Scotland says technology commercialisation success validates its model

ITI Life Sciences CEO Eleanor Mitchell: “…many more commercial opportunities to create real value from these new intellectual assets.”

The three-year Transgenic Screening and Safety Models (TSM) programme has exceeded expectations in delivering new technologies and intellectual assets, and will be extended for up to 14 months. TSM began in February 2005 with £5.5 million funding awarded to two commercial partners, CXR Biosciences of Dundee, Scotland, and TaconicArtemis GmbH, of Cologne, Germany.

At the same time as the extension was announced CXR said it has raised £1.3 million to support the marketing of technology platforms and services developed as part of the TSM programme. The investment was led by Archangel Informal Investment, a network of business angel investors.

The £2 million extension will enable ITI Life Sciences and its commercial partners to complete the commercial packages of additional technologies developed beyond those originally targeted.

The technologies developed are transgenic mouse lines, in which key mouse proteins responsible for drug metabolism have been replaced by their human counterparts. The ability to test drugs in vivo in these mice is expected to inform decisions on which compounds to take forward earlier in preclinical development.

By the end of the initial three-year term, the TSM programme had generated 30 novel mouse lines, including the world’s first quadruple transgenic mouse. Ten of these lines are ready for commercialisation, with patent applications filed and all relevant external licences gained. The programme extension will allow ITI Life Sciences to complete the commercial packages for the other 20 lines.

Under the terms of the programme, ITI owns all the intellectual property. CXR Biosciences and TaconicArtemis have signed licences to co-commercialise the drug-screening models and services developed using these new technologies. The market for such drug discovery tools is estimated at more than US$3 billion and significant interest has already been seen from pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US.

ITI Life Sciences is already receiving royalty payments on sales and services of the models and expects these payments to increase as the range expands. The organisation will seek to commercialise technology and intellectual assets in other areas not covered by the agreements with CXR Biosciences and TaconicArtemis also.

Eleanor Mitchell, Managing Director of ITI Life Sciences, said, “Predictive screening models were identified by our analysts as very important to improving the quality of drug candidates entering into human clinical trials. Not only has the programme achieved all the technical goals set at the beginning of the programme, it has generated many more commercial opportunities to create real value from these new intellectual assets.”

Tom Shepherd, CEO of CXR Biosciences, said the programme had been successful because of the complementary skills of the participants. “The technologies created have the potential to make a significant impact on the speed, cost and effectiveness of new drug development. Furthermore, our involvement with the ITI programme has directly led to the substantial growth in our business over the past few years.”