FRAME SHIFT BIO-INCUBATOR
The Milner Therapeutics Institute provides space for start-ups and SMEs through the Frame Shift Bio-incubator. Frame Shift provides a unique environment for companies to work side-by-side with startups, pharma and academic scientists in an ecosystem physically and culturally designed to spark collaboration and entrepreneurship. Frame Shift has a particular focus on R&D intensive companies working in areas related to the institute’s expertise (e.g. functional genomics, early target discovery, therapeutics). Frame Shift complements other initiatives such as the Start Codon Venture Builder, providing flexible options for start-up companies at different stages in their development.
Frame Shift began with the successful model of companies such as Rockend Ltd (now Xap Therapeutics), who were located in the institute for two years before expanding into another site. Companies in the incubator have access to space in the Milner environment for 24 months to conduct critical R&D work and successfully grow so that they are ready to scale-up at one of the science parks in Cambridge.
In November 2023 the Frame Shift Bio-incubator opened a second hub in Cambridge City Centre, based at the Gurdon Institute. The Frame Shift – City Centre hub allows further growth for selected companies before they secure further funding and move to their own lab space. The first company to move across to the Frame Shift – City Centre hub was Shift Bioscience. The existing hub at the Milner Institute is now called the Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub.
If you wish to be considered for lab space, please fill in this short form to join our waiting list.
Benefits for companies in the Frame Shift Bio-incubator:
- Potential for interactions with clinicians, researchers and drug discovery scientists at the University and on the biomedical campus.
- Advice and research input from the Milner’s in-house research groups.
- Know-how and expertise of representatives of the 12 pharma companies in our Consortium.
- Membership to an exclusive network of 70+ affiliated global pharma and biotech companies, and access to Milner internal and external events, including the annual Milner Therapeutics Symposium and Pitch Event.
- Access to our Venture Partner Network, mentors, business experts, and masterclasses.
Frame Shift Companies
You can read more about our Frame Shift companies below, and find their current job opportunities on our Careers Page. For further information on space in the bio-incubator, please email our Head of Entrepreneurship Alexandra Huener.
AVATRIAL
HEALTHSPAN BIOTICS
VIROTHERA
CLOCK.BIO
IMMUTRIN
VIEW ALUMNI PAGE
COSYNE THERAPEUTICS
SHIFT BIOSCIENCE
EPITOPEA
TRIMTECH THERAPEUTICS
AVATRIAL
An unparalleled biomedical data universe
Avatrial aims to assemble the world’s most comprehensive and scalable multi-dimensional health and disease dataset and interrogate it to transform our understanding of how cancer begins, to improve diagnosis and to develop transformative therapies. In disease, Avatrial will routinely collect healthy tissue, cancer tissue and blood samples from patients undergoing surgery and perform state-of-the-art deep multi-omic characterisation of the samples. The data will be linked with regularly-updated clinical data for all patients. Avatrial will crowdsource longitudinal socio-demographic, environmental, behavioural, physiological (e.g., from wearables) and multi-omic (e.g., from blood, urine and saliva samples) data across ages and races.
