DeltaDot and Integrated Technologies have been awarded a £465,000 grant from the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) for the development of a tool for drug discovery and biopharmaceuticals
The three parties will use this new funding to build a novel system, based on a prototype successfully constructed under the highly effective DTI-EPSRC 'Applied Genomics' programme.
This programme was led by Deltadot and Imperial College, which together form the Protein Folding Chip consortium.
The proposed new drug discovery tool, Osprey, was initially developed by Deltadot, a developer of enabling technologies and products for bioscience research.
Osprey will allow researchers to reduce dramatically the time it takes to weed out drug candidates that are unsuitable for the therapy or treatment being designed.
Typically, so-called 'small molecule' drug candidates effect physiological change at a sub-cellular level by attaching to or in some way affecting proteins within the cell.
The small molecule drug candidates attach to proteins according to the highly complex protein structures, of which their folding or unfolding is perhaps the most important.
Traditionally, large pharmaceutical companies search molecular compound libraries containing millions of drug candidates to identify a small number of molecules that, by binding to the protein associated with a disease, might potentially offer a patient any benefit.
There are many tools in use, but progress is usually slow and prone to error, which partly accounts for the typically huge ($850m (£430m)) research costs that are spent for every successful 'block-buster' drug.
The Osprey will provide a very powerful new weapon in the drug hunters' armoury, allowing, for the first time, protein folding structures and the dynamics of the process to be tested against the drug candidate.
The Osprey biomolecule stability analyser (BSA) is a microfluidic chip-based instrument that applies aspects of Deltadot's label-free intrinsic imaging (LFII) to the characterisation of the properties of proteins, rather than to their separations, and targets the market for QA/QC of biopharmaceuticals as its first application.
Tony Baxter, CEO of Deltadot, said: "Osprey is the third of Deltadot's fleet of productivity tools, and has the potential to transform the drug discovery landscape.
"This instrument offers a one-stop solution to the increasingly difficult R+D environment of the world's drug discovery and development companies, many of which are located in the south east of England.
"We are delighted that Seeda has awarded this significant development grant; it will serve to reinforce further Deltadot's lead in label-free technologies serving the biomedical communities, and will bring renewed R+D focus and technological leadership to our region".
Greg Smith, director of ITL, said: "As a world leader in analytical instrument design and manufacture, ITL is delighted to be able to contribute over 30 years' successful experience to assist the consortium in developing this important instrument.
"The system will have far-reaching implications for the world pharmaceutical industry and should reduce drug selection times dramatically.
"Again it shows that the UK, and in particular the south east, is among the top innovators in the biotech world".
Seeda's knowledge transfer manager, Colin Baldwin said: "This pioneering and visionary work will have a dramatic impact both in terms of accelerating progress in drug discovery as well as benefiting patients in terms of new applications of drugs.
"Seeda recognises the pivotal roles that all the partners will play in this critical collaborative venture.
"Above all, this is testimony to the world class research, development, innovation and leadership that is synonymous with the biotechnology industry throughout the south east.
"It is crucial that this industry continues to be a thriving and vibrant beacon for the region."
