13 minute read
Selected portfolio companies
MICROBIOTICA
CIC has been a great partner! In particular, I have really appreciated the personal touch. This has been a new area for me, and I have valued the opportunity to talk through the process about what to expect as an academic starting a new business and to talk through the challenges and pitfalls with someone that I trust. CIC has been with us through the good and the bad and I have really valued their support.
DR TREVOR LAWLEY
AOur goal from the very beginning of setting up Microbiotica has been to make medicines out of poop that can improve health and cure disease. In the early days of my academic research, we saw clear potential in infectious diseases but as time has gone on the vision for potential benefit has continually expanded. Microbiotica’s lead programs in inflammatory bowel disease and improving response to immuno-oncology treatments are just two examples of how we believe defined bacteriotherapies have the potential to treat a wide range of conditions.
QWHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/TECHNOLOGY?
AIt was more bringing together a collection of skills and technologies that together optimises our understanding of the microbiome and how to influence it positively. My group at the Sanger Institute had particular insights around genomic sequencing, culturing, developing disease-specific algorithms and bioinformatics. Bringing these things together with a clear goal of developing novel medicines, we believe, gives us a differentiated offering.
Translating precision in microbiome science into transformative medicines and biomarkers
QWHAT IS THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY?
AWe found the technology very exciting, but the opportunity for us was to help shape microbiome therapeutics based on strong science. As mentioned, our first focus was on infectious disease, but this soon widened. I remember well a meeting with Cancer Research UK, which really opened my eyes to the breadth of benefits that microbiome therapeutics could potentially bring and from then I believe my ambitions expanded.
QHOW DO YOU MEASURE PROGRESS?
AMicrobiotica has been on a journey to the point where we now have two candidates (for inflammatory bowel disease and immuno-oncology) in pre-clinical development with plans to enter the clinic next year. For me, the meetings with the regulatory authorities was a real milestone. Hearing their positive feedback and the realisation that we have a real product was very important to me. The recent fund-raising (Microbiotica’s £50 million Series B) was also a great endorsement of the work that we are doing. Q WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO DATE?
AEverything is a challenge! We are innovators in this space and a lot of what we are doing is novel and new challenges need to be constantly overcome. Meeting the rigorous specification standards in CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control) to regulatory standards for complex products with novel bugs stands out as a particular area where Microbiotica has devoted a lot of resources.
For me personally, starting Microbiotica has been an enriching experience, but it has been a steep learning curve. I have learnt a lot particularly around the importance of surrounding myself with the best people, time management and delegating.
QWHAT IS NEXT?
AWe are really excited to be entering the clinic next year with our first two products. Defined bacteriotherapies have the potential to be transformational in providing a novel approach to address a wide range of diseases. We set up the company to try and improve human health and cure disease and we now have the opportunity to try and fulfil this ambition.
PRETZEL THERAPEUTICS
CIC has been an important part of the whole Cambridge ecosystem which is super‑supportive for early‑stage companies. In the early days of spinning out my technology, Cambridge Enterprise was an invaluable source of knowledge and advice and CIC has complemented this input as the company has grown.
DR MICHAL MINCZUK
AMy academic research group is aiming to unravel the genetic links between mitochondrial gene regulation and human disease with the aim of using mitochondrial genome engineering to develop future therapies. Diseases associated with specific disorders within the mitochondria affect one in 5,000 people and currently there are no curative treatments. Mitochondrial disorders also impact a wide range of chronic conditions including neurodegeneration, cancer and healthy aging. The vision behind Pretzel Therapeutics is to develop novel treatments for both rare and common conditions associated with mitochondrial dysfunction.
QWHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/TECHNOLOGY?
APretzel Therapeutics is following two specific approaches. Firstly, through precision medicine technology we can find specific mutations within the mitochondrial DNA associated with disease with the aim of correcting the mutation with the aim of removing the cause of the disease. This has the potential to benefit specific rare diseases. Secondly, we have a number of small molecule discovery programmes that address validated targets associated with rare and common diseases.
