Latest news

Success for LCG Bioscience one year on from MBO (20 per cent increase in turnover)

Less than 12 months since the management team of LCG Bioscience, based at Bourn Hall in Cambridge negotiated a successful buy-out from its parent company Serono, the company has announced a 20 per cent increase in sales and an expanding client base. LCG Bioscience was also short listed for the prestigious Scrip 'Management Team of the Year' award for excellence, alongside four of the industry's most established companies, including Wyeth, Norgine and Avecia Biologics.

Mike Macnamee, Chief Executive of Bourn Hall Limited - which trades as 'LCG Bioscience', offering clinical research and development services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry and 'Bourn Hall Clinic', the world's first in-vitro fertilisation clinic - said the year has been exciting and challenging.

"It is just less than 12 months since we took one of the biggest decisions of our careers and launched a management buy-out, completing the multi-million pound transaction in just six weeks thanks to the commitment of our own team and to our extended team of external advisers.

"This new found freedom and independence has been a hugely rewarding experience, resulting in personal growth both for the management team; and for all our staff who have felt invigorated and inspired by the change in the atmosphere.

"We have discovered new levels of energy and heightened communication skills which has enabled us to retain our best talent and successfully implement a major reorganization.

"Our experience of managing diverse business activities and vastly different customers, coupled with the confidence and support of our staff, has resulted in record sales and world-class profitability in 2006."

While LCG has retained its preferred supplier status with Serono it has also widened its client base, more than doubling its non-Serono sales. Overall turnover is 20 per cent up on last year and the organisation has a strong order book reaching well into the New Year.

Independence offers the opportunity to pioneer new approaches and techniques, for example the Biomarker laboratory boasts a specialist proteomic capability that is in growing demand as the number of studies requiring this specialist expertise increases.

Macnamee concludes: "We share a collective passion to make a difference to the quality of human life through innovative medicine and thus a commitment to the growth and development of both core businesses. We have been able to make strides in this ambition only through the dedication, professionalism and support of our excellent team of staff at LCG and Bourn Hall, which have resulted in many sterling achievements in our first independent year."

top of page

MHRA Presents at LCG Bioscience

Rebecca Harrison (Group Manager for Inspections) of the MHRA presented on Friday 29th September 2006, the title of the presentation was 'Regulatory Inspection Findings at the GMP/GCP Interface'..

Paul Davies
Head of Business Development
September 2006

top of page

Lcg Bioscience New Brand Image

In January this year the management team at Bourn Hall Ltd (parent company to LCG Bioscience) successfully concluded a Management Buyout from the Swiss biotech company, Serono. In order to mark this occasion and herald in the new era, a new brand image has been launched. LCG Bioscience has been conducting contract early phase clinical trials for a wide variety of pharmaceutical companies since 1993. In this time LCG Bioscience was also an integral part of the Research and Development group of a major pharmaceutical company. This unique positioning gives us a comprehensive vision of full product development as well as an intimate understanding of the specific needs and concerns of clients outsourcing Phase I/IIa trials. We know the best way to deliver success with Phase I/IIa studies as part of the new product development process. This means that we are uniquely placed to ‘redefine outsourcing’ of early clinical development. Our aim is to share this ‘unique intellectual capital’. This is a time of unprecedented opportunity for LCG Bioscience and an appropriate moment to re launch the LCG Bioscience brand.

The Brand is built on our core values of:

Teamwork
Enthusiasm
Adaptability
Commitment

The expression of these central tenets communicates that we offer an altogether better early phase clinical research service providing all the benefits of outsourcing, as it should be. Our new strap line ‘care for success’ conveys our organisation wide commitment to caring for our client’s success. We care for your success as a company and as individuals. We care for your business by taking care in our work - details are as important as deadlines. We think that the new image communicates these benefits to the market place and that clients will be encouraged to ‘find out how good it feels’ by experiencing the brand promise first hand.

May 2006

top of page

Moving Stem Cell Development From Lab To Clinic

Stem cell meeting hears of new production facility

Behind the hype that has been associated with stem cells there is, in the background, a solid body of research and development work. The issues involved with funding and commercialising this work were discussed at a recent meeting held by the East Region Stem Cell Network at Bourn Hall in Cambridge.

Delegates discussed a number of emerging projects that demonstrate the enormous potential of stem cell based therapies to address a range of currently incurable diseases and also the hurdles that need to be overcome to realise this. These included: the shortage of and need for high quality stem cells, the unresolved issues surrounding intellectual property rights and patents, and the ‘funding gap’ for translational work which lies between early stage research – which is relatively well supported in the UK – and the commercialisation of IP, in which venture capitalists have an interest.

