CASE STUDIES

Dr David Weinkove, CSO of Magnitude Biosciences who undertook the ICURe training says:

“We’d thought about commercialising our research, but it wasn’t until we were referred to the ICURe programme by Durham University’s Tech Transfer Officer (TTO) that I really understood how helpful this programme could be. The principle behind it is brilliant – it’s the fact that you don’t just push your technology on to the world you actually find out what the world wants and what it needs first. That was a critical concept that was really useful for our company.”

“The opportunity that we had to go out and travel the world and speak with potential customers was unrivalled, we really needed to understand what our customers’ challenges were. The ways in which we were proposing to use C. elegans in the market was a totally new concept. When you have a new approach like this, it’s not enough just to tell people that it really works. You have to get under the skin of those industry consumers to understand their challenges and work with them to provide what they actually need. ICURe allowed us that opportunity to refine our offering.”

“ICURe made it clear to us that whereas we had thought we might sell the technology as a piece of equipment, in fact what the industry required was our technology as a service as a Contract Research Organisation, as to be used successfully, customers would need to tap into our team of C. elegans and life sciences experts. That validation then led us to reconsider other sectors that we should be targeting such as nutrition consumer goods, and green manufacturing.”

“Following ICURe, we successfully pitched for funding from the Northern Accelerator. The money allowed us to hire our now COO, John O’Brian – who brought with him experience of the fundraising landscape to help us with the commercial aspects. With his support, we approached local investors and were successful in receiving several offers, from which we were then able to choose two. This really started us on the path to where we are today.”

Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences who joined the team in 2022 says:

“I joined the company in 2022 and my remit is to grow the business into different market sectors and increase the revenue. It’s now all about scaling up on the sales front, and expanded service offering as well.”

“Our WormGazer™ technology allows us to image the worms over a set period, we have a number of different assays that we commercialise. And we are working on another four new services that we’re developing that should be offered to our clients, by the end of next year.”

“We have grown the team to 16 employees, and we will have added 3 more by June 2023. Recruitment is  a challenging factor for us, we do struggle to attract people as we based outside of the city. We’ve got a fantastic, dedicated team. The community around us are very helpful with each other, we all share networks and suppliers, and help each other out wherever possible.”

“We are thrilled to have been awarded a grant of nearly £250,000 from Innovate UK that has been matched by our current investors. This £500,000 will enable further automation to be introduced to our innovative imaging technology WormGazer™ allowing us to implement high throughput screening to identify drugs that could slow ageing or prevent age-related diseases. At the moment, our processes are very labour intensive, so it costs more, which prevents us from being able to give our clients a better price point.”

“We plan to scale up over the next few years, raise more funds and expand our offering to meet clients’ needs. Subsequently, there will be two further options for the company – to be acquired or grow organically as a company.”

Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO
Magnitude Biosciences Limited