DEEPMIND HEALTH
Industry/sector: Medical research/data
Founded: 2010 (DeepMind), 2016 (DeepMind Health)
Founders (DeepMind): Demis Hassabis (pictured), Shane Legg, Mustafa Suleyman
General counsel: Trevor Callaghan (DeepMind)
Based: London
In early 2016, Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) specialist DeepMind announced it would create a healthcare division. DeepMind has chalked up some notable successes in advanced AI – including creating AlphaGo, the first programme to beat a human player at the game of Go – making the formation of DeepMind Health one of the most touted recent developments in the life sciences sector.
The London-based company found its early work in partnerships with NHS trusts, using machine-learning technology to help improve rates of success in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of conditions. In return, it will get access to the most precious commodity in AI: data. The NHS treats a million people every 36 hours and has, since 1987, been collecting standardised data on its patients. Tony Young, clinical director for innovation at NHS England, has pointed out that no other medical body in the world has comparable datasets in its archive, positioning the NHS as a key partner for data-driven medical research.
DeepMind Health has already entered into partnerships with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which together serve around 2.5 million patients. In the early stages of the collaboration, data will be used to power an app – known as Streams – which alerts doctors when a patient shows abnormal or dangerous signs.
DeepMind was founded in 2010 and acquired by Google for $500m (£400m) in 2014. Its healthcare division launched with a small team of 15 people, including two doctors advising on research, but plans to grow rapidly. It has also appointed a number of senior people. Former Google Maps team leader Andrew Eland has been put in charge of engineering, ex-GE Healthcare executive Cathy Harris has been hired as products lead, while Will Cavendish, the senior civil servant behind the NHS’s development of online booking and prescription, will act as strategy lead.
The business will also benefit from the input of DeepMind general counsel Trevor Callaghan, who was involved in developing Google’s privacy compliance programme. Callaghan works with some of the world’s leading privacy advocacy organisations, including the Open Rights Group where he serves as committee member. Callaghan spent five years working as a director in Google’s San Francisco-based legal team before returning to the UK in mid-2016 as GC of the wider DeepMind business.
ABCAM
Industry/sector: Protein research tools supplier
Founded: 1998
Founders: Jonathan Milner, Tony Kouzarides, David Cleevely
Chief legal officer and company secretary: Suzanne Smith
Based: Cambridge
Abcam was founded in 1998 as the go-to source for research scientists to find the world’s best reagents. These tools enable life scientists to analyse components of living cells at the molecular level, which is essential in a wide range of fields, including drug discovery, diagnostics, and basic research.
Abcam co-founder Jonathan Milner was a post-doctoral researcher at Cambridge University struggling to find antibody reagents for his work on breast cancer. Sensing a gap in the market to easily find trusted products, an online market place was created, where research scientists could find and buy antibodies. By 2005 Abcam had floated on the AIM market. It has since become one of the UK’s most successful AIM-listed companies, with revenues of around £177m a year, a market capitalisation of over £1.5bn, employing nearly 1,000 staff in 12 locations in Asia, Europe, and the US.
Since then Abcam has been raising validation standards at an unprecedented scale, championing data sharing, and continuously looking for ways to streamline science – helping scientists to minimise time, effort, and money wasted in poor research.
The model Abcam has developed is based not only on selling antibodies and other protein research tools, but collecting and sharing data with customers, gathering customer feedback through a system known as ‘Abreviews’. This means that, unlike most biotech companies, Abcam’s information-rich products become more valuable with time. Two-thirds of the world’s 750,000 life science researchers use Abcam’s products, which are mentioned in over 20,000 of the 56,000 peer-reviewed papers published each year in the life sciences industry.
Abcam has expanded its business through a string of strategic acquisitions, including the 2011 acquisition of MitoSciences, its first US acquisition, and the 2012 acquisition of California-based Epitomics, which gave Abcam a significant presence in China. Another natural match was found in AxioMx, which pioneered methods for producing recombinant antibodies in a matter of weeks rather than months and in November 2015 AxioMx, joined the Abcam fold.
Following several years of international growth, Abcam hired Suzanne Smith as chief legal officer and company secretary in 2015. Smith, who is also a member of Abcam’s executive leadership team, is responsible for all legal matters affecting the Abcam group, including licensing, intellectual property, company secretarial, corporate governance and compliance. Since joining, she has built up a legal team of three in the UK and the US to support the business. She has been an in-house lawyer in the life sciences industry for over 20 years and had previously held senior legal positions at Phoqus Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme, and Watson Pharmaceuticals, where she served as executive director of legal following its takeover of Actavis.
