19th
century York
was a centre
of early photography
Aptamer development
Accelerating biotechnology in York
T
hanks to winning the
Venturefest prize, which
provided us with free office
and lab space for six months,
the Aptamer Group was able
to move from a location outside York
to the York Science Park in 2014 with a
team of seven. This move gave us a great
chance to develop and grow during a really
critical period for the business, when
we were initially focused on R&D and
establishing commercially ready processes
surrounding our core technology.
Ta r g e t e d a f f i n i t y
Aptamers are short ssDNA or ssRNA
sequences that offer high affinity and
specificity to virtually all types of targets.
We develop nucleic acid aptamers, and
our proprietary technology was launched
in 2012 to customers wanting to develop
affinity / binding molecules for a range of
applications, such as potential research
tools, diagnostic reagents, biomarker
discovery tools, or bio-therapeutics.
The company was initially funded
through private investment and
participated in grant funded, collaborative
or drug molecules) which are often difficult
or impossible to generate antibodies
against. We have also launched our
aptamer based target purification platform,
for simplified purification of customer
targets (e.g. therapeutic proteins).
David Collins
Chief Commercial Officer,
Aptamer Group
Aptamer Group is a biotechnology
company founded in 2008. David
Collins has 30 years’ CRO experience
with preclinical drug discovery and
development, biosafety testing,
laboratory sciences and phase I clinical
projects to demonstrate the application
of our technology. We have now moved on,
and are working on delivering successful
projects for a range of customers. We
have also developed a range of new
processes and taken on additional
staff with extensive experience in the
generation of aptamers against small
molecule targets (e.g. food contaminants
A w o r k i n g r e l at i o n s h i p
With our current configuration, the
majority of our space consists of lab
facilities – an R&D lab, large commercial
lab, and robotics instrumentation room
for customer projects. The work processes
are very different for these activities, and
separating them helps efficiency and
delivery of commercial work.
We have learnt a lot during our time
at the Science Park, and our company
has undergone some huge changes.
So, how have we managed to get this far?
We have developed a very close working
relationship with the Science Park team,
and have been clear with them about
the demands we have faced as a growing
company. This allows them to understand
our specific requirements and support us
during some extremely challenging periods
as we continue to grow. ■
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