Lectus was initially financed by the management and in 2003 obtained funding from the Quester-managed SULIS Seedcorn Fund. Lectus quickly gained early endorsement for its innovative approach to ion channel drug discovery through a strategic investment from Takeda Research Investment Inc (TRI; the corporate venture arm of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd) in 2004. In 2006, building on its early success, in a difficult fundraising climate, Lectus raised £8.2m in one of the biggest series A funding rounds in recent history for an early stage drug discovery company. This bucked the trend for late-stage business financing. Lectus attracted two top tier venture investors: Sofinnova Partners and Quester, as well as two Japanese corporate investors: TRI (who followed their earlier investment) and Astellas Venture Management (the venture capital arm of Astellas Pharma Inc.). This blue-chip investor base endorses the value of Lectus’s approach to discovery of ion channel therapeutics. Throughout its history Lectus has maintained a pragmatic and novel approach to fundraising: delivering value at each stage in the cycle and carefully aligning itself with the market and its investors.

In April 2006 Lectus acquired NeuroServe Ltd: a company that tested electrophysiological effects of compounds. This enabled Lectus to increase the efficiency of its research, expand its intellectual property base and move its headquarters to the Babraham Institute, located near Cambridge at the heart of the UK’s leading biotechnology cluster.

IntelliHep Ltd was founded to exploit world-leading research in glycoscience at the University of Liverpool, and to develop drug candidates from modified heparin. Heparin is a complex polysaccharide and the world’s largest selling pharmaceutical by weight, with over 60 year’s clinical use as an anticoagulant. It has a wide range of other biological activities; exploitable in many therapeutic areas, which have both large scale unmet clinical need and huge market potential.

IntelliHep has developed a platform technology, involving proprietary combinatorial chemical modification steps, fragmentation and fractionation, to produce a huge range of saccharide structures. These ‘intelligent heparin’ libraries are unique, and are used for rapid identification and optimisation of sugars as novel drug leads. This process is complemented by IntelliHep’s ability to offer world-class accessory technologies, including novel screening and sequencing methodologies.

IntelliHep is exploiting its competitive advantage by a dual strategy of near term revenue generation through licensing, and medium term value generation through its in-house drug discovery pipeline. The Company has established an internal R&D program in Alzheimer’s disease and in angiogenesis modulation. In addition, the Company has developed links with partners worldwide in a number of disease areas, including neurodegenerative disorders, multiple sclerosis, wound healing and dermatology. IntelliHep is also working with the National Biomanufacturing Centre to establish a commercial GMP-compliant manufacturing process for its candidate therapeutics.

Phynova designs drug candidates based on a deep understanding of Chinese botanical drugs and their chemistry and develops these using rigorous western methods. There are several unique aspects to our approach facilitating high discovery and development hit rates. Selection of drug candidates is based on plants with a long history of safe and effective use in humans, in targeted diseases. In addition, unlike most conventional drug candidates focusing on a specific receptor or underlying disease process, our candidates, by design, contain a number of compounds targeting multiple key underlying disease processes (ie polyvalent approach). Moreover, we follow FDA botanical drug guidelines that potentially allow early entry into clinical trials. We do this from a low cost operational base in the UK and can access markets worldwide.

Founded in 2002 and AIM listed in 2006, Phynova's model has already delivered PYN17, its lead clinical candidate for the relief of symptoms and liver inflammation in chronic hepatitis C infection. This unique product will enter a US Phase II clinical trial this month. Pipeline candidates for fatty liver disease and post-operative ileus will enter clinical trials later in 2007. Phynova has also discovered a novel antiviral agent (against hepatitis C and dengue viruses) and has several other anti-infective and anti-cancer leads advancing well in development. All of these products address common conditions with substantial unmet medical need.

Biopta Ltd is an innovative company providing human tissue-based services and instruments to the pharmaceutical industry. Biopta has taken a fresh approach to the problems inherent in drug development. Biopta’s contract research services are unique in being offered entirely in fresh functional human tissues obtained from Biopta’s extensive clinical network. Moreover, by offering GLP compliance, the prospect of human tissue assays as a routine screen within the drug development process becomes ever closer.

Despite the large sums invested in drug development and the extensive nature of the tests employed, the attrition rate of drugs during clinical trials remains a staggering 92%. The industry as a whole is therefore rapidly searching for techniques and quality-driven services that provide better information which will reduce the risks of late-stage failure. Such information is particularly required at the stages between initial discovery of a potential drug and the first clinical trials of the compound.

During the earliest stages of drug development new chemicals are tested in primary screening assays in order to determine which of them cause some detectable effect. Secondary screening and “preclinical” testing is then carried out and is critical since it aims to predict in cells, tissues, organs or whole animals the actual effect of the drugs in the human body for reasons of both safety and efficacy.

