Real Business

After a short interval, I'm back. This blog will look at both government/regulatory action that affects Britain's lifeblood small and medium-sized businesses. I'll also cover notable investments in high-potential growth businesses, and the individuals leading our future star businesses. And I'll ask (and maybe sometimes answer) the question: why doesn't the UK produce more.

First out of the blocks is Chrysalin, an Oxford-based life sciences business that's just received £1.5m from a group of investors including IP Group, IP Venture Fund (managed by IP Group), Oxford Technology Management and Oxford Spin-Out Equity Management and Ora. You can read the full investment details on the Chrysalin site.

Chrysalin does some pretty hairy stuff, which I won't claim to fully understand (perhaps one of the team can post a "layman's words" comment below?). As the company's site puts it: "Crysalin was founded in June 2007 to research and develop crysalin lattice technology derived from patented work conducted since 2002 in the Oxford University Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics.

"Crysalins are a protein-based nanotechnology with proven application in protein structure determination. Crysalins demonstrate significant advantages over other methodologies for protein structure determination since they are able to impose order on macromolecular targets to enable X-ray and EM instruments to resolve 3-D molecular structure where current technologies have failed (in particular: membrane proteins, soluble proteins with flexible regions). Crysalins also have the potential for use in biosensor development and optoelectronics."

Hope that's now clear.

What interests me about the deal is, first, the investor group and, second, the new chairman, David Brister. The backers show that, even for a small university spin-out, quality investment can be found from across the UK including, in this instance, from Guernsey (Ora). One often hears the complaint that the UK lacks the infrastructure to support promising new-generation businesses, so it's positive to see such a deal get done. The proof, of course, will be in how fast it develops and how large it becomes.

David Brister, appointed as Chrysalin's chairman as part of the deal, is a private equity investor turned serial life sciences business leader. Brister is venture partner at Inventages (no, I'd never heard of them either), which has more than $1.5bn under management and claims to be one of the world's largest life sciences investors with a big team of investment managers and four offices around the world. Anyone working in the life sciences field should probably take a close look.

Brister is currently on the boards of Green Biologics, Mabey Holdings, AM-Pharma and U-Live Enterprises. He previously worked at 3i and at Metal Box and studied the splendid combination of genetics and zoology at Sheffield University. Apropos of nothing whatsoever, he also bears a striking resemblance to the excellent comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

Chrysalin was founded by Dr John Sinclair and Professor Martin Noble.