| 10th July 2002
Daniolabs Raises £850k in seed funding
to accelerate its drug discovery process
DanioLabs Ltd,
a new Cambridge based drug discovery company that uses
zebrafish to drive the
creation of novel therapeutic agents, has raised £850k
in seed funding from a consortium of investors. This
initial funding has come from The Cambridge Angels, the
Cambridge University Challenge Fund and a DTI SMART award.
Using its proprietary technologies, DanioLabs will utilise
the new finance to progress the development of its existing
therapeutic programmes in the fields of ophthalmic and
neurodegenerative diseases and initiate new discovery
programmes in other areas of unmet medical need.
DanioLabs' technology and expertise exploits gene discoveries
in zebrafish to generate disease models, to find and
validate novel drug targets and to identify new lead
compounds to treat human disease. DanioLabs' technologies
will facilitate rapid progression up the drug discovery
and development value chain using its novel approaches.
DanioLabs' technologies are particularly suited to the
areas of macular degeneration and neurodegenerative diseases,
including Alzheimer's Disease, Huntington's Disease and
Motor Neurone Disease.
DanioLabs Ltd was founded in October 2001 by Professors
Bill Harris and Herwig Baier, and Dr Paul Goldsmith,
with commercial assistance from the Cambridge University
Entrepreneurship Centre. The company has been spun out
of the University of Cambridge UK, and the University
of California, San Francisco, USA, to develop therapeutics
with proven in vivo activity. The company is located
in Cambridge and has strong links with academic groups
elsewhere in the UK and in the USA. The founding scientists,
Dr Paul Goldsmith (Chief Scientific Officer), Prof Bill
Harris and Prof Herwig Baier are to be joined on the
Board by Dr Roger Brimblecombe as Chairman and Dr Andy
Richards as non executive director and representative
of The Cambridge Angels.
Professor Bill Harris commented, "DanioLabs has
a very promising new strategy to search for drug targets
for diseases that so far have been difficult or impossible
to treat effectively. The power of forward genetic screening
can now be coupled with genomic information and drug
design technology to focus attention effectively on the
most promising targets".
Professor Herwig Baier added, "The
time is ripe to leverage the enormous power of zebrafish
genetics
for the discovery of new and better medicines. It has
become clear over the past few years, that fish and people
share a very similar set of genes - we are basically
made of the same ingredients. Fish can suffer from the
same illnesses that humans do. Our company will focus
on devastating diseases of the brain, most of which are
currently untreatable. Of the millions of chemical compounds
that are potential drugs, DanioLabs will first identify
the very few that cure the fish, and will then transfer
this information to the clinical practice. We will pursue
our goals with determination, but we also wish to be
seen as a trusted partner of basic scientists and help
them commercialise their discoveries."
Dr Paul Goldsmith Chief Scientific
Officer said, "As
both a researcher and medical practitioner in neurology
I am very excited by the prospects for this company to
be able to identify novel therapeutics to treat some
of the most devastating diseases."
Dr Roger Brimblecombe Chairman
of DanioLabs commented, "I
am very pleased to be involved in the creation and future
development of DanioLabs with its exciting technology
and excellent scientific team, a combination which should
provide opportunities for novel therapeutic approaches. "
Dr Andy Richards added, "DanioLabs
is a dynamic new company formed from Cambridge University
and UCSF
technology. The team are using a radical new approach
to identifying 'cure' strategies using model organisms
in important areas of medical need. This is a major business
angel led investment into biotechnology from The Cambridge
Angels"
"It is absolutely fantastic to see world-class
biotechnology from both Universities focused into a tight
commercial strategy", says John Snyder from the
Cambridge University Entrepreneurship Centre. "The
DanioLabs team have been hugely energised by the close
network of advisors, seasoned entrepreneurs and business
angels in the Cambridge cluster - two years of commercial
grooming ahead of this spin-out will undoubtedly pay
dividends. The technology is first class - and so are
the team around it".
Notes For Editors
Macular degeneration is the commonest cause of blindness
in the western world. It affects 1 in 20 of the population.
Although there are drugs that treat a complication of
the rarer 'wet' form of the disease, there are no drugs
which alter the underlying course of the disease. Although
there are drugs which have some effect on symptoms of
the neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's Disease,
Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, motor neuron
disease etc), there are no drugs that have had a major
impact on the underlying progression of these diseases.
DanioLabs utilizes zebrafish when they are the size of
flies, only a few millimetres long, as part of its program
to identify drugs to treat the above conditions.
Professor Bill Harris is Professor of Anatomy in Cambridge.
He began his career publishing seminal papers on retinal
degeneration in drosophila. Since then he has published
over 100 publications on the visual system, latterly
in the zebrafish field.
Professor Herwig Baier is Assistant Professor at the
University of California, San Francisco. He previously
conducted postdoctoral work with Professor Harris, when
they were both based at the University of California,
San Diego. He is one of the leading figures in zebrafish
visual science and behavioural genetics.
Dr Paul Goldsmith is a neurologist who began working
on zebrafish to help devise new therapeutics, motivated
by the lack of any real prospect for cures for the patients
he saw in clinic.
Dr Roger Brimblecombe - ex-Chairman SmithKline and French
Research Ltd, Chairman of MVM Ltd, Oxxon Pharmaccines
Ltd., pSiMedica Ltd and pSivida Ltd (Australia) Non-exec
director PPL Therapeutics plc, Tissue Science Laboratories
Ltd, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc (USA) and GenPat77 Pharmacogenetics
AG (Germany).
Dr Andy Richards - Founded Chiroscience in 1992. Executive
Director until August 1999. Founder of Arakis in 2000
and currently a director of Arakis Ltd, BioWisdom Ltd,
Vectura Ltd., Amedis Ltd and Syngenix Ltd and strategic
advisor to the Merlin Bioscience fund. He is a founding
member of The Cambridge Angels.
The University of Cambridge Entrepreneurship
Centre (CEC) began operation in October 1999 following
the award
of £2.9 million of seed funding from the DTI's "Science
Enterprise Challenge". The formation of CEC represented
a significant step in the on-going development of the
University of Cambridge's strategy for commercial exploitation
of science and technology. The background to the formation
of the Centre rests on a number of initiatives in the
Cambridge area and within the University of Cambridge.
One of the most significant initiatives was the Cambridge
Network's 'Programme for Entrepreneurs', launched in
1998. The vision of CEC is to ensure that Cambridge is
acknowledged as the leading centre for knowledge-based
entrepreneurship in Europe.
|