Bourn Hall is a fitting place to hold such a meeting; it is arguably Cambridge’s first biotech company. The clinic was home to the pioneering work of Patrick Steptoe and Dr Robert Edwards which, in 1978, resulted in the first ‘test tube’ baby Louise Brown. The advances they made including the development of techniques for the micro-manipulation of sperm and eggs and the biopsy of the embryos to remove a single cell are now being employed in the progression of stem cell research.

The availability of stem cell material of known quality and origin is potentially a limiting factor when moving research work out of the laboratory and into the clinic. Bourn Hall Ltd has one of the largest repositories of fully consented embryos, providing a reliable source of material and is developing a facility for the GMP production of stem cell lines – one of the few organisations to provide this resource.

The embryos come from IVF patients who have chosen to donate excess embryos – which would otherwise have been destroyed – for research. The short-term objective is to create a stem cell lines that will reduce reliance on embryos for research and accelerate understanding in this area.

Mike McNamee, CEO Bourn Hall Ltd, comments: “Our strategy is to secure quality material for this research and have 85 fully consented embryos, providing a reliable source of material, within a facility coming up to GMP standard.”

The company has also achieved an HEFA licence in human embryonic stem cell work in partnership with Prof Roger Peterson’s Department at the University of Cambridge. The two organisations bring complementary skills in the culture and differentiation of stem cells. Bourn Hall is also actively looking for partnering agreements with commercial partners to exploit the IP that will result from this work.

Bourn Hall Limited also includes a contract pharmaceutical research facility and Mike McNamee sees great potential for stem cell research from both a clinical and pharmaceutical perspective:

“Although still speculative, stem cell work offers the opportunity for a new pharma discovery platform offering new targets for drugs screening, sources of new proteins and of receptor variants. If we can grow stem cells on into different tissues types, then we can investigate differentiating a patient’s own stem cells, in vivo, to overcome debilitating diseases, and then of course the ‘holy grail’ a whole new pharma paradigm of cells not pills.

top of page

Bourn Hall Management Team Secures Buyout From Serono

20-January-2006

20th January 2006: Bourn Hall Limited announced today that ownership of Bourn Hall Clinic and LCG Bioscience has transferred from its parent company, Serono, to the existing management team through an amicable management buyout (MBO) in a multi-million pound deal.

All Bourn Hall Ltd contractual agreements remain unaffected as a result of this MBO and this includes continuity of service for employees.

Bourn Hall Limited, Bourn, Cambridge, trades as ‘LCG Bioscience’, offering clinical research and development services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, and as ‘Bourn Hall Clinic’, the world’s first in-vitro fertilisation clinic.

LCG Bioscience provides exploratory early phase human clinical development services for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Working for a wide cross-section of organisations, over 80% of its revenue is generated from repeat business. Serono will continue to use LCG as a preferred supplier for its early stage clinical research. LCG is also a preferred supplier to three of the top ten blue-chip pharmaceutical companies and has confirmed orders in excess of £12 million. LCG Bioscience plans to bring its unique and successful service offering to a wider range of clients.

Bourn Hall Clinic, the world’s first “test-tube baby” clinic, will expand its assisted conception services to private patients and the NHS, seeking to re-define the partnership with Primary Care Trusts to bring high quality fertility services to NHS patients. Bourn Hall is dedicated to providing the highest quality of fertility treatment and is committed to continuing its pioneering research in embryo development, implantation and embryonic stem cell lines.

“This agreement represents an exciting opportunity for the committed management team at Bourn Hall to focus on the organisation’s core strengths and develop or extend these further,” comments Mike Macnamee, Chief Executive of Bourn Hall Limited. “Our people have a unique understanding of the requirements of our patients, partners and customers and we believe that being an independent company gives us the flexibility to further expand, improve and enhance our service delivery.”

The deal enables the dedicated management team, all of whom have held senior positions at the organisation for over 10 years, to shape the future growth and development of this internationally renowned company. Led by Mike Macnamee, BSc, MSc, PhD, Chief Executive, the management team comprises Simon Barton ACMA, Finance Director; Nicola Graver FCIPD, Human Resources Director, Lisa Gibbons RGN, Clinical Research Director and Dawn Wilkerson IT and Core Services Director.

The MBO deal – which took just 6 weeks from outline agreement to completion – was financed by the Bourn Hall Management team and Barclays Bank, with the support of PEM Corporate Finance LLP and Mills & Reeve.

top of page