BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Abcam plc is to float on the Alternative Investment Market in London, raising £10 million (US$17.7 million) to further its ambition of becoming the largest supplier of antibodies for research.

The current catalogue lists around 17,000 antibodies, leaving the company some way to go to reach the 1 million-plus human antibodies with potential for use in research.

Cambridge-based Abcam is both a dotcom survivor and a dotcom success. Since its formation in 1998, it has sold exclusively over the Internet. Supporting technical data are updated daily on its website. More than 50 percent of sales are in the U.S., and the company has customers in more than 60 countries.

For the year ending June 30, the company reported sales of £12.1 million, and pretax profits of nearly £3 million. That's up from a profit of about £1.5 million on sales of £6.7 million in 2004. Abcam is forecasting sales of £18.5 million for the year ending June 2006.

The money raised would enable the company to expand its product range and to acquire new catalogues. The emergence of thousands of novel protein targets that has followed the sequencing of the human genome means the market for antibodies for use in research is growing.

Abcam has a collaboration with Purely Proteins Ltd., a fellow Cambridge company that manufactures proteins for use in research, for the production of therapeutically relevant proteins, paired with their corresponding antibodies.

Jonathan Milner, founder and CEO, said the growth in the role of antibodies in drug discovery and development created a significant opportunity to expand the company. "An IPO on AIM is the ideal mechanism by which we can take advantage of those opportunities, giving us the funds to deliver our vision of building the world's largest antibody resource," he said.

Milner founded the company with David Cleevely and Tony Kouzarides, and it is currently majority-owned by the three founders and the employees. In addition to the placing of £10 million of new shares, up to £10 million of existing ordinary shares are being placed.