A UK biotechnology company is looking for business partners to co-develop small molecule drugs, cell and gene therapies under a joint venture agreement or to deploy their combinatorial cell culture technology under an acquisition agreement

Annotation

A UK biotechnology company has developed combinatorial cell culture technology that enables testing of tens of thousands of protocols in single experiment to identify optimised protocols for cellular endpoints. They are looking for business partners to co-develop small molecule drugs, cell and gene therapies under a joint venture agreement or to deploy their technology under an acquisition agreement.

Offer description

A UK biotechnology company with 14 years expertise in cell biology, neurosciences, immunology, genetics, protein engineering, bioengineering, drug screening and translational biology, has developed a combinatorial cell culture technology and a number of preclinical cell therapy assets thus derived. The combinatorial cell culture technology, an award-winning product (CombiCult), enables the high throughput testing of tens of thousands of cell culture protocols in a single experiment to identify optimal protocols for variety of cellular end points. The technology utilises solid or hydrogel micro-beads to anchor or encapsulate adherent or suspension cells respectively as well as organoids. Cell beads are split into multiple culture conditions, each spiked with unique tags that identify with each specific culture condition and bind irreversibly to the cell beads. At the end of each culture step, cell beads are pooled and washed to remove previous culture media and unbound tags, then split into a new set of different culture conditions spiked with different tags. After predetermined number of culture steps, cell beads carrying the positive readout markers are sorted and the bound tags identified to reveal the cell culture history of each of the positive cell beads. Cell culture paths are analysed by proprietary computer software to derive best protocols. Candidate protocols are then validated and optimised in cell culture formats of choice. Using this technology, novel protocols have been developed for cell creation, cell expansion, gene transduction, while projects also ongoing for improvements in protein production. These achievements have given rise to therapeutic development opportunities within the company and in collaborations, e.g. cell therapy (neural regeneration, platelet transfusion, bone repair, hematopoietic stem cell transplant, metabolic syndrome), gene therapy (cell processing and gene transduction) and drug discovery (human cells for regenerative medicine screening, metabolic syndrome drug screening). The UK company is looking for business partners to co-develop small molecule drugs, cell and gene therapies under a joint venture agreement or to deploy their technology under an acquisition agreement.

Innovations and advantages

The company's combinatorial cell culture technology provides the ideal tool to realising the growing demands for cells. The company's experience and expertise in manipulating cells in an efficient manner are reflected by the development of other products, e.g. an osteogenic media that has been licensed and is available commercially for research purposes, and an accelerated protocol for the creation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells that is approximately 6-fold faster than published methods.

Market application codes

04004 Other Genetic Engineering
04006 Cellular and Molecular Biology
04009 In vitro Testing, Trials
04012 Toxicology
04013 Stem cells and biobanks

Profile date

16.03.2019