MEREO BIOPHARMA
Industry/sector: Biopharmaceutical research and development
Founded: 2015
Founders: Denise Scots-Knight, Alastair MacKinnon, John Richard, Charles Sermon
General counsel: Charles Sermon
Based: London
New early-stage research techniques, especially those based on computer modelling, mean major pharma companies now hold increasingly large portfolios of high-potential, early-stage drugs and face difficult decisions about which to develop. London-based Mereo BioPharma focuses on the acquisition and rapid development of medicines from these portfolios.
It was formally launched in March 2015 following a fundraising of around £76m – backed by investors including Woodford Investment Management and Invesco Perpetual – and the acquisition of a portfolio of three mid-stage rare and speciality diseases development programmes from Novartis, which was granted a stake in Mereo BioPharma in return. One such programme, BPS-804, a line that aims to treat osteogenesis imperfecta (‘brittle bone’ disease) has subsequently been granted orphan drug status. Mereo has also signed a strategic development partnership with ICON, a leading global contract research organisation, to help bring these products to market.
Its co-founders, including chief executive Denise Scots-Knight, chief medical officer Alastair MacKinnon, head of corporate development John Richard and general counsel Charles Sermon, were previously senior figures at healthcare-focused venture capital firm Phase4 Partners. Sermon, a former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyer, was until recently a member of the Mayor of London Enterprise Panel’s Digital Creative, Science & Technology Working Group.
Industry/sector: Bioelectronic medicine
Founded: 2016
Founders: GlaxoSmithKline, Verily Life Sciences
Head of legal: Gwynedd Warren
Based: Stevenage
In August 2016, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Verily Life Sciences announced a new entrant to the UK healthcare sector: Galvani Bioelectronics. The company will focus on bioelectronic medicine, an emerging field of research that looks to treat chronic conditions such as arthritis and diabetes by modifying nerve signals within the body.
GSK, which will hold a 55% equity interest in the jointly-owned company, already has around 50 research collaborations in the field of bioelectronics, but this is by far the biggest. If agreed milestones are reached, the two companies will together contribute £540m over the next seven years, along with certain intellectual property assets. Galvani Bioelectronics will be headquartered within GSK’s global research and development centre in Stevenage, with a secondary hub at Verily’s research facilities in San Francisco, and employ around 30 people in the early stages of its operations.
The venture will harness GSK’s market-leading position in bioelectronics research – a field in which it has been active since 2012 – and Verily’s capabilities in building miniaturised devices. The Google-backed company has already partnered with Novartis, developing contact lenses with miniaturised sensors that can help monitor blood sugar levels in diabetics, and Johnson & Johnson, with whom it has a separate joint venture to develop robotic medical devices.
Galvani Bioelectronics is what Verily parent company Alphabet dubs a ‘moonshot’. The commercial viability of bioelectronics is an unknown. Creating, implanting and powering devices small enough to work on the level of individual nerves will also present huge engineering challenges. However, the venture is a strong vote of confidence in the UK life sciences market, particularly as Galvani was launched just a week after GSK announced plans to invest nearly £300m into its manufacturing facilities in the UK.
GSK’s vice president of bioelectronics research, Kris Famm, will serve as president to Galvani Bioelectronics, with former GSK assistant general counsel and head of bioelectronics patents Gwynedd Warren serving as vice president and head of legal and intellectual property.
IMMUNOCORE
Industry/sector: Immuno-oncology
Founded: 2008
Founders: Nicholas Cross, Bent Jakobsen
Based: Oxford
Oxford-based Immunocore is among the leaders in the field of immunotherapy, a branch of medical research that seeks to boost the body’s ability to detect and kill tumours without damaging healthy tissue. Early successes with the technique led Science to declare immunotherapy as its Breakthrough of the Year 2013. Since that time, further positive results have convinced many oncologists that it represents a step change in the fight against cancer. It is also set to be a lucrative market, with revenues forecast to reach over $200bn in the next five years.
Founded in 2008, Immunocore has focused on developing a new class of biological drugs, called ImmTACs, which can help identify tumour antigens inside cancer cells rather than on the cell surface. Immunocore’s T-cell therapeutics will also be used to fight a range of infections and it has started research into a class of drugs that can help the body fight HIV. Early-stage trials with the eye cancer drug IMCgp100 have also shown positive results and helped Immunocore to secure orphan drug designation – used to protect treatments with high potential in fighting rare diseases or where costs are unlikely to be recovered by the manufacturer – from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2016.
