OneStart Top 10 Announced!

ORIGINAL: Oxbridge Biotech

JohnDaley
21st April 2013

OneStart Top 10 Finalists from johndaley89

OBR and SR-One are pleased to announce the Top 10 teams in the OneStart Competition. After extensive work with their industry mentors, all 35 semi-finalist teams developed comprehensive pitches and business plans. The judges, after poring over the submissions, have chosen only 10 to move on to the final round. These teams will present their ideas at the Finals Gala on May 16th, where one will walk away with the £100K prize!

1) anywhereHPLC

anywhereHPLC is a novel analytical platform developed by researchers at the Institute of Chemical Biology at Imperial College in London, allowing precise and reproducible measurement of small-molecule metabolites at the point of sampling – in the field or the home. anywhereHPLC will provide rapid diagnoses and disease monitoring in many environments where no alternative tool exists, ranging from applications in the developing world to the patient-led supervision of chronic diseases in Europe and the USA. anywhereHPLC can deliver instant results when and where they are needed, providing the diagnostic power of gold-standard laboratory equipment from an integrated, disposable unit with a foot-print smaller than a paperback book.

2) BioAmp

The cost of healthcare is rising unsustainably across the globe. Remote health monitoring has exceptional potential to both reduce the financial burden of healthcare, reducing the number of patient visits to medical centres, and improve treatment outcomes through closer monitoring. BioAmp Diagnostics is a startup exploiting highly innovative new technology developed by the founders at the University of Cambridge. Our patent filed technology has significant advantage for use in remote health monitoring over current diagnostic technologies in its small form factor, extremely low power, multiplexing potential (hence adding accuracy to clinical decisions) and integrability with existing electronic infrastructure such as smartphones for efficient data transfer. We are initially targeting lucrative segments within the chronic and acute cardiac disease market, where our technology aids clinical decisions and adds significant value to healthcare providers. The BioAmp team combines expertise in electronic engineering, nanotechnology, informatics, biology and business development. Our complimentary backgrounds form an excellent foundation to propel this powerful new technology forward to market.

3) FoetoH

FoetoH is a novel portable technology for pregnant mothers to monitor the health of their babies themselves, at hospital level accuracy, in the comfort of their own homes. Mothers would use the device by strapping on FoetoH’s sensor belt and launching its smartphone application. FoetoH acquires and analyses foetal heart rate signals according to clinical guidelines using a combination of wireless ultrasound and sophisticated signal processing. It then presents mothers with information on the health of their baby in real time in an easy to understand colour coded manner. FoetoH also provides the mother with information on what to do next, and allows her to transfer the results to her physician. The product aims to provide reassurance to pregnant mothers in moments of uncertainty and empower them to be more actively involved in promoting the health of their babies, while simultaneously contributing to preventing stillbirths and neonatal deaths – 11 of these occur globally each minute. The company, F-GHS, is headquartered in London, UK. The current management consists of co-founders and Oxford PhDs, Michelle Fernandes and Ricardo Pachόn. Michelle is a clinician with expertise in foetal development, and antenatal monitoring. Ricardo is a mathematician with 10+ years of experience in pattern recognition automation. The management is supported by three advisory committees, consisting of medical, technical and business experts.

4) Hackett Biologics

Hackett Biologics was formally founded in 2009 and has primarily focused on designing and developing novel materials including injectables, patches, conduits and scaffolds. All research and therapies involving stem cells rely on a ‘cold chain’ for storage and distribution, thus introducing loss of efficacy, viability, chemical contaminants, logistical issues and costs. Hackett Biologics has developed a proprietary technology that stabilises stem cells at room temperature, removing the need for freezing; as such a significant market opportunity exists for the technology. Dr. Joanne M. Hackett, CSO and Founder, has a background in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. She has been an assistant professor of regenerative medicine at Linköping University in Sweden, a visiting scientist/strategy lead at Pfizer Neusentis and Director of Business Development for Bodymetrics. She is currently the strategic & commercial partnerships executive at the Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr. Ryan B. MacDonald, Project Manager/scientific advisor has been critically involved in Hackett Biologics since its inception in 2009. He has a background in stem cell biology, principally studying the differentiation and proliferation of neural stem cells. He is currently a Herchel Smith Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, a research associate at Clare College and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

