Nottingham bioscience business, CrossGen Ltd, has scooped the Best New Business Plan Award at the First Enterprise Business Agency (FEBA) Ethnic Minority Awards which were held recently.

CrossGen Ltd, which supplies software application tools to enable gene expression data analysis, impressed the judges with a detailed business plan that clearly identified and addressed all of the main components of the process going forward.

CrossGen Ltd uses both wet and computational science principles to develop cross-species gene expression technology for biomedical applications in drug development. Specifically, the CrossGen technology (patent pending) aims to reduce genetic variation between laboratory species and humans, which is an essential aspect of drug toxicity to humans.  The technology has the potential of reducing the number of animals used in experimentation since only cell culture techniques are employed rather than whole animals.

CrossGen Director and Molecular Biologist Dr John Okyere received his prize from award category sponsor EnterpriseLoans East Midlands, the loan fund established by the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), and managed by FEBA which helps regional entrepreneurs to raise finance for new and existing ventures.

Speaking at the event, which celebrates the achievements and contributions of East Midlands business and entrepreneurs in the local ethnic minority sector, Dr Okyere said:

“This award is a significant endorsement of our business model. The complexity of the multidisciplinary technology was a challenge in developing a business plan that was readable to the investor. Support from business professionals with experience in the sector was sourced through Connect Midlands. The business skills I developed through the BioEntrepreneur School were very useful in bringing together the business and the science to develop the business model.”

John O’Reilly, emda’s Business Support Director, added: “The entries were judged on how each plan would make a meaningful contribution to the business, as well as identifying the potential customers which may be attracted to the products or services that they offer. CrossGen’s business plan explained the principles of what is a quite complex subject in layman’s terms and there was a very clear understanding of the business model and what they were aiming to do.”

Cross Gen Ltd is based at BioCity in Nottingham. It secured funding from an Enterprise Loan in June 2008 and since then has recruited a marketing firm to handle the company’s advertising, as well as a sales consultant.

ENDS

Issued on behalf of emda by lava. For further information please contact
Matt, Stuart or Louise at lava on 01522 842 800 / 07870 567 968 or matt@lavapr.co.uk / stuart@lavapr.co.uk / louise@lavapr.co.uk

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