2024, which supported customers by bringing together mass photometry users to share their experiences and how they are pushing the limits of the technology in their own research to provide vital insights for scientific discovery. Refeyn scientists also shared developments in applications and products and gave demonstrations.

From investigating oligomerization and macromolecular assembly to analyzing adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), users’ presentations and posters highlighted much of what mass photometry can do – and how users are driving it even further. Presenters included Dr. Di Wu of the National Institutes of Health, an early adopter of mass photometry, who talked about SEC-MP, a technique for AAV characterization for gene therapy that he and colleagues published in 2023. The day’s keynote speaker was Prof. Priyamvada Acharya from Duke University School of Medicine, whose work focuses on the HIV-1 envelope.