Innovation at Oxford

What is Innovation?

Oxford Science Enterprise Centre

What we have done in Oxford, is created completely new ethos for invention and innovation. Innovation follows invention, that is when you create something with phases in between until it is commercialized. You have to convert the innovation into business and that includes stages of technology readiness.

The IP has to be converted into a business or a product: this is the innovative step

Managing innovation is a new and poorly understood topic
We introduced enterprise fellowships to do this


- The technology was too disruptive for any license deal
- The time to market is long because of FDA approval issues
- The complexity increased as the improvements to performance to achieve a 3% CV were made
- Many questions of basic science and technology have been identified: polymer cutting, machining, bonding, surface wetting, drying, printing…..


- There is a growing gulf between science and technology
- it is not a new phenomenon
- in academia science is ok, but technology is regarded with suspicion







Nanoparticles and Medicine

Some of the ideas being developed in oxford

- Detect natural nanoparticles in body fluids using new optical/zeta potential techniques
- Design particles for image enhanced and diagnosis

- Design new particles for targeted drug delivery


Peter Dobson, Innovation and Spin-out Company, Begbroke Science Park, 2008



- I think it is fair to say that most pure scientists have themselves been devastatingly ignorant of productive industry
- Pure scientist and engineers often totally misunderstand each other
- Pure scientists have by and large been dim-witted about engineers and applied science.
- Engineers have to live their lives in an organised community…. they are absorbed by making things – P C Snow





How particles interact with living cells?

Porous nanoparticle with drug loaded pores – We are taking a drug which is just come of patent and put it in nanoparticle with a recognition molecule on the surface - we are designing this particle drug - having attached itself to tumour it begins to fall apart and leak the drug directly into the tumour.


Karl Morten; Gareth Wakefield; Peter Dobson


OXFORD PROJECT TO EXAMINE MEMORY AND AGEING

The challenge
• Each year about 203,000 people in the UK develop dementia (550 every day), the great majority with Alzheimer’s disease.
• Alzheimer’s disease costs the country about £17 billion per year, which is almost 20% of the health budget. The costs of Alzheimer’s disease are more than the combined costs of heart disease, stroke and cancer.
• The main challenge is to discover ways of preventing Alzheimer’s disease from developing.


How is OPTIMA dealing with the challenge?

1. In 1992, OPTIMA introduced new methods of diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, in use around the world.

2. In 1994 OPTIMA discovered that Alzheimer’s disease is not an inevitable part of ageing, but that it is a true disease. This finding led OPTIMA to search for ‘risk factors’.

3. In 1998, OPTIMA discovered the first risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease that can be safely and simply modified by diet (homocysteine. This discovery was recognised by the American Medical Association as one of the most significant findings of the year. OPTIMA’s discovery has been confirmed world-wide and has led the US National Institute on Aging to set up a clinical trial in which B vitamins, which lower homocysteine levels, are being tested to see if they can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/optima



The Financial Crisis and Biotechnology - 3 Oct 2008

Biotechnology companies are highly dependent on well functioning capital markets to finance their development projects since many will not see revenue for perhaps a decade.

It generally takes approximately $1 billion, including the cost of failures, to get a new therapy to market. This financing generally comes in the form of equity investment.

When credit markets seize up, as we've seen in the past 13 months, there is less capital available for investors to put at risk, and the capital that is put at risk is dedicated to shorter term, lower risk options. So while some areas of the economy have seen a slowdown, biotech has seen a near-freeze.

This means that our companies - especially our public companies - are in a very precarious situation: they must continue on their development projects, but are unable to attain additional financing from investors. As a result, many of the 300-400 public biotech companies are trading at very low levels, and many are operating with less than one year's cash remaining.

If credit markets don't open up, it's possible that the biotechnology industry may go through a considerable consolidation or shake out during the next year. The result? Companies with promising therapies may not be able to continue their work, delaying the availability of new options for patients.

We will work with allies across numerous industries - those innovative industries similar to ours - as well as new partners to develop these initiatives and urge Congress for action.

Jim Greenwood, Biotechnology Industry Organization, BIO
www.bio.org