At first sight, they are unlikely bedfellows — Oxford’s 900-year-old university and a family-owned Hong Kong firm with its roots in watchmaking. But cutting-edge research taking place beneath Oxford’s dreaming spires has attracted the attention of the Chung Nam Corporation, a company which “tries to be half a step ahead of the rest”, according to KK Yip, the head of strategic development at CN Innovations, the firm’s precision engineering and material sciences division.

Last July, CN Innovations invested £1m in Zyoxel, an Oxford University spinout company developing microbioreactor technology to culture human tissues for laboratory testing of drugs and stem cell research.

The system, developed by a team led by Professor Zhan Feng Cui, of the university’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, at the Churchill Hospital, in Headington, mimics the way cells in the body are supplied with nutrients and waste is removed via the blood.

Zyoxel says the system will cut the cost of drug development by at least 10 per cent by providing better and more accurate information from testing on human tissues and could cut animal testing worldwide by 10 per cent a year.

Mr Yip said: “The team at Zyoxel is more or less in place now and hopefully this year we will start to generate revenue.”

Zyoxel was not CN Innovations’ first investment in Oxfordshire. The company has a strategy of seeking out new environmentally-friendly manufacturing techniques, in line with the firm’s firm policies on social responsibility, which draw on the Buddhist principles of its founding family.

These policies preclude any involvement with the arms industry, despite CN’s expertise in precision engineering and manufacturing, but have seen it offer help after the devastating Sichaun earthquake in China in 2008, in reconstruction work but also funding play and music therapy schemes for the communities affected.

Concern over the use of chemical etching in the electronics industry — in particular the use of cyanide — led the firm to look at alternatives, particularly laser etching.

Mr Yip added: “We went out to explore and were very fortunate to meet someone from Oxford. Within a short period of time we set up a joint venture with him, M-Solv. Now we employ more than 20 engineers, who have about 200 years’ of laser technology experience between them.”

M-Solv’s research centre at Oxonian Park, Langford Locks, Kidlington (pictured right) specialises in advanced laser micro-machining and micro-depostion applications for sectors such as microelectronics and flat panel display screen manufacture.

The firm’s manufacturing centre is in China.

“Because of this Oxford connection, we came across Prof Cui and his work,” said Mr Yip.

“Isis Innovation, the university’s technology company, was looking for a spinout and that’s when we started talking.

“CN Innovations is all about science-based innovations in different industries. That’s why when we started to talk to Prof Cui, it became clear it was more bio-engineering than bio-medical, and we started to think about investing in it more seriously.”

And further co-operation with the university is on the cards in the near future. Mr Yip said a memorandum of understanding about another programme had recently been sent to Oxford.

He added: “Industry today is about innovations and brainpower. It’s not so much about the financial side and the hardware side — it’s all about the people who make it successful and make it work and we like working with the people in Oxford, as well as our partners in other places, including Cambridge, Switzerland and the US.”

o Contacts: www.chungnam.com, www.m-solv.com and www.isis-innovation.com