CEO Today United Kingdom Awards

67 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today United Kingdom Awards 2018 HEALTHCARE PETER HARRISON CEO of Bioventix FIRM PROFILE Bioventix was founded in 2003 as a biotechnology company specialising in the creation and supply of high-affinity sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs) for use in immunodiagnostics. However, the antibody technology laboratory and some of the staff have been based at the same location in Farnham, Surrey, UK since the early 1990s. Focusing on the areas of clinical diagnostics and drugs of abuse testing the Company’s strategy is to identify new or existing commercial assays for which there is or may be a need for improved antibodies. We aim to provide clients with high quality SMAs that address the shortcomings of other antibodies. The high-affinity antibodies created at Bioventix have advantages over conventional rodent monoclonal antibodies where the target is present at low concentration, or where the target is a short peptide sequence or where the target is a small molecule or drug. In many assay formats, the use of high-affinity SMAs confers improved assay sensitivity and precision. Bioventix has successfully developed SMAs to targets where conventional monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies have failed to produce a suitable reagent and supplies antibodies to almost all of the global multinational immunodiagnostics companies. The company was admitted to trade on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in April 2014. Since then the company has excelled in financial and share price performance. SMAs Bioventix has created a novel sheep hybridoma technology to produce stable and productive cell lines that secrete sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs) of very high affinity. The ultra-high affinity of Bioventix’s antibodies facilitates the development of immunoassays of increased sensitivity and precision at Bioventix’s customers. The technology to create monoclonal antibodies was first described in 1974 by Kohler & Millstein. Their work demonstrated that mouse cells could be created to make mouse monoclonal antibodies in large quantity. Bioventix technology is related to this early work but focusses on the use of sheep cells to make sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs). Advantages of SMAs • Ultra-high affinity – SMAs remain bound to their target for longer. This affinity is commonly 10 to 100-fold greater than rodent antibodies. • Broader epitope recognition – able to recognise ‘difficult’ targets where other antibodies technologies have failed. • Improved sensitivity – able to bind target analytes rapidly and when target is present at very low concentrations (e.g. hormones). • Improved specificity – able to exquisitely discriminate between closely related molecules such as drug derivatives. RECOMBINANT ANTIBODIES There are many expression systems available to efficiently produce recombinant antibodies and antibody fragments. At Bioventix, we have found that expression of recombinant antibodies in CHO mammalian cells is a better fit to the production and purification processes used for sheep monoclonal antibodies (SMAs). ABOUT PETER HARRISON Peter Harrison has worked in the field of antibody technology since 1986 and has extensive experience of the development and commercialisation of antibody technologies. He graduated in Natural Sciences from Clare College Cambridge in 1980 and joined the graduate training scheme at Shell Chemicals UK Ltd. In 1986 he joined Celltech Ltd to manage their contract antibody production business and in 1991 he joined KS Biomedix Ltd and helped to establish sheep monoclonal antibody technology at their Farnham research laboratory. Following the acquisition of KS Biomedix Limited by Xenova plc in 2003, he led a management buy-out that resulted in the formation of Bioventix and he has led the subsequent commercial development of the Company.