The Norwich Research Park (NRP) is pleased to announce the appointment of Alan Giles in the newly created post of NRP Director, on an interim basis. He will be responsible for leading the multi-stakeholder programme to transform the NRP from a ‘World Class Research Centre’ to a successful ‘Next Generation Science Park’.
As you will be aware, the NRP has over 2,700 scientists and more than 11,000 staff in total. It already has one of Europe’s largest single-site concentrations of research in Food, Health and Environmental Sciences. Also, it is home to a growing number of scientific and IT based companies.
Reporting to the NRP Enterprise from Innovation Board, Alan will have overall responsibility for converting the NRP Vision into commercial and employment success with the intention to generate 5,000 new jobs in the Greater Norwich area in the next ten to fifteen years through growth in start-up companies, inward location and institutional growth.
Walter Herriot, Chair of the Enterprise from Innovation Board commented that “NRP has been extremely fortunate in securing the services of Alan Giles. He has already made a significant contribution to the development of the NRP and we are confident that he will be able to build substantially on this.”
Alan has been based at the NRP for the past four years, formerly as Head of the Operations Centre supporting the Norwich based institutes. He was closely associated with the creation of a new BBSRC national institute ‘The Genome Analysis Centre’ which is now located on the Norwich Research Park as well as the new NRP Innovation Centre which opened in 2010. He remains Chair of the John Innes Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Committee and advises on business development activities. Alan also has over 20 years worldwide experience in high-tech electronics, instrumentation and specialised manufacturing. He has a first degree in physics and further qualifications in finance. He has held Chief Executive roles for major divisions of Fortune 500 and PLC companies as well as for private equity and early stage organisations.
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The Norwich Research Park Office has moved to new premises. We’re now located in the NRP Innovation Centre whose opening we described in the last newsletter.
Our enquiries number has changed to 01603 274443.
In November 2010, Norwich Research Park company Procarta Biosystems secured £730,000 of equity investment with the potential for this sum to rise to £1.25 million.
The funding round was led by Morningside Venture Investments Limited and included Procarta’s current investors, Rainbow Seed Fund and Iceni Seedcorn Fund.
Procarta Biosystems is a spin-out company from the John Innes Centre, targeting the major healthcare problem of antibiotic drug resistance.
This additional funding will allow Procarta to continue the development of their novel DNA-based antibiotic technology designed to help combat drug-resistant infections such as those caused by the so-called ‘Superbug’ MRSA and Gram-negative bacteria.
This is of particular importance because of the distinct lack of therapeutic options for treatment of these infections.
Dr Michael McArthur, Procarta’s scientific co-founder and CSO, commented “coming on the back of positive scientific results, this [funding] validates the Procarta platform’s promise to cope with the emerging threat of antibiotic resistance. “We are thrilled to see this capital infusion which will allow us to drive all of our programmes forward and build on the early-stage interest expressed by major pharmaceutical companies.”
The company is strengthening its Board by appointing two investor Directors alongside Dr David Knowles as Chairman.
David is internationally renowned as a pioneer of antibacterial research and a successful developer of therapeutics with twenty years’ experience in senior positions in major international pharmaceutical companies, including SmithKline Beecham.
www.procartabio.com
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have discovered a gene which encourages cancer to move around the body.
Experiments suggest that blocking this gene could prevent cancers from spreading.
Cancer Research UK said that the study has improved understanding of the disease and although still at the laboratory stage, researchers at the University are hoping that their findings will lead to a new generation of anti-cancer drugs within the next 10 years.
In a process known as metastasis, cells can break off a primary tumour and travel around the body, through the bloodstream or lymph fluid and start secondary tumours where they land. Secondary tumours are notoriously difficult to treat.
For instance, breast cancers are known to spread to lymph nodes, the bones and lungs.
Dr. Andrew Chantry from the University who led the study said “I think we’re really onto something important if we can put a wall around cancer and lock it in place. The discovery could lead to the development of new drugs within the decade that could stop the aggressive spread of most forms of the disease, including breast, brain, colon and skin cancer.”
The research was funded by UK-based charity the Association of International Cancer Research with additional support from the Big C Charity and British Skin Foundation.
(Picture shows breast cancer that has spread to the spine, skull, pelvis, ribs, shoulders, hips and knees.)
