The Cambridge–Oxford–London Golden Triangle is now firmly established as one of the world’s leading concentrations of biotechnology and life sciences. (Source) In a recent article highlighting the Top 20 biotechs to watch in the EU, four were from Cambridge and Oxford.
My top picks for innovative biotechs in the Golden Triangle follow:
Excienta, Oxford, has a mission to design and develop novel, precision engineered drugs with an improved probability of clinical success for the benefit of patients. Combining high-precision information from viable patient tissue, screened in their own laboratories, with carefully engineered CentaurAI systems, empowers target selection, precision design & experiment, as well as enhanced clinical assessment.
Arctoris, Oxford, Ulysses system enables peerless efficiency, accuracy, reproducibility, and above all full data and metadata capture from idea to IND. They are automating the drug discovery development pipeline from Target Validation to Hit Finding to Hit-to-Lead to Lead Optimization to Preclinical.
CRISPIR Therapeutics, Cambridge, are focused on developing transformative gene-based medicines for serious human diseases.
They are rapidly translating their specific, efficient and versatile CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing platform into therapies to treat hemoglobinopathies, cancer, diabetes and other diseases
Their multi-disciplinary team of world-class researchers and drug developers works every day to translate our CRISPR/Cas9 technology into breakthrough human therapeutics. Their lead program targeting the blood diseases β-thalassemia and sickle cell disease has entered clinical testing, as has our first allogeneic CAR-T program targeting B-cell malignancies. They are also advancing additional blood stem cell, immuno-oncology, regenerative medicine and in vivo programs towards the clinic.
Bit.bio, Cambridge, has developed breakthrough technology that combines synthetic and stem cell biology, offering limitless possibilities. Enabling a new generation of cell therapies, providing the best human cells for research and drug discovery, and allowing the control of advanced synthetic biology circuits for biomanufacturing.
Their opti-ox™ is capable of producing batches of every cell in the human body at scale and gives them the power to precision engineer human cells. This is because it reliably activates specific transcription factors within the cells.
Achilles Therapeutics, London, is a biopharmaceutical company developing precision T cell therapies targeting neoantigens: protein markers unique to each individual that are present on the surface of a cancer cell and can be detected by the immune system. Their approach is based on the science of tumor evolution which allows them to identify neoantigens that arise early in the cancer’s development and are retained as each tumor grows. These ‘clonal’ neoantigens are present on all the cancer cells and are completely absent from a patient’s healthy tissue. By directing T cells therapies to clonal neoantigens we can for the first time target every cancer cell without attacking healthy tissue.
Genflow Biosciences, London, has the potential to extend a healthy lifespan with groundbreaking science.
The SIRT6 gene is recognized as a master regulator of healthy ageing. SIRT6 overexpression has been shown to lead to a healthy lifespan extension in both male and female mice. Genflow Biosciences intends to promote healthy ageing by providing extra copies of a variant of the Human SIRT6 gene found in centenarians. Genflow Biosciences is developing an ethical, safe and efficient gene delivery system to deliver this centenarian variant of SIRT6 gene.