ITI Life Sciences makes excellent progress
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ITI Life Sciences provided an update of its activities and progress to date. ITI Life Sciences was set up by Scottish Enterprise as an "innovation fund" explicitly to catalyse the development and sustainable growth of Scotland's life sciences sector. The organisation's strategy is to leverage Scotland's excellence in early stage research to identify, develop and commercialise valuable technology-based intellectual assets targeting future market needs. ITI Life Sciences aims to achieve these objectives through well-funded, focused and market-driven collaborative R&D programmes involving participants from the international life sciences industry and academia.
During 2005/06, its second year of operations, ITI Life Sciences made significant progress:
- Spent £19.2 million of an allocated £44.5 million in four R&D programmes commissioned during the 2004/05 year (Cardiac Biomarkers and Near-Patient Diagnostics, Predictive Drug Safety Screening Models, Lifetime Fluorescence Cell-based Assays, Text Mining)
- Involved nine organisations in ITI Life Sciences R&D programmes as programme participants or research providers - these include collaborations between Scottish academic institutions and commercial organisations from Scotland, Germany and the USA
- Contributed to the creation of new quality jobs in the Scottish life sciences sector, including over 60 created at Stirling Medical Innovations through the cardiac biomarkers programme and some 23 created as a result of the formation of Cognia EU Ltd in Scotland through the text mining programme.
- Filed 14 patents
- Published four market foresighting reports in new areas of potential market need, adding to previously published reports on Stem cells and Biomarkers (Molecular Imaging, Nanotechnology, Biofuels , Therapeutics and Diagnostic Antibodies)
Dr Eleanor Mitchell, Interim CEO of ITI Life Sciences, said: "With four R&D programmes launched in quick succession at the end of the 2004/05 financial year, our focus has since been on carefully managing those programmes while still developing our pipeline of future opportunities. I am pleased to report that ITI Life Sciences successfully managed this change of focus and also met its key financial and business targets."