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News
Edinburgh
Instruments makes first sale of product using technology
developed in ITI Life Sciences programme
Press Release June 2008
Dundee and Edinburgh, Scotland, ITI Life Sciences, the publicly funded innovation
group,
is pleased to announce that Edinburgh Instruments, one of
its earliest commercial partners, has made its first sale of
a new product
called NanoTaurus
containing technology developed in an ITI R&D programme.
Edinburgh Instruments (EI)
has combined novel fluorescence technology with
state-of-the-art optics and detection in the NanoTaurus,
which features the highest sensitivity and discrimination
for drug discovery screening and assay development.
ITI Scotland owns rights to certain core
elements of the technology and associated intellectual
property used in the NanoTaurus, which were developed during
a 17-month ITI programme that ended in June 2006. Edinburgh
Instruments licensed this technology in February 2007 and
the product sale, which was made to an undisclosed
Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company, triggers a royalty
payment to ITI Scotland.
Eleanor
Mitchell, Managing Director of ITI Life Sciences, said: The sale of
the NanoTaurus instrument represents an important milestone
for ITI Life Sciences as it demonstrates for the first time
a completed cycle of the ITI model: an opportunity in cell
screening was identified, from which an ITI research
programme was developed and valuable intellectual assets
resulted. These assets were licensed out and further
developed through commercial research into a product, the
sale of which generates a royalty stream back into ITI
Scotland. The process makes use of research expertise and
business skills resident in
Scotland
and indicates the future potential value that can be created
by the ITI model. While these first royalties are modest
they represent a significant achievement by Edinburgh
Instruments and we are confident that ITI can repeat this
success with technologies developed in our other programmes.
Professor
Des Smith, FRS,
Chairman and CEO of Edinburgh Instruments, said: We are
very pleased to have made this first important sale to a
major international pharmaceutical company and continue to
market the capabilities of the technology widely to academia
and industry. The NanoTaurus is being used in an ongoing
research project with Dundee
University
to create protein kinase assays without the use of
radioactive markers, producing advantages in speed, cost,
processing steps, safety and waste disposal. We are also
working with
Edinburgh
University to detect
single base mutations in a DNA
nanoswitch, which will have potential applications in
immunoassay development and clinical diagnostics ultimately
revealing fundamentals of gene selection.
-ends-
Exhibitions
Edinburgh Instruments will be
exhibiting at :
Microscience 2008 held at ExCel,
London 24,25,26 June 2008
www.microscience2008.org
XXII IUPAC Symposium on
Photochemistry, Gotheborg Sweden, 28th July - 1st August
http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/Goteborg2008/
Photon 08 held at Heriot-Watt
University Campus, Edinburgh 26-29 August 2008
www.photon.org.uk
2008 NCRI Cancer Conference
Exhibition, 5 7 October 2008, The ICC, Birmingham, UK
Photonex
www.photonex.org
Stoneleigh, Coventry, 15-16 October 2008
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