̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Iain Thomas

Enterprising researchers: Making a difference in Southern Africa

skbf2 — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 10:50:18 +0000

An award-winning team from Cambridge, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia has been bolstering entrepreneurship in Southern Africa and supporting some exciting new ventures along the way.

Cambridge and four other universities form agritech partnership

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 12:57:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��Ceres Agritech Knowledge Exchange Partnership links the universities of Cambridge, East Anglia, Hertfordshire, Lincoln and Reading, as well as the John Innes Centre, NIAB and Rothamsted Research, to enable effective sharing of commercialisation expertise, a key aim of Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund, which has awarded the partnership £4.78 million in funding.

Ceres will work with business partners to identify, build, invest in and run the most commercially viable development projects, based on the needs of the agritech sector. ̽��ֱ��resulting technologies can then be licensed to industry or form the basis of start-up companies or partnerships with SMEs and large agritech corporations.

In addition to the funding from Research England, Ceres has secured funding commitments of over £15 million from industry and technology investors for further investment in commercial opportunities.

A 2016 government report estimated that the agritech sector was worth £14.3 billion and employed 542,000 people in the UK.

“ ̽��ֱ��time is ripe for catalysing early stage technology transfer in the globally critical agritech sector,” said Iain Thomas, Head of Life Sciences at Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm. “Advances in nutrition, genomics, informatics, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, automation and plant sciences have huge potential in precision agriculture and food production. Farmers, food processors and producers are eager to explore and adopt new technologies to improve their competitiveness and efficiency.

“Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� wants to play a significant part in the successful development of an agritech cluster. ̽��ֱ��Ceres Partnership builds on models of collaboration, technology acceleration and effective commercial demonstration of proof-of-concept from other technology sectors, such as the pharma-biotech cluster currently flourishing in the Cambridge region.”

̽��ֱ��Ceres funding is part of an investment of £67 million through Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund in new collaborative projects to drive forward the commercialisation of university research across the country.

Five leading universities, including the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have formed a partnership to develop and commercialise agritech research, in order to improve sustainability, increase productivity and contribute to global food security.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� wants to play a significant part in the successful development of an agritech cluster.

Iain Thomas

Hauser Forum

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Cambridge joins consortium to launch £40 million Apollo Therapeutics Fund

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:59:33 +0000

This new joint venture will support the translation of ground-breaking academic science from within these universities into innovative new medicines for a broad range of diseases.

Each of the three industry partner companies – AstraZeneca UK Limited, Glaxo Group Limited and Johnson & Johnson Innovation-JJDC, Inc. – will contribute £10 million over 6 years to the venture. ̽��ֱ��technology transfer offices of the three university partners – Imperial Innovations Group plc, Cambridge Enterprise Ltd and UCL Business plc – will each contribute a further £3.3 million.

̽��ֱ��aim of Apollo is to advance academic pre-clinical research from these universities to a stage at which it can either be taken forward by one of the industry partners following an internal bidding process or be out-licensed. ̽��ֱ��three industry partners will also provide R&D expertise and additional resources to assist with the commercial evaluation and development of projects.

Drug development is extremely complex, costly and lengthy; currently only around 10 percent of therapies entering clinical trials reach patients as medicines. By combining funding for promising early-stage therapeutics from leading UK universities with a breadth of industry expertise, Apollo aims to share the risk and accelerate the development of important new treatments, while also reducing the cost.

Dr Ian Tomlinson, former Senior Vice President, Worldwide Business Development and Biopharmaceuticals R&D, for GSK and founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Domantis Limited, has been appointed Chairman of the Apollo Therapeutics Investment Committee (AIC). Comprising representatives from the six partners, the AIC will make all investment decisions.

̽��ֱ��AIC will be advised by an independent Drug Discovery Team of ex-industry scientists who will be employed by Apollo to work with the universities and their technology transfer offices to identify and shape projects to bring forward for development. All therapy areas and modalities, including small molecules, peptides, proteins, antibodies, cell and gene therapies will be considered.

Apollo will be based at Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst. Once funded, projects will be progressed by the Drug Discovery Team alongside the university investigators, with other external resources and also in-kind resources from the industry partners as appropriate. For successful projects, the originating university and technology transfer office will receive a percentage of future commercial revenues or out-licensing fees and the remainder will be divided amongst all the Apollo partners.

Dr Tomlinson said: “This is the first time that three global pharmaceutical companies and the technology transfer offices of three of the world’s top ten universities have come together to form a joint enterprise of this nature, making the Apollo Therapeutics Fund a truly innovative venture.

“Apollo provides an additional source of early stage funding that will allow more therapeutics projects within the three universities to realise their full potential. ̽��ֱ��active participation of the industry partners will also mean that projects will be shaped at a very early stage to optimise their suitability for further development.

" ̽��ֱ��Apollo Therapeutics Fund should benefit the UK economy by increasing the potential for academic research to be translated into new medicines for patients the world over.”

Iain Thomas, Head of Life Sciences at Cambridge Enterprise, added: “Efficiently bringing together drug discovery expertise, potential customers, funding and project management, along with rapid decision making and execution through the Apollo Therapeutics Fund is a unique and extraordinarily exciting and valuable proposition for any academic or company that wants to see early stage ground breaking therapeutic technology progress to the clinic for patient benefit and economic return.”

Adapted from a press release by Apollo Therapeutics.

Three global pharmaceutical companies and the technology transfer offices of three world-leading universities – Imperial College London, ̽��ֱ�� College London and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge – have joined forces with a combined £40 million to create the Apollo Therapeutics Fund.

Imperial Innovations Group plc

Innovation

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes