ApconiX is Honoured with a King’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation 2025
ApconiX was founded by Ruth Roberts, Michael Morton and Richard Knight, colleagues with the drive and ambition to create a world-renowned drug safety company. The journey began with the idea to provide life science companies with access to high quality drug safety expertise, normally available only in large pharmaceutical companies. ApconiX has previously won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade in 2022 and a King’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade in 2024.
We were awarded a King's Award for Enterprise for Innovation for iSLA, an innovative assay which improves drug development safety and success rates. iSLA was developed over 3 years and is based on original open-source research carried out by our team in our laboratory. This team included Kimberly Louise Rockley who won the Bionow Rising Star Award in 2022 for her work in this field.
iSLA, the ApconiX in vitro Seizure Liability Assay, https://lnkd.in/ekN7x3tf predicts if a compound in drug discovery or development might cause seizures by measuring the electrical activity in human-derived neuronal stem cells (hiPSC) using microelectrode array (MEA) and by screening a panel of 15 seizure-associated ion channels using automated patch clamp electrophysiology.
There is a pressing need to develop new drugs to treat conditions such as cancer, arthritis and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease and Epilepsy.
Toxicity is a major challenge in drug research and development. A pharmaceutical company will invest 100s of millions to billions of pounds in a drug, only to fail in clinical trials. Identifying a compound that may cause seizure early could save billions, enabling those funds to be diverted to compounds more likely to succeed and save lives.
iSLA has the potential to make a significant contribution to reducing animal testing.
Professor Ruth Roberts, Director, and Co-founder of ApconiX commented, “Receiving the King’s Award is a tremendous honour and testament to the hard work, creativity and ambition of the whole team.”
The research was published in the Journal of Toxicological Sciences in October 2023:
Rockley K, Roberts R, Hannah Jennings, Karen Jones, Davis M, Levesque P, Morton M. An integrated approach for early in vitro seizure prediction utilizing hiPSC neurons and human ion channel assays. Toxicol Sci. 2023 Oct 30;196(1):126-140 https://lnkd.in/exeyaNDx Department for Business and Trade #drugsafety #drugdiscovery #KingsAwards
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