mrc

London, UK, 5th June, 2008 – MRC Technology (MRCT) (London, UK) today announced that the MRC has approved a further £6 million of funding for a continuation of the MRCT Development Gap Fund (DGF).
DGF is an innovative and successful pre-seed fund established to help exploit the cutting edge science of the MRC which could have a significant impact on the health as well as the competiveness and growth of the UK economy.

The fund, first launched in November 2003 with a budget of £4.5 million, has so far funded 51 applied research projects covering a spectrum of biomedical research including cancer, infectious diseases, genomics and drug discovery. DGF has already demonstrated a positive impact on the commercialisation of MRC discoveries and has engendered change towards translational research.

“We are excited to have been given this extra funding – MRC Technology will once again help lead the way in developing positive scientific discoveries, not only to benefit the market place but also for the health of the nation” said Dave Tapolczay, CEO of MRC Technology

Notable outputs of the fund include the formation of new companies to work on disease targets where there remains high medical need, medical devices to diagnose cancer and the creation of specialised jobs. Investment totalling £5.7 million has been generated including funding from Pfizer, the world’s largest private biomedical research organisation.

MRCT Contact Information
Dr Lorraine Anderson
Development Gap Fund
MRC Technology
1-3 Burtonhole Lane
Mill Hill
London. NW7 1AD
UK.
Phone: +44 (0)131 311 7011
Fax: +44 (0)131 311 7025
E-mail: lorraine.anderson@tech.mrc.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

About Medical Research Council Technology (MRCT)
MRCT is the exclusive commercialisation catalyst for the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), working to translate cutting edge scientific discoveries into commercial products. MRCT bridges the gap between innovative basic science and making medicine. By providing both chemical tools and therapeutic antibody candidates, we give pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies new starting points for drug discovery and development, based on MRC advances in science.

About Development Gap Fund (DGF)
The Development Gap Fund is ‘pre-seed’ money, operating at the earliest possible stage of technology transfer. It is intended to strengthen new patent filings or to support the applications of patents from good, commercially interesting, ideas. The awards from this fund will be for projects that are governed by commercial rather than scientific potential, and so would not usually be funded by the MRC of academic grants. The projects will also be actively managed by MRC Technology to meet technical and commercial objectives.