ITI Life Sciences Launches First R&D Programme in Scotland o develop 3-dimensional cell-based assays

11-Feb-2005

ITI Life Sciences, which has a minimum of £150 million from the Scottish government to invest in life sciences over ten years, announced the launch of a new £3.7 million R&D programme focused on the development of cell-based, pharmaceutical screening technologies to address a significant bottleneck in the drug discovery and development process. The programme is driven by ITI Life Sciences' Market and Technology analysis of the pharmaceutical market and its existing and future needs and aims to identify opportunities for commercialisation that can capitalise on Scotland's world-leading R&D expertise in this area, with the aim of stimulating the growth of its life sciences sector.

The three-year programme will take place in Scotland as a collaboration between Edinburgh Instruments Ltd, Hannah InterActions Ltd and CSS-Albachem Ltd. Initially, the programme is focused on developing instrumentation and novel cell-based screens for breast cancer, with plans to expand to other disease areas as the technology develops.

In the ITI Life Sciences programme, the three participating companies will provide complementary expertise in order to develop and commercialise fluorescence lifetime cell-based assay products, including frozen 3-D cell systems ready for screening, unique fluorescence-linked reagents and state-of-the-art optics and detection instruments. This approach brings advances in sensitivity and discrimination by using fluorescence lifetime techniques pioneered in Scotland. Three-dimensional cell culture represents an ideal model providing a much closer representation of the physiological environment than existing biochemical and cell models.

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