Portfolio Company Crysalin Co

RNS Number : 2430Y

IP Group PLC

20 December 2010

 



20 Dec 2010

IP Group plc - Portfolio Company Crysalin successfully completes £1.55m funding round

David Brister appointed as Chairman of Crysalin

IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group"), the developer of intellectual property based businesses, is pleased to announce that portfolio company Crysalin Limited ("Crysalin" or "the Company"), has successfully completed a £1.55m fundraising.

Crysalin is IP Group's first spin-out from the University of Oxford that falls outside its commercialisation partnership with the University's Chemistry Department.

Crysalin, which is developing a revolutionary, patented technology for protein structure determination, enabling a step change in the productivity and scope of structure based drug design, has also announced today that David Brister has been appointed as Chairman.

Crysalin was founded in 2007 to develop products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, enabling protein structure determination where current methodologies have proved ineffective. Current protein structure determination methods face numerous hurdles as the production of suitable crystal structures remains complex, time consuming and uncertain. Crysalin's patented lattice-based nanomaterials have demonstrated significant advantages in drug discovery and development over current methods.

Investors in the £1.55m funding round include IP Group, IP Venture Fund, managed by IP Group, Oxford Technology Management and Oxford Spin-Out Equity Management. The funds raised will enable Crysalin to operate out of dedicated facilities, further exemplify the technology's drug discovery and development potential and rapidly bring the technology to market.

David Brister, Crysalin's Chairman, has over twenty years experience in a variety of private equity, venture capital and operational roles. He was instrumental in the successful development of venture businesses at 3i and MVM. As an investor he was responsible for successful investments in Cambridge Antibody Technology, Acambis and Oxford GlycoSciences and was also Chairman of Domantis for five years from its inception. Prior to his current range of board and advisory roles he was Chief Business Officer at Evotec, a Deutsche Borse and NASDAQ-listed business.

Crysalin's solution is based on ten years of research carried out by Professor Martin Noble and Dr John Sinclair at the University of Oxford's Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, part of the Department of Biochemistry. Professor Noble, is a world renowned protein crystallographer and structural biochemist with a strong publication record in these fields. He is also the joint holder of three patents relating to anti-cancer drug design, of which two were jointly developed with AstraZeneca. Dr Sinclair also has extensive experience in molecular biology, protein production, crystallization and crystallographic structure determination.

For more information, please contact:

IP Group	www.ipgroupplc.com
Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive Officer       Mike Townend, Director of Capital Markets	[phone]
Mark Warne	[phone]
Financial Dynamics
Ben Atwell, John Dineen	[phone]
Crysalin David Brister, Chairman	www.crysalin.com [e-mail] [phone]

About IP Group

IP Group is an intellectual property (IP) commercialisation company that specialises in commercialising university technology. Founded in 2001, IP Group listed on AIM in October 2003 and moved to the Official List in June 2006. It has made two acquisitions to date - Techtran, a company set up to commercialise university intellectual property under a long term contract with the University of Leeds, in 2005 and Top Technology Ventures, an investment adviser to early stage technology venture capital funds, in 2004.

IP Group has formed long-term partnerships with ten universities - the University of Oxford, King's College London, CNAP/University of York, the University of Leeds, the University of Bristol, the University of Surrey, the University of Southampton, Queen Mary (University of London), the University of Bath and the University of Glasgow.

The Company's portfolio is diverse with exposure to five main sectors - Energy & Renewables, Medical Equipment & Supplies, Pharma & Biotech, IT & Communications
and Chemicals & Materials. To date, thirteen portfolio companies have listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, one on PLUS Markets and there have been five trade sales.

For more information, please visit our website at http://www.ipgroupplc.com.

About Crysalin

Crysalin has developed a groundbreaking and patented technology for protein structure determination, enabling a step change in the productivity and scope of structure based drug design (SBDD).  Spun-out from the University of Oxford, UK in 2007, Crysalin has operated as a virtual company and is currently establishing its own facilities in the Oxford area.

Crysalins are lattice based nanomaterials that demonstrate significant advantages over other methodologies enabling protein structure elucidation.  Current methods, specifically crystallisation, face numerous hurdles because production of suitable crystal structures remains complex, time consuming and uncertain.  In addition, whole classes of protein are not amenable to crystallisation techniques.

Crysalins act by imposing order on macromolecular proteins, thereby rendering them amenable to X-ray and EM techniques for resolving 3-D molecular structure.  The methodology is equally applicable to all protein classes and therefore will provide the biggest impact where current technologies have failed (in particular: GPCRs, ion channels, and soluble proteins with flexible regions). 

For further information, please visit our website at www.crysalin.com.

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