Winner of Innovate UK's ICURe Follow-on-Fund
Summary
"Innovate UK drives productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas. This is just the beginning!The journey so far...Since finishing my PhD at the University of Nottingham, I have been working on a project which aimed to commercialise the innovative peptide hydrogel platform that was first developed by my supervisor Prof Cathy Merry.At the time, all we had was an idea: to bring the next generation of peptide hydrogels to the wider research community, to help tackle the problems of using animal-derived materials in drug discovery and investigative research.To fully test this idea in the market place, I enrolled on the , supported by Prof Cathy Merry, Dr Jonathan Gibbons, and Dr Clive Roper. This began with 3 months of customer discovery work, in which we found our place in the market, followed by another 3 months of business planning.After a few weeks of nervous waiting, we were delighted on Friday to find out that we had been successful in securing \xa3270,690 in funding to help us realise our vision.The next steps for us will be to formally register the company so that we can begin work on our first commercial projects.This will incluce collaborations with selected early adopters who expressed interest during the customer discovery phase. This is also one of the ways in which we intend to differentiate ourselves from our competitiors: by providing unparalled customer service, now and into the future.A look to the future...Our idea was to bring the next generation of peptide hydrogels for 3D cell culture to the wider research community. Behind this, our passion for reducing, replacing, and refining the use of animals in research is our driving force.We hope that by bringing an alternative to the market for animal-derived hydrogels (such as those derived from Engelbreth-Holm-Swarm (EHS) mouse sarcoma), we can help to reduce, and eventually replace, the use of animals and animal-derived materials in drug discovery and investigative research.If you are interested in trialling the latest innovation in 3D cell culture, please get in touch!