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A company based at the Wilton Centre has received global recognition for developing ground-breaking technology to deliver life-saving drugs.

During the past 18 months Micropore Technologies has been working with some of the leading pharmaceutical companies who produced Covid-19 vaccines.

It is now in talks about using the same technology to tackle some of the world’s other deadliest diseases.

Micropore’s CEO Dai Hayward MBE said:

“We provide the flexibility to be able to treat diseases that up to now have been untreatable,” 

“We are not only talking about infectious diseases like AIDS, flu and malaria we are also talking about genetic diseases like Parkinson’s and Hodgkin’s.

“We’ve got two dozen companies in discussion about this technology, so it really is a case of from Wilton to the world.”

In October Micropore received the 2021 iChemE global award for its Versatile Lipid Nanoparticle Manufacturing.

It was also highly commended in a second category by the Institution of Chemical Engineers’ judges. The company had previously won an iChemE global award in 2019.

Dai said:

“Experts in the field are on the judging panel, so we were properly peer reviewed – and that means a lot,”

“We were up against global competition but, even though we are a still just a small business, we did it again.”

Micropore’s techonolgy has the potential to play a key role in fighting future pandemics caused by viruses like Covid-19.

The vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech were based on mRNA (messenger Ribonucleic Acid).

Injecting synthetic mRNA teaches a body’s cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response to fight an infection.

“Using LNPs – lipid nanoparticles – as a carrier mechanism is a very different approach for making vaccines,” said Dai.

“In effect you need to smuggle the RNA into the body, past its defences and into the cell, otherwise it will see it as an alien species.”

Micropore Technologies was launched in 2003 as a spin-out business from Loughborough University.

When it moved to the Wilton Centre in 2016 it employed one person. During the pandemic it doubled its staff to 16.

The company has just signed a long-term lease and taken on more office and laboratory space.

It has also recently appointed a new commercial director and is looking to strengthen its board.

The Wilton Centre has just undergone a £2m refurbishment. It and nine other science parks in the UK and Ireland are owned by We are Pioneer Group (WAPG).

The centre’s accommodation manager Claire Morton said WAPG’s objective across all of its sites was to provide an environment where businesses like Micropore can flourish.

She added:

“We are all so proud of its achievements. Micropore’s just one of a number of businesses based here who are making such a difference to people’s lives. We’ve got companies leading the world in plastic recycling as well as life sciences.

“The level of investment taking place in Teesside and now the launch of the freeport has placed the Wilton Centre at the very heart of one of the most economic active areas in the UK.”

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Credit: Tees Business