These stages are currently dominated by an over-reliance on in vivo animal models where species specificity and artificially narrow gene pools are a significant problem. Such assays are obviously best conducted in the most relevant models, particularly functional human tissues.

Biopta has helped their first client bring their compound from concept to an application for Phase I trials within 30 months, compared with the average time span of 4-6 years.

Piramed is a UK-based drug discovery company focused on the research and development of targeted therapies for cancer and immune-inflammatory diseases. Founded in July 2003, it has received £12M investor funding from JP Morgan Partners and Merlin Biosciences.

Piramed's area of expertise is centred on specific inhibitors of a family of lipid kinases, namely PI 3-kinases. The PI 3-kinase pathway is considered to be one of the most important pathways in cancer as aberrations in this pathway are common in most tumour types. Activation of the pathway is also important in inflammation and autoimmunity.

Our scientific founders are pre-eminent in this field and gave Piramed a substantial first-mover advantage in what has become a highly competitive area. This advantage has been considerably strengthened by the establishment of a large and influential academic network focussing on this area of biology. Indeed, Piramed has created a strong intellectual property portfolio, encompassing both inhibitors and kinase targets.

In November 2005, Piramed signed a $230m alliance with Genentech for the clinical development and commercialisation of PI 3-kinase inhibitors in cancer. The alliance represents a landmark preclinical deal by a European biotech start-up company, providing significant funding for the growth of the company. The deal received two accolades in 2006; winner of the Biotech:Biotech Innovative BioPartnering Award at Biobusiness Network and placement of Piramed in the top 15 'Fierce Biotech' companies. This deal not only endorses the value of Piramed's technology but also enabled the company to retain downstream value via an option to commercialise in ex-US territories.

Piramed has also discovered highly selective, isoform-specific PI 3-kinase inhibitors. The company's most advanced proprietary programme involves novel selective inhibitors of p110 delta, a PI 3-kinase isoform that is an important target for immune inflammatory disorders. This programme is currently in IND enabling studies and the Company's intention is to create significant value by taking this programme through to clinical proof of concept before partnering.

• Lead product approved to begin UK-based clinical trial in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients
• MS diagnostic blood test under development
• Therapeutic vaccine to prevent factor VIII inhibitor antibodies in haemophilia A patients under evaluation in pre clinical models

The body’s immune system protects us from harmful proteins. However, an abnormal immune response to the bodies own (e.g. the myelin sheath surrounding nerve fibres in MS) proteins can cause serious life threatening damage to the body causing common conditions such as allergies, asthma, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, organ transplant rejection and type I diabetes. All current treatments either treat the symptoms or non-specifically suppress the patient’s immune system and can cause serious side effects such as increased infections and a greater risk of cancer.

Apitope’s therapeutic approach is based on well-established scientific evidence showing that soluble, synthetic peptides can reinstate normal and/or attenuate abnormal immune responses through the induction of a naturally occurring population of IL-10 secreting lymphoctyes.

• First, through the provision of expert contract research service via branch lab acquisitions where equipment and staff are either transferred to GSL in Cambridge or through GSL actively managing our partner’s core service lab in situ. Why does this work? Our partners benefit from professional service support and access to the newest technology platforms without the need to invest in capital or staff. GSL understands the research process to provide solutions to our partner’s problems. Keeping close, literally, to our customers, and implementing our quality systems facilitates a better customer experience. For GSL, this model enables rapid market penetration and growth of regional hubs (eventually 4-5 in the UK) and access to equipment capacity, expert staff and local scientific researchers for applications development. In future GSL will investigate equivalent partnering opportunities with the NHS or pharma/biotech companies.
• Second, through biobanking and distribution of biomolecular resources, such as DNA-based collections. These collections are extremely expensive to generate and represent valuable tools for future research. Academic groups partner with GSL so that we can provide a commercially viable way to maintain the archive, and promote/distribute to the international science community through a sophisticated e-commerce portal. In future we plan on incorporating cell and tissue resources.

Combinatorial Domain Hunting Advances
Technology Development
We published the technology in a high quality, peer-reviewed journal

Customer Satisfaction
We have achieved an excellent result for one of our early collaborations where we have supplied a domain isolated from a very difficult protein drug target. The following is a quote direct from the customer:
“Probably one the best expressing proteins we have ever had in the insect cell system! Protein from both E.coli and insect cells has been used successfully in generating co-crystals with our in-house inhibitors and we now have a 2.3A structure with our inhibitor bound”
This result is very important as it demonstrates the validation of our technology via a third party customer. More importantly, we have a positive message from the customer that they are considering a larger further collaboration.

