IMAGINE IF! Idea Competition – Meet the Oxford Startups and Mentors

IMAGINE IF! in Oxford

Oxford continues to top the World University Rankings, a testament of the excellence and impact in academic and innovative pursuits.
Innovation Forum Oxford (IFO) is embedded in this exquisite environment that keeps on giving; when you think the place is saturated with support for startups, then 10 teams of entrepreneurial scientists entrust you with their ideas and aspirations. It evokes a thrill mixed with immense sense of responsibility.
IFO orchestrated a bespoke mentoring scheme that aimed at helping the teams reassess and propel their business ideas forward. With a highly diverse backgrounds and a unified passion for innovation, Oxford mentors, a group of volunteering professionals, set out to support the teams position their idea on a path for a successful business. This is in a nutshell what local Oxford IMAGINE IF! Accelerator entailed. On Thursday 12th of October 2017 at 18:00, Innovation Forum Oxford brings you the Oxford Pitching Final, “Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs”, an evening where the budding science entrepreneurs are cheered on, championed, and scrutinized by veteran entrepreneurs.
To provide the teams and the audience with an inspirational and educational account of what it takes to make a shrewd innovator, a panel of Oxford startup CEOs: Susan Graham of BioCarbon Engineering, Samuel Conway of Zegami, Tristan Collins of Metaboards, and David Llewellyn of DJS Antibodies, will share the trials and tribulations of leading a startup in the Oxford ecosystem from their personal and very unique perspective.
A rare opportunity in an intimate gathering will allow you to witness the resilience and passion of startup founders, the insight and empathy of the Oxford startup CEOs, and the world-class expertise of our local judges and mentors, without forgetting the audience, our local network and supporters; A mix of great minds, big ambition and plenty of know-how.

The IMAGINE IF! Accelerator is the first truly global competition and accelerator program for science-based ventures. The accelerator provides to early stage science startups extensive opportunities: mentorship, the potential to secure non-dilutive capital, free advice from leading professional services companies and rapid networking across the Innovation Forum platform.

A glimpse into the world of Oxford’s Startups

AirBliss+
AirBliss+® is developing the most comfortable, elegant, and smart anti-pollution mask on the market. Micro-sensors measure the ambient pollution and the efficiency of the filter, lights and ear-free headphones provide safety. Wearing the AirBliss+® is an active protest against the increasing air pollution in large cities. Moreover, this connected device is part of a large portable air monitoring network. Thus, the crowdsourced air pollution measures are the foundation of real-time and accurate air pollution maps and forecasts.

BioMe Oxford Ltd
BioMe Oxford Ltd is an Oxford-based start-up company seeking to catalyse a transformation in gut health by developing a cost-effective solution for targeted gastrointestinal sampling. An ever increasing number of studies have linked human diseases to variations within the immense population of bacteria inhabiting our gut, referred to as the gut microbiome. Available methods for sampling the microbiome have limited sampling capabilities, and represent a trade-off between accuracy and cost. To address this unmet need, the company is developing BioCapture®, an ingestible device for low-cost and non-invasive sampling of the human gut microbiome. BioCapture® will facilitate large-scale diagnostic and medical research uses in a wide range of diseases.

Dartum LTD
Dartum is a syn. bio start-up formed by a multidisciplinary team that aims at producing medicines using synthetic biology. The company would create synthetically modified organisms, principally genetically modified yeast which can produce the target compound in any desired location, easily and inexpensively. This would serve researchers and healthcare professionals who need location independent and scalable medicinal compounds production.

HeatSync
HeatSync start-up develops an integrated heating system that heats rooms only when occupied. Large institutes like universities, hotels and hospitals spend millions of pounds on their energy bills while pumping thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Approximately 40% of the energy could be saved with an integrated heating system that allows the facilities managers to control the energy consumption room-by-room and stop wasting energy on rooms that are unoccupied and not in use. 40% energy saved means 40% smaller carbon footprint! The vision of HeatSync is to fight climate change and save the planet – one building at a time!

HyperC
HyperC is a technology start-up that can quickly and efficiently produce 13C-labelled compounds for the emerging technology in Hyperpolarised Magnetic Resonance Imaging enabling the study of complex structures and processes previously not visible. The company has already established their first customers with pioneers in hyperpolarized imaging at University of Oxford and at University of California San Francisco with Professor Tyler and Professor Vigneron. The company will significantly advance academic and industrial diagnostics and clinical research specifically for this emerging technology as the first European company to provide the labelled compounds cheaper and faster in contrast to the existing American based companies that mostly have taken up this technology as a secondary pipeline, and are therefore not devoted to the technology.

