Dundee Cell Products Ltd