Avatrial has obtained the expertise, infrastructure, regulatory approvals, contracts and logistic solutions to generate these data as a matter of routine and in a scalable manner. Avatrial is seeking partners to join its mission to deliver a paradigm shift in oncology discovery and therapeutics by leveraging and rapidly expanding unprecedented access to healthy and diseased human tissue and data.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: Professor Kourosh Saeb-Parsy
| kourosh.saeb-parsy@avatrial.life | avatrial.life
Kourosh Saeb-Parsy
CLOCK.BIO
Investigating the repair mechanisms of stem cells to better treat age-related diseases
Clock.bio is a healthspan/longevity venture that aims to identify novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of age-related disease. Using iPSCs, a proprietary aging-model, and unbiased CRISPR screens, we have validated a way to read genetically encoded rejuvenation programs in human cells.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: Markus Gstöttner | info@clock.bio | Clock.bio
Markus Gstöttner
COSYNE THERAPEUTICS
Transforming drug discovery through polymathic AI
CoSyne Therapeutics is a computational drug target discovery company based in London and Cambridge. The company’s mission is to develop next generation therapeutics to help patients with devastating diseases. Their first goal is to cure brain cancer.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: info@cosyne.com | cosyne.com
Louwai Muhammed
EPITOPEA
Revealing the true targets for next generation immunotherapies
Epitopea is a new transatlantic cancer-immunotherapeutics company with operations in Cambridge and Montreal. The company builds on the recent discovery of an abundant new class of tumour-specific antigen. The company aims to discover additional antigens and prioritise the most promising for exploitation via multiple modalities to achieve our goal: guiding the adaptive immune system to control cancer.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: info@epitopea.com | epitopea.com
Jon Moore
HEALTHSPAN BIOTICS
Boosting brain health using nature-inspired methods
Healthspan Biotics use AI and laboratory experiments to identify how certain individuals protect themselves against brain-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. They have identified a novel pathway that contributes to the health of neurons and found a beneficial bacteria from our gut that can boost this pathway to promote neuronal health.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: Yizhou Yu | yizhou@healthspanbiotics.com
Yizhou Yu
IMMUTRIN
Developing transformative antibody treatments for amyloidosis
Amyloidosis is a group of rare but very serious, usually fatal diseases caused by the aggregation of body’s own proteins to form amyloid deposits in vital organs. Immutrin Ltd is a Cambridge-based biotech company that is generating transformative antibody treatments for systemic and local amyloidosis.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: Mihriban Tuna | info@immutrin.com
Mihriban Tuna
SHIFT BIOSCIENCE LTD
Unlocking safe rejuvenation with deep learning models
Shift Bioscience, cofounded by Daniel Ives, is developing safer drug targets for cellular rejuvenation by the application of machine-learning ‘driver’ clocks to cell reprogramming. Daniel (CEO) helped guide Brendan Swain (CSO) to develop an accurate single cell ageing clock, through the application of machine learning approaches to gene expression data. This enabled a CRISPR screen for ageing, but more excitingly, the constituent genes making up the clock were enriched for functional ‘drivers’ of ageing phenotypes, suggesting a causal or ‘driver’ clock methodology. This methodology was then applied to a powerful but dangerous cellular rejuvenation paradigm (cell reprogramming with pluripotent factors OSKM), which identified putative drug targets for safe rejuvenation. Shift is now on the cusp of validating these drug targets (more detail here).
Based at: Frame Shift – City Centre hub
Contact: hello@shiftbioscience.com | shiftbioscience.com
Daniel Ives
TRIMTECH THERAPEUTICS
Neurodegenerative diseases affect more than 50 million people worldwide and are now the leading cause of death for both men and women in the UK. These diseases, which include Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s, are caused by protein aggregation inside cells.
TRIMTECH’s unique technology targets and degrades aggregated proteins, without affecting non-aggregated forms, offering a solution that is both potent and offers outstanding safety.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: nicki@trimtechtherapeutics.com | TRIMTECH Therapeutics
Nicki Thompson
VIROTHERA
Advancing gene immune therapeutics for infections, cancer and autoimmune disease
Virothera (formerly Virokine Therapeutics), founded by Dr Ursula Gompels, is engineering novel virus inspired human gene immunotherapy for new cures for infections, autoimmune disease and cancer. Our proprietary technologies can solve the problem of in vivo immune cell targeting, utilising gene expression of novel cell membrane antigen complexes and adapted human chemokines, regulators of immune cell delivery. Initially focused on virus infections, we show high protective efficacy for our first products in preclinical in vivo models. With rapid genomics discovery, we aim to re-code immunity for new treatments.
Based at: Frame Shift – Biomedical Campus hub
Contact: info@virothera.co.uk | virothera.co.uk
Ursula Gompels
