THE UNIVERSITY of Dundee has been named the UK’s greatest for supporting spinout companies, in accordance with industry-leading evaluation.
Dundee fended off the distinguished Oxford, Cambridge and College School London and topped Gateways to Progress: The Entrepreneurial Influence Report.
The report was compiled by Octopus Ventures, one in all Europe’s largest enterprise capital groups.
This unbiased rating was decided by components similar to numbers of patents, spin-out firms created, and up to date portfolio success.
For Dundee, this included the £2.2bn IPO of Exscientia on the US NASDAQ, one of many largest ever UK college exits.
The College has at all times championed entrepreneurial exercise and has recognized Enterprise as one of many three cornerstones of its just lately adopted technique, which is able to outline its work for the subsequent 5 years.
College help is essential in serving to research-based companies to turn into established, eradicating threat from founders as they transition from the laboratory to the event stage.
Dr David McBeth, Vice-Principal (Enterprise & Financial Transformation), mentioned: “This award confirms Dundee’s trendy standing because the undisputed residence of profitable UK spinouts.
“The foundations of our success are world-leading life and biomedical sciences analysis, and revolutionary entrepreneurial researchers.
“Our dedication to driving the creation of accelerating numbers of excessive development potential spinout and start-up firms is mirrored in a number of infrastructure investments, together with a brand new Life Sciences Innovation Hub as a result of open in late 2024, as a part of the Tay Cities development deal.
“Our aspiration is to develop an Innovation District within the metropolis to anchor our firms right here in Dundee, with an final imaginative and prescient to assist this metropolis turn into a magnet for prime worth jobs within the life sciences and well being sector.
“When it comes to how we create firms, we now have at all times prided ourselves on fostering nice relationships with traders and the founding groups of firms and treating every firm in accordance with its particular person circumstances.
“We’re assured that with entry to extra early stage, proof of idea kind funding, we might ship many extra excessive development firms.”
Dr McBeth added: “We’re demonstrating in real-time the form of impacts that many authorities methods search however the one draw back is that a number of of our spinouts have relocated away from Dundee, and certainly away from Scotland, as they pursue their development methods.
“It’s vital that we work in partnership with Authorities and its businesses, and vice versa, to create the infrastructure that may assist preserve these companies and the roles they create, nearer to their origins.”
Dr Amy Nommeots-Nomm, Funding Affiliate, Octopus Ventures, mentioned: “Congratulations to the College of Dundee, it’s nice to see them transfer up the rankings to take the primary spot and show its standing as a pacesetter within the deeptech house.
“By harnessing native pockets of excellence like these, we may help the entire of the UK flourish.
“Since our final report, the race to deal with Covid-19 highlighted the facility of educational establishments to mobilise rapidly and develop options which rework hundreds of thousands of lives.
“Sustained funding for analysis and innovation, and constant help for spin outs is significant if the UK’s universities are to proceed producing globally impactful applied sciences.”
A spinout success story is of Tay Therapeutics, a UK biotech firm primarily based in Dundee, having emerged from the College’s Faculty of Life Sciences in 2020.
Previously referred to as In4Derm, the corporate was based by Dr Andrew Woodland and Dr Mark Bell, with the purpose of growing the subsequent technology of drug therapies.
Earlier this 12 months, the corporate introduced a licensing cope with Vyne Therapeutics value a possible $50m {dollars}, following on from an earlier deal value £16m in 2021.
The corporate is now centered on growing the Tay-Allow platform concentrating on cease codon mutations in most cancers and genetic ailments.
The corporate operates from the College of Dundee’s Incubator for Companies and employs 12 folks.
Dr Woodland mentioned: “With the ability to develop our spinout firm and drug discovery tasks inside the College of Dundee gave Tay Therapeutics entry to innovative amenities, world class specialists and a singular innovation ecosystem.
“We’d not have been capable of license two of our tasks, that are at present progressing in scientific trials with Vyne Therapeutics, with out the College’s preliminary help.
“Dundee really is the Metropolis of Discovery, and the College of Dundee is a necessary factor of that.”
