Edinburgh BioQuarter Newsletter 03 | Autumn 2011
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THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM EDINBURGH BIOQUARTER ISSUE 03 AUTUMN 2011 W: WWW.EDINBURGHBIOQUARTER.COM T: 0131 242 9249 E: [email protected] LOCATE AT BIOQUARTER MORE ABOUT EDINBURGH CONTACT US p01 Welcome to the third BioQuarter newsletter. Over the last year, we’ve been busy building our team and developing our contacts with academics and industry. I’m now pleased to be able to report the first major successes at BioQuarter. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced a collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, negotiated by the BioQuarter team, to identify inhibitors for the treatment of Acute Pancreatitis and Multiple Organ Failure, a condition for which there is a significant unmet medical need. Also in this issue, you can read about the ten companies we recognised in the inaugural BioQuarter Innovation Awards, and the completion of our brand-new multi-purpose building, Nine The BioQuarter. As always, please get in touch if you’re looking for more detail on the news covered here. With best wishes, Mike Capaldi Commercialisation Director, Edinburgh BioQuarter FIRING UP… Queens’ Medical Research Institute, 47 Little France Crescent, Edinburgh EH16 4TJ GlaxoSmithKline collaboration to address Acute Pancreatitis What is the strategy behind GSK’s DPAc programme? Making innovative medicines requires a combination of originality, passion, deep knowledge and technical know-how. By forming truly integrated project teams that bring together the insight and creativity of the academic world with the drug discovery expertise of GSK, DPAc seeks to ensure that the combined team has the best chance of translating innovative research into medicines. For us, it’s all about recognising the talents of key individuals, and then playing to people’s strengths, matching leading academics with experienced Discovery Leaders from GSK. This is a global initiative: which other sites around the world apart from Edinburgh have attracted investment to date? We are indeed reaching out globally, and are in discussions with academics from institutes across five continents. Edinburgh is among the first to get involved, following on from agreements with Professor Mark Pepys at University College, London and with Professor Irwin Mclean at the University of Dundee. More will follow over the coming months. What attracted GSK to the pancreatitis research at Edinburgh BioQuarter? Damian and Scott’s work has a very clear therapeutic hypothesis – we can understand exactly how the proposed medicine will be used to have a profound impact on outcomes for patients. There is a defined target, and a tractable discovery path, with established expertise in Edinburgh that will help to progress the project. However we believe that GSK can make a valuable and complementary contribution to success, and so partnership seems like the right way forward. Are there other areas of research in which you think the University of Edinburgh excels? We have seen a number of really interesting proposals from Edinburgh across a whole range of areas. It’s clear that there is some fantastic science going on here, and we’d love to find other suitable projects to do together. At the moment however, we are only looking for ten partners worldwide, and so the hurdle is high. What’s your view of Edinburgh BioQuarter as an overall proposition? The BioQuarter has proved really effective in providing a focal point that has facilitated our search for partners and smoothed the process of securing the agreement. The flexible approach of supporting both collaborative opportunities and business creation is well balanced, allowing academics to choose the path that best suits them. What do you see as the future of academic/industrial collaborations in the bio- pharmaceutical industry? We believe that by working closely together and aligning our interests, we greatly improve the chances of translating innovative research into effective medicines. There are many ways of achieving that, but working together has to be the way forward for us all. Following the announcement of GSK’s collaboration with the University of Edinburgh at BioQuarter, we spoke to Duncan Holmes, leader of the Discovery Partnerships with Academica (DPAc) initiative at GSK, about their decision to work with Edinburgh University’s scientists based at BioQuarter (Left to right): Duncan Holmes, Head of DPAc; Iain Uings, biology leader and Mark Bamford, chemistry leader. For more information see www.edinburghbioquarter.com/news
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The Quarterly Newsletter from Edinburgh BioQuarter. Autumn 2011 issue
Transcript of Edinburgh BioQuarter Newsletter 03 | Autumn 2011
THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM EDINBURGH BIOQUARTER ISSUE 03 AUTUMN 2011W: WWW.EDINBURGHBIOQUARTER.COM T: 0131 242 9249 E: [email protected]
LOCATE AT BIOQUARTER
MORE ABOUT EDINBURGH
CONTACT US
p01
Welcome to the third BioQuarter newsletter. Over the last year, we’ve been busy building our team and developing our contacts with academics and industry. I’m now
pleased to be able to report the first major successes at BioQuarter.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced a collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, negotiated by the BioQuarter team, to identify inhibitors for the treatment of Acute Pancreatitis and Multiple Organ Failure, a condition for which there is a significant unmet medical need.
Also in this issue, you can read about the ten companies we recognised in the inaugural BioQuarter Innovation Awards, and the completion of our brand-new multi-purpose building, Nine The BioQuarter.
As always, please get in touch if you’re looking for more detail on the news covered here.
With best wishes,
Mike CapaldiCommercialisation Director, Edinburgh BioQuarter
FIRING UP…
Queens’ Medical Research Institute, 47 Little France Crescent, Edinburgh EH16 4TJ
GlaxoSmithKline collaboration to address Acute PancreatitisWhat is the strategy behind GSK’s DPAc programme?Making innovative medicines requires a combination of originality, passion, deep knowledge and technical know-how. By forming truly integrated project teams that bring together the insight and creativity of the academic world with the drug discovery expertise of GSK, DPAc seeks to ensure that the combined team has the best chance of translating innovative research into medicines. For us, it’s all about recognising the talents of key individuals, and then playing to people’s strengths, matching leading academics with experienced Discovery Leaders from GSK.
