What's in the pipeline?
Imperial College London has long had one of the most active spin-out incubation programmes in Europe. It has holdings in 54 companies. Its most successful recent examples include:
- Ceres Power, a fuel-cell technology company built on research from the Department of Materials, floated on the stock market in November 2004, valued at £66 million.
- HydroVenturi, a company based on Department of Physics research, developing a novel method to generate power from tidal currents, completed a £2.5 million funding round in March 2005
- ComMedica, a spin-out from the Department of Bioengineering, won a £33 million contract from the National Health Service in 2004.
Other, lesser-known examples of Imperial investments:
deltaDOT
Founded in 2000, deltaDOT focuses on technology derived from high-energy particle physics research and its application to bio-molecular separation, including proteins, DNA and RNA analysis. deltaDOT's core technology; Label Free Intrinsic Imaging, allows the direct monitoring of unlabelled bio-molecules in real time, resulting in faster, more accurate results at lower cost, for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.
Inventors: John Hassard and Stuart Hassard.
Inforsense
Founded in 1999. The company has built a suite of data-mining software tools that enable multiple sources of data to be analysed. The company develops and markets next-generation discovery informatics platforms for individual and corporate researchers. It has partnerships with Oracle, Affibody, Curis and several other companies.
Inventor: Yike Guo
NanoBioDesign
Founded in 2001. The company is developing a way of testing new drugs that could improve the safety of new medicines and reduce the costs associated with discovering new cures. The action of new drugs on the liver is an important step in the development of new medicines: the liver acts like a chemical factory, breaking down foreign materials and allowing them to be excreted. Scientists currently use laborious methods to be sure that their new compounds will both be broken in a safe way and also that they do not harm this important detoxification process. NanoBioDesign is developing a new device, the "liver chip," to enable these tests to be conducted faster and with a higher degree of accuracy than is currently possible.
The concept incorporates protein engineering technology developed by Gianfranco Gilardi.
HeliSwirl
Formed in February 2005. HeliSwirl is an engineering design company that aims to improve yield, and reduce operating costs and energy use in a broad range of fluid-handling industries, from petroleum production to food processing. HeliSwirl's products are based on Small Amplitude Helical Technology, which increases the transport efficiency of single and mixed-phase fluids within a wide range of pipe-work systems. Because there are no internal parts, there is also the benefit of reducing blockage by sedimentation or mineral precipitation. The technology is based on the geometry and flow patterns observed in natural blood vessels. Research behind the company has shown that arterial geometry causes the flow to swirl and suppress stagnant regions, which are preferred sites for the development of vascular disease. HeliSwirl Technologies is using this knowledge to benefit industrial applications.
Inventor: Colin Caro
Veryan Medical
Founded in 2003. The company is developing vascular access devices and stents based on the helical twist geometry and flow patterns in blood vessels (the technology also being used in HeliSwirl). Rather than connecting in a simple T junction, the connecting 'pipe' is attached via a helical twist, which imparts a swirling motion to the fluid - reducing the build-up of blockages, which in turn reduces the onset of intimal hyperplasia, an accelerated form of arterial sclerosis, and improves the effectiveness of the device while lengthening the life of the implant. This can be applicable to stents, by-pass grafts and vascular access devices.
Inventor: Professor Colin Caro.