Award winning health editorial agency Content Consultants have recently expanded through the appointment of four new members of staff and moved to larger premises in the City Centre.
Set up ten years ago by health journalists Daphne Metland and Anna McGrail, with offices in both Norwich and Brighton, they have grown to become a leading specialist agency.
With projects spanning twenty countries, they supply tailor-made content for websites, books and health programmes to name a few.
With a wide variety of medical expertise they communicate complex medical information on a variety of topics to different audiences, both specialist and non-specialist alike, in ten languages.
Clients include BabyCentre, BUPA and the NHS.
Following on from our last newsletter announcing the appointment of Prof Andrew Stewart Coats as Norwich Research Park ‘Professor at Large’, please make a note in your diary of his Inaugural Lecture.
Tuesday 22nd March, 18:30 followed by a drinks reception. Open to all.
Thomas Paine Study Centre Lecture Theatre, University of East Anglia.
‘Why in medical research we shouldn’t look too hard for what we are trying to find.’
Further details, e-mail events@uea.ac.uk or telephone 01603 592130.
During the first week in February, Boots the Chemist became the first high-street chain in the UK to sell over-the-counter paternity kits.
The kit ‘assuredna’ is manufactured by Norwich Research Park company Anglia DNA who also carry out analysis of the DNA samples.
For the test, samples of cells are collected by mouth swab from the father, child and mother. All three parties must give consent for the test, which is said to have an accuracy rate of 99.9% for a positive result and 100% for a negative.
Mandy Hartley, technical manager at Anglia DNA, said “the tests have been available on the internet for a long time and have been available in independent chemists but this is the first time they have been available in a UK high street chain.”
The national availability of the test through a major UK chain was widely reported in the media and caused some debate amongst newspaper columnists and guests on TV news / current affairs programmes.
Anglia DNA continue to expand their range of services. They have recently recruited three scientists as they develop their new drug testing service.
www.angliadna.co.uk
In July 2007 we reported on a publication in the journal Science of research conducted by a group at the John Innes Centre (JIC) then led by Dr Liam Dolan. They had made significant progress in understanding the genetic regulation of root growth.
In November last year, JIC and its technology management company Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL) announced an exclusive commercial license agreement for this technology to Dow AgroSciences.
This technology enhances the root systems of plants with important implications for crop improvement. The commercial license covers a range of important agricultural crops.
The team of scientists had cloned and characterised genes which may play vital roles in anchorage, water use and nutrient uptake in plants.
“Our research aims to answer key questions in biology and to provide solutions to important problems in food security, energy production, promoting health and combating disease,” said Professor Dale Sanders, Director of JIC.
“The technology was born out of basic research in nutrient uptake by plants and demonstrates the importance to agriculture of answering fundamental questions.”
A consortium led by Professor Graham Moore at the John Innes Centre aims to develop resources and knowledge that will contribute to global food security.
The project is important to ensure the sustainability of wheat production in the UK and abroad at a time when we are facing a growing global population and changing environment.
In February the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council announced a grant of £7 million to the consortium of researchers to increase the trait diversity in wheat via a comprehensive programme – the first of its kind in the UK for over 20 years.
The research aims to understand the genetics behind factors affecting wheat yield such as drought tolerance and resistance to pests and diseases.
Professor Moore stated that “there is an urgent need to improve yields of wheat; it is estimated that in the next 50 years we will need to harvest as much wheat as has been produced since the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago!”
Scientists on the Norwich Research Park have identified bacteria that are low in abundance in the gut of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) patients compared with healthy adults.
This finding could be relevant to preventing or managing these conditions and to maintaining health.
Institute of Food Research (IFR) scientists have identified significant abnormalities in the faecal bacteria of UC and IBS patients; most notably, a reduction in Bacteroides species.
Previous studies have shown reduced microbial diversity associated with UC and IBS, but have not identified which groups of bacteria are depleted.
“A better understanding of which bacteria or bacterial populations are relevant is important if microbial interventions are to be used in preventing or managing these conditions,” said Dr Arjan Narbad from the IFR who is working on the project.
Scientists based at the John Innes Centre (JIC) and University of East Anglia (UEA), funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, are pioneering a combination of computer modelling and experimental genetics to work out how complex shapes of organs found in nature are produced by the actions of genes.
