Time to shine: bit.bio sets a high bar for Life Sciences

Candidates certainly have plenty of categories to aim for. Besides the obvious glory of winning Business of the Year, which Bicycle Therapeutics achieved two years ago, AstraZeneca supports two leading Life Sciences categories for Innovation and Scale-up.

Life Science ventures can also enter categories that cover everything from quoted businesses to international trade; from significant investments to disruptive technology and engineering excellence; and which reflect deployment of Cambridge graduates or boast influential women in key roles.

New entrant bit.bio is a strong contender right across the board in the Business Weekly Awards, not just the Life Sciences categories. In the past year, bit.bio has seen remarkable growth on all fronts.

There were 18 new products launched in the ioCells portfolio – human cells for research and drug discovery – including ioWild Type Cells™ and ioDisease Model Cells™.

One of these products was the first in a new range – ioCRISPR-Ready Cells™ – with the introduction of CRISPR-Ready ioGlutamatergic Neurons™, first-in-class, stem-cell-derived human neurons containing a Cas9 nuclease for gene knockouts and CRISPR screens.

On the cell therapy side, the company announced a collaboration and option agreement with BlueRock Therapeutics for the discovery and manufacture of regulatory T (Treg) cell-based cell therapies.

In addition, the company announced its own cell therapy pipeline, including lead cell therapy candidate bbHEP01, targeting acute liver failure. The announcement of the cell therapy pipeline also included the strategic additions of Drs. Katy Rezvani, Anil Dhawan, and Loïc Vincent to bit.bio’s Science Advisory Board.

Under CEO and founder Mark Kotter’s visionary leadership, bit.bio is on a mission to democratise access to human cells for research, drug discovery and cell therapies.

The growing portfolio of therapeutic bit.bio txCells is poised to enable a broad pipeline of regenerative and immune cell therapies, either developed independently or in collaboration with external partners.

The company rounded out the year with an official opening of its expanded manufacturing and automation laboratories by the UK’s Minister of State for Science, Research, and Innovation.

The fully-automated solution for a key aspect of bit.bio’s cell manufacturing process, developed in collaboration with Automata, is a groundbreaking step toward quadrupling manufacturing output, showcasing bit.bio’s commitment to scalability and consistency in its manufacturing processes.

bit.bio’s nomination is a testament to its outstanding achievements in the past year. The company’s journey from stem cell research to a synthetic biology leader underscores its commitment to advancing the field and making a lasting impact on the industry.

bit.bio is on a rapidly accelerating trajectory. It raised a sizeable Series A of $41.2 million from top tier life science DeepTech investors, which will catalyse this unique convergence of biology and engineering.

Previous winners

Seven companies in the Life Sciences sector have won the overall Business of the Year crown during the history of the competition. The first, Waymade Healthcare, which won the ninth competition way back in 1998-99, has since been followed by some superb BioMedTech businesses.

Acambis won in 2002 after covering itself in glory, notably for the US government, in a then fledgling area of vaccines. What a game-changing company Acambis was – and one that came to the forefront at a time of incredible global political flux due to the emerging threat of bioterrorism.

Then headquartered in Cambridge, Acambis targeted infectious diseases with novel vaccines. Its smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, was hired for emergency-use stockpiles held by the US Government and several other governments around the world. Acambis moved out of Cambridge in 2008 after being acquired by Sanofi Pasteur for $565 million but had clearly made its mark internationally.

It would be another three years (2005) before Cambridge Antibody Technology became the second biotech to win the title. CAT finally got the cream after a spell in which it did not look capable of trapping a crippled mouse and, reinvigorated, was snapped up by AstraZeneca – now a sponsor of the Awards – for $1.3 billion in May 2006.

Fast forward another four years to Abcam winning the 2009 crown. Founded by Dr Jonathan Milner – now a serial investor in the sector through his firm Meltwind – the company went on to become a world leader in providing life science research tools to scientists worldwide.

In November last year the company accepted a $5.7bn acquisition offer by American giant Danaher – a deal which is going through protocols as we write – despite bitter opposition from Dr Milner who claimed the money was too cheap given Abcam’s ongoing potential.