5) LipoPep

LipoPep is a targeted drug delivery system that allows for existing therapeutics to be actively and selectively delivered to the placenta, providing the first treatment option for pregnancy complications. Placental abnormalities affect approximately 10% of pregnancies worldwide and cost in excess of $(US) 40 billion per year. Such abnormalities lead to pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction, which result in an increased risk of stillbirth, premature birth, neonatal death and poor health in adulthood. Currently there is no therapeutic intervention for these complications, with the only treatment option being premature delivery. LipoPep is being taken through pre-clinical development by Dr Lynda Harris, a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellow, and Anna King and Natalie Cureton who both undertaking PhDs in nanoscience. Development is fully supported by the School of Pharmacy and the Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre in St Mary’s Hospital, at The University of Manchester.

6) MPDx

MPDx Technologies, founded in 2012 and based in Cambridge, UK, is developing portable, automated sample processing technology as an enabler for truly integrated sample-to-result diagnostics. MPDx´s innovative, yet proven, robust sample extraction platform will address the urgent unmet clinical need for early diagnosis within high value and rapidly growing infectious disease diagnostic markets, to deliver step-change benefits to consumers and have a profound impact on patient lives. MPDx´s passionate, interdisciplinary team of technical, business and finance professionals comprises a wealth of complementary industry-specific expertise to ensure success of the business.

7) Picoto

The cornerstone of healthy living is a healthy beginning. Yet 80% of the globe does not have this guarantee — vulnerable babies begin their lives everyday. Picoto is our solution for newborns worldwide. It is a complete, networked system of intelligent sensors and algorithms that monitor neonatal health parameters — and empower actionable healthcare delivery to provide a neo-standard of care. Picoto is being developed by a group of dedicated, multidisciplinary researchers at the University of Oxford.

8) Puridify

Puridify ltd. is a London based spinout company from the Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London. Our flagship product, FibroSelect, is a new chromatography reagent structure that utilises existing purification chemistries in a more efficient manner. The result is a significant reduction in biotherapeutic manufacturing costs (c.25%) addressing the global demand for cheaper drugs and widening patient access to new and existing therapeutics.

9) Pym

James Flewellen and Irwin Zaid are postdoctoral research fellows in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. We aim to develop a mobile diagnostic platform based on a novel form of microscopy. Most microscopic diagnoses are performed by highly-trained staff in dedicated medical laboratories looking at samples through a microscope. Our idea will automate much of this analysis and allow a health practitioner anywhere to perform a fast and cost-effective optical diagnosis of a fluid sample. Our plan involves developing a portable imaging device that attaches to your smartphone. The smartphone camera is used to form images of a fluid sample, which are uploaded to a cloud server for processing and analysis. Unlike conventional microscopy, we are able to capture 3D position and shape data of particles suspended in the sample. This data is then analysed by server-side software returning a diagnosis to the practitioner. Our first application is urinary tract infections, which are currently diagnosed by seeing bacteria in a urine sample – something our software can detect automatically.

10) Tecrea

Stem cell therapy offers a promising potential to cure many clinical conditions such as spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease, Type I Diabetes etc. Any cell can be re-programmed via the introduction of genes, proteins and small molecules to provide induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are of huge interest for therapy and are also valuable in drug discovery research and toxicology. Cell reprograming, however, is greatly limited by poor gene or protein delivery efficiencies. Current delivery strategies are too toxic and difficult to translate into the clinic for therapeutic applications.Tecrea-stem has a novel nanotechnology-based delivery platform for biomolecules (DNA, RNA, protein and small molecule). The platform is clinically safe and protected by a pending patent. This technology utilises an existing polymer that has been used safely for 50 years. Our discovery shows that this polymer forms nanoparticles with a wide range of cargo molecules and delivers them efficiently into eukaryotic cells with minimal stress. We have extensive lab-based evidence demonstrating how our technology works. We propose that our nano-polymer can be optimised for efficient stem cell reprogramming, which will facilitate the advancement of stem cell research and therapy.

This post was written by:JohnDaley