Scottish Firm Secures Investment

Glasgow-based life science firm Biopta Ltd, which assists the pharma industry with the development of new drugs, is significantly expanding its R&D capabilities and call for the greater use of human tissues in drug testing after securing its second round of investment in as many years. Spun-out from Glasgow Caledonian University in 2002, Biopta has secured in excess of £265,000 in funding from Braveheart Investment Group, TRI Cap and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund to develop its human tissue testing techniques. The company uses donated, residual human tissue collected from surgery to conduct non-clinical trials on new drugs which can potentially reduce the gap between animal and human testing and could also prove vital in developing safe and effective medicines more quickly.

Dr David Bunton, Chief Executive Officer and cofounder of Biopta, said: “The commitment from our existing investors has come at an exciting time for our business. We enjoyed rapid growth in 2010 and will build on this by accelerating our development of new service areas.

We believe there is no better model for testing human medicines than humans themselves and using surgical discard human tissue means hugely valuable material can be put to good use, rather than be incinerated.

We hope to build on recent activities to bring the development of safer medicines and the availability of human tissue to the forefront of public debate, as much more can be done to make tissues widely available to all medical researchers.”