ITI Life Sciences research programme extended

ITI Life Sciences, the publicly funded innovation group, is extending its research programme designed to develop new technologies for use in the pharmaceutical industry to predict the effects of drug compounds in the human body.

The research programme, which has exceeded expectations in delivering new technologies and intellectual assets (know-how and patents), will be extended from February 2008 for up to 14 months and receive a further £2m (Euro 2.7m) in funding from ITI Life Sciences.

The three-year Transgenic Screening and Safety Models (TSM) programme was initiated by ITI Life Sciences in February 2005 with £5.5m (€7.3m). The commercial partners for the programme are CXR Biosciences, of Dundee, Scotland, and TaconicArtemis, of Cologne in Germany.

The programme extension has been granted to enable ITI Life Sciences and its commercial partners to complete the commercial packages on the additional technologies developed beyond those originally targeted. The technologies developed are transgenic mouse lines, in which key murine proteins responsible for drug metabolism in the cytochrome P450, nuclear receptor (CAR and PXR) and transporter families, have been replaced by their human counterparts.

These models allow the generation of data in pre-clinical models that behave in a similar way to man, thereby reducing species differences between mice and humans and providing more predictive data to drug discovery teams. Therefore, they are regarded as highly relevant models for human biology.

By the end of the initial three-year term, the TSM programme had generated 30 novel mouse lines, including the world's first quadruple transgenic mouse. Ten of these lines are ready for commercialisation, with patent applications filed and all relevant external licences gained. The programme extension will allow ITI Life Sciences to complete the commercial packages for the other 20 lines.

CXR Biosciences and TaconicArtemis have signed licences with ITI Life Sciences to allow them to co-commercialise this range of drug-screening models and services developed using these new technologies. Significant interest has already been seen from major pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US.

ITI Life Sciences is already receiving royalty payments on technology sales and services resulting from available models and expects these payments to increase as the range expands over the duration of the programme extension. It will also seek to commercialise technology and intellectual assets in other areas not covered by the agreements with CXR Biosciences and TaconicArtemis.

"Not only has the programme achieved all the technical goals set at the beginning of the programme, it has generated many more commercial opportunities to create real value from these new intellectual assets," said Dr Eleanor Mitchell, managing director of ITI Life Sciences. "The extension and additional funding will help to capitalise on these opportunities."