SmartBead Technology Cambridge firm tops again in international technology competition

7th November 2002. A Cambridge biotechnology company with a barcoded microparticle array solution for simultaneous testing in the protein and DNA based markets has won an international competition to begin operations in the US.

SmartBead Technology believes the free space and management advice offered by the BioAccelerator Incubator in Fairfax County, Virginia, the technology gateway of the US east coast, will give its ground breaking technology a valuable foothold in several key areas of the drug discovery market valued at £5.2 billion in 2001 including the emerging protein microarray market valued at about £448 million by 2005 alone.

SmartBead says its UltraPlex solution will provide customers in the pharmaceuticals sector with a comprehensive range of quality, cost effective and flexible assay solutions. These should assist in substantial productivity gains and faster times to market for their new chemical compounds.

At the same time a company from Fairfax County, Enlightened Technologies Associates Inc, has won a reciprocal place in a UK incubator in York to continue the development of its devices to treat sleep disorders, depression and jet lag.

The unique two-way "Touchdown" competition was organised by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA) in conjunction with the UK Science Parks Association and UK Business Incubation.

It is the second year in succession that a Cambridge-based company has won the competition. Last year AB Technology Cambridge Ltd, which developed its refrigerant gas leakage detector at the St John's Innovation Centre, won a similar place at another business incubator in Fairfax County.

SmartBead was spun out of the Cambridge consultancy Sentec Ltd following a joint development with the Cavendish Laboratories at the University of Cambridge, funded by a DTI Smart award.

The first patent application for the technology was filed in 1998 for a bar coded microparticle and the company has since filed additional patents on applications of the technology. In Nov 2001 the company received seed funding from BankInvest of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Chief Executive Robert Booth believes the free space at the Fairfax County BioAccelerator will also provide the opportunity to access additional venture capital in the US marketplace.

The UltraPlex solution consists of barcoded microparticles, optical reader and attachment chemistry, and allows multiple experiments to be performed in a single vessel. More than 1 million unique barcodes are available with enormous implications for the speed of research. SmartBead has taken the well established and unambiguous tagging and tracking properties of barcodes to microscopic dimensions. The barcode has been moved from the reagent bottle to the reagent.

Said Mr Booth: "The US represents the largest pharmaceutical and diagnostics market for UltraPlex and naturally we were developing US market entry plans for the future. Now we have been given a chance to do so ahead of schedule and with the knowledge that we are going to receive extremely beneficial help and guidance right from the start. We chose Fairfax because it is conveniently located close to the key pharmaceutical company clusters on the east coast and for its proximity to the NIH and national diagnostics laboratories offering opportunities for SmartBead to collaborate with world-class organisations."

Fairfax County, which has highest average income of any US county, is home to more than 4,000 technology companies including 38 from the UK.

Dr Gerald Gordon, President of the FCEDA commented: "This kick start for both companies is something that is hard to put a price on. But whatever the value to the companies themselves, we hope the competition will provide added impetus to the technology and bioscience sectors in American and Britain. In our view it has been a win-win situation."

The winners of the "Touchdown" competition will be announced at a dinner at the Savile Club in London as part of an evening to celebrate the success of British businesses overseas.

The principal speaker at the event will be a senior representative of BAE SYSTEMS who recently won, with Lockheed Martin, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) contract. This is worth 8,500 jobs in the UK and income in excess of £8 Billion. BAE SYSTEMS have their US Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.


Note to Editors:
For further information contact Ross Clarke/David Wallen on tel: 020 7630 1100 or e-mail: fairfaxcounty@livepr.net 

About SmartBead Technologies Ltd
SmartBead has developed a microparticle array technology, UltraPlex, based on barcoded microparticles, which, in effect barcodes molecules. SmartBead will be a preferred solution provider of these multiplexing technologies for the drug development and diagnostics industries and will lead the way in new approaches to analysing multiple parameters through barcoded bioassays. 

SmartBead was founded to exploit technology originally developed by Sentec Ltd, a Cambridge, UK company, and the Cavendish Laboratories, University of Cambridge.

For more information, please see www.smartbead.com  or contact Robert Booth at robertbooth@smartbead.com.