InVent
InVent is a team of medical experts that work in the area of digital health to meet the problem of weaning hospital patients off mechanical ventilation, which is an enormous challenge in critical care.
Patients must be retrained to breathe on their own, but retraining can be significantly delayed by busy doctor schedules and heuristic weaning techniques. InVent will help patients breathe independently by (i) automating the weaning process so it is not delayed by doctor scheduling, and (ii) using data-driven methods to personalize the weaning training.

Matrix Magnets
Matrix Magnets has a new chemical analyser based on advances in cryogenics and electronics. There is a great need for an instrument of this type in pharmaceutical labs for real-time chemical analysis and in pathology labs for clinical diagnostics. Our system has a significantly smaller footprint, lower operating and maintenance costs than existing systems. It can be deployed in any laboratory or industrial setting. Our technology can greatly accelerate the rate of pharmaceutical development by compressing the development cycle of new drugs. We expect it to have applications in cancer diagnosis by making diagnostics available at the point of use.

Oxford nanoSystems Ltd.
Founded in 2012 by experienced academics and business professionals from the Oxford community, Oxford nanoSystems (OnS) have spent five years developing a coating technology, which has shown substantial enhancements in heat transfer capabilities when applied to heat exchangers and other two-phase systems. The goal of Oxford nanoSystems is to enable the production of cheaper, lighter, and more efficient products which consume less energy, limit environmental impact and reduce costs for consumers and manufacturers. OnS has had interest from some of the world’s largest heat exchanger manufacturers to develop the coating towards a commercial product. OnS is now looking to quickly scale up to meet the needs of these customers.

Spherox Pharmaceuticals
Spherox Phatmaceuticals is a start-up led by an Oxford DPhil student, which aims at using the assay he has developed during his research project to identify compounds that block glioblastoma (GBM)- type of brain cancer- invasion. The core of the project is the world’s first assay that enables the medium-high throughput study of subventricular zone (SVZ) progenitor migration. SVZ has been identified as a source of a large subpopulation of GBM tumors. This assay has already been successfully used for the screening of small molecule compounds. Now the start-up is seeking to expand the preclinical data portfolio to demonstrate that this approach can identify compounds that block GBM invasion.

Wattson Blue
Wattson Blue is a digital health start-up formed by a multidisciplinary team of Oxford DPhil students. They work in collaboration with Oxford university coaches and athletes to develop an app and web platform that will enable the accurate and efficient monitoring of how a student-athlete’s daily activities influence their psychological well-being, and athletic performance. This will enable the user and his/her coach to identify signs of overtraining, declining performance and/or changes in mood at an early stage and intervene accordingly. The team expects this would significantly reduce the incidence of overtraining syndrome and associated mental health complications in elite student-athletes, whilst helping maximize their training gains and performance in competition.

Meet our Mentors

Tom Brown

Tom Brown is currently Associate Head of the Chemistry Department at Oxford with responsibility for Research. He is the co-founder of three Biotech companies (Oswel, ATDBio and Primer Design) and has published over 350 research papers and patents. He has received several awards including the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Josef Loschmidt prize, the RSC award for Nucleic Acid Chemistry and the RSC prize for Interdisciplinary Research. He was Chemistry World entrepreneur of the year for 2014 and BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year and overall Innovator of the Year for 2016. Recently he was presented with a lifetime award for external engagement and promoting impact by Oxford University. Tom is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is President of the Chemistry Biology Interface Division of the RSC and Editor-in-Chief of the RSC Book series on Chemical Biology.

Nicholas Edwards

Nicholas Edwards is currently Chairman of Oxtex (developing a surgical implant device for skin expansion), Satie 8 (developing an anti-obesity treatment) and Prescient Healthcare Group (a specialty biopharmaceutical product strategy consultancy). After the scientific career in medicine, he spent 18 years with Andersen Consulting (now known as Accenture). There in 2001 he was part of the corporate strategy team for Andersen Consulting developing strategy for the global business and supporting the IPO on the NY Stock Exchange and the rebranding to Accenture. In 2005, he was one of the founders of Kinapse, a business focused on providing consulting and outsourcing services to the pharmaceutical industry. Nicholas is part of the Kilfinan Group – a network of senior business people who provide free and informal mentoring to charity chief executives. Nicholas is an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford and chairs the Wealth Creation Oversight Committee of the Oxford Academic Health Science Network.

