Curing the world’s ills

Edie Lush says UK biotech and medical research is world-class, but that start-ups face a challenge to raise capital and must think global from the start

Gilham does, however, point out that this is changing. If a Primary Care Trust is sending 1,000 patients to a hospital diabetic clinic four times a year, it can calculate how much this outsourcing is costing them against the option of recruiting a diabetic nurse to the PCT to perform the Afinion test in house. But the UK market remains minor for the Afinion device. Out of 2,500 around the world, 1,000 are in the US. Only 12 are in the UK.

If the UK market is still nascent for Axis Shield, it is next to non-existent for other companies in the field. Silverfleet Capital has invested in Sterigenics – a company that sterilises everything from medical devices to the mail that goes into the US Congress. In the words of Silverfleet’s Neil MacDougall, a non-executive director of Sterigenics, the sterilisation process ‘achieves total kill’. By shining electrons on the product or passing it through a bunker housing radioactive cobalt 60 rods, the process kills or disrupts the DNA of every living thing on the scalpel, surgical scope or hospital gown it has been sent. Sterigenics has 40 sterilisation facilities in 11 countries around the world, including one in Derbyshire, aimed at servicing medical manufacturing companies. In Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Atlanta, it also provides overnight sterilisation of reusable medical devices. ‘Our technology produces a much higher level of sterility than the steam autoclaving of used instruments which is used in the UK. There is simply a difference in standards. The UK is some way behind, although with the rise of hospital infections in this country, it may have to make radical changes.’