“How do hearts, wings or flowers get their shape?” asks Prof Enrico Coen from JIC.
“Unlike man-made things like mobile phones or cars, there is no external hand or machine guiding the formation of these biological structures; they grow into particular shapes of their own accord.”
Scientists on Norwich Research Park working within the research group of Prof Andrew Bangham (UEA) and Prof Enrico Coen (JIC) have begun to answer this question, using the snapdragon flower as a convenient subject.
The snapdragon flower has distinctly different upper and lower petals which form a tube with a hinge. When a bee lands on the lower petals the hinge opens the flower, allowing access to nectar and pollen.
The petal shape is known to be affected by four genes, but precisely how these genes work in combination to produce the specialised flower shape was unknown.
The same is true for many organ shapes, but the snapdragon flower provides a good model system. Research has shown how these principles allow very complex biological shapes to generate themselves.
Medicago Inc, a Canadian Biotechnology company, is clinically trialling a vaccine to the H5N1 avian influenza virus, produced in part using innovations developed at the John Innes Centre.
Medicago is using a protein expression system developed by Prof George Lomonossoff and Dr Frank Sainsbury under a licence from PBL (the John Innes Centre’s technology management company), to produce large, commercial-scale accumulations of protein as part of the vaccine production process. The company has recently been selected to collaborate with the Infectious Disease Research Institute on a multimillion dollar grant awarded to them by the US Department of Defence’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency for the proposed development of a single dose H5N1 influenza vaccine which could be rapidly and widely administered in the case of avian pandemic ‘flu outbreak.
This new technology could deliver a vaccine for testing in about a month after the identification of a new pandemic strain of influenza and sequencing its genome. There is the potential to allow vaccination of the population before the first wave of a pandemic strikes and to supply large volumes of vaccine antigens to the world market. Current methods of production take several months and are also more expensive.
Norwich Research Park scientists are on the trail of some of the most economically damaging organisms that infect crops worldwide.
Their latest targets are the parasitic water fungus that causes powdery mildew and the water molds that cause late blight in potatoes and tomatoes and downy mildew in cruciferous vegetables and other crops.
In separate research collaborations, one involving John Innes Centre scientists and the other The Sainsbury Laboratory, the genomes of the parasites have been sequenced.
This has given a clues on which genes research should focus in order to be able to tackle these important disease causing organisms.
A patented process to control the degradation of plant material during composting was short-listed as a finalist in the Technical Product category in this year’s Grower of the Year awards.
The process invented by Professor Keith Waldron from the Institute of Food Research (IFR), centering on composted food-chain and food-processing waste, was developed with the help of industry partners, Defra, the Technology Strategy Board and the BBSRC.
It has enabled Prof Waldron to produce growing media with sufficient plant structure to provide an alternative to peat.
Sphagnum peat is the main growing medium used by growers, prized for its water holding qualities, structure and aeration. These qualities are derived from the plant structure of partially decayed mosses and other bog plants.
Commercial composting usually destroys plant tissues, leaving an unreliable product for horticulturalists. With a wealth of expertise in plant cell wall structure and function, Prof Waldron has invented a process to retain sufficient structure to produce a high quality growing media, which closely mirrors the properties of peat.
The novel process has been successfully patented in the UK and filed in the US.
Some nurseries may be able to compost their own waste and turn it into a growing medium they can sell.
“There is an opportunity to turn waste into cash,” said Professor Keith Waldron.
As part of Science and Engineering week, come along to a Family Science Discovery Day.
‘Science in Norwich’
The Forum, Millennium Plain
Saturday 19th March 2011
10:00-16:00
Official Opening and Launch at 10:00
Do the DNA Boogie led by Brainiacs’ Jon Tickle and Laura McGillivray, Chief Executive, Norwich City Council with Inspire Discovery Centre on Millennium Plain.
Come and talk to some of the 2,700 scientists in Norwich and find out first hand about their work and hear about the Norwich Science Vision and future plans which will firmly establish Norwich as an International City of Scientific Excellence.
This is a FREE event.
Projects & Communications Manager
Norwich Research Park Office
01603 274442
jane.heavens@nrp.org.uk