Our specific approach is to target very closely the source of the mitochondrial dysfunction, specifically the mitochondrial DNA rather than the downstream, secondary effects of the mitochondrial dysfunction.
Developing treatments to address the genetic roots of mitochondrial dysfunction
QWHAT IS THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY?
AOne in 5,000 people in the population have specific mutations with their mitochondrial or nuclear DNA associated with specific mitochondria-related condition impacting their health and well-being. Currently, there are no treatment options for these patients; our precision approaches aim to address these conditions. More widely, with an aging population. the impact of neurodegeneration and diseases of aging affects an increasingly large number of people where there are no effective treatments.
QHOW DO YOU MEASURE PROGRESS?
AAll that we do at Pretzel Therapeutics is aimed at improving human health. When we see products that we develop that have a positive impact on human health, then we will know that we are making progress. Q WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO DATE?
AMitochondrial function is complex and dysfunction results in heterogeneous, multi-organ conditions. For both precision medicine approaches as well as small molecules effective delivery to the affected organs is a particular challenge.
QWHAT IS NEXT?
AWe are focused on our aim of developing new medicines for conditions of unmet medical need. We have a great foundation on which to build but we are fully conscious of the challenges and the need for hard work to fulfil our vision.
RIVER LANE
Successfully spinning out a company from a university (in my case Cambridge University), transitioning from a start‑up to a scale‑up, and raising subsequent rounds of investment have been critical steps in our journey so far. CIC has played a fundamental role in helping us successfully navigate each of these opportunities.
STEVE BRIERLEY
AQuantum computers do not promise an improvement over the world’s most powerful computers today. Rather, they promise a whole new computing paradigm. By mirroring the quantum mechanical properties of nature and the universe, quantum computers offer the possibility of solving complex problems in fields such as material science, clean energy and drug discovery that are unsolvable today. But quantum computers of the scale, stability and accuracy to achieve this don’t yet exist. Further breakthroughs in science, engineering and applications are still required. Our mission is to make quantum computing useful far sooner than previously imaginable, enabling an era of human progress as significant as the digital and industrial revolutions.
QWHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/TECHNOLOGY?
AEvery type of computer needs an operating system to manage complexity for the user. We’re building Deltaflow.OS, the operating system (OS) for quantum computers Uniquely, we’re engineering Deltaflow.OS to holistically tackle quantum computing’s defining challenge – data errors. Such errors are simply unavoidable due to the inherent instability of the quantum bits (aka qubits) that process and store information on a quantum computer. Correcting these errors at the scale and speed required is one of the most complex technical challenges mankind has ever sought to tackle. This is where we are focused and making strong progress.
QWHAT IS THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY? Q WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO DATE?
AThe quantum computing market could create value of between $450 and $850 billion in the next 15–30 years, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG, July 2021). By creating an operating system at the core of the whole quantum computing ecosystem, we can capture a considerable proportion of that value.
QHOW DO YOU MEASURE PROGRESS?
AAs with any business, revenue and pipeline today are important markers of progress. On those fronts we are doing well, capturing 25% of the UK’s total commercial value in quantum computing today. And we are now starting to make similar inroads in the US too. For the medium to longer term, partnerships with quantum computer hardware companies and academic labs is our most critical metric. Today, we partner with about 30% of these globally. Our pipeline takes us to about 60%. Our long-term goal is to reach 80%. A Talent. Acquiring, retaining, growing and blending the right mix of skills is absolutely critical for any growing technology business. In our field, it’s existential. In quantum error correction, for example, there’s a total global talent pool of no more than a few hundred physicists, mathematicians, engineers and academics in this field. So far, we’ve been successful at building teams with the right mix of these skills. This has involved both recruitment of existing talent and growth of next generation talent from within via intern, graduate and development schemes. Continued success in this area will be a key enabler of our success going forward.
