Pharmaceutical aid trials to be launched

Jul 25 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A HI-TECH business is launching trials of a product which it hopes will be used in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines worldwide.

BioToolomics is a world leader in the bioseparation which is used to develop treatments based on antibodies, vaccines, gene vectors and enzymes.

It currently supplies more than 40 products to life science researchers worldwide, from its base at the Consett Innovation Centre.

The technology behind this, known as chromatopraphy, was developed by Dr Chad Zhang, who set up the business two years ago.

“We have proved our technology now and are moving on to the next critical stage with this new product,” he said.

“Our patented resin technology provides from 50 to 100 times improvement in separation efficiency.”

The business, which has two staff, is developing an advanced version of its chromotography column to be used in disposable medical products.

Dr Zhang said: “This is a huge advantage for development and production use in the pharmaceutical industry. We hope to bring the product to market within a year, and as this is a rapidly-expanding market, there is a real potential for us here.”

BioToolmics won £65,000 investment towards the new project from the Three Pillar Fund which invests in hi-tech SMEs and last year accrued £140,000 in grants and loans.

“We still need to raise further finance to get the new product to the market,” Dr Zhang said.