Simcyp Ltd (the Company), a profitable Biofusion portfolio company spun out of the University of Sheffield, announces today that during 2005 it signed new licensing deals for its predictive pharmacokinetic software and consultancy services totalling in excess of £1.5 million. This commercial success is based on the Company continuing to build the Simcyp Consortium. Members of the consortium not only gain access to Simcyp’s predictive pharmacokinetic software and consultancy services, but also contribute to the development of the services offered. The Consortium includes leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, regulatory institutions and world- renowned academic centres.
The new business that Simcyp has achieved in 2005 has been driven by a significant number of important new pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers joining the Simcyp Consortium in recent months, partly in response to the launch of its new software package Simcyp v5. New members to the consortium in 2005 include Takeda, and Sanofi-Aventis. Existing members include Pfizer and Astra Zeneca, who have renewed their membership during the first half of 2005. The Universities of Manchester (UK) and Goteborg (Sweden) also joined the Consortium alongside existing member Uppsala University (Sweden) These academic units use Simcyp software for both research and teaching. Further details of other members of the Simcyp Consortium can be found on the company’s website - http://www.simcyp.com/
Professor Geoff Tucker, Simcyp’s Chairman commenting on today’s announcement said, “We have built a strong team at Simcyp, which includes specialists with extensive experience in drug metabolism, drug absorption, pharmacokinetic-pharmaco-dynamic modelling and paediatric pharmacology. This expertise, in conjunction with our in-house software capabilities, is rapidly enabling Simcyp to establish itself as a preferred partner for pharmaceutical companies and academic centres in assisting them to solve important problems related to drug development. The progress that we have made in winning new clients in 2005 provides me with great confidence of Simcyp’s ability to grow and develop over the next 12 months and beyond.”
David Baynes, CEO of Biofusion said, “The impressive customer base that Simcyp has expanded over the course of 2005 clearly illustrates the pharmaceutical industry’s growing recognition of the value of the company’s software and consultancy services. The deals that have been signed this year mean that Simcyp, in which we have a 24.9% shareholding, has considerably enhanced its profitability. Simcyp’s success also serves to underline the quality of the applied life science research that is being undertaken at the University of Sheffield; research that offers Biofusion many opportunities to create value for our shareholders.”
Contacts
Biofusion David Baynes/Stuart Gall +44 (0) 114 275 5555
Citigate Dewe Rogerson Chris Gardner/David Dible +44 (0) 20 7638 9571
About Biofusion
Biofusion was established in 2002 to commercialise university-generated IP. The Company has agreed a ten-year exclusive arrangement with the University of Sheffield for the commercialisation of IP owned by the University in the area of medical life sciences. The agreement also gives Biofusion shareholdings in an existing portfolio of eight spin out companies including Axordia, Celltran and Simcyp. The University of Sheffield is a world class life sciences research centre, spending £30m in 2002/3 on research in medical life sciences. This spending level is expected to grow year on year giving an estimated £0.5bn of research funding over the next ten years. The University, which celebrates its centenary this year, can count five Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and researchers, and data from the latest UK Government’s Research Assessment Exercise 2001 (RAE 2001) showed it ranked fifth in the UK for the quality of its life sciences research.
About Simcyp
Simcyp Limited is a spin-out company from the University of Sheffield, UK, that develops software and databases specifically designed to inform the processes of drug discovery and development by simulating virtual patient populations to identify individuals at extreme risk. The Company is supported and guided by a Consortium of global pharmaceutical companies and the US FDA.
In 2004, Prof Geoff Tucker (Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Head of the Academic Unit of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Sheffield, and Chairman of Simcyp Limited) and Dr Amin Rostami (Reader in Pharmacokinetics at the University, and Director of Scientific Development at Simcyp Limited) were jointly awarded the New Safer Medicines Faster Award 2004 by the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS). This award recognises their pioneering work in predicting population variability in whole body pharmacokinetics and drug-drug interactions.
