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US biotech business floats on AIM

By Nick Britton on December 10 2007

Biopharmaceutical company Medgenics has floated its shares on AIM following a fundraising worth £3.3 million. The company is developing a treatment that allows sufferers of anaemia and hepatitis C to produce therapeutic proteins within their own bodies.

Incorporated in the US with research operations based in Israel, Medgenics has a market capitalisation of £10.4 million, with 9.3 per cent of this represented by the placing shares.

The company is developing a “biopump”, made from a toothpick-sized sample of the patient’s own skin, which is processed outside the body to produce therapeutic proteins before being reimplanted one or two weeks later. The treatment, which is initially being developed for anaemia and hepatitis C sufferers, aims to enable patients to produce the proteins within their own bodies on a long-term basis.

The company says the worldwide market for protein therapy is worth $51 billion (£25 billion), and is forecast to reach $87 billion by 2010. In addition to the biopump, which is in clinical trials, it plans to develop further associated technologies to treat a wider range of ailments including diabetes, multiple sclerosis and haemophilia.

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