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Impact: EaStCHEM spin out Albachem (1994), subsequently incorporated into the Almac group, enabling the latter company to become a world leader in the provision of chemically synthesised proteins.
Significance: Chemical synthesis is competitive with recombinant methods for commercial production of the therapeutic polypeptides that represent ~50% of drugs in big pharma pipelines and have a market value in 2008 of over $13B. The value attributable to Ramage's methods for polypeptide syntheses over the REF period is estimated at approximately £6M.
Beneficiaries: Drug manufacturers, contract research organisations, patients, clinicians.
Research: Studies (1993-6) led by Ramage (at the University of Edinburgh) on new methods for high-yield total syntheses and purification of long polypeptides.
Reach: Almac's protein-manufacturing team remains in the UK with 24 staff members. The Almac Group, headquartered in N. Ireland, has 3300 employees globally (1300 outside UK) and sells to 600 companies worldwide.
Working with TMO Renewables Ltd, work in Dr Leak's laboratory at Imperial College demonstrated that thermophilic bacteria of the genus Geobacillus could use a novel (i.e. non-textbook) route to produce ethanol. TMO used this information to develop strains that produced ethanol in commercially useful quantities from lignocellulose breakdown products. This allowed them to: (i) compete for and win a major contract ($500M over 20 years) with Fiberight in the USA in 2010, to turn fermentable components of municipal solid waste into biofuel, (ii) enter into partnership agreements with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation in 2011, and (iii) enter into agreements in 2012 and 2013 with Usina Santa Maria Cerquilho to build a bioethanol production facility in Brazil. The most recent agreement with Brazil will create more than 150 new jobs in the UK. At the end of 2011, TMO Renewables reported a net worth of almost £11million.
Protein modification represents a highly significant and growing source of new products for the biopharmaceuticals market. This case study outlines the development of PolyTherics, a highly successful spin-out company from the UCL School of Pharmacy, and the impact that their enabling technology has had on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The company was developed as a direct result of new conjugate technology developed by Professor Steve Brocchini and coworkers at the School. The company moved to independent premises in 2006 and now manages a portfolio of over 100 granted and pending patents. Several licensing agreements are in place, including with Celtic Pharma Holdings for haemophilia treatments and Nuron for a multiple sclerosis treatment based on PEGylation conjugation technology. Revenue is expected to be £8m in 2013. The impact of Polytherics is therefore as a significant and effective technology provider to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Essex research identified a novel bioprocessing matrix which has since been developed into commercial products and recently launched into external markets by Porvair Filtration Group Ltd. The discovery involved the chemical modification of sintered thermoplastic materials in order to attach biological molecules, so conferring highly specific functionalised properties to an otherwise inert base material. This enabled a new approach for protein immobilisation, having technical and practical advantages over existing processes. As a direct result, Porvair has adopted a new technology and invested £900k in R&D over eight years. Essex research has supported a change in business strategy, enabling entry into new markets, which has in turn both safeguarded and created jobs at Porvair.
Nature's Raincoats is a physical exhibition and a website providing easily accessible information and resources. These entities have had extensive use within the public understanding of superhydrophobic surfaces (extremely repellent to water), including The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, Cheltenham Science Festival, The Big Bang Fair, British Science Festival and Techfest (India) — reaching thousands of people in the UK and overseas. As well as impacting on improved public awareness, the research informed website provides a direct route to research expertise for companies within the UK and internationally and extends good practice of working with industry e.g. Rolls Royce.
A novel conjugation technology has been developed to enable site-specific attachment of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to proteins to extend the in vivo half-life of biopharmaceuticals. The technology has been commercialised by an Imperial College spin-out company, PolyTherics Limited. In 2013, the merger of PolyTherics with Antitope Limited, enhanced the company's biopharmaceutical technology development offering. PolyTherics issued new shares to the value of £13.5 million to investors and Antitope shareholders in connection with the merger.
The company has enabled the development of novel forms of interferon 03b2 (for the treatment of multiple sclerosis) and blood factors VIIA, VIII and IX (for the treatment of haemophilia A and B) utilising original Imperial TheraPEG™ technology. This is achieved through licences granted by PolyTherics to Nuron Biotech and Celtic Pharma Holdings who are in early pre-clinical development. PolyTherics has further developed the conjugation technology (ThioBridge™) for its application in the creation of stable, homogeneous antibody-drug conjugates for the targeted cancer therapy.
Polytherics has impacted the UK economy generating intellectual capital, capital investment, new employment and novel compounds to treat disease.
Plaxica is a spin-out from, and based, at Imperial College London with economic, societal and environmental impacts. Launched in 2008, Plaxica is a process technology licensing business which is tackling the barriers that currently prevent a wider acceptance of bioplastics; specifically improving properties, decreasing cost and using non-food feedstocks to manufacture the biopolymer poly(lactic acid), PLA. Plaxica's technology uses sustainable feedstocks to produce PLA using more energy-efficient processes, to produce a strong, high-quality polymer, the result of which is a low-cost, environmentally-friendly biopolymer for use in applications including textiles, packaging, and automobile parts. In the REF period Plaxica has raised £10m from investors such as Imperial Innovations, Invesco Perpetual and NESTA Investments. The market pull for biorenewable materials from consumers is strong and the EU predicts that PLA will substitute >10% of the existing market for petrochemical polymers and forecasts a market >$15b [A].
As sophisticated proteomics methodologies are increasingly embraced by both academics and industry across the globe, growth in this area is set to explode. The University of Dundee has a leadership position in quantitative proteomics technology, through the expertise of Professor Angus Lamond. Dundee Cell Products Ltd is a University of Dundee spin-out company that was created to commercialise life sciences technology and reagents, and to exploit technology and expertise in proteomics developed at the College of Life Sciences. As of 2013, DCP offers >5,000 research products and six contract research services, centred around quantitative proteomics.
Metamaterials deliver electromagnetic properties not available in natural materials. Transformation optics replaces the ray picture of Snell's law with the field lines of Maxwell's equations and is an exact description of classical optics. These powerful concepts, originally developed by Prof John Pendry, have engendered massive interest in the electromagnetic community encompassing radio frequency (RF) through to optical applications. His advice is sought by numerous companies and these concepts are now filtering through into products. In the last 5 years there has been great involvement of industry and particularly of the defence establishment in the USA who run several multi mullion dollar programs on metamaterials based at DARPA, WPAFB and Sandia. A company, KYMETA, was formed in 2012 to market this technology with $12M of investment funding, and is developing a laptop-sized antenna that gives instant Internet hotspot access anywhere in the world, with an ultimate application allowing cheap and fast Internet connections for the everyday consumer. In the UK, BAE Systems is using metamaterials for several applications including compact, directional antennas.
Molecular Vision Ltd ("MV"), which was spun-out of Imperial Innovations, develops simple-to-use, point-of-care diagnostic devices (known as the BioLED™ platform) that quickly produce lab-quality information from a single sample of bodily fluids. Since 2008 MV has validated the platform, including demonstration of its CardioplexTM triple test for myoglobin, CK-MB and troponin-I in a serum sample, and undertaken >£1.5M of contract work for a variety of customers including Acrongenomics Inc, Microfluidic ChipShop and L'Oreal; addressing analysis problems relating to kidney and cardiac health, pathogen identification and cosmetics. During the REF period the Company has generated a total of over £3.4m in investment, contract revenue and non-UK grant funding and created greater than 50 man years of UK employment, primarily at the PhD level. Abingdon Health Group acquired a majority stake in MV in 2012 as part of its strategy to create a fully integrated business in the UK that is able to compete in the large and global immunodiagnostics market.