Alexander Finlayson

Alexander Finlayson is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Primary Care in Oxford. Developing a fledgling interest in innovation in global health he founded and is now a board member of ‘The 2023 Challenge’, an Innovation Fund and Incubator for Healthcare across Thames Valley. He has worked with some colleagues from Digital Health Oxford (DHOx) to form ‘The Hill’ a healthcare Innovation Hub based at the John Radcliffe Hosptial which launched in June 2016. He founded a UKAID/THET funded Digital Health company in Somalia, called MedicineAfrica, for which he was awarded BMJ Junior Doctor of the Year. Whilst studying Genetics and Systems biology on a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard he developed an interest in strengthening health systems and went on to work in this field for three years as the Head of Research at the King’s Centre for Global Health.

Nick Housby

Nick has been the founding CEO of the life science businesses Novolytics (antimicrobial therapeutics, 2010), BioMimox (peptide aptamers, 2014), Arcamis (business consulting, 2010) and has served as the Director of Business Development at OBN (2012). Raising finance has been his key skill as he has raised significant public, private, VC and business angel funding (Beer and Partners, 2013) for several businesses (multiple £M) and was a coach for the Growth Accelerator programme. More recently (2016) Nick has co-founded The Clinical Genome Advisory (tcga) that exists to promote the UKs world leading strengths in genomics through the 100,000 genomes project. tcga builds global relationships with Governments and healthcare organisations seeking advice and support around genomics activity.

Brian Howlett

Brian Howlett has a long and successful career as a medtech business leader in large corporations, AIM listed companies and early stage ventures: CEO of Lombard Medical Technologies (2005 – 2009) and General Manager of Boston Scientific in UK (1999 – 2005). He is currently a board member of three emerging medtech companies, including Oxford Endovascular Limited – an Oxford University spin-out.

Eileen Modral

Eileen has been working with entrepreneurs since 1999 where she was part of a consultancy team and small fund. Since 2001 Eileen has worked for Oxford Innovation working on programmes relating to business development for SMEs including coaching for high growth. Since 2004 Eileen has managed Oxford Innovation’s angel networks under OION Ltd. Eileen led the due diligence negotiations for OION Ltd to establish a Co-investment Programme with a leading corporate bank that part inspired the Angel CoFund. She was instrumental with developing the Angels4LifeSciences network with two Life Science professionals, Nesta and the BIA in 2012 and continues to support the Forum. She is a Board member of Venturefest Oxford and has actively supported the annual event for more than 10 years. More recently Eileen has been actively involved with the launch of OION Limited’s SEIS funds in partnership with Fund Manager Innvotec; supporting the twelve companies in the portfolio.

Michalis Papadakis

Michalis Papadakis is a co-founder and the CEO of Brainomix, an award winning University of Oxford spin-out. Building the company from the ground up, he has significant experience in start-ups and innovation. He has led the development, regulatory clearance and commercialisation of medical imaging, decision support tools for stroke diagnosis and treatment. He has secured and managed more than £1.5 million of Innovate UK funding and £2.7 million of private investment. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College and a PhD in Neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. In 2005, he joined the Laboratory of Cerebral Ischaemia at the University of Oxford and he was the scientific director.

Beverley Scott

Beverley is a registered, practicing nurse with 19 years’ clinical experience in working with people with eating disorders and 14 years working in patient safety and information governance. She has extensive experience working with the UK/NHS digital health strategy at national agency level, including 12 years in senior management within the Department of Health.
Beverley has a successful track record in developing quality management systems and clinical safety risk management systems for large health technology organisations with complex matrix operating models and product development lifecycles (public and commercial sector). She has significant experience in successfully obtaining medical device and health IT system registration and CE Marking/certification, conforming to UK and NHS regulations and standards for safety risk and quality management.

IMAGINE IF! Accelerator applications open!

Do you have a great idea for a science-based start up?

Join the global network of innovators across 16 branches world wide, and become a scientist-entrepreneur via our IMAGINE IF! accelerator!

Innovation Forum invites you to participate in the 4th edition of the first truly global competition and accelerator program for science-based ventures.

IMAGINE IF! accelerator’s mission is to turn scientists with business ideas into scientists-entrepreneurs.

