Scottish company taking years off drug development

A Scottish clinical development company is redefining early stage development, taking years off the time it takes for new life improving treatments to become available to patients.

BDD Pharma Ltd – based at BioCity Glasgow, one of two Pioneer Group sites in Scotland – has also developed it’s own, in-house technologies. One one of them – OralogiK™ – is a unique patented drug delivery tablet system that enables drugs to be release inside the body at the optimum time, hours after taking the tablets.

This means that children on medication for ADHD, for example, will not need multiple doses throughout the day, while their parents will not have to worry that they are not taking them when they go to school.

OralogiK™ is also being developed in an anti-inflammatory drug to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

“Currently,” said BDD CEO Carol Thomson, “you take your drug when you wake up in the morning, but it takes about an hour or so to kick in. In that period you can’t even tie your shoelaces because you’re in so much pain. So we have developed a tabled that can be taken before you go to bed. It releases while you’re asleep, at the right time before waking, and then of course you wake up pain and stiffness free.”

BDD is in advances development of several OralogiK™ products which have gone – or are going – through clinical studies, with the ADHD treatment set to be the first available next year.

“We are excited that we have a solid pipeline of products moving closer to being on the market and making a real difference to patients” said Carol.

With the opening of the company’s new £2m GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) laboratory at BioCity, she said BDD will be able to further speed up the development of future OralogiK™ and modified release products. “We will no longer have to outsource the scale-up, so it’s going to be very much in our hands, and we will be able to keep manufacturing in Scotland, rather than sending it abroad.”

The new lab was financed by existing investors, led by angel investment syndicate Archangels, alongside Scottish Enterprise and new investor, British Business Bank.

To mark its opening and BDD’s 25th birthday, people, who have supported the company from it’s origins at the University of Strathclyde, were invited to share a small celebration at BioCity Glasgow.

BDD now employs more than 35 staff at both it’s formulation site in BioCity and it’s clinical site at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and anticipates further growth.

It describes itself as a global drug development company, with hundreds of clients around the world – from startups to the biggest pharmaceutical businesses – and has applied successful, lead manufacturing methods from other industries to it’s processes.

Commercial Director Calum Stevens said Lead Clinical Development™ will accelerate it’s delivery of new treatments.

“Traditionally, people would have to go and find someone to fix their formulation, someone to do the GMP manufacture and someone to take on the clinical work. And they would all have minimum quantities, minimum orders, lengthy timescales and would not communicate effectively with each other,’ he explained. “So instead of that siloed approach, we offer all of this under one roof. It means that we can move with great flexibility and great rapidity between these stages so that it’s just much less for our clients to worry about.”

Gerry McCarron, an account manage from Scottish Enterprise, who has worked with the company for a decade, described BDD as a “Scottish success story.”

He added: “Scottish Enterprise supports businesses to scale up through innovation and investment, with life sciences being an area where we see huge potential for high growth.

“We are backing ambitious companies like BDD Pharma to develop and deliver ground breaking solutions to real world problems, in high quality labs, in turn attracting other businesses to tap into that supply chain and find their home in Scotland too. It is fantastic to see the new facility at BioCity, which looks set to be an exciting hub for life sciences in Glasgow.”

John Mackenzie, Director (Scotland) at Pioneer Group – which has Edinburgh Technopole as well as BioCity Glasgow in its portfolio – said: “It is great to see a company with it’s roots in Scotland making such an impact on the national and international stage. As well as being part of our successful innovation eco-system of our like-minded businesses, Pioneer has supported BDD through investment as well as our Accelerator Programme.”

BDD is one of 20 life science businesses at BioCity, a 26 acre site 13 miles east of Glasgow. During the past 18 months Pioneer has spent around £2m on improvements to buildings, infrastructure, landscaping and services for laboratories. Planning permission is in place for a further 73,000 sq. ft development.