LAST month York hosted its annual technology conference Venturefest, awarding prize packages worth £63,000 to innovative ventures through its Investment Competition and Innovation Showcase award. Business Editor Laura Knowlson is revisiting a previous York-based winner to find out how the business has grown since its Venturefest success.

IT was 2012 when Aptamer Solutions won the Investment Competition at Venturefest, scooping a prize package worth £29,000 after impressing judges with a business plan focussed on developing aptamers; a synthetic alternative to antibodies, which can be used in life-sciences research, such as diagnostics, therapeutics and biomarker.

At the time the venture was still pre-trading, with founders Arron Tolley, now chief executive officer, and Dave Bunka, chief technology officer, having tested the technology and researched the market.

Now the business operates four separate companies under the Aptamer Group, employing a team of six from its headquarters at York Science Park.

With more than £1 million of robotics equipment in its laboratories, the team works to identify, develop and characterise aptamers, which can be used to replace or fill gaps in the antibody market, which is worth $50 billion according to several market reports including Companies & Markets - Research Report on Global and China Monoclonal Antibody Industry, 2013-2017.

Melanie Ellyard, chief operating officer at Aptamer Group, said: "Aptamers are smaller than antibodies, so they can be more flexible, and we can push them beyond the boundaries of traditional antibodies so they can be used for different things.

"An antibody is evoked from an immune response, so you have to inject an animal in order to evoke an immune response. This technology reduces animal testing as we can make aptamers in vitro (test tubes), and we can make them in large scale quantities and relatively quickly compared to antibodies."

Aptamer Solutions, now branded as aptasol within the Aptamer Group, was co-founded by Dr Tolley and Dr Bunka in 2008 to address areas in the life sciences sector that were unfilled by traditional antibodies.

Ms Ellyard said: "We realised the demand for aptamers was for a wide range of uses, so we launched separate companies to address the different markets for their use.

"All four elements of the business have interest in them from around the world.

"We're looking to form a European joint venture in the next couple of months with one of the largest hospital groups in Europe.

"They will have access to our technology, and we will have access to their patient samples to put our technology through its paces.

"All four companies have been set up as SPVs (special purpose vehicles), which means they can easily be sold if the right opportunity comes about. It enables us to keep growing and keep evolving"

Aptamer Diagnostic, known as aptadx was created to respond to the need for faster, more accurate and more diverse diagnostic solutions, with a longer shelf life.

The business specialises in the development, modification and integration of aptamers in a range of different diagnostics and detections platforms, these could be hand held point of care devices for the detection of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or portable diagnostic devices for rapid detection of disease outbreaks or bioterror attack.

One of the more recent sub-companies within Aptamer Group is aptasort, set up to develop and promote the business's unique method of combining aptamer technology with a biomarker based technology, offering a novel process that is fast and efficient and identifies differences between ‘health’ and ‘diseased’ whilst simultaneously developing the affinity reagent. This cuts out many of the steps associated with traditional biomarker discovery processes.

Aptasort's technology enables the Aptamer team to speed up identification of new biomarkers, allowing for the identification of ‘undiscovered’ markers for various diseases such cancer.

The final company in the group is aptarx, the therapeutics arm of Aptamer Group, which develops aptamers for use in therapeutic applications. aptarx is currently exploring the development of aptamers for use as therapeutics with several organisations, and is seeking further partnerships to advance the technology.

Ms Ellyard said: "We are working in an evolving market. Aptamers have actually been around for more than decades "The reason they are not more widely used is because they were heavily patented out of the US. However universities have been using this technology for many years.

"Aptamer Group is early entrants into this market, there are not many competitors offering the services that we do. The reality is the market is enormous and there is more than enough business out there for many more aptamer companies. There are roughly 20 worldwide, some specialise in very specific areas.

“Our philosophy is ‘we do aptamers, we do them well, and we do them for every market area. We have got a foot in every single market, and can respond to client demand wherever it comes from.

"When we won the Venturefest Investment Competition we were very early stage. Winning put us in touch with valuable mentors. We were absolutely put through our paces, but they got us ready for going to the banks and out for investment.

"As it happens we didn't need to go to the banks in the end, we found investors thanks to the guidance we received. One of the most valuable lessons was learning how to communicate a difficult concept. Arron and Dave are very ‘technical’ being scientists so we had to dumb down a couple of levels.

"Also we knew that Intellectual Property (IP) was important, but we didn't realise how expensive IP advise and protection can be. Venturefest helped us establish other invaluable contacts such as Secerna who have supported us with our IP strategy. The plan came together at the right time. Winning Venturefest gave us access to £29,000 worth of business services just as we were trying to get off the ground. It gave us access to these professional services we would never have been able to afford.

"We have achieved far more than we expected to. We thought we would do a lot of work with Universities, before having the opportunity to work with large pharmaceutical organisations. The reverse is true.

"The reality is, with relatively little marketing effort, these companies are finding us. We are now having to think carefully about growth strategies"

Later this year Aptamer Group will going out for Series A Funding of up to £15 million, on a draw-down basis, based on milestones, to fund expansion, increase laboratory space, attract talent and invest in new robotic equipment.