The accelerator provides early stage science startups with extensive opportunities: mentorship, training, the potential to secure non-dilutive capital, free advice from leading professional services companies and rapid networking across the Innovation Forum platform. If your innovative idea can have an impact on the world: this is the accelerator program for you!

View IMAGINE IF! 2016 projects and read about last year’s winner!

Don’t miss the application deadline on the 28th of July and APPLY NOW!

Top ten teams from Oxford will be selected to receive mentorship and participate in the local final. The winners, selected by a panel of experts, will receive further support and a free pass to the Innovation Forum Leaders Conference 2017 (Oxford, 4-5 December 2017), where they will compete for the grand global prize.

LAB282 – a Unique Partnership Supporting Innovation from Academic Research

LAB282 is a new funding partnership in Oxford, which has just awarded its first grants. We interviewed Dr Thomas Hanke, Expert in Residence at LAB282 and Head of Academic Partnerships at Evotec. Read on to find out what is so unique about LAB282, what it can offer and, most importantly, how to get them to fund your project!

Dr Thomas Hanke has over 20 years of experience in research and drug development in academia, biotech and pharma. Since December 2016, he has been overseeing a growing portfolio of strategic academic partnerships at Evotec, spearheaded by LAB282 in Oxford.

In his career, Thomas has sat at different sides of the innovation table. We asked him to take a look at the history of pharmaceutical innovation.

“Over the last 10-15 years many academics at centres of excellence have become more business-oriented, they have developed a good idea of what can generate business. This is now very pronounced in the US, but is also maturing in the UK,” he says. In addition, many technology transfer offices at world-leading Universities have become more creative and flexible. In the past, these offices mostly dealt with intellectual property, which resulted in tough negotiations. However, they now provide a whole package of support and are much more holistic in their approaches. One of such organisations is Oxford University Innovation, one of the partners forming LAB282.

“At the same time, pharma companies have become more creative in forming public-private partnerships.” For example, Novo Nordisk, where Thomas worked as the Sourcing Director at the Biopharmaceuticals Research Unit from 2007 to 2013, would have been completely different without their innovative partnerships. One of the issues faced by big pharma companies is huge cost pressure. Their own research is cost-intensive, while the research costs are fixed. To allow them to step into true innovation, they need more flexibility. Therefore, partnerships between academia and industry are needed. However, there is growing recognition among policy makers that a significant part of academic research fails to be reproduced by pharma companies. The focus of future projects must take reproducibility into account – and this is where LAB282 steps in.

What is so unique about LAB282?

LAB282 is a partnership formed to create a next-generation accelerator for academic science at Oxford. The four founding partners are The University of Oxford, Oxford University Innovation (OUI), Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) and Evotec. Building on lessons learnt from years of public-private collaborations, there are three main goals of the scheme:

Avoid the infamous valley of death by providing early industry-standard validation, following the framework of best practice from both academic and industrial environments;
Provide project-specific support;
Make Evotec, a technology-driven global company with industry record, a central part of the accelerator, in order to put industry standard onto technology validation.

The ‘glue’ of LAB282 is the technology validation provided by Evotec. This company, which employs around 1,200 specialists, is already experienced in forming partnerships around the world. However, according to Dr Hanke, LAB282 is a unique accelerator. The hope is that its uniqueness should guarantee its success.

The differentiating value proposition is the quick turnaround of projects. Taking the example of the first two projects, which were scientifically evaluated in November and December 2016. The official deadline for applications was in January; the decisions were made on 8^th February; the projects initiated two weeks later and at the end of March one of them was already half-completed. The secret behind such unmatched speed is the pre-filtering and pre-assessment of potential projects during individual meetings between the local expert in residence (Dr Thomas Hanke) and Principal Investigators (PIs). Hanke, embedded in the local ecosystem, discusses the projects in person with the interested PIs at their convenience, which saves them a lot of time. He can make recommendations whether to apply in the current round of applications or wait until more research produces more results. The main aim of initial discussions is to prepare seed-fundable project plans. In the end, the main target of LAB282 is to validate principles with already available initial evidence. This is another thing which makes it different from traditional granting schemes – the projects are a little more advanced than in the case of usual research grants.

“LAB282 provides an integrated commercial framework into funded projects. In fact, the time to go from concept to series A funding is halved with the support from LAB282. Going from concepts to commercialisation is indeed something in which academics and the university need support.”

