See below links to read about two of our spin out companies, Cytoseek and Ceryx Medical:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/november/cytoseek.html

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/december/artificial-neurons.html

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/november/bionic-pacemaker.html

 

IP Expo event at MoD Filton on Friday 6th September.  Jaci Barnett, Head of Research Commercialisation attended, alongside Evangelos, CEO at @comat_i, on our stand. Carolyn Jenkins and James Hamilton were busy off talking to the likes of DSTL, DASA, Ploughshare Innovations etc #Innovation, #defenceIP  

 

 

 

We are looking for our next cohort of promising leaders of growth-potential engineering and technology companies.

This six-month programme is designed to support you to develop the leadership skills needed to scale your business.

Applications close Monday 18th November 2019, 4pm.

What we offer:

• Grant of up to £10,000 to fund leadership training courses of your choice
• One-to-one personal leadership coaching
• Masterclasses and workshops delivered by senior business leaders
• Provision of an experienced business mentor
• Access to the Taylor Centre, our Central London office and meeting space
• Travel and accommodation expenses covered for all activities

What we’re looking for:

• Decision-makers (both engineers and non-engineers) in engineering and technology SMEs with an ambitious vision to grow
• Your company must have raised at least £500,000 equity investment and/or have a turnover of at least £200,000 in the previous 12 months
• Your company must be based in the UK to be eligible for this award – applicants from any nationality are eligible as long as you have the right to work in the UK
• We are committed to improving diversity and inclusion in engineering, and we especially welcome applications from those currently underrepresented within the sector.
• This programme is now open. If you are not ready to apply, we run the programme every six months.

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide; it affects roughly 2% of all people over 40. Researchers at the University of Bristol are pioneering a new way of treating glaucoma using gene therapy.

The underlying causes are varied and no cure exists, but studies have shown that high pressure in the eye (intraocular pressure, or IOP) is a key feature, and deceasing this pressure can largely prevent progression and further visual loss by halting damage to the optic nerve. At present, there is no definitive treatment – and what treatments there are risk sudden loss of vision, or arduous lifelong repeated administration.

Thanks to the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute MRC Confidence in Concept scheme, Dr Colin Chu and Professor Andrew Dick at the School of Clinical Sciences, University of Bristol have developed a system which potentially halts the elevated IOP which causes so many problems with just one injection. The injection contains a viral vector; essentially a virus with all the pathogenic material removed. In its place Dr Chu has inserted fragments of Ribonucleic acid (RNA), a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. The virus transports these to the cells in the eye’s ciliary body, a tissue which produces the aqueous humour. Here, these RNA fragments interrupt the production of some of the cellular machinery that’s responsible for maintaining the pressure in the eye, and thus lower the IOP.

Initially, Dr Chu investigated a number of methods to reduce the IOP, before settling on disrupting the Aqp1 gene, which is responsible for making Aquaporin water channels that the eye uses to maintain IOP. He demonstrated a reproducible 22% reduction in IOP in a mouse model, before then determining that the gene Aqp1 is also expressed in human ciliary bodies, and that the same viral vector he used in the mouse model can also be used.

Dr Chu said, “We initially tried disrupting a variety of cellular mechanisms involving different pathways that maintain IOP, but we identified targeting Aqp1 provided the most robust effects. We were also able to disrupt Aqp1 in human ciliary body donor tissue and so our further research is focusing on preparing the treatment for clinical trials.”

“We are excited as this approach has the potential to halt the progress of glaucoma for great numbers of people, following a single minimally invasive injection, and of course provide huge long-term savings to healthcare systems.”Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide; it affects roughly 2% of all people over 40. Researchers at the University of Bristol are pioneering a new way of treating glaucoma using gene therapy.

 

 

 

The Enterprise Fellowship Programme offered by the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub is now open for applications.

This programme is for researchers, recent graduates or international PhD students based in the UK who have developed an innovative idea within their universities/research institutes, who are at a relatively advanced stage of readiness for commercialisation and are considering setting up a company.

