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Research by Dr Andrew Martin at the UCL Research Department of Structural & Molecular Biology has led to a series of antibody-related tools being made available for free use over the Web. One of these, Abysis, has been visited over 360,000 times by over 8,000 users. Abysis has also been released under a commercial license and has been purchased by companies ranging from small biotechs to large pharma for use in their antibody therapeutic development pipelines, allowing them to identify unusual features of their sequences and to improve strategies for humanisation. Martin has also acted as an expert witness for drug companies in patent disputes.
The university's Pharmacy and Pharmacology unit has developed and validated novel in silico and in vitro/ex vivo models for use by the pharma industry to select drug candidates, optimise formulations, determine the posology for clinical trials and show bioequivalence. This resulted in: the approval of two products for actinic keratosis (Picato® and Zyclara®); a generic nail formulation approved for use based on the demonstration of equivalence using the in vitro/ex vivo models described with no clinical testing (the first time this has occurred); and the translation and commercialisation of two dermal drug delivery-based patented technologies (licensing deals with Sinclair IS and major pharmaceutical companies).
Research into non-ionic surfactant vesicles (NIV) led to the development of an innovative platform system for delivery of vaccines and drugs, either through oral administration or inhalation. The technology was licensed to a US company, VBI Vaccines in 2008 and led to product development in that company. The adoption of the technology supported the creation of 35 FTE jobs in US/Canada and attracted 50% of the licensor company's Series A VC investment (approximately $18M). It was also adopted by Morvus Technology Ltd. (2010). The University collaborated with Biovaxpahrma Ltd to create a new biotechnology spin out Inhalosome-C, which was awarded a £196k TSB grant in December 2012. The technology is currently being used in commercial R&D in two further companies, Aptuit Ltd and Philips Respiratory Drug Delivery.