How did the partnership form – and why Oxford?

Formation of LAB282 resulted from a certain ‘gravitational force’ between the founding partners. The idea to formalise it was floating around in discussions between late 2015 and early 2016, when it was finally put into context, in February 2016. A few months of negotiations followed, which resulted in the official launch in November 2016.

Oxford was chosen for a few reasons. The University has been number one worldwide for biomedical research for years. Moreover, OSI has a strong history of funding successful projects and it can bring a lot of potential into the future. As mentioned before, OUI is a very creative and flexible transfer office, which provides very good alignment with the mission of LAB282. Finally, the close proximity of the science parks in Abingdon or Harwell is a huge bonus for freshly arising biotech companies.

The LAB282 partnership is designed to bring benefits for each party. While the research is done at Evotec and also at the University of Oxford, the scheme allows collaborative projects with other labs, as long as the strategy is agreed on by all involved parties. OUI and OSI provide the knowledge and financial capital. The main benefit for academics, OUI and OSI is de-risking of the projects through industry-standard validation, done by Evotec at their internal cost. In return, the company takes a small stake in the successful companies from the pre-seed funding stage.

How to get funded by LAB282?

The area of interest of LAB282 is therapeutics. “Potential projects can focus on any disease, and each project will be assessed individually and independently,” says Hanke.

The partnership has a portfolio approach, planning to fund 10-15 projects each year and then assessing which ones will contribute to portfolio growth. The funding amount is £250,000 per project, provided by the OSI. The minimum target is to form around 5 successful companies from around 40 projects funded over three years.

For the next round, the application deadline is 31^st July. Decisions will be made within a month and announced at the beginning of September. All decisions are made by the Steering Committee: Dr John Davis, Dr Carolyn Porter, Dr Andy McLean and Dr Thomas Hanke (one nominee from each involved party).

At present, Dr Thomas Hanke travels and arranges meetings in order to increase the interest for LAB282, promote the scheme among different departments and brand it into the appropriate newsletters. He does all this to increase awareness among academics, who may find this support very useful. LAB282 should be interesting for junior researchers, because it promotes grassroots innovation. It fits well with the main message of The Innovation Forum and you will be able to meet Thomas at one of our upcoming events: From Discovery to Impact on 19^th September.

Biography of Dr Thomas Hanke:

From November 2013 to November 2016, Hanke was responsible for scientific advancement and commercial licensing of Evotec’s preclinical R&D projects in the areas of inflammation and immuno-oncology, with a particular focus on building high-value, performance based drug discovery alliances with academia and pharma.
From 2007 to 2013, Hanke was Sourcing Director at the Biopharmaceuticals Research Unit of Novo Nordisk, where he identified and evaluated partnering opportunities related to compounds, targets and technologies within haemophilia, autoimmune/inflammatory diseases, growth disorders and protein technologies. At Novo Nordisk, he initiated agreements with academic institutions and biotech companies both in Europe and the US.
Prior to joining Novo Nordisk, Hanke was co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at the German biotech company TeGenero, where he headed the R&D efforts to develop first-in-class immunomodulatory monoclonal antibodies (2002-2007).
Preceding his entrepreneurial activities, Hanke was Group Leader and Assistant Professor for Immunobiology at the University of Würzburg (1999-2002) following a PostDoc at the University of California in Berkeley where he researched basic cellular immunology (1996-1999). Hanke received his PhD in Biology from the University of Würzburg in 1995. He is (co-) author of approximately 30 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Evotec AG: LAB282 awarded first projects

Oxford University and Evotec’s drug discovery partnership launched last November to accelerate drugs to market begins making awards.

Hamburg, Germany, 21 February 2017:
Evotec AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809) is pleased to announce that LAB282, the £13m drug discovery partnership with Oxford University, has made its first wave of awards, backing projects targeting cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases.

Launched last year in November as a partnership between Oxford University, Evotec, Oxford University Innovation and Oxford Sciences Innovation, LAB282 aids the rapid translation of research outputs into new drug discovery and development programmes. It draws on expertise provided by Evotec and combines it with pre-clinical proof-of-concept grant funding to accelerate projects into a position where they can be commercialised and scaled up efficiently and effectively.

Out of a pool of high-quality project proposals across various therapeutic areas and encompassing different therapeutic modalities, two projects were chosen. The two grant winners will be conducting further research into:

“Drugs from bugs” – A project developing evasins, a potential treatment for cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases derived from the saliva of ticks;
DarTG – A potential new target for the development of antibiotics that could shut down tuberculosis and several other pathogens.

