Spin-out to cut drug production costs

Compandia, a bioscience company spun out of Nottingham Trent University, could help to save the UK’s pharmaceutical industry millions of pounds in the cost of producing important drugs.

It is estimated that the average cost of bringing a drug to market is £720m, with the majority spent on clinical trials and testing alone. These expenses are often attributed to the high costs and numbers of human test subjects required to produce meaningful results from the trials.

Biomarker detection, however, is able to identify the most suitable individuals for drug testing, potentially reducing the numbers of people needed to deliver a successful clinical result.

Biomarkers are substances or indicators within the human body that can help to identify a person’s susceptibility to disease or illness, as well as their potential reaction to pharmaceutical drugs or therapies.

Compandia, which uses mass-spectrometry techniques combined with unique bioinformatics tools for biomarker discovery, has recently received £265,000 of funding from the Lachesis Fund to support the further development of its technology.

It has also received funding from Nottingham’s BioCity’s Mobius fund, with £75,000 to be given over the next two years to further develop the company and its range of clients.