Both Immunocore and sister company Adaptimmune Therapeutics grew out of University of Oxford spin-out Avidex and share a common approach to immunotherapy based on the work of biochemist Bent Jakobsen, who remains as chief scientific officer at the two companies. However, since 2015 they have gone their separate ways to pursue different methods of fundraising, with Adaptimmune looking to tap into US biotech equity financing by floating on Nasdaq, and Immunocore continuing to focus on private investors and major pharmaceuticals companies.
In 2015, Immunocore secured the largest-ever private fundraising by a European biotech company and the second-largest private financing for a biotech company globally, when a syndicate of investors including US pharma giant Eli Lilly and prominent UK investor Neil Woodford participated in a $320m funding round that took the Oxford-based developer’s valuation close to $1bn.
Immunocore’s strong intellectual property has also attracted major pharma companies. It has already signed drug-discovery collaborations with leading companies such as Genentech, Roche, AstraZeneca subsidiary MedImmune and GlaxoSmithKline, with the latter partnership reported to be worth up to $500m alone.
Industry/sector: Translational genomics
Founded: 2007 (incorporated 2014)
Founders: Chris Torrance, Alberto Bardelli
Based: Cambridge
Drug-makers have traditionally looked to develop a single form of treatment that can be applied globally. Recent advances in genomics have led a number of companies to look for ways of avoiding the expense of researching and developing medicines targeted at diverse populations. Cambridge-based Horizon Discovery Group is one of the global leaders in personalised medicine, which draws on research such as the Human Genome Project to tailor drugs to specific individuals or populations.
It was founded in 2007 when molecular geneticist and current president of the European Association for Cancer Research, Alberto Bardelli, and Chris Torrance, former senior manager at Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company Vernalis, realised that the recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV)-based genome engineering platform could be used to produce cell lines with virtually any genomic modification. The platform has since generated a catalogue of over 20,000 cell models that reproduce genetic anomalies found in a range of conditions, helping major pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca and Merck to gain a better understanding of the genetic basis of disease and improve their research and development strategies.
Horizon Discovery was admitted to the AIM market in 2014, and has grown rapidly to supply research tools and services to a range of corporate and not-for-profit clients engaged in thousands of genomics research projects globally. In 2016 it formed Avvinity, a joint venture with UK biotech company Centauri Therapeutics that will look to develop the next generation of immuno-oncology drugs, stimulating a patient’s immune system to fight cancer.
IMMODULON THERAPEUTICS
Industry/sector: Immunotherapy/immune modulation
Incorporated: 2007
Founder: Charles Akle
Based: London
London-based biopharmaceutical company Immodulon Therapeutics uses naturally-occurring mycobacteria to modulate the body’s immune response to a range of diseases. It was founded in 2007 by Charles Akle, a Harley Street surgeon with ambitions of bringing affordable immunotherapy to mainstream cancer treatment. The private company, valued at £400m in 2016, has chosen an unusual funding model, relying on philanthropic donations from high-net-worth individuals rather than private equity or venture capital. Its board of directors includes fund manager Anthony Bolton and Sir Simon Robertson, HSBC’s deputy chair.
Its therapies use heat-killed strains of naturally occurring bacteria to tune the body’s own response to treat cancer and tuberculosis.
In particular, Immodulon is developing gentle immuno-therapeutic treatments for pancreatic cancer, which has the highest morbidity rate of all major forms of cancer. While the odds are against Immodulon, in September 2016 it reported some remarkably good results. A study published in the British Journal of Cancer led by Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St George’s, University of London, showed positive results in phase two pancreatic cancer trials that combined Immodulon’s IMM-101 strain with standard gemcitabine chemotherapy treatments, improving median survival by 59% compared to those treated with gemcitabine alone.
Immodulon’s portfolio of drugs owes much to University College London (UCL)’s tech-transfer strategy. In the 1970s, UCL professor of medical microbiology John Lawson Stanford isolated a mycobacterium vaccae that appeared to help the body deal with inflammation in conditions such as tuberculosis.
Stanford developed this research with Graham Rook, a professor at UCL’s Centre for Clinical Microbiology. The two filed a number of patents relating to their research and formed a company – Stanford Rook – to work on heat-treated mycobacterium therapeutics. That company later became SR Pharma, which folded in the early 2000s. However, the data generated by SR, along with its approach to immuno-modulation, has given Immodulon a head start.
CELL MEDICA
Industry/sector: Immuno-oncology and infectious disease
Founded: 2006
Founder and chief executive: Gregg Sando
Legal counsel: Zafar Qadir
Based: London
Cell Medica is a portfolio company in University College London (UCL)’s Touchstone Innovations (formerly Imperial Innovations Group), which develops cell-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancers and infectious disease. It focuses on technologies designed to extract T cells and modify their receptor molecules to better identify cancer cell antigens.
