NOVEMBER 1998 BROADSHEET - Biotechnology in Cambridge
Over the last five and a half years of the Club's existence and probably well before when it was a mere 92 Club, there hasn't been a single meeting either devoted to or including a biotechnical subject. All this time the predominantly "physical" membership has been totally unaware of the meteoric growth of this area of technology. Suddenly we find that there are some 200 biotech companies in the region with their centre of gravity heavily based on Cambridge. There are eight universities, twenty research centres and 25% of the UK's bio research occurs in the Eastern Region. Furthermore we have 10% of the world's living Nobel prize winners in this subject.
So the meeting on Thursday 15th October was quite a revelation, ably put by our three speakers. Most of us had not heard of ERBI, not surprising as it has only been going for a year or so and has only just produced its first newsletter. The Eastern Region Biotechnology Initiative was launched in May 1997 and is headed by Jeff Solomon who gave us a report of its early successes and rapid growth. The lack of commercial acumen was no different among the biologists and he has therefore been most active in promoting courses on finance, project management, etc. More info on 202346 or www.erbi.co.uk.
Our second speaker was Graham Hind of DHA Nutrition Ltd which is one of the burgeoning small companies at the St John's Innovation Centre. It was all to do with "clean" fatty acids which are derived from the purist source of all - plankton. You get all the advantages of oily fish without the fishy smell and it was already being applied to dog food (Eucanuba, which is certainly a firm favourite of our golden retriever) and hopefully without the attentions of the animal rightists, will keep us humans fighting fit in due course. Another aspect of this technology is that these products are superbly biodegradable, ideal for babies' nappies and the like. Graham has now been very healthily bought up by an American giant, BioProgress Technology International Inc. of Atlanta. You can find out all about them on www.bioprogress.com and he can be found on 01353 741308.
Finally Mike Walker told us of his small company Genesis Diagnostics. Mike has had a succession of small biotech companies which he sold off at huge profit, got bored with sailing round the world and decided to start again with diagnostic test kits for the ever increasing hypochondriac market, known to him as the "worried world". Kits for testing for allergies, pregnancy etc turned his one man band in the Lancaster Business Park in 1994 from £20k annual sales to eleven people working flat out in Littleport to achieve an expected £850k this year. If you're one of the worriers you can find out more in complete secrecy by surfing into www.elisa.co.uk, or more opaquely on 01353 862220.
It was gratifying to hear that quite a large part of the audience had touched in on the Club's web site. Do take advantage of the feedback forms both for making comments, gleaning information and requests for links to your sites; a completely free service. There are more details of the last meeting, an announcement of the next and what we hope will prove a useful and entertaining links page. The address of our web pages? http://wwweb.org/cetc/
Finally, if you are in the market for European money, the Eastern England Innovation Relay Centre is holding a seminar on the morning of 24th November, 10am to 1pm on "Bidding for EU Research Funding for Information Society Technologies: why proposals fail". Cost £30+VAT. Details 01223 420844 or www.stjohns.co.uk/eeirc/
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