Summit, a biotech spin-out from Oxford University, has received £2.4m ($3.18m) for trials into treatment of Duchene muscular dystrophy (DMD) as part of the UK’s £26m Biomedical Catalyst Fund.
The funding is a turn of fortunes for the struggling Didcot-based spin-out, which saw its headcount axed from 40 to 13 during the UK’s recession. It has since returned to 20.
DMD is a fatal muscle-wasting condition which currently affects around 1,500 young men in the UK who are not expected to live past their late 20s. Summit’s SMT C1100 product hopes to change that. The company is also developing another drug to treat hospital superbug C. Difficile. Both drugs are currently heading for trials.
Summit chief executive Glyn Edwards said: “This award recognises the promise of SMT C1100 as a life-changing drug for boys with this devastating disease.”
Commenting on Summit’s recent troubles, Edwards added: “It takes ten years or longer to develop a new drug. Companies always need money to get to the next stage and that became more difficult. We had to shut our chemistry labs to concentrate on developing our two drugs, but fortunately the whole team was able to move to another company, Carbosynth, which also moved into our labs.”
