A NEWLY-formed company is investing £750,000 to harness the discoveries and ideas of brilliant York scientists working on the genes of plants.

Amaethon Ltd has been formed to help commercialise intellectual property originating from the University of York's Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP).

The new company is the result of a joint agreement between the university and IP2IPO, a subsidiary of Evolution Beeson Gregory, the investment bank and fund management group. The university will have a majority stake.

IP2IPO forms long-term university partnerships from which it receives a "significant interest" in the intellectual property its money helps to create.

Its first partnership was at the University of Oxford where in return for an investment of £20 million to create state-of-the-art chemistry facilities, it acquired 50 per cent of the shareholding in spin-out companies based on the intellectual property created at the chemistry department until 2015.

Today it also has partnerships with the University of Southampton and at King's College, London.

CNAP is a plant and microbial gene discovery centre in the university's department of biology, specialising in solving problems for industry, society and the environment.

It has already built up a commercial process for its intellectual property so the investment by Amaethon is nowhere near as large. It means that the money generated by CNAP will be largely reinvested and stay in York. This summer CNAP's 60 scientists linked up with the Oklahoma-based Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in a joint research programme at the Noble Laboratory in the new £25 million biosciences building at the university in Heslington.

The object: To develop new technologies based on the incredible diversity of biologically active chemicals found in plants for the prevention and treatment of human diseases.

Now, with plans to double the size of the research centre in the next three years, Amaethon Ltd will be seeking ways to capitalise on CNAP discoveries. These include -

Using plants as "factories" for instance using tobacco plants to grow "antifreeze"

Developing plants as "biosensors" to clean up contaminated land

Deriving health products from plants which could lead to the development of new medicines.

Top academics today applauded the formation of the new company. Professor Brian Cantor, vice-chancellor of the University of York described it as "an exciting development."

He said: "It demonstrates the strength and quality of research in CNAP and is an excellent example of York's ambitious plans to expand its world-class research."

Updated: 08:51 Tuesday, September 30, 2003