Epistem, the UK biotechnology and personalized medicine company with expertise in skin biology and delivery of dermatological testing services, and ScandiDerma, a Norwegian company with expertise in developing new dermatological ingredients from biomass, today announced that they aim to develop a new in vitro human living skin equivalent model for testing inflammatory responses.
This is a novel method that will add to the field of dermatological testing as a whole and help create more activity in extracting high value compounds from biomass. The collaboration is made possible through the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, and Innovation Norway following a successful application for funding in the “Sustainable high value chemical manufacture through industrial biotechnology” competition.
Matthew Walls, Epistem CEO commented:
The collaboration with ScandiDerma presents an exciting opportunity to leverage Epistem’s strong scientific background in skin biology and inflammation to address the shortage of robust human dermatology models for testing inflammatory responses.
Ingebjørg Pernille Nedal, CEO ScandiDerma said:
For ScandiDerma this is an important milestone in building up our competence around test-systems and how to rapidly determine good lead candidates from our bioprospecting activities.
The project will last from May 2013 to March 2014 and will run from the project leader Epistem’s facilities in Manchester UK and ScandiDerma’s facilities in Barents Biocenter, Tromsø, Norway.
For further information please visit http://www.epistem.co.uk or contact:
| Dr Kathleen Mackay Public Relations Epistem plc |
T: +44 (0)161 606 7258 M: +44 (0) 7979 577886 E: [email protected] |
