Xceleron

University of York spinout firm, Xceleron is being hailed all over the world for the way in which its edge-ofscience work with atoms is helping to speed up drug development.

In fact its techniques for testing drugs with microdosing could mean ending forever the kind of tragedy which struck six "human guinea pigs" who nearly died in a clinical trial last year.

The sort of full dose testing of an anti-inflammatory drug at a research unit at Northwick Park Hospital, in London, which resulted in multiple organ failure in the human testers, could be a thing of the past.

Meanwhile more than 100 biotech and pharmaceutical organisations, including 15 of the world's top pharma companies have been helped to develop drugs quicker, safer and less costly using the technique and gives the company a head start in a market thought to be worth more than £200 million per year Professor Colin Garner, Xceleron's chief executive, pioneered the use of an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) facility at the Central Science Laboratory in Sand Hutton, a 20-ton nuclear physics-based instrument which took two years and £2.75 million to build.

Only tiny doses of experimental drugs are given to volunteers whose blood is then analysed by the machine, which generates millions of volts and measures isotopes atom by atom, clearly predicting which drugs will fail.

By introducing AMS into various stages of the drug development process, clients can improve their drug candidate selection, reduce the risk of clinical failure and streamline the whole drug application and clinical development process.

It is hardly surprising that the world's boffins are beating a path to Xceleron's door at the York Biocentre in Innovation Way, York - and fully justifies the company's ambition to win The Press' Science And Technology Business Of The Year title, as well as the International Trade Award.

Its entry comes at a time when Xceleron, already buoyed by an International Award for Bioscience from Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, has been given a second tranche of £2 million - cash injections from Close Venture Management and Foursome Investments to help its business development.

It also coincides with the formation of an Xceleron in Gaithersburg, Maryland in the US and plans to open a new AMS Centre in nearby Germantown, Maryland. The York office employs 37 people and there are three in the US, but a recruitment drive there means many more will be on the payroll in the next few years.