New Premises will expand Proprietary Technology and advance Turnkey Solutions

Novel binders developer the Aptamer Group, celebrated the opening of its new facilities at York Science Park, UK, at the end of November last year, following increasing demand for its Optimer technology.

Eminent neuroscience researcher Baroness Susan Greenfield, conducted the opening ceremony of the new 18,000 sqft site (Nov 25) and gave a presentation regarding scientific discovery within growing biotech companies.

Baroness Greenfield and York Central’s MP Rachel Maskell also toured the new premises which, including containment level 1 and 2 laboratories, have tripled the company’s previous footprint.

As well as expanding capacity of its proprietary OptimerR platform to deliver novel binders for researchers across the bioprocessing, diagnostic, and drug development sectors, a portion of the new lab space will be dedicated to validation and assay development to provide turnkey solutions for the company’s partners.

Optimer binders can be used as synthetic antibody alternatives and offer benefits of smaller size, reduced immunogenicity, increased stability and ethical compliance as their discovery, developmentand manufacture are animal-free. They can be used to pursue new targets and applications, such as targeted drug delivery, that have previously proven intractable with protein-based technologies.

"We are excited to move to the new purpose-developed site for Aptamer Group. This will enable us to keep up with the increased demand for our Optimer technology and the growth of the team at our new larger lab and office facilities," commented Dr Arron Tolley, Chief Executive Officer of Aptamer Group at the opening event.

Baroness Susan Greenfield said: "I'm delighted to support a British company, clearly flourishing with an exciting new technology!"

Dr Arron Tolley continued: "This expansion will mean Aptamer is able to work on larger-scale projects that can be processed faster to support our partners with Optimers as a robust and much-needed alternative to antibodies."

More information online