London, 27 March 2012: Activiomics Limited. (“Activiomics” or the “Company”), the developer of innovative biomarker technologies has announced the appointment of industry leader Dr Trevor Nicholls to its Board as Non-Executive Chairman.
Dr Nicholls has over 30 years’ experience of building international businesses in the life science industry. Currently he is CEO of CABI, a not-for-profit inter-governmental organisation owned by 46 member countries worldwide and is Non-Executive Chairman of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, which is developing the GridION system, a new generation of electronic molecular analysis system for use in scientific research, personalised medicine, crop science, and security/defence. His previous board roles include Chief Commercial Officer of Affymetrix Inc, based in California and, prior to that, CEO of Oxagen, a UK biotech company where he raised £50m over three venture-backed financing rounds and secured major commercial partnerships and academic collaborations.
Welcoming Dr Nicholls to the board, Dr Mark Warne, CEO of Activiomics, said: “I am confident that Trevor’s broad background in leading companies as they develop commercially will be invaluable to Activiomics as we move to the next phase of our development. He brings both a depth of international experience in commercial markets as well as a proven ability in raising finance for early-stage companies.”
Activiomics has developed innovative technologies using mass spectrometry to interrogate and interpret the activity of whole cell signalling pathways. This technology is well-positioned to support personalised medicine initiatives, which are influencing increasing numbers of therapeutic programs.
The Company has recently met internal milestones resulting in a second tranche of funding from IP Group plc, (LSE: ipo) (“IP Group”), the developer of intellectual property based businesses. This follows an initial investment by IP Group in 2011.
Commenting on his appointment, Dr Nicholls said: “The unique nature of Activiomics’ approach to identifying robust biomarkers has already been validated by a number of partnerships with large pharmas, including with GlaxoSmithKline, UCB and Genentech, and the Company is well placed to take advantage of the rapidly growing personalised medicine market. I am delighted to be joining the Board at a time when it has received a financing injection on the back of this success and look forward to helping the company in its next stage of development.”
About Activiomics - www.activiomics.com
Headquartered in London, UK, Activiomics Ltd. is a privately owned spin-out company from the Barts Cancer Institute (BCI), ranked one of the top five cancer research centres in the UK and a Queen Mary University of London campus. The company was founded in 2009 through investment from a number of sources including IP Group.
Activiomics has developed a groundbreaking patented technology that will enable a transformation in the way in which biomarkers are identified, diagnostics are developed and drug candidates are identified and profiled.
Activiomics’ technology centres around novel mass spectrometry based approaches for the global quantitative analysis of phosphorylation sites. Phosphorylation is a critical mediator in all cellular processes and hence sites of phosphorylation represent an important class of novel biomarkers. Activiomics’ TIQUAS (Targeted In-depth QUAntification of cell Signalling) technology enables the quantification of thousands of phosphorylation events from a given tissue sample and the subsequent markers of response that are identified will enable the development of future diagnostics.
Activiomics is using exclusively accessed primary breast and kidney cancer samples to generate proof of concept data and high value data packages for novel predictive and prognostic markers of disease. Additionally, Activiomics commercialises its technology by partnering directly with large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in bespoke programmes of work. Recent partners include Genentech, UCB and GlaxoSmithKline. Enquiries
At the company:
Mark Warne, CEO
+44 (0) 20 7444 0050
Media contacts:
College Hill
Gemma Howe/Rebecca Caygill
+44 (0)20 7866 7860