Technology Development
Early technology development, part funded by a European grant under FP6, is going well. The initial gene synthesis for two projects has commenced and the technology is ready for testing.

Funding
Domainex was initially funded by BBSF, a Challenge fund linking UCL and ICR spin outs. In late 2006 Longbow Capital invested to enable the development of the technology and particularly the applications, to be accelerated.

The first quarter of 2007 has been a busy time for Domainex. We completed a merger with NCE-Discovery in Cambridge which now enables the complete delivery of novel drug targets from gene to small molecule.
We have embarked on an in-house program of drug target discovery and now complement that activity with the ability to synthesise our own small molecule drugs.

Ai2's business focus is developing novel anti-microbial coatings for out-licensing to healthcare companies across a range of sectors. The company's core technology stems from research by company founder Dr Curtis Dobson, who developed a powerful anti-microbial technology from a previously unrecognised aspect of innate human immunity.

In addition to a ground-breaking new platform technology, Ai2 has an innovative 'virtual' business model that has minimised costs and accelerated time to market. The company outsources much of its manufacturing, and shares development costs with carefully selected partner organisations, allowing Ai2 to leverage complementary resources and expertise on a project by project basis. A portfolio of experienced technical and commercial managers advise the company, most employed on project-limited or part-time basis.

The company is already generating revenues from operations (approx £50k in the past year) although the vast majority of its income will be derived from exclusive licensing deals. In validation of this model, Ai2 is about to conclude a major licensing agreement with a blue-chip multinational Healthcare company. This deal will place the company at the forefront of the medical device coatings sector and provide funds to advance its new product development programs to market.

OGeS is making rapid progress towards its goal of being a leader in the development of personalised medicines for cancer. This quickly developing field, combining diagnostics and therapeutics, has been highlighted by Genentech’s Herceptin. This antibody therapeutic that has transformed the treatment of specific group of breast cancer patients. In order to achieve our corporate ambitions, we plan to enter into strategic collaborations with both world-leading antibody companies and with bluechip diagnostic companies.

• Started to develop antibody therapeutics for the treatment of colorectal cancer via our collaboration with Medarex (US), one of the world leaders in this field. This collaboration has since been rapidly extended to a number of other cancer indications.
• Commenced the development of novel commercial diagnostics for colorectal cancer with Biosite (US), a world leader in rapid diagnostic products,
• Extended our search for new clinical biomarkers for colorectal cancer through a new collaborative agreement with the University of Oxford.

LUX biotechnology ltd (LUX) is a technology development house which uses its core expertise in light based technologies to develop solutions across different industries. LUX develops its own product ranges, which it distributes globally through partners in Europe, the US and Japan. Products available on the market include Glowell™, a series of innovative, high quality light standards for the calibration of imaging and analytical equipment and a range of novel research reagents with application in life science research and discovery. In addition, LUX has a rich product pipeline that includes novel detection and measurement of chemicals used in a number of industrial processes in the energy and environmental sector, a water quality monitoring system for detection of pathogens in potable water and also a new diagnostic technology.

As part of this product development, LUX works closely with companies and universities to identify needs which can be fulfilled through cooperative development.

Our range of building blocks and intermediates contain many novel materials. We have a comprehensive range of phenyl and heterocyclic ring systems with one or more reactive sites specifically designed for research and development purposes in the pharmaceutical, biochemical and agrochemical industries. Principals have over 30 years experience in the manufacture and supply of quality materials.

Avacta has two core activities:

• The spectraTECH platform - a set of technologies using laser spectroscopy for chemical and biological analysis/detection. This could be applied to take measurements of protein therapeutics at an early stage of a drug development pipeline in order to predict their biophysical properties with a view to identifying some of the risks of later stage failure of the candidate drug. Avacta is currently in collaboration with UCB’s Celltech Antibody Centre of Excellence to take this further.
• The nanoSCREEN platform - a set of technologies being developed with the aim of producing instrumentation and associated consumables that will be capable of use in the rapid detection of pathogens, toxins and biomarkers. Avacta is working with clinical scientists based at the University of Leeds to develop a rapid, non-invasive diagnostic product and is in the early stages of discussions with two private UK companies regarding clinical applications.

Avacta Analytical has developed a packaged service for the biopharmaceutical industry (the ‘‘Biophysical Toolkit’’) which can be used to characterise the properties of protein molecules that are critical to their performance as biopharmaceuticals.