Horizon Discovery, when it was steered by CEO Dr Darrin Disley – a walking encyclopaedia on all things biotech – has won the Business of the Year title twice. The first of its title wins came in 2011 and Horizon won again in 2014. Dr Disley, on both occasions, gave arguably the best ever pitches seen by some hardened entrepreneurs on the judging panel.

A slightly different slant on the success story was seen in 2018 when ieso Digital Health was crowned overall winner. This was a classic case of our judges reading the runes and picking a previously unfancied business that proceeded to greatness in its field.

Ieso was honoured for providing live, one-to-one cognitive behavioural therapy on behalf of the NHS and some of America’s biggest healthcare providers through its smart, digital diligence.

One gets lost for superlatives when describing the most recent Life Sciences winner of the overall title – Bicycle Therapeutics – in the 2021-22 year. Based on the Nobel Prize-winning brilliance of Sir Greg Winter, the NASDAQ-quoted company is already transforming the lives of patients worldwide as one of the world’s leading solid tumour medicines companies.

Bicycle was back on the podium last September when it won the Quoted Company of the Year Award. It was one of several successes for the Life Sciences community locally.

Evonetix won two categories – Disruptive Technology and Investment of the Year. Its technology puts accurate gene synthesis capabilities directly into the hands of researchers. To do this, it has developed a method for synthesizing, assembling and error-correcting gene-length DNA on a single silicon chip within a benchtop device.

The technology will enable scale and flexibility far beyond the limits of centralised service labs. DNA availability will no longer be a bottleneck. Instead, it’ll provide opportunities to design more ambitious experiments and deliver faster results.

Biofidelity, a power player in oncology, won Life Science Innovation with its ASPYRE® solution – a new biomarker testing technology that was specifically developed to provide comprehensive biomarker results within days of diagnosis, giving physicians the opportunity to offer their patients the best possible treatment options.

Domainex won the Life Science Scale Up category. The company, a King’s Award winner, has grown like Topsy. The integrated drug discovery CRO has been setting the highest standards in drug discovery, with a particular emphasis on small molecule research, since 2001.

It works in partnership with clients from a variety of sectors including academic, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and patient foundation organisations around the world.

The shooting stars among last September’s winners are also worth keeping an eye on. Decorte Future Industries was named Young Company of the Year: It is a DeepTech company that extracts human health data from sound.

Another one to watch is Opto Biosystems, a NeuroTech startup whose co-founder Elise Jenkins was named Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, a category sponsored by Cambridge Judge Business School. Last April it emerged from stealth with a £1.85 million pre-seed round to develop groundbreaking technology that improves the lives of people suffering from neurological disorders.

The Business Weekly Awards, launched in 1990, welcomes entries from across the six counties of the East of England – Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire.

And the nature of business can embrace all manner of propositions spanning industry in its broadest sense, B2B, EdTech, AgriTech, CleanTech, DeepTech, Genomics, AI, FinTech, Engineering, the Life Sciences, Academia and much more.

New this year is the Cambridge Tech Week Award which will honour the winner of a scale-up competition being held during CTW in September. The trophy will be presented at our Awards dinner at Queens’ College, Cambridge on Wednesday September 11.

One change to the 16 Awards we traditionally make at the Cambridge presentation dinner involves the popular Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Cambridge Judge Business School has kindly allowed Sana Capital in Cambridge to facilitate sponsorship of the category by Murray Edwards College. Judge will continue to sponsor the equally popular Graduate Business Award.

Lead forensic sponsor Mills & Reeve, a UK leading law firm, will set up an interview with entrants’ chosen spokesperson to prepare a confidential report for the judges ahead of the presentation banquet on Wednesday September 11, 2024.

The award categories are:
Young Company of the Year
Cambridge Judge Graduate Business of the Year
The Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award
Disruptive Technology
The Pathfinder Award
Technology Scale-up
Life Science Scale-up
Life Science Innovation
International Trade Champion
Quoted Company of the Year.
Woman Entrepreneur of the Year
Sustainability Champion
DeepTech Innovation
Investment of the Year

From all of the entrants a Business of the Year will be selected. You can enter online at https://www.businessweekly.co.... or by emailing chair of judges Tony Quested – tquested@businessweekly.co.uk