Case Studies

The University of Manchester Intellectual Property Limited (UMIP) is one of the biggest technology transfer companies in the UK and has access to proof of concept funds to develop embryonic inventions to a stage where they become investible propositions. It also has investment funds to develop fledgling companies, alongside the skills and contacts required to bring in the larger sums of external venture capital which are critical to their success.

Please see the following case studies:

The Company
Gentronix was established in July 1999 as a joint venture between The University of Manchester's Departments of Biomolecular Sciences and Instrumentation & Analytical Science and Dr. Richard Walmsley, an expert in yeast molecular genetics. Gentronix is an innovative biotechnology company helping to accelerate the pace of drug development in the pharmaceutical industry.

Products
Gentronix is delivering a range of productivity-enhancing tools for scientists in the drug discovery field, designed to ease or remove current bottlenecks in pre-clinical research and development.

Gentronix's first product release, GreenScreen, successfully combines their expertise in molecular biology and analytical science to address the ADMET bottleneck in lead candidate selection, focusing specifically on genotoxicity screening. Gentronix has entered into an exclusive marketing deal with the British Technology Group through
which BTG is co-promoting and negotiating sales of GreenScreen products as a component of their drug development portfolio, Mettox'.

Success
In May 2005, Gentronix Ltd completed a £1m fund raising round supported by YFM Private Equity Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund Ltd., The University of Manchester Intellectual Property Limited (UMIP) and Private Investors.

In April 2004,Gentronix won 'Best Environmental Technology' for GreenScreen EM at the Northwest Business Environment Awards 2004 ceremony held at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton. Awarded for the design and production of the GreenScreen EM assay and associated instrumentation for the monitoring of toxic and genotoxic contaminants in surface waters and soils.

In October 2003, Gentronix won one of the coveted Innovative Enterprise Awards 2003 from Excellence NorthWest for 'GreenScreen'. GreenScreen won one of just 4 Innovative Enterprise Awards made by Excellence North West at the awards ceremony held at the Palace Hotel, Manchester.

In November 2002, Gentronix was honoured at the first ever Northwest Biotechnology Awards Ceremony. The event was hosted by Bionow, the biotechnology cluster development programme of the Northwest Development Agency. Gentronix won Biotechnology Project of the Year for the development of the company's first product, GreenScreen GC, while Dr Andrew Knight and Dr Nick Billinton from Gentronix, jointly received the award for Young Biotechnologist of the Year.

Contact details
Gentronix are currently based in The Manchester Incubator Building, one of The University of Manchester Incubator Company Limited's (UMIC) four incubator facilities.

The company
Founded in 2000 by lecturer Alasdair Rawsthorne, Transitive exports computing technology conceived at the University of Manchester to Silicon Valley, continuing a tradition of nearly 60 years standing.

QuickTransit, Transitive's product, allows any software application binary to run on any processor and operating system which breaks the hardware/software dependency. This is now included in every system shipped by Silicon Graphics, from deskside visualisation systems to high-end supercomputers with hundreds of CPUs.

Transitive's highest profile event to date came in June 2005 at an Apple Computer event in San Francisco, when CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated on stage Transitive's part in Apple's plans to migrate from PowerPC to Intel CPU chips.

In the beginning
Transitive's origins date back to 1995, when Alasdair formed a small research team within the School of Computer Science. The team spent the next three years researching technology that would eventually form the foundation of the QuickTransit product.

Patents were filed on key components of the technology in 1998 and several options for commercialising the technology were explored by The University of Manchester's IP commercialisation company (now UMIP).

This resulted in the founding of Transitive with an initial investment of £0.2m from the Manchester Technology Fund alongside a £1.8m investment from Pond Venture Partners of London and Silicon Valley. The company has subsequently raised more than $20 million in the USA.

Success
The company has received numerous awards over the intervening years, the most recent from InfoWorld magazine in the USA, which named Alasdair Rawsthorne an InfoWorld Innovator of the year. The InfoWorld awards recognise individuals whose vision and expertise drive the future of enterprise technology.

Transitive's grasp of cutting-edge computing technology has led to high profile press coverage. Stories about the company have appeared in publications as diverse as the BBC's website, the Financial Times and Wired magazine.
The Financial Times - 'Transitive makes its mark in Silicon Valley' - 13 June, 2005
'Transitive, a small software spin-out from Manchester University, has begun to attract the smart money in California's Silicon Valley after developing a solution to one of the computer world's thorniest problems.'

BBC News - 'Apple makes switch to Intel chips' - June 6, 2005
'There are reports that Apple has licensed technology from a company called Transitive which makes software that makes it easier to port programs on to different chip architectures.'

Wired.com - 'Step Towards Universal Computing' - Sep 13, 2004
'A Silicon Valley startup claims to have cracked one of most elusive goals of the software industry: a near-universal emulator that allows software developed for one platform to run on any other, with almost no performance hit.'

The Manchester connection
The Transitive Corporation remains firmly linked with the University, employing more than forty home grown graduates at their offices in Manchester and Silicon Valley, California.

Alasdair Rawsthorne is a visiting lecturer in Computer Sciences at the University of Manchester and a member of the Advanced Processors Technologies Group.