Member Article

County Durham life sciences firm spread international reach

A County Durham life sciences company which makes 3D cell culture for researchers in academic and the pharmaceutical industry has announced two milestone international partnerships.

Sedgefield-based reinnervate, which employs 12 staff at its NETpark headquarters, provide technology that allows cells to be cultivated in three-dimensional conditions and therefore more accurately representing the way cells grow in human tissues, as opposed to petri dishes.

The firm has signed partnerships with two contract research organisations (CROs) in Germand and the USA.

Oncotest GmbHm based in Freiburg, and SBH Sciences based in Massachusetts both offer services to clients who want to trial cancer 3D cell culture screening for the first time.

Reinnervate are expecting significant new revenue streams from the services, and are now looking to find similar partners in the Asia Pacific region.

Richard Rowling, commercial director at Reinnervate Ltd, said: “These new introductory 3D tumour cell services will allow more scientists to explore the differences in drug response between 2D and 3D cultured tumour cells.

“These services have been priced at a level which should be affordable for most groups that have not yet had the time to explore the improved biological relevance offered by 3D cell culture systems.”

The firm’s Alvetex technology is a type of material ‘scaffold’ on which cells can be grown in complex structures, mimicking growth in the body.

It was voted one of the top 100 innovative products of 2011 at the R&D 100 awards and was named among the winners of The Scientist magazine‟s “Top 10 Life Science Innovations of 2010.

Reinnervate was founded in 2002 following the research of Professor Stefan Przyborski and his lab at Durham University, UK, and is funded by NorthStar Equity Investors (NSEI), management and private investors.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .