AN Imperial College spin-out has won the first annual HP New
Ventures Competition aimed at helping launch technology start-ups
and strengthen small technology-based businesses.
The
winning team receives its award |
Photobiotics Ltd, currently developing new light-activated
therapies for a range of cancers and microbial infections,beat 20
entrants from 11 European technological universities, at the
inaugural event hosted by Imperial College entrepreneurship centre.
The competition's aim was to assess and reward start-ups between
six and 30 months old that are already in business in the science
and technology sectors. First prize was Euro 30,000 worth of HP
equipment of their choice.
"I had a feeling we might make it through to the first cut of 10
finalists," said Dr Lionel Milgrom, chemist and managing director
of PhotoBiotics. "But to come out eventual winners against some of
Europe's finest, especially when we were saddled with home
disadvantage, is absolutely fantastic! It's a tribute to all the
hard work our team put into this."
Four current and former members of Imperial's department of
chemistry are behind PhotoBiotics which is developing photodynamic
therapy (PDT), a method of killing diseased cells using light and
photosensitising drugs.
A niche treatment for superficial cancers and age-related
macular degeneration, the most common form of blindness among over
fifties in the Western World, PDT begins with the injection of a
photosensitising drug into a patient that spreads throughout the
body and accumulates slightly in tumours.
A non-heating laser light is shone onto the tumour, activates
the drug and rapidly produces a potent and toxic form of oxygen,
which kills the target.
"We've combined targeting and new photosensitising drugs to make
a kind of light-activated guided missile," added Dr Mahendra
Deonarain, PhotoBiotics' technical director of biochemistry, named
London Biotechnology Network's 'Young Biotechnologist of the Year'
in 2001.
"An antibody carries the sensitisers to the target, for example
a cancer cell or microbe, where they are subsequently activated by
the laser. Targeted PDT has much higher specificity for target
tissues, higher light penetration, high potency, very little
photosensitivity and it requires fewer treatments overall. In other
words, it's a technology with all the advantages of existing PDT
but none of the disadvantages."
Dr Milgrom added: "Imagine a therapeutic treatment so gentle it
leaves no scarring, yet is so potent, no cancer or infection can
become resistant to it.
"Then imagine this technology being applied to any disease where
cells need to be killed, so producing a range of drug products for
any indication. This is PhotoBiotics' vision of Targeted PDT."
Chemist, Dr Gokhan Yahioglu, and photophysicist Professor David
Phillips OBE, dean of the faculties of life sciences and physical
sciences at Imperial College are also involved in the company.
