ReproCELL Buys Biopta

Japanese regenerative medicine company ReproCELL Inc., has acquired Scottish life sciences company, Biopta. The acquisition of Biopta and its U.S. subsidiary, Biopta Inc. is aimed at strengthening ReproCELL’s pharmaceutical industry-targeted drug discovery services. The acquisition will also see an immediate investment to expand Biopta’s range of contract research services. Biopta, which will continue to operate from its headquarters in Glasgow, aims to grow its workforce to 30 over the next three years and Biopta’s management views the synergies within the ReproCELL Group of companies as key to its growth ambitions.

“The acquisition by ReproCELL is a great opportunity to build on the solid platform we have in outsourced drug discovery services,” said David Bunton, Biopta’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Scotland is known for the quality of its scientists and customer service and ReproCELL’s investment recognizes these strengths. We have had a close partnership with BioServe, another ReproCELL Group company, for the past five years, which has helped us establish a very successful US subsidiary. We see the acquisition as the natural next step in the growth of the UK and US businesses.”

ReproCELL’s chief executive officer, Chikafumi Yokoyama said, “This will allow our company to increase our market share by expanding our lineup of drug discovery support products aimed at the pharmaceutical industry and accelerate the development of ReproCELL’s new products and services.”

Biopta was spun out of Glasgow Caledonian University in 2002 by its co-founders, Mr. Bunton and Professor Chris Hillier, with the aim of addressing the high failure rate of drugs during clinical trials through the use of ethically-sourced human tissues. The use of human tissues is considered more predictive of human responses to medicines than animal experiments and is part of a growing move by the pharmaceutical industry towards non-animal alternatives. Moreover, the advent of precision medicine, which aims to deliver the right drug, at the right dose, to the right patient, necessitates the use of human tissue-based experiments of the type offered by Biopta, which reflect the diversity of the patient population.

Biopta has developed a network of clinical partners in the UK and U.S. which provide human tissue samples for its research into diseases such as asthma, Crohn’s disease and psoriasis. Biopta counts eight of the top ten pharmaceutical companies among its clients and has worked on over 500 potential new medicines.

Biopta’s finance director, Elaine Ferguson, says the cost savings for the pharmaceutical industry of improved drug selection are considerable. “The cost of each clinical failure has now become so high that most pharmaceutical companies are focusing on better preclinical selection of drugs, with a ‘fail fast, fail early’ approach,” she said. “Biopta’s methods are just as valuable in identifying which drugs won’t work in patients, as they are in identifying the next blockbuster drug.”