Neurotex

Neurotex Ltd Offers New Approach to Nerve Repair

A new company, Neurotex Ltd, has been established to develop novel silk-based products that have the potential to provide a new generation of nerve repair materials and treatments. To help Neurotex Ltd. carry out its developments, a £250,000 investment has been made by The Kinetique Biomedical Seed Fund.

Neurotex Ltd is a joint venture company, bringing together the expertise of Professor John Priestley, Head of Neuroscience at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, and the unique silk-based materials technology of Oxford Biomaterials Ltd.

Neurotex Ltd is developing a range of patented devices for the repair of damaged nerves using a modified wild silk developed by Oxford Biomaterials, called Spidrex. Initial studies have shown Spidrex to be highly supportive of directed nerve growth with low immunotoxicity. Professor John Priestley, Scientific Founder of Neurotex expects that the research will lead to treatment for damaged nerves and may eventually lead to treatments for repairing damaged spinal cord.

“For us it’s an ambitious but realistic goal to repair the peripheral nervous system,” says Professor Priestley. “If you damage a peripheral nerve, so long as it has a support to follow, the nerve should regrow and hopefully the nerve injury will repair itself. If you damage the spinal cord, however, there are lots of things that will try and prevent the regrowth taking place, such as natural inhibitory components. To repair a damaged spinal cord, we will need different types of tubes and will have to combine other approaches such as stem cells, growth factors or other additives. So it’s a much longer term goal, but the rewards are potentially much greater.”

Dr Richard Skipper has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of the new company. Richard has 25 years experience in the marketing and manufacturing of aerospace, telecommunications and medical products, 16 years at board level with multi-national companies with an emphasis on producing medical devices, taking them from concept through to sales.

For further information, please contact:

Dr Richard Skipper, CEO 01962 713179 or Richard@neurotex.co.uk or see the Neurotex website at www.neurotex.co.uk

Contact us to request a copy of our "Silky Feeling" press information paper.

Notes for Editors

About Oxford Biomaterials Ltd

Founded in 2002, Oxford Biomaterials Ltd. (OBM) is an Oxford University spin-out company developing Spidrex: an absorbable biomaterial based on Spider silk technology for use in the repair and regeneration of human tissues. Spidrex is available as both an exceptionally tough, absorbable fibre and a porous, load bearing, tissue scaffold. Both fibre and scaffold are biocompatible and provide excellent substrates for attachment and growth of human cells. This single, generic technology has multiple market opportunities and, as well as nerve repair, OBM is developing Spidrex for wound management, cardiovascular, and orthopaedic applications. To learn more about OBM’s Spidrex technology and product development visit www.oxfordbiomaterials.com or contact information@oxfordbiomaterials.com

About Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary is one of the leading Colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2,600.

Queen Mary has a strong research base with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries. The College has 21 academic departments and institutes organised into three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

It has an annual turnover of £175 million, research income worth £43 million, and it generates employment and output worth nearly £400 million to the UK economy each year.

Queen Mary Innovation & Enterprise works to protect and exploit the College's intellectual property and to build successful relationships so that academic knowledge and expertise can be transferred to business and the community. For more information, please visit www.qmul.ac.uk.

About The Kinetique Biomedical Seed Fund

The Kinetique Biomedical Seed Fund is managed by Javelin Ventures and is one of the few specialist University Challenge Seed Funds investing in technologies relating to the biomedical sciences - this includes the development of therapeutics, drug delivery systems, diagnostics, devices, biomaterials and IT related to healthcare. This may be through the creation of spin-out companies that can attract further venture funding, or through developing the technology to the point where it can be licensed to a commercial partner.

Javelin Ventures also manages The Heptagon Fund that provides proof of concept funding for its seven academic members for new technologies in life sciences and healthcare addressing the translation of novel and inventive ideas from fundamental research to commercial demonstration with the aim of leading to soundly based propositions able to attract licensing deals or investment funding.

For more information please visit www,javelin-ventures.com or email: info@javelin-ventures.com

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