‘When I was two I was nearly new’ … with thanks to A. A. Milne for the line from his 1927 poem ‘Now we are Six’.Ten Bio is not six, but we are two and ‘nearly new’ and celebrate the second anniversary of our launch in September this year. It has been a fascinating journey so far and with much more to come. I am very much looking forward to the success we will achieve on the journey to . . . when we are six!
In September 2020 Ten Bio Ltd. was launched out of the University of Dundee’s renowned School of Life Sciences. The timing of our spin out was delayed by the Covid pandemic. When we could again access our labs within the university the trigger was pulled and spin out achieved. We had not been passive during lock-down. While we counted the weeks until we could again be scientifically productive the founders used the summer to develop their relationship with the R&D team of a global cosmetics company. As a result of that effort Ten Bio launched with a contract in place with our ‘anchor’ client to use Ten Bio’s unique testing platform and the skills of its team to evaluate a range of dermatology brands. That work progressed well during Year 1 delivering real value to Ten Bio’s contacts in the science team and to the commercial operations as we provided robust data on which to base the claims for those brands. Ten Bio celebrates that the original contract has been extended to the present day with plans in place to extend further into 2023.
This experience is illustrative of Ten Bio’s business history. The work is won because the Ten Bio team can evidence with real data the differences and differentiators that the TenSkin™ platform can provide to the clients’ R&D programs. And in that engagement the client teams also experience and value the inputs of the Ten Bio team as they partner with the in-house scientists to define the methodology that will address their questions. When coupled with our unerring focus on delivering excellence to our clients, our clients stick!
Ten Bio’s early market success and financial prospects allowed the company to constructively engage with investors through Q1 2021 culminating in an equity event which raised necessary working capital. The Ten Bio team thanks our investors for their continued support on our journey. This was an important milestone for Ten Bio.
Our priority with this investment was to secure a reliable and economical supply of skin, which we found in the strong and growing cosmetic surgery market in the US. Ten Bio Technologies Inc. was set up in the David H Murdock Research Institute in Kannapolis, NC. This campus also hosts research centers from the major NC universities (including NC State University, UNC, Duke and others) providing an elite local research community.
Ten Bio formed contracts with several cosmetic surgeons in the area which provided the company with the required raw materials – full thickness human skin usually from abdominoplasty procedures provided with patient consent and in the full range of Fitzpatrick skin type scale, which characterizes skin’s responses to sunlight. Our location also enables collaboration with the labs of Prof Giuseppe Valacchi, a global authority on the effects of pollution on skin tissue.
Ten Bio is pleased that Prof Valacchi has agreed to join our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) as chair. Also on Ten Bio’s SAB are Prof Alan Irvine of Trinity College Dublin an authority on drug discovery and clinical evaluation of treatments for rare and genetic diseases of the skin, and Dr Braham Shroot who has a long and successful career in dermatology R&D and is currently CSO at Palvella Therapeutics. Ten Bio is delighted to have such breadth and depth of medical and scientific expertise available to it and celebrates the launch of our SAB.
So where next?
The markets for Ten Bio, its products and services are clear and expansive. We have to-date secured contracts with major global companies and smaller, specialist enterprises in the cosmetics, consumer health, pharma and aesthetic dermatology sectors. We are providing our brand platform to research labs in industry and government. The feedback we receive is wholly positive and frequently outstanding as the performance of our team and our technology delights our clients. So our next step is to build on the strong foundations laid by our successes to date and to find new clients to whom we can deliver excellence through our research partnering services.
Ten Bio will be attending a series of conferences* through the remainder of the year with the opportunity to present our science to the attendees. We very much look forward to meeting with everyone, to sharing our experiences to date and to building new relationships that will grow with us over the coming years – all the way to being six, and beyond!
*Conferences
ESDR 2022 – Amsterdam 28th Sep – 1st Oct
Dermatology Drug Development Summit – Boston 1st Nov – 3rd Nov
ESTIV 2022 – Barcelona 21st Nov – 25th Nov
Skin@Bath 2022 – Bath 14st Dec – 16th Dec
September 2022