“The recognition and requirement for Precision Medicine has questioned the historic practice of using genomic approaches almost exclusively in drug development and patient management. As a consequence there has been increasing acceptance of the inclusion of complementary proteomics approaches and these have been driving considerable interest and activity in our biomarker services business. The current year started well with a strong order book, increasing amounts of repeat business and a growing pipeline in biomarker services. With the level of SysQuant® /TMTcalibrator™ production doubled the increased capacity is being fully utilised at a time when the volume of customer enquiries is rising on a monthly basis and we are looking to further expand the sales team. Current indications point to a strong performance in 2016.
We have been actively engaged with prospective licensing partners in Alzheimer’s disease using the compelling results announced in November from a second and different AD model to test our CK1d compounds that mimicked the effects of the previous study, again successfully reducing the level of tau phosphorylation. Following receipt of the analysis from the next cohort of patients with MCI/AD from KCL, we anticipate that the proposed 10 protein panel will be finalised and developed into a panel test later in the year. It is intended that the test will be out-licensed non-exclusively.