Evotec will exclusively contribute its drug discovery expertise and platforms to the selected projects and together with Oxford University and its academic researchers develop them further with the aim to have a pre-clinical proof of concept for new drugs.

The next round of grants awards is due in June 2017.

Dr Thomas Hanke, LAB282 Expert-in-Residence and Head of Academic Partnerships at Evotec, commented:

“I am excited and very pleased we were able to select two outstanding and truly translational projects from a panel of high-quality applications for the first round of LAB282 awards. My cordial congratulations go to Prof. Bhattacharya and Dr Ahel and their teams for their excellent work. I am very much looking forward to closely collaborating with the Oxford University and Evotec teams in accelerating bona fide drug discovery from the awarded projects.”

Shoumo Bhattacharya, British Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford University and lead academic on the evasins project, said:

“The LAB282 funding, which brings Evotec’s world-class expertise in the development of peptide therapeutics and in inflammation to the evasin project, will help the development of new therapeutics – ‘drugs from bugs’ – that can treat orphan autoimmune diseases such as myocarditis.”

Carolyn Porter, Deputy Head of Technology Transfer, Oxford University Innovation, added:

“The LAB282 partnership was established to accelerate drug discovery at Oxford University. This funding will enable the evasin project to enter the clinic more rapidly for the benefit of patients with cardiovascular autoimmune disorders for which there is no cure. Through validation of DarTG role in bacterial growth and function, our second funded project could uncover a new strategy for development of antibiotics.”

Additional scientific information

The “drugs from bugs” project will be looking to develop evasins, which are peptides derived from the saliva of ticks. Ticks have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, and have been evolving these peptides to block chemokines, which are proteins in the body that recruit inflammatory cells to the site of injury. The research team led by Professor Shoumo Bhattacharya have developed a new ‘Bug-to-Drug’ technology to find these tick peptides in order to treat inflammatory and fibrotic diseases that are currently incurable. In this project, they will use these peptides to target chemokines that cause giant cell myocarditis (GCM), a rare autoimmune disease with no cure. GCM usually affects young adults, progressing rapidly to heart failure and death. There is no specific treatment except for a heart transplant.

The second project, with Dr Ivan Ahel, looks to validate translational research on DarTG toxin-antitoxin system, a pathway found in tuberculosis. Essentially a back door around tuberculosis’ defences, DarTG could be a potential target for small molecules, which could shut down the bacteria. If the project demonstrates that DarTG is the pathogen’s Achilles’ Heel, it will pave the way for a new class of antibiotics. Aside from offering a potential new therapy for tuberculosis, which will become a greater threat as antibiotic resistance increases, DarTG could also be a weakness in Escherichia coli, superbug Klebsiella pneumonia, and other gram-negative pathogens.

About

LAB282, initiated in November 2016, is a new £13m partnership between the Oxford University, Oxford University Innovation Ltd, Oxford Sciences Innovation plc and Evotec AG created to identify and develop new approaches to treating serious diseases, which originate from the Oxford University. The goal is to accelerate the achievement of pre-clinical proof of concept for new drugs and to generate new spin-out companies. The name derived from the pantone colour code of “Oxford Blue”. For more information, please visit www.lab282.org.

The University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division is one of the largest biomedical research centres in Europe, with over 2,500 people involved in research and more than 2,800 students. The University is rated the best in the world for medicine, and it is home to the UK’s top-ranked medical school.
From the genetic and molecular basis of disease to the latest advances in neuroscience, Oxford is at the forefront of medical research. It has one of the largest clinical trial portfolios in the UK and great expertise in taking discoveries from the lab into the clinic. Partnerships with the local NHS Trusts enable patients to benefit from close links between medical research and healthcare delivery. A great strength of Oxford medicine is its long-standing network of clinical research units in Asia and Africa, enabling world-leading research on the most pressing global health challenges such as malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS and flu. Oxford is also renowned for its large-scale studies which examine the role of factors such as smoking, alcohol and diet on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

Oxford Sciences Innovation plc is the world’s largest IP investment company dedicated to a single university. Founded in May 2015, we help turn Oxford University’s world-leading scientific discovery into innovative science and technology companies that can have a positive impact on society. We provide capital and expertise to businesses driven by intellectual property developed in Oxford’s Mathematical, Physical, Life Sciences Division and Medical Sciences Divisions. We are guided and powered by some of the world’s leading organisations, including Invesco, Woodford Investment Management, the Wellcome Trust and Lansdowne Partners.

