BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - ITI Life Sciences is investing £30 million (US$57 million) of public money in the £97.5 million formation of Stirling Medical Solutions Ltd., a new company that will use novel biomarkers as the basis of home-use diagnostic tests for monitoring chronic diseases.

The balance of the investment will come from Inverness Medical Innovations (IMI) Inc., of Waltham, Mass., which plans to invest £37.5 million in its R&D program and £30 million on manufacturing and commercialization. The facility, to be based in Stirling, Scotland, will create 500 jobs.

It is the third and the largest investment by Edinburgh-based ITI, an independent company with £150 million of public money to invest in developing life sciences in Scotland.

Last month it announced a £3.7 million investment to bring together three Scottish companies to develop cell-based screening systems, and a £5.5 million program bringing together CXR Biosciences, of Dundee, Scotland, and Artemis Pharmaceuticals, of Cologne, Germany, to develop predictive screens for preclinical drug development.

ITI's investments are based on an assessment of market opportunities that would stimulate Scotland's life sciences sector. It identified biomarkers as an important area and was looking for suitable partners to pull a program together. IMI was planning an international expansion and had Scotland on its list of possible locations.

"At first blush, this may look like a traditional soft grant to attract inward investment," John Chiplin, CEO of ITI Life Sciences, told BioWorld International. "But when you pull back the layers of the onion skin, there is much more to it than that."

IMI will develop a new diagnostic platform for use in patient-administered tests, and while the U.S. company will own all the intellectual property in health care ITI Life Sciences will have rights in all other markets, including biodefense, environmental monitoring and food testing. It intends to use that as the foundation of a series of vertical market ventures, pulling in other partners and expertise.

"We have got access to key components of IMI's technology and have full rights to commercialize it outside health care," Chiplin said. The initial focus will be on developing tests for cardiovascular disease, a major cause of ill health in Scotland.