QWHAT IS NEXT?
AThe next phase for Riverlane is to internationalise our operations, customer base and culture. In 2022 and 2023, our focus is on expanding into North America.
SALIENCE
CIC has been tremendously supportive, not least by leading our $11.5m seed with Oxford Enterprise Sciences. The primary value‑add of working with CIC has been the deep experience of the team in scaling deeptech companies like Salience and the strength of their network. It has given us a tremendous commercial jump start. I would recommend the team to any deeptech founder who wants to plug into the wider deeptech ecosystem and who is looking for investors with vision.
VAYSH KEWADA
AThe compute requirements of AI double every three to four months, as the world needs ever-faster chips to grow AI capability. The current semiconductor industry cannot keep pace with this demand. What is required now is not further incremental innovations on transistor technology or chip architecture. We need a paradigm shift in the way we compute – one that delivers an immediate step change in performance and speed, while also offering a long-term future roadmap of scaling improvements. That is what we aim to deliver at Salience Labs.
Salience Labs was spun out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021, to commercialise an ultra-high-speed chip for AI. We are building a multi-chip processor that packages a photonics chip together with standard electronics. By using light to execute operations, we can deliver massively parallel processing performance – bringing high-speed computes to a wide array of new and existing AI applications.
QWHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/TECHNOLOGY?
AWhile other photonic chip companies execute operations in the phase of light, we use a proprietary amplitude-based approach to photonics, resulting in dense computing chips clocking at tens of GHz. Our unique approach allows us to leverage a multi-chip design, with the photonic processing mapping directly on top of the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM). This novel “on-memory compute” architecture delivers order of magnitude performance improvement. It can also be adapted to the application-specific requirements of different market verticals, making it ideal for realising AI use-cases in communications, robotics, vision systems, healthcare and other data workloads.
The photonic computing company
QWHAT IS THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY?
AThe demand for AI compute doubles every 3.5 months. The industry is growing fast, and so the need of the market now is for a technological innovation to arise that can bring about an immediate stepchange in the way we compute. By leveraging our unique approach to multi-chip design, we are delivering to the market a huge jump in processing performance and bringing these high-speed processors to a variety of new and existing AI processes and applications.
QHOW DO YOU MEASURE PROGRESS?
AWe originally spun-out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021 and have just closed our seed round of $11.5 million from a number of leading VCs including Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises, with participation from semiconductor industry leader Jala Bagherli, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor. Since closing our seed round, our focus has been on the tape out of our next test chip, developing our software models and packaging solutions. We are also building relationships with customers across a range of market verticals. Q WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO DATE?
AAttracting world-class talent is always front-of-mind for CEOs of high-growth companies. We have been able to bring on board an exemplary team, many of whom come from a distinguished semiconductor background. They’ve worked on standard electronic chips for most of their career, and this is their first role at a photonic compute company. They join Salience because we offer them the chance to work in an entirely new compute domain – photonics – while still leveraging all the experience and insight they have accumulated in their previous work. As with anything new, it is a hugely exciting opportunity but does require people to think creatively and look for new ways to solve these existing problems in the market. I anticipate many more people will make this leap into novel chip architecture as the market matures and production ramps up over the next one to two years. Q WHAT IS NEXT?
AWe are at a very interesting point in time where the industry is recognising the potential of silicon photonic compute to solve the tremendous processing bottleneck currently hampering AI growth. We are talking to customers across a range of market verticals who are excited about the performance improvements our chips will offer and the new AI processes and applications this will enable. They are attracted by technology’s ability to adapt to their application-specific requirements and our ability to deliver the ultra-fast speed of photonics, the flexibility of electronics and the manufacturability of CMOS. Companies and analysts are updating their roadmaps because they recognise we are about to enter a new era of processing – where thanks to photonics – supercompute AI becomes truly ubiquitous.
