July - December 2007
23 July 2007
The School of Pharmacy is ranked sixth out of all UK higher education institutions for income earned in research grants and contracts relative to spending on academic staff costs. The data, published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency and analysed by The Times Higher Education Supplement, shows that the School is “forging ahead of the field” in its capacity to attract research funding. In 2005-2006, for every pound spent on academic staff costs, the School attracted £1.66 in research grants and contracts.
The School is accompanied in the top ten ‘research elite’ by leading Russell Group institutions including Imperial College London, Oxford University and Edinburgh University.
Our research focuses on advancing and understanding medicines and health care. It is organised into four divisions: drug discovery; neurosciences; formulation sciences; and medicines use and health.
The research returns league table
Income earned (in research grants and contracts) per pound spent on academic staff.
Analysis by The Times Higher Education Supplement, based on Hesa data.
16 July 2007
Immune Targeting Systems (ITS) Limited, a School of Pharmacy spin-in company developing synthetic vaccines for mutating viruses, today announced it has closed its series-A equity funding round for £3.5m. This is ITS’s first significant funding round with major global life science and specialist investors including the Novartis Venture Fund (US & Basel), Truffle Capital (France), HealthCap (Sweden) and the London Technology Fund (UK). The London Development Agency will also be contributing an Exceptional Development Project award of £500,000 under the Grant for Research and Development scheme.
In 2004, the company collaborated in a technology development program with The School of Pharmacy to develop a patented synthetic vaccine technology designed specifically to target genetically diverse mutation-prone viruses where cellular immunity is critical to disease protection. Diseases like Influenza-A, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis-C are all potential vaccine targets. A synthetic universal flu vaccine is initially being developed with the potential to target all Influenza-A virus strains likely to be implicated in both seasonal and pandemic flu outbreaks.
Following the investment, the board of directors will be complemented by five highly experienced and accomplished bioentrepreneurs and venture capital investors: Dan Adams (CEO/President, Protein Science Corp.), Martin Becker (former CEO/President, XTL Biopharmaceuticals Ltd.), Florent Gros (Novartis Venture Fund), Philippe Pouletty (Truffle Capital) and Magnus Persson (HealthCap). The British Government’s Global Entrepreneurs Programme (UKTI) assisted the fundraising and through its Global Entrepreneurs Mentoring Programme introduced ITS to the international senior industry executives Dan Adams and Martin Becker who have joined the board of directors.
Carlton Brown, CEO of ITS, commented: “We are delighted to have raised investment from such a strong syndicate of specialist investors focused on developing companies and bringing important disease control medicines and vaccines to the market.
Dr Phil Sizer, ITS Research and Development Director said: "The combination of our unique proprietary bioinformatics antigen identification platform and vaccine delivery system renders a powerful and novel technology for the prevention and treatment of diseases caused by rapidly mutating viruses.
Florent Gros, Managing Director at Novartis Venture Fund, and leader of the investment syndicate commented: “We believe strongly in the need to speed up vaccine discoveries and in the potential of the ITS technology platform over many other technology alternatives. We are thrilled to support a group of experienced scientists to develop breakthrough vaccines for major unmet medical needs.”
Philippe Pouletty, MD, General Partner of Truffle Capital commented: “We are impressed by the strength and commitment of the management team, a critical asset to build a successful biotechnology company”.
Magnus Persson Partner at HealthCap concluded: “We think that ITS has a uniquely positioned technology in the vaccine field and a solid management team. Thus, we are very proud to take an active role in ITS’ future success at this early stage. We believe ITS will become yet another successful vaccine investment for HealthCap.”
More about Immune Targeting Systems Ltd.
Immune Targeting Systems Ltd (ITS) is a London based life science company developing synthetic vaccines for mutating viruses. These vaccine candidates, which target highly conserved antigenic regions of the virus, are believed to be potent stimulators of host antiviral cellular immunity required for disease protection. In this way, the vaccine can address all the various strains and sub-types of any virus type.
An example is ITS’ lead universal influenza-A vaccine that targets all potential seasonal and pandemic flu strains. The vaccine is designed to eliminate the need to produce a strain-specific flu vaccine each year or after a pandemic emerges. Being fully synthetic it could eliminate the manufacturing bottlenecks associated with conventional flu vaccines, which dominate the global development pipeline and, potentially, offers governments a first line of vaccine defence that could be immediately deployable in a pandemic scenario.
The Company also has candidates for all major strains of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis-C. These viruses share a number of common features that present major challenges to vaccine designers: infectious strains are genetically diverse, have a tendency to continually mutate and cause human disease that can be prevented by generating appropriate cellular immune responses. ITS has developed its vaccine technologies to address these major vaccine challenges.
“The information is historical in the sense that it refers to situations in existence more than three years ago. Much has changed since then.” - HEFCE spokesperson
*UPDATED* Clarification published by the Guardian on 21 July 2007
We are pleased to note that the Guardian has today published, on its 'Corrections and Clarifications' page, a note to acknowledge that the newspaper "did not place sufficient emphasis on the distinction between the historical situation and the current state of financial health of some of the universities named. There were changes to the institutions on the Hefce's risk list between 1998 and 2003 - none of the universities were on the list for the whole of that period." Read the full clarification here on the Guardian website.
11 July 2007 - The Dean's response to the original article
Articles published on 7 July 2007 by the Guardian and The Times on universities apparently facing collapse may have caused anxiety to students joining or returning to The School of Pharmacy in the autumn.
I would like to reassure our students that the data are misleading and do not relate in any way to our current position. The newspapers suggest that The School of Pharmacy is one of 46 higher education institutions in crisis. It is not. A recent visit by a team from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) specifically indicated that the School was not at risk.
The documents obtained by the newspapers, some of them nearly 10 years old, reveal that in the late 1990s, HEFCE was concerned that the School itself was predicting that it would be in deficit for two concurrent years. There was a straightforward explanation for this which had nothing to do with the underlying financial or academic health of the institution.
Simply, the undergraduate qualification in pharmacy was changing from a 3-year Bachelor’s degree to a 4-year Master’s degree. The School’s financial projections were based on supporting one third more students before HEFCE confirmed to the School the award of additional funded student numbers to support the expansion.
Once the additional funding was confirmed, at the end of the last century, the School was no longer on the funding council’s alert list. Since then, the School has gone from strength to strength. It continues to receive outstanding recognition for the quality of its teaching and its research.
I hope that this statement dispels any concerns raised by the newspapers. However, any students who remain uncertain about the School’s financial position are welcome to contact our admissions team in Registry for further information.
Professor Anthony SmithDean