Case Studies

iXscient limited

76 Popes Grove

Twickenham

Middlesex

TW1 4JX

UK

 

Tel: +44 (0)20 8892 7809

Fax: +44 (0)20 8892 7809

Email: nickw@ixscient.com

iXscient Limited

Innovation

Excellence

Science

Technology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based around an innovative silicon microneedle developed for a cell injection project, the iXscient team developed a proposal for a microfluidic, biomimetic, silk spinning process. They approached Nexia Biotechnologies, and developed a proposal for a microfluidic experimental spinning rig. However at the same time an association was established with Professor Volrath and Dr Knight at Oxford University, world experts on spider silk spinning. They had already produced a patent application for biomimetic silk spinning and, in collaboration, this was filed. Together they approached ISIS Innovations at Oxford University and Technostart, a German VC company, and organised funding for a new start-up company - Spinox limited. The iXscient team wrote the business plan, helped negotiate the company startup terms and organised, managed and delivered the programme of work developing the chemical interfaces and microfluidic device capable of biomimetic silk spinning. The programme succeeded in spinning silk from appropriate feedstock materials. Spinox continues as a materials development company.

Setting up of Spinox Limited (Biomimetic Spider Silk Spinning) and organising microfluidic biomimetic silk spinning programme

Design, development, licensing and technology transfer of a neural-network based text data mining algorithm suite

Developing on from neural network techniques used for customer segmentation, and in response to a tender from ESRIN - the European Space Agency's research centre in Frascati, Italy which had then a responsibility for document search - iXscient team designed a set of integrated neural-network based information retrieval and categorisation concepts and included these in a winning proposal to ESA. In the resulting funded research programme these concepts were implemented and tested and a subset developed into a successful prototype. This prototype

· was fully integrated with the Fulcrum inverted index text retrieval engine FulText

· was capable of searching documents based on either an explicit or an implicit query expansion process which used independent Component Analysis to generate underlying concept vectors for each document

· was capable of automatically building  subject-based hierarchies for a large document collection and subsequently assigning documents into this subject

· could categorise documents into user defined subjects based on a training set of positive and negative examples

 

The prototype was further developed in programmes for military intelligence and  then successfully licensed to Fulcrum Inc. in a $Canadian multi million licensing and technology transfer deal.

 

iXscient staff then moved to Canada and successfully ran the software team that integrated the code into Fulcrum's flagship product - Fulcrum Knowledge Network. During this time Fulcrum was acquired initially by PCDocs and then PCDocsFulcrum was itself acquired by Hummingbird. The software is now sold as the Knowledge Manager Workstation (a stand alone application for building the categorisation) and as the Enterprise Table of Contents (ETOC) feature of Hummingbird Executive Information Portal.

Developing, Writing  and Submitting EU IST-NMP Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP) NAS-SAP: Nano Arrayed Systems based on Self Assembling Proteins

Based on a detailed understanding of nanoarrays and bionanotechnology iXscient was able to set up and collaborate with a small consortium of European academics and companies to structure a coherent vision of using biological nanoarrays, including spore coat proteins and S-proteins, to construct a flexible, generic,  self organising manufacturing system for applications from novel immunogens, including immuno surfaces and immuno-coated liposomes, through arrayed sensors to industrial applications of structured metallic deposited nanosurfaces.

The proposal was written, submitted and the project was funded.