CEO Today United Kingdom Awards

www.ceotodaymagazine.com 18 CEO Today United Kingdom Awards 2018 BIOTECHNOLOGY ARRON TOLLEY CEO of Aptamer Group FIRM PROFILE The Aptamer Group of companies specialise in the development of nucleic acid aptamers for various applications within the life sciences sector. Based in York, UK, we are a biotechnology company developing an exciting market for the supply of custom aptamers for use across a range of disciplines. Aptamers are synthetic oligonucleotides that are isolated from combinatorial libraries, through an iterative process of binding and preferential amplification. This Darwinian Evolution like process leads to the isolation of aptamers which have high affinity and specificity to their targets. The in vitro nature of this selection process means that we can raise aptamers to almost any target type, including targets not amenable to other processes (such as antibody generation). We have successfully isolated aptamers against targets ranging from small molecules, to peptides and proteins; even complex systems such as viruses, whole cells and tissues. The selected aptamers are readily adapted to function in a variety of applications including use as diagnostic tools or biosensors, imaging and flow cytometry reagents, affinity purification ligands, therapeutic agents and targeted drug delivery vehicles. Our world-leading, parallel processing, aptamer discover approach has been developed to ensure you receive the best possible service and results. Over 80 years of combined experience has shown us that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to aptamer selection and so knowledge and flexibility is built into all our processes. After evaluation, each project follows an optimised approach, tailoring one of our ‘base selection methodologies’, to meet your specific needs, in a comparatively short time frame. By using high throughput, liquid handling robotics, we provide improved accuracy, delivery and success. At Aptamer Group, we are dedicated to continually improving our service offering, to identify the best performing binders from our vast libraries, in the quickest time possible. As part of this improvement process, we have recently validated our automated Minimal Aptamer Fragment Identification (MAFI) process for the identification of kinetically optimised aptamers, which will be differentiated from the standard library aptamers as Optimers™. Kinetically optimised aptamers have multiple advantages, when compared to their ‘parent’ aptamer sequence. This makes it an essential step in the development of the highest quality reagents against cellular, protein or small molecular targets. Aptamer Group is a biotechnology company founded in 2008 by Dr Arron Tolley (CEO) & Dr David Bunka (CTO). It was established based on technology to develop aptamers, nucleic acid molecules with affinity and selectivity for a specified target, as an alternative to antibodies. ABOUT ARRON TOLLEY Arron holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biophysics from the University of Leeds and has a B.Sc. in Molecular Medicine. Arron has several years’ research experience raising aptamers against complex cellular targets and model disease systems and has developed several aptamer panels against model cell lines associated with oesophageal adenocarcinoma. These have shown promise for use as cell imaging reagents, biomarker discovery tools and as novel therapeutics. Arron has leadership experience raising capital for business expansion and diversification of the Aptamer Group of companies and still plays an active role in the R&D side of the group. He is credited with the invention and development of a new aptamer based biomarker discovery platform to be offered to the life sciences industry through the Aptamer Group. CONTACT Aptamer Group Ltd. Suite 2.78-2.91 Bio Centre, Innovation Way Heslington YO105NY W: www.aptamergroup.co.uk E: info@aptamergroup.co.uk T: +44 (0) 1904 567 790 Side-by-side size comparison shows that aptamers are considerable smaller than antibodies (Left) meaning that they can interact with targets not accessible to antibodies. Their flexibility allows them to form a ‘cage’ around small molecule targets (centre) or form a network of interactions with a complimentary surface on a protein, cell or tissue (right).