Oxford University Innovation supports innovation activities across all University Divisions, managing technology transfer and consulting activities, and providing an innovation management service to clients around the world.
We provide access to technology from Oxford researchers through intellectual property licensing, spinout company formation and material sales, and to academic expertise through our Consulting Services team. The New Venture Support & Funding team supports investors or donors with an interest in early-stage ventures, and manages the Oxford Angels Network. Our Startup Incubator supports members and ex-members of the University who wish to start or grow entrepreneur-driven ventures that are not University spinouts.
Oxford University Innovation is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked 1st in the UK for university spin-outs, having created over 140 new companies in 25 years. In the last reported financial year we completed 529 licenses and consulting agreements. Isis Enterprise, our innovation management consultancy, works with university, government and industrial clients from offices around the world.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
Information set forth in this press release contains forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the judgement of Evotec as of the date of this press release. Such forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

This article has been reposted with permission from the Evotec website.

The first steps to become an Entrepreneur

Find out what it means to be a health and life-sciences entrepreneur!

On 30th November 2016 Innovation Forum Oxford closed the first round of four lectures in the series in Health and Life-Sciences Entrepreneurship, organised in collaboration with the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division. Here is the summary of what the audiences of around 100 current and future entrepreneurs experienced over the course of two months.

How to develop commercial ideas from research

Two weeks after the first lecture by Sir John Bell we hosted Torsten Reil, the CEO of NaturalMotion, Professor Andrew Carr, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Professor Tom Brown, BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2016 from the University of Oxford. In a set of three fascinating talks, they shared their experiences in developing businesses from basic research. Among a multitude of advice, they discussed the concept of blue oceans, different pathways to innovation and the cycle research-innovate-commercialise. At the end of the evening, Professor Brown shared a few thoughts in a video interview:

How to explore business tools to develop and evaluate your idea

On 9th November our opening speaker was Maria Nikolou, Senior Programme Manager from the Entrepreneurship Centre by Saïd Business School. Maria began with explaining the concept of entrepreneurship and outlining key features of a successful business. After that, she went into details of the Canvas method of business planning, covering a variety of tools. The presentation was immediately followed by a case study. Maria applied the Canvas method to an example of OrganOx, an Oxford-based start-up with the mission to improve the quality of organs, especially livers, for transplantation. With this exercise, she also handed the stage over to Dr Les Russell, the CEO of OrganOx. Les took the audience on a journey through the company’s history, offering practical advice from his own experience. After the talks, both speakers shared their thoughts in video interviews:

How to define your target market

The last speaker of 2016 in our series was Neil Butler, a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Spectromics, an innovative company tackling the microbial antibiotic resistance. Based on examples from his extensive experience, Neil explained the key rules of identifying the target market for a business. His advice was particularly tailored to entrepreneurs within the fields of MedTech and Health innovation. Below you can watch an interview with Neil done after his lecture:

This lecture series is a part of the IMAGINE IF! accelerator programme, designed to inspire and foster grassroots innovation. The business idea competition provides support, mentorship and opportunity to secure $30,000 of non-diluted capital. Further lectures will continue until May 2017 and cover a number of points regarding developing a business in healthcare and life sciences area.

Invitation to join Innovation Forum Oxford

Are you interested…

…in getting to know the Oxfordshire start-up ecosystem?
…in understanding the intersection between business and science?
…in developing your own entrepreneurial skills?
…in building an international network with innovation thought leaders?
…in innovation-related careers (launching your own start-up, technology transfer, venture capital, patent law, etc.)?

Then you should join our team of entrepreneurial-minded scientists!

Innovation Forum Oxford is part of a global platform promoting innovative technology development. Our mission is to support science entrepreneurs by mentoring and facilitating access to industry expertise and investment.

How do we do this? By organising:

An annual Innovation Leaders Conference held at Oxford in 2017
The Oxford and global finals of the “Imagine IF!” start-up accelerator
A series of lectures on Health and Life Sciences Entrepreneurship
Other innovative initiatives that you could be leading and/or be a part of!
Writing editorial articles on innovation in Oxfordshire and globally

Sounds interesting to you? Drop us an email.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you,
Committee of Innovation Forum Oxford
[email protected]

Innovation in Oxfordshire and trends shaping the industry

Oxfordshire – the place to drive innovation!

