Siemens and Scottish Enterprise accelerate technology start-ups in Scotland

A new framework agreement between Siemens Technology Accelerator and Scottish Enterprise will mean more opportunities for Scotland to commercialise ground-breaking technology, leading to more high growth start-up companies being created.

The agreement, announced last night (Thursday 9 February 2012) at the Scottish Enterprise Life Sciences Awards 2012 in Edinburgh, has already resulted in the formation of a new screening and drug discovery company in Scotland, called SESMOS Ltd.

The new life sciences spin-off company is the third Siemens Technology Accelerator-supported company to be created in Scotland, and will develop a novel technology that has the potential to radically reduce the time it takes the pharmaceutical sector to find new medicines.

Current forecasts estimate the market opportunity for new medicines to be approximately $10 billion per annum.

Lena Wilson, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, said, “This agreement with one of the world’s leading technology companies is great news for Scotland. By working with Siemens to commercialise its non-core technology, we can help intellectual assets to be brought to market, support the development of new Scottish high growth technology businesses and have a significant impact on the success of the Scottish economy.”

Rudolf Freytag, chief executive officer of Siemens Technology Accelerator adds, “With the creation of our third start-up company in Edinburgh, Scotland has become one of the major investment locations for us. We highly value the existing mix of excellent scientific and economic environment, highly-skilled people, good financing opportunities and quality of life. In the case of SESMOS we had the opportunity to combine an innovative Siemens sensor-chip with an exciting technology from the University of Edinburgh, creating a highly innovative company with great potential.”

Manfred Auer, Professor of Chemical and Translational Biology at the University of Edinburgh commented, “The collaboration with Siemens Technology Accelerator provides an ideal opportunity to enter the field of label free detection using our core chemical library technology. SESMOS Ltd will open the route to drug development for many scientists in Scottish Universities by allowing them to chemically validate their innovative target biology.”

The idea for SESMOS came after a meeting between the Siemens Technology Accelerator and Professor Auer which resulted in the realisation that the integration of Siemens sensor technology with miniaturised chemical screening performed by the University of Edinburgh could result in a robust, extremely rapid, and cost effective method of testing large collections of chemicals against hundreds of drug targets in the pharmaceutical sector.

Investment into SESMOS Ltd totals £1.5 million, with approximately fifty per cent funding from both Scottish Enterprise and Siemens. SESMOS will further develop and market test the technology over the next two years and will engage with investors to seek investment of £2 to £3 million, forecasting profitability within approximately four years.

Scottish Enterprise and Siemens Technology Accelerator are both committing experienced staff to support SESMOS until the management team is fully in place. An interim executive position at the company will be advertised soon on Talent Scotland.

As a large multinational corporation with existing in-house research and development facilities, Siemens has access to a range of highly innovative technologies which are not regarded as being ‘core’ to its company strategy. The Siemens Technology Accelerator was instigated more than 10 years ago to find new ways of taking these ‘non-core’ technologies to market.

One route to do this is through the creation of start-up companies. Previous examples of this route are Pyreos, based in Edinburgh and which started in 2008, and is proving to be a highly successful Scottish company specialising in infra-red sensor products. More recently, Odos Imaging was created which develops ultra-high-resolution 3D cameras.

As a consequence of this successful track record of activity in Scotland, Siemens Technology Accelerator and Scottish Enterprise are collaborating to set up the Founder Designate Programme. The Programme forms the backbone of the joint venture agreement, and aims to continue delivering economic benefit for Scotland through encouraging more start-ups by Siemens Technology Accelerator to be founded in Scotland with the aim to commercialise non-core Siemens technology.