This is a global initiative: which other sites around the world apart from Edinburgh have attracted investment to date?We are indeed reaching out globally, and are in discussions
with academics from institutes across five continents. Edinburgh is among the first to get involved, following on from agreements with Professor Mark Pepys at University College, London and with Professor Irwin Mclean at the University of Dundee. More will follow over the coming months.
What attracted GSK to the pancreatitis research at Edinburgh BioQuarter?Damian and Scott’s work has a very clear therapeutic hypothesis – we can understand exactly how the proposed medicine will be used to have a profound impact on outcomes for patients. There is a defined target, and a tractable discovery path, with established expertise in Edinburgh that will help to progress the project. However we believe that GSK can make a valuable and complementary contribution to success, and so partnership seems like the right way forward.
Are there other areas of research in which you think the University of Edinburgh excels?We have seen a number of really interesting proposals from Edinburgh across a whole range of areas. It’s clear that there is some fantastic science going on here, and we’d love to find other suitable projects to do together. At the moment however, we are only looking for ten partners worldwide, and so the hurdle is high.
What’s your view of Edinburgh BioQuarter as an overall proposition?The BioQuarter has proved really effective in providing a focal point that has facilitated our search for partners and smoothed the process of securing the agreement. The flexible approach of supporting both collaborative opportunities and business creation is well balanced, allowing academics to choose the path that best suits them.
What do you see as the future of academic/industrial collaborations in the bio-pharmaceutical industry?We believe that by working closely together and aligning our interests, we greatly improve the chances of translating innovative research into
effective medicines. There are many ways of achieving that, but working together has to be the way forward for us all.
Following the announcement of GSK’s collaboration with the University of Edinburgh at BioQuarter, we spoke to Duncan Holmes, leader of the Discovery Partnerships with Academica (DPAc) initiative at GSK, about their decision to work with Edinburgh University’s scientists based at BioQuarter
(Left to right): Duncan Holmes, Head of DPAc; Iain Uings, biology leader and Mark Bamford, chemistry leader.
For more information see
www.edinburghbioquarter.com/news
THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM EDINBURGH BIOQUARTER ISSUE 03 AUTUMN 2011W: WWW.EDINBURGHBIOQUARTER.COM T: 0131 242 9249 E: [email protected]
LOCATE AT BIOQUARTER
MORE ABOUT EDINBURGH
CONTACT US
p02
The upper two floors of our new multi-occupancy building, Nine, The BioQuarter are now ready for fit-out by life science companies, as this image of the building shows. The fit out of the ground floor bio-incubator, café and meeting rooms will complete in early March 2012, ready for immediate occupation by early stage companies and spin-outs. Virginia Herriot from Scottish Enterprise’s Business Infrastructure team said: “We’ve had a strong pipeline of enquiries for Nine, and we are in detailed discussions with a number of occupiers who are interested in taking accommodation in both the BioIncubator and the upper floors.”
For more information see
Awarding Innovation in Edinburgh
#9 DREAM FOR THE BIOQUARTER
More than eighty guests attended an awards ceremony in Central Edinburgh in late July to celebrate the winners of the first Edinburgh BioQuarter Innovation Competition, sponsored by Marks & Clerk LLP (principal sponsors), MBM Commercial and Springfords LLP.
Pharmatics Limited, a company which creates software intended to reduce the time required for drug development, won first prize. Pharmatics was founded by Dr Felix Agakov and Professor Paul McKeigue to address the challenges of exploiting vast arrays of modern biological data to speed up discovery and testing of new drugs. “By applying cutting edge machine learning techniques, we reduce very complex data to a handful of the most promising factors”, said Dr Agakov.
Cytomos Ltd, which has developed a device for sorting cells in laboratory studies that will create a step-change in early-stage drug development, was named as the first runner-up in the competition. AccuoPept, a company that assists in the identification of
biomarkers for cancer and other conditions through the development of new reagents, was named as the second runner-up. Acid Test Ltd, which has created a new means of testing the safety of drinking water, and CerebrAid™, a device for cooling the brain after traumatic injury, were
named as second-round winners and receive prize money of £3,000. Dr Felix Agakov, CEO of Pharmatics Ltd, said: “Pharmatics aims to change the way large-scale biological and medical data are analysed by providing intelligent software and services to uncover useful structure in complex and incomplete biological measurements. Our technology will help to discover causal biomarkers, focus clinical trials, and accelerate drug development.”
Dr Mike Capaldi, Commercialisation Director at Edinburgh BioQuarter, said: “There was a great response to this year’s competition. Next year
we hope to engage even more researchers with the message that scientific innovation can bring real rewards outside the lab - not just to researchers, but to patients and their families as well.”
http://www.edinburghbioquarter.com/locate-at-bioquarter.php
i2eye Diagnostics has secured support from Scottish Development International as it gears up for its first trade show, and its official launch as a trading company at the end of November. Chief Executive Peter Estibeiro said, “This support enables us to finalise our marketing proposition and to prepare for our first outing at a trade show later
this month in Orlando, Florida. It is a major step towards the commercial production of the first of our groundbreaking visual field analysers, which we hope to deliver to our first customers in clinic early in 2012.”
Find out more about i2eye
http://i2eyediagnostics.com
I2EYE DIAGNOSTICS GATHERS FOCUS
“Our technology will help to discover causal biomarkers, focus clinical trials, and accelerate drug development.”
Dr Felix Agakov (left) and Professor Paul McKeigue.