Has the innovation ecosystem in Oxfordshire been changing over the recent years?
What lessons can we learn from the stories of successful biotech companies?

An audience of nearly 100 academics and young entrepreneurs gathered on 12th October in the lecture theatre of John Radcliffe Hospital. There, Sir John Bell opened the lecture series on Health and Life-Sciences Entrepreneurship, organised by the Oxford branch of Innovation Forum in collaboration with the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division. In his inspirational talk, Sir John addressed the role of Oxfordshire in driving global biotech innovation and shared lessons from the past which can shape the future of the industry.

Professor Sir John Irving Bell GBE FRS FMedSci FREng graduated from Medicine at the University of Oxford. After working as a Clinical Fellow at Stanford, he returned to Oxford in 1992. His major contributions to the University include co-founding the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and serving as the Regius Professor of Medicine since 2002. Throughout his career he has served on boards of large companies, including Roche, AstraZeneca and Genentech. He has also advised a number of charities, including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Oak Foundation and the Robertson Foundation.

Sir John was once a student at the University of Oxford himself. Since then, he has witnessed two of the greatest worldwide advancements: the decrease in mortality rate and more than eight-year increase in life expectancy. Although this long-term achievement, driven by pharmaceuticals and technology, has presented a lot of issues along the way, it was definitely worth the effort. But how can we ensure that the future innovators build on this exciting trend?

Innovation works best in environments where two or more disciplines intersect. For example, LMB in Cambridge, where physics and biology go side by side, produced several Nobel prize winners. Moreover, universities, where academic scientists have a certain degree of research freedom, create environments that favour innovation.

How does Oxfordshire fit in this picture?

In fact, Oxfordshire is a great place for biotechnological innovation. The University of Oxford has been the world’s leading university in Biomedical Sciences for six consecutive years according to the Times Higher Education Ranking. The University scores particularly high at interactions with industry, thanks to the associated technology cluster.

Quantifying by output, Oxford is home to the most successful biomedical campus in Europe. The Old Road Campus, which started with the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, co-founded in the 1990s by Sir John Bell himself, currently employs 2500 scientists. This expands to around 180 companies in Oxfordshire and 780 in whole Thames Valley. These include the Harwell campus, the site of really exciting developments, with increasingly more biologists on site. It will become home to the Rosalind Franklin institute, a new place for collaboration of physicists and biologists – another example of an interface that drives most powerful innovation.

The audience at Sir John Bell's lecture — The audience at Sir John Bell’s lecture

Geographically, the English South-East triangle Oxford-Cambridge-London is the same size as Boston and Silicon Valley taken together. It is actually the biggest biotech area in Europe. However, there are no UK-based pharma companies in the top 10 of the market cap table. Clearly, there must be some lessons to learn.

Lessons from the past

Sir John Bell has been the founding director of a few biotech companies, including Oxagen or Avidex. The stories of these companies provide a source of useful advice. Our speaker shared several of them. For instance: Orient the innovation around patient needs. While companies may be working on improving patient’s condition, the most powerful innovations actually respond to what the patients actually want. Another point to keep in mind is the fact that developing a product may often be more difficult than discovery. Add the need to be patient and flexible and you arrive at the most important take-home message: Innovation takes time. A very long time, actually. Successful middle-size companies, such as Gilead, Genentech, Celgene or Novo Nordisk are all driven by breakthroughs, which took decades to achieve. How can we then ensure that the UK creates an ecosystem that provides enough time?

Sir John pointed out the need for new facilities and incubators. Actually, the newest addition to the Old Road Campus, the Bioescalator, is currently under construction. Among many useful resources, it will allow reduced costs for new start-ups by sharing management. It will also play a role in aiding the very much needed establishment of middle size life sciences companies.

Closing his talk, Sir John Bell pointed to a lot of patient capital currently coming to Oxford. Therefore, we will very likely witness Oxfordshire becoming the world’s new leading hub for life sciences innovation.

With his talk, Professor Sir John Bell opened the lecture series on Health and Life-Sciences Entrepreneurship, supported by the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Saïd Business School, Enterprising Oxford, Oxford Academic Health Science Network, J&J Innovation, George James Ltd, Orangefield Group, Penningtons Manches and White October.