If the above applies to you and you wish to pursue a career at the centre of a start-up or spin out company, then Enterprise Fellowship offers to support you setting up a company by providing you with up to £60,000 equity-free funding, training and mentoring, PR, marketing and promotion, access to the Taylor Centre and access to networks of investors, experts and advisers as well as other entrepreneurs.

This is a full-time commitment (1/01/2020 – 31/12/2020) in the sense that you cannot have another role whilst on the Fellowship. Stage 1 deadline is on the 19^th of August 2019 and if you are successful, you’ll enter Stage 2 with the deadline on the 16^th of September 2019.

You will in all likelihood already be working with us (the Research Commercialisation team within the University), and we are involved in the application process where university research and hence University owned IP is involved. A summary of what a commercially strong project typically involves can be found here. For other resources on commercialising your research, please check out our website.

For the full description of this RAEng Enterprise Fellow programme, click here.

A new spin-out company has been established to develop a medical diagnostic device. The device, named Inform ™, can detect the volatile organic compounds in patient samples, in order to diagnose and monitor a range of medical conditions. Founding institutional shareholders include the University of Liverpool, the University of Bristol, the University of West of England, Bristol and The Wellcome Trust.

Nidor Diagnostics Limited will offer a range of diagnostic products, the first of which would enable patients to receive a positive diagnosis of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Currently, the diagnosis of IBS and other related medical conditions can require many assessments, including blood and faeces testing, colonoscopy with biopsies, and radiology (X-ray) tests, and requires a lengthy process of elimination. Inform (IBS) ™ will help to speed up the diagnostic process for patients.

Professor Chris Probert, now at Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Liverpool, has been influential in driving the Inform ™ technology forward over a number of years, and has been successful in securing large translational grants from Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK in order to develop and validate the technology in a range of other applications, including bladder and colorectal cancer.

Dr Taj S Mattu, CEO of Nidor said: “Nidor is excited about realising the technology’s potential to improve the diagnosis of a number of diseases, not just IBS in the near future..”

Professor Anthony Hollander, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Impact, University of Liverpool, said: “We are very excited about the future of Nidor – the University of Liverpool has incubated the technology for a number of years, in collaboration with the other stakeholders, and the project has received significant support from the University of Liverpool’s Enterprise Investment Fund.”

Throughout the process, academics were supported by the IP Commercialisation teams at Liverpool, Bristol and UWE. Emma Nolan, Head of IP Commercialisation at Liverpool, said: “We’re pleased to have completed the founder round for the company – we have a very dedicated academic founder and a first-class management team.”

Tech-XPO is an annual event organised by SETsquared Bristol, with the 2019 Tech-XPO taking place last night at Paintworks, Bristol. This year, the University of Bristol’s Research and Enterprise Development team were amongst the sponsors.

The event attracted about 20 exhibitors who had the opportunity to showcase their technologies and meet with potential investors. The main focus of the evening was the Elevator Pitch Competition. A recent University spin-out company, Actuation Lab, not only showed off their exciting new actuated valve and rear wing technologies but also made the award for Best Elevator Pitch and the winner was Vitamica Ltd, another of our spin-out companies. Congrats!

Great to attend the Translational Pathway Symposium organised by the Cancer Research Network in Bristol on Monday and hear about exciting translational cancer research happening in Bristol. Do you want to find out how to translate your research? Learn more on our website!  

We had a lovely time on the 6th of June at the Launch:Great West awards ceremony. A number of Bristol spin-outs won awards or were finalists. Amongst these,

Rosa biotech won the Ones to watch Award;

Cytoseek won the Rising Star Award; 

Ultrahaptics won The Rocket Fuel Award;

Ceryx Medical won The BioDesign Award; 

Imophoron won The Global Good Award;

Ziylo/Carbometrics won The Deal of the Year Award 

Many thanks to the organisers for showcasing and celebrating innovation in scientific commercialisation activity taking place in the South West.

See more photos and info about all winners and finalists here.