InterAct News 2006

December 2006

InterAct Proof of Concept Investments reach £0.5m

The InterAct Proof of Concept (POC) Fund held its fourth investment round in December. Seven new projects were funded bringing the total investment to date for the Fund to £565,000 across sixteen projects. The new projects that were funded included: the development of new commercial assays for Brucella (VLA), horse strangles (VLA) and noroviruses (HPA); the development of a new clinical serology assay that will enhance HPA’s service offering to pharmaceutical companies in the vaccines field; and the validation of a novel nematode egg counting device (VLA). Once completed these projects will lead to the validation of new technologies, generating additional IP that can be licensed to commercial partners.

November 2006

InterAct holds three new workshops

InterAct ran three new workshops in November. These workshops brought together scientists from across the four partner organisations to discuss common technology opportunities and issues in the fields of biofilms, bioinformatics and radionuclide testing. A number of new opportunities for collaboration and commercial exploitation were identified in each of the workshops. The InterAct project will now prioritise these opportunities and look to identify IP strengths that can be used to form new exploitation vehicles by combining IP across two or more of the partners.

October 2006

Exhibiting at White Rose Annual Conference

InterAct will be exhibiting at Bioscience into Business – the 6th White Rose Bioscience Forum to be held at CSL on 31st October to 1st November 2006. InterAct will be represented by staff from CSL and by Dr Lorraine Jones from IP Pragmatics. This event is one of a series of conference and partnering events in which InterAct has participated or will participate during October. Others include the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) 49th Annual Meeting which was held in Minneapolis from October 12- 19, 2006 and Advances in Microarray Technology Second Annual conference to be held in Amsterdam from 31st October to 2nd November 2006. The AAVLD conference proved particularly useful for meeting with potential US licensees of InterAct technology opportunities being promoted in the diagnostic sector.

September 2006

InterAct completes its sixth exploitation vehicle

InterAct has completed its sixth exploitation vehicle with the signing this month of a major licence agreement between VLA and Qiagen. As a part of this agreement, QIAGEN acquired a license to commercialize outside the United Kingdom a portfolio of selected PCR-based, veterinary molecular tests (assays) developed by VLA. The relationship is the result of activities undertaken by InterAct to identify markets for a wide range of molecular tests developed and validated by the InterAct partners in the animal health, human health and plant disease diagnostic sectors. InterAct expects to complete additional licences in the coming months for further tests in other sectors. For full details of the Qiagen licence press release please see: www.defra.gov.uk/news/2006/061002a.htm.

August 2006

Exhibiting at ABIC 2006

InterAct will be exhibiting at the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference in Melbourne from the 6-9 August. The conference brings together researchers, companies and investors from the agbio sector to discuss the latest research and technology in this area. InterAct represented by Dr Rupert Osborn and Dr Claude Kaplan, will promote the technologies and projects of the partnership and seek partners for specific InterAct projects, and investigate possible co-development opportunities.

June 2006

Interact POC Fund Progress

InterAct held its second round of investment reviews for its Proof of Concept Fund. Support for a further 6 projects was approved in this round bringing the total to 8 projects funded since launching the POC in April. The InterAct POC Fund provides development monies of up to £45k to increase the commercial attractiveness of nascent projects. Funded projects include those on rapid avian flu detection, novel barcodes for food traceability, bacterial serotyping, rapid mycoplasma detection and an enhanced hand held detection platform.

May 2006

Exhibited at DTI Science and Innovation Summit
InterAct exhibited at the Department of Trade and Industries (DTI) Science and Innovation Summit this month. This event was well attended by many of UK's public sector research establishments, universities and government departments. The exposure of InterAct was significantly enhanced by attending this event by meeting many potential stakeholders who had been previously unaware of the project.

April 2006

InterAct holds Arrays Workshop

InterAct held a microarrays workshop at the London Bioscience Innovation Centre in April, at which 15 scientists from the InterAct Partner institutes presented and discussed their work with microarrays with a view to seeking collaborative technology opportunities or projects. A number of interesting projects and opportunities were identified at the workshop and these will be subject of further investigation by InterAct.

January 2006

Interact Commercialisation Milestone
InterAct has completed its first commercialisation deal less than a year after it initiated its operations. This involves a new licence in the animal health field completed between Dstl and a major animal health company.