Its lead therapeutic candidate is known as CMD-003, a form of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own T cells to treat relapsed lymphomas associated with the Epstein-Barr virus. In February 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted fast-track designation – designed to expedite the review process for drugs with the potential to treat serious conditions – to CMD-003. Cell Medica is also active in producing treatments that use third-party donor cells to treat aggressive cancers.
The company was formed in 2006 but grew significantly in 2014 following a $78m funding round backed by Imperial Innovations, Invesco Perpetual and Woodford Investment Management. In 2016 it acquired Swiss biotech Delenex Therapeutics, formerly part of Novartis company ESBATech, and signed a partnership with Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, granting it licence to cell and gene technologies as part of a collaboration to help develop genetically engineered immune cells to fight tumours. Since then it has signed further research agreements with UCL. It also counts the Wellcome Trust and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas among its research partners.
In December 2016 former Covington & Burling associate Zafar Qadir was appointed as Cell Medica’s vice president and legal counsel. Covington has previously advised the company on a number of matters, including the 2012 equity investments that allowed it to launch operations in Texas.
Industry/sector: DNA sequencing
Founded: 2005
Founders: Hagan Bayley, Gordon Sanghera, Spike Willcocks
Based: Oxford
Formed in 2005 by biochemist Hagan Bayley, whose research provided the foundations for its technology, along with Gordon Sanghera and Spike Willcocks, Oxford Nanopore Technologies may be the University of Oxford’s most valuable spin-out to date.
The company designs and builds DNA sequencing devices and molecular analysis systems that use a technique known as nanopore sensing: genetic material is guided through a mycobacterium-derived pore small enough to process DNA on the level of a single molecule. As the material passes through the nanopore it generates particular electric currents that allow individual base pairs to be read, helping to identify the molecules forming the nucleotide in real time.
Oxford Nanopore’s devices include the handheld MinION, the world’s only portable DNA sequencer. The device has already been deployed in a number of situations where existing sequencing technology cannot easily operate, for instance, helping to analyse samples in mobile testing labs in Guinea during the recent Ebola epidemic. In 2016 it was used by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins to demonstrate for the first time that Oxford Nanopore’s DNA sequencing technology can be reliably used in low-gravity environments, opening up the possibility of future missions testing for extraterrestrial DNA-based life. It has also developed the much bigger PromethION, which can handle larger genomics projects and is sold at a lower price than competing devices.
The company has already gone through eight fundraisings, including a round led by Woodford Patient Capital Trust, the $1.2bn UK life sciences-dedicated fund led by Neil Woodford, taking its total funding to date to over £350m and giving it an estimated market value of around £930m. It is reportedly planning an initial public offering, though it faces a challenge from US company Illumina, the global leading producer of DNA sequencing instruments, which last year began court proceedings against Oxford Nanopore over an intellectual property (IP) disagreement relating to nanopore sequencing technology.
Overseeing the dispute for Oxford Nanopore is head of IP Martyn Andrews, a former European Patent Office lawyer who has spent the bulk of his career representing start-ups in the field of patent litigation. Since 2011 he has helped oversee Oxford Nanopore’s IP collaboration licences along with its patents and applications, which now number in the hundreds and cover everything from protein engineering to solid state physics.
BenevolentAI
Industry/sector: AI/medical data
Founded: 2013
Founder: Kenneth Mulvany
Based: London
Around 10,000 medical research papers are published every single day. For doctors, keeping up with this research has become impossible. Based in the King’s Cross Knowledge Quarter, BenevolentAI uses its core artificial intelligence tech, the Judgment Augmented Cognition System, to process medical data and develop new drugs for the pharmaceuticals industry.
It was founded by the management team of Cambridge-based biotech company Proximagen in 2013 and is already competing with much larger rivals IBM Watson and Google-backed DeepMind for the lucrative market forming at the intersection of big data and life sciences. Just a year after launching, BenevolentAI (then known as Stratified Medical) signed an $800m agreement with a major pharmaceuticals company to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s.
Following a fresh funding round in 2015 its valuation rose to around $1.7bn, according to start-up register Crunchbase. It has since developed its machine-learning capabilities by becoming the first European company to use the NVIDIA DGX-1 supercomputer. In late 2016, BenevolentAI signed an exclusive licence agreement with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen, giving it access to a range of clinical-stage drug candidates that will enter trials later this year.
Led by the former Proximagen chief executive Kenneth Mulvany, it has also started to assemble a formidable team, hiring former IBM Watson vice president Jérôme Pesenti to lead its technology division and Patrick Keohane as its first chief medical officer.