Since inception, we have constantly developed the DrySyn range and successfully introduced our partner company PharmaCore’s custom synthesis services into the European market. We have also been awarded the privilege of becoming official agents for Vacuubrand, Heidolph, Thales and JKem. We have a 100% commitment to investing in new products and chemistries and plan to launch new ideas regularly. We are slightly unique in the way that all of our sales team are chemists. This provides us with first hand knowledge in the field. Together with this, we can talk animatedly with the chemist and discuss improvements in products related to the bench chemist.

In a dynamic world such as science, Asynt is able to adapt to the constantly changing environment of the market sector. Our products have applications in the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, agrochemical, environmental and academic sectors. Backed by our current team of product specialists, we are able to offer extensive, comprehensive and technical support on our complete product range internationally and domestically. The services, products and support Asynt embellishes are requested by chemists and developed by qualified “in-house” chemists.

Thanks to our ever-increasing network of hard working, dedicated, distributors, we have installed our DrySyn heating blocks all around the world. We have an excellent track record for successful, innovative products that are simple and easy to use but enable the chemist to save time, money and increase profitability.

Asynt joined the UK Trade & Investment Passport to Export programme in early 2005. Overseas figures rose quickly from 221k to 394k in 2006. Using the four intensive Overseas Market Introduction Service (OMIS) reports in Singapore, Japan, Spain and Ireland and grant money from Passport to Export, Asynt toured the Far East and appointed several excellent distributors. Asynt also used marketing money from the “Trade Show Access Programme”, to visit Pittcon as a new exhibitor.

VetCell's first concerted foray into international trade began in the summer of 2004 and by 2006 overseas income made up c35% of turnover.

Whilst on the UKTI Passport to Export program VetCell developed their international trade strategy and put in place their 1st overseas territory (Australasia) deal which became a model for their international business approach.

VetCell explored various routes to market and undertook an exercise comparing distributorships, franchising and licensing. A novel solution was developed that involved having 2 territory partners one under a licensing agreement (for laboratory based services) and one acting as a distributor (for sales & marketing functions).

They prioritised markets by a combination of potential size and ease of access and have taken a stepwise approach to cover the globe. They have gone on to gain business from 19 other countries and opened a US subsidiary last year.

Scottish Biomedical Ltd. was established to advance research in the life sciences and biotechnology. Scottish Biomedical has got its own research laboratories at the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow. This facility delivers leading edge drug discovery and development projects in the fields of inflammation, metabolic diseases and disorders of the CNS.

The Company provides preclinical contract research services for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. It has established an international presence and a track record of achievement in the commercial development of biomedical discoveries.

Scottish Biomedical has successfully completed over one hundred research projects for pharma and biotech companies in the UK, Europe, North America and the Far East. It has been particularly successful in Japan. These have made it financially self-sufficient and profitable.

Scottish Biomedical currently has 50 researcher employees at the Glasgow Research Facility and further 10 FTE’s employed in satellite facilities. Scottish Biomedical’s key laboratory skills are

• The ethical accrual of human tissue
• Genomics/Proteomics/Bioinformatics
• Target validation
• Custom assay development
• HTS and drug discovery
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Drug development
• Disease models

Our goal is to be an industry leader in improving the quality of life for people with dermatological disorders. We aim to achieve this through the application of innovative Research & Development into novel formulations and their effectiveness in a clinical setting. We believe in improving patient care by discovering, developing & marketing novel, high quality and cost effective dermatological products.

A spin out from the University of York, Paraytec shot to global attention in March 2007 with the announcement that it had won one of the most important international technology awards in its sector. Paraytec's ActiPix D100 instrument was awarded the Pittcon 2007 Editors' Choice Silver Award when it was featured as a new product at the world's largest meeting for laboratory instrumentation and scientific equipment, held in Chicago.

Paraytec beat off challenges from more than 1,000 exhibiting companies including multi-billion dollar blue chip corporations, to have its first product endorsed as one of the most significant and important technology advances of the year. Paraytec's innovative equipment was described by a panel of 150 scientific publication editors as a "novel and innovative product" that “transcends” boundaries in its contribution to life and analytical sciences.

Paraytec's patented technology is a revolutionary advance in UV-Vis absorbance measurement, using capillaries in conjunction with sophisticated optics and active pixel area sensors. The result is a powerful new detection platform which is opening up exciting new applications. Early users have called the ActiPix "a detector with so much potential that it is bound to have an impact on key discoveries for years to come."

Recognising early the global significance of its technology, the company has worked closely with UKTI from the outset. UKTI advisors assisted Paraytec during preparation of the targeted presentation which caught the eyes of judges at Pittcon, and have also supported it in establishing a global network of distributors for its products, now achieving international sales. The company is continuing to take advantage of the intense international attention to grow its sales to end users and development partners, and to progress its international collaborations.