“Sci-Tech Daresbury is a great site to be on it because it allows a small company to have a big company feel about it.”
That’s according to Jan Rogers, chief scientific officer at Arcis Biotechnology, who feels a supportive spirit has been an important factor in the business’s success since locating to Sci-Tech Daresbury in 2010, as a team of three.
She said: “The whole ethos here allows the flexibility of growth patterns and as we have expanded to 10 people, Sci-Tech Daresbury’s close collaboration has accommodated our very specific needs.”
Arcis Biotechnology has developed a fast and convenient nucleic acid sample preparation for analysis and identification for infectious diseases. The complete, ready-to-use system enables a sample’s DNA or RNA to be amplified in under three minutes. Their product, Arcis, has the potential for massive impact across the world, especially in remote places.
From the beginning the opportunity to collaborate at Sci-Tech Daresbury has been vital for Arcis Biotechnology and it’s helping them to achieve their ambitions.
Jan said: “To start off you don’t have to make your own lab investment, because you can use the equipment that’s here. Even as we have built our own labs up in the Innovation Technology Access Centre, we benefit from its ISO accreditation and risk assessment procedures. All this massively reduces costs and helps a company land and start work immediately.”
Arcis Biotechnology also works extensively with design consultancy, 4D Products and health economics and business intelligence specialists, HCD Economics with all three located at the campus’s Innovation Centre.
They have worked with the University of Liverpool on studies to prove the effectiveness of their product, while the University of Manchester has provided a “brilliant” biochemistry student for a year-long industrial placement.
The company has also enjoyed Sci-Tech Daresbury’s extensive networking programme allowing it to work with sector-similar companies whether they are on campus or not, like Wirral-based diagnostics company, BioFortuna.
Jan said: “Without this collaboration it would so much harder. Collaboration has helped us to deliver our products and systems faster and with everything in place here is allows us just to focus on what we need to do without distraction.”
