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Promega, a leading manufacturer of products for the life sciences industry, has developed CRISPR-generated Knock-In Reporter Cell Lines containing a proprietary, small bioluminescent tag, which can reduce drug development lead times by up to 12 months.

The breakthrough will not only accelerate products to market, but also may significantly improve the success rate of biotech businesses. A contributing factor to the relatively high (approximately one third) failure rate of biotech startups is that, at a high burn rate of their funds, they run out of money before they achieve sufficient progress to attract second round funding.  

Industry figures from a key financial services provider to the Biotech industry bear this out. In the US market, during the 18-month period, between 1st July 2020 and 31st December 2021, 356 biotech companies raised Series A funding. However, only 102 of the Biotech companies announced a Series B in 2022. Over two-thirds of startups last year struggled to progress past infancy at a potential cost of £2.3 billion to investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs.

Philip Hargreaves Ph.D, Director of Strategic Marketing & Business Development at Promega UK, comments: “The field of drug discovery is hugely competitive, with substantial rewards for those businesses than can show progress, transitioning from an early-stage platform to a commercialised product. However, they’re typically spending between £100k and £500k a month. For them, time is of the essence. Biotechs need to be able to demonstrate that their idea is viable before they run out of financial runway.”

CRISPR-generated Knock-In Reporter Cell Lines can take up to 12 months to develop, a period which could burn up to £6 million worth of cash. Using Promega’s optimised, ready-to-use products, startups can begin work with them immediately upon receipt. Consequently, the time taken to commercialise the biotech’s lead compounds or biologic entities is significantly shortened.

Hargreaves continues: “It is extremely costly and, perhaps more importantly, time-consuming for any pharma or biotech company to develop the required range of consistent, highly quality controlled, flexible knock-in cell lines with the desired reporter tag for their development needs. We’re massively reducing these constraints by offering a proven, ready-to-go product. It’s a real breakthrough.

In addition to accelerating the development process, Promega’s CRISPR-generated Knock-In Reporter Cell Lines free up R&D resource so that biotechs can look at a broader range of target molecules and projects, reducing and spreading their risk.   

Hargreaves concludes, “We’re giving biotechs the gift of time. By the time their Series A funding runs out, a company using our technology should be in a much better position. They’re more likely to have hit key milestones, which fosters that all-important trust amongst investors, and the biotech is much more likely to have something tangible in the pipeline for investors to get excited about.”

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