BIOPTA, the life sciences fledgling spun out from Caledonian University that provides the global pharmaceutical industry with an alternative to animal testing, yesterday said it had completed a £265,000 funding round to expand its Glasgow-based research and development operation.
The company, which is part of the rapidly growing move towards outsourced drug development and offers services using ethically donated residual human tissue from surgery as a test system for new pharmaceutical compounds, said its second round of investment would also be used to further develop its unique human-tissue testing techniques.
Biopta, which is also calling for the greater use of human tissues in drug testing and an increase in the opportunities for surgery patients to consent to donating their discarded tissue, previously raised £900,000 from investors in December 2008.
Increasing numbers of pharmaceutical companies, big and small, agree that “fresh” human tissue makes better test subjects for drugs than lab animals.
Biopta uses donated, residual human tissue collected from surgery to conduct non-clinical trials on new drugs.
Testing of tissues, such as skin removed during cosmetic procedures, is becoming increasingly valuable in the development of new drugs.
News of the investment comes in the wake of a mere smattering of cash injections this year for Scottish life science companies, including Oban-based Aquapharm Biodiscovery and Dundee-based Tayside Flow.
Elaine Ferguson, Biopta’s finance director, said the company expects to increase its headcount to 23 from 18 over the next year -- and “substantially more” as Biopta grows -- and that the new funds would also be used to expand the number of its tissue tests and boost its global marketing reach.
She said: “Our goal is to provide the best possible prediction on whether a drug will pass or fail a clinical trial, and that is a huge value proposition for pharmaceutical companies.
“Testing human tissues such as skin removed during cosmetic procedures is seen to be increasingly reliable and valuable in the development of new drugs.”
Ms Ferguson, whose company counts eight of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies among its customer base, said drug firms can spend up to $1 billion and take up to 15 years to develop new products, largely on the back of the high rate of failures in clinical trials.
Current figures suggest nine out of 10 potential products that go through the clinical-trial process fail to reach the market -- a situation Ms Ferguson attributes to an over-reliance on animal testing.
“Without naming companies, we recently tested a potential new drug for asthma that had already successfully passed its phase I clinical trials on the basis of animal tests,” she said.
“We discovered that this new drug would not have been effective in humans. That would not have been discovered until after the phase II trials, so we ended up saving the company upwards of £500,000.”
Ms Ferguson also said she expects Biopta, which is based in a small-business incubator premises in Garscube Estate, near Glasgow University’s Small Animal Hospital, to outgrow its current base as human-tissue testing becomes more prevalent.
Asked about the availability of “fresh” human tissue, she said: “A recent survey revealed that 96% of patients would be happy to donate tissue after surgery, but it turns out only 10% of patients are asked.”
The company aims to use part of its recent investment to raise awareness, in both the medical and political arenas, of the need for greater use of human tissues.
Biopta secured its latest funding round -- and the previous round -- from a number of investors, including Braveheart Investment Group, TRI Cap, the Scottish Co-Investment Fund as well as the company’s board of directors.
