Viewpoint from David Cleevely Contents / New Arrivals Contents

Summer 2008 Established in 1970 by Trinity College Cambridge catalyst CAMBRIDGE SCIENCE PARK NEWSLETTER In this issue: > Advancing the drug discovery process with Domainex > The future of gaming at Frontier Developments > Pioneering diagnostics from Cambridge Medical Innovations > A new chapter for Pharmorphix > Building a pipeline with Serentis > First tenants for 101 Cambridge > Viewpoint from David Cleevely Contents / New arrivals Contents New arrivals page 2 Cambridge Medical Innovations page 3 Frontier Developments page 4 Domainex page 6 Pharmorphix page 8 Serentis page 10 Parklife page 12 101 Cambridge page 14 Parklife connections page 15 Viewpoint page 16 New arrivals Susan Hamilton Group Susan Hamilton Group provides high quality recruitment solutions helping clients to meet both temporary and permanent requirements across a range of sectors including scientific, technical and commercial. With operations already in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Greater London, the opening of a new office at Cambridge Science Park allows the Susan Hamilton Group to bring its expertise and understanding of the recruitment market to the Eastern region. www.susanhamilton.co.uk AKN Labs AKN Labs is a software company which designs and develops advanced web applications and low-cost websites. www.aknlabs.com 2 catalyst summer 2008 Cambridge Medical Innovations A sound approach to diagnosis Diagnostic giant sets up on Cambridge Science Park With the establishment of Cambridge Medical electronic timing technology that’s already RAP*id 4™ instrument for use in the drug Innovations at the end of 2007, Cambridge in widespread use in items such as mobile discovery and life science markets. Science Park is now home to a part of one of the phones and computers, the technology has the world’s largest diagnostic companies – Inverness potential to offer real cost benefits.” “TTP LabTech has a solid track record in Medical Innovations. Catalyst spoke to Managing the development and support of novel Director Dr Matt Cooper to find out about the In line with its parent company, Cambridge instrumentation for this industry sector, so we new company and its ambitions. Medical Innovations is focused on diagnostic think it’s very well positioned to commercialise technology for consumer and professional our RAP*id 4 technology in this area,” Building on elements of the technology diagnostics, specifically products to be used comments Dr Cooper. developed by former Cambridge Science Park by consumers at home or by physicians at tenant Akubio, Cambridge Medical Innovations their offices rather than the larger platforms “Meanwhile at Cambridge and Inverness, is focused on advancing and exploiting its we continue to pursue our core mission required at major testing centres. acoustic detection systems to diagnose disease of launching diagnostic products and the and help people manage their health. management of human health. With the resources of a global player like Inverness “We use very high-frequency sound waves Medical Innovations behind us we’re confident between the megahertz and gigahertz that this is the start of a very productive range – that’s between a million cycles journey for our company. per second and a billion cycles per second,” explains Dr Cooper. “As our deal with TTP LabTech shows, we’re also interested in talking “We’re interested in to and building partnerships with building partnerships local biotech companies. It’s not with local biotech just about what our technology companies” might bring to them, but also how their technology might build “When we pass these sound on what we are doing. We think waves through a sample and look we’re in the right location to be at how it is altered, we’re able to making these kinds of connections directly monitor the presence or which ultimately can benefit absence and the amount of material everyone involved.” such as a protein, DNA, a virus or www.cam-medical.com bacteria in the sample. Above and below: image illustrates a coloured “There are optical techniques that do the transmission electron micrograph (TEM) showing a cross-section of a herpes simplex virus (HSV) and same kind of thing in purified samples, but one an AKT-ivCovalent sensor chip that enables rapid of the great advantages of our technology is detection of bacterial and viral infections that it works in non-purified samples and can therefore save time and money. Currently, few In an important technologies offer users the ability to detect recent deal, in March real-time kinetic data of this quality across such 2008, UK-based TTP a broad range of samples, sample purity and LabTech (part of the sample concentrations. TTP Group plc) was granted a licence for “High-frequency acoustics is also a label-free the application of its technique – we don’t have to use a radioactive Resonant Acoustic label or a fluorescent label or a reporter Profiling™ technology assay on our samples – and because it uses incorporated in the catalyst summer 2008 3 On the frontier Exciting games and serious business at Frontier Developmentst Catalyst spoke to David Braben, co-inventor of “Setting up the company was more of a case very much think internationally and longer term the legendary 80s computer game Elite and of formalising an existing structure – I’d been – not just over the next six months but way founder of Frontier Developments, about the working for a long time with other people beyond that.” growth of the company and the challenges of beforehand such as Chris Sawyer,” David producing games for the 21st-century market. explains. With a host of popular games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Wallace and Gromit If you were one of the many users of the “We’ve been trying to develop and Thrillville to its credit, Frontier is one of hugely successful BBC Micro computer in the more enduring ways of telling the gaming industry’s leading independent 80s, chances are you may have also joined stories in our games” developers and has certainly adapted and the multitudinous ranks of Elite devotees – a evolved to meet the challenges of this game that broke new ground in sophistication “We were a very small operation when we fast-moving market over the last 14 years. through its exciting combination of interstellar started. In those days the number of people Nevertheless, David sounds a word of battles, galactic trading opportunities and the you’d need to make a game was way fewer caution for one of the UK’s most successful chance to develop your ship into an ever-more than today. With much less powerful machines, industry sectors. powerful vessel. obviously the expected complexity of a game wasn’t as high then. So it was quite practical in “Until last year, Britain was number three in Co-inventors Ian Bell and David Braben were those days for just one or two people to do a the world for producing games in terms of the brains behind this gaming phenomenon. game in a relatively short time. most measures, behind the US and Japan. That The latter went on to establish Frontier changed last year when Canada overtook Developments, a company which has grown “When I first started, games weren’t very Britain. I think there’s a really serious problem: from a handful of people working from a international – they would sell in one market the exodus of games development talent from farmhouse outside Cambridge to a team such as Britain or the US. Even computers that Britain is becoming a stampede, particularly, but of around 160 employees based at 306 people were using in different countries were not exclusively, to Canada. Cambridge Science Park. quite different – the BBC Micro never took off in America for example. But now we have to 4 catalyst summer 2008 Frontier Development “Partly it’s because education standards in this talented programmers and software country have slipped dramatically over the last engineers, in addition to artists, animators few years, and so the people who’ve come and designers.” through the higher education system with the new regime are coming out of the other end With Managing Director David Walsh with nowhere near as good skills as they were focused on the business elements of three or four years ago. That is a problem. running the company, David Braben has remained free to concentrate on keeping “The second problem is in the cost of basing the creative work at a consistently a company here. In Canada, for example, they high standard. are actively enticing software companies to go and locate there where there is a salary subsidy “Both the problem and can go in very different directions from there, of 39% of the cost of the salary, plus there are advantage of an industry like and this is one of the unique things about tax holidays, plus they’ll find offices for you. So ours is that it changes very, the game. You can take the route of taking Canada is very attractive to our sector. There very quickly” revenge on the people who’ve set you up, or is also the strength of the pound against the “What we’ve been doing is trying to work you can try to prevent them achieving what dollar which is making us more expensive here, out more enduring ways of telling stories. The they’re trying to achieve – two diametrically compared to companies based in the US. trouble with a lot of games is that the story opposed paths. “For us it hasn’t been completely negative as “This clearly means you have a lot of choices, we’ve benefited from recruiting people who so that’s a lot of development work for us. We don’t want to relocate when their company also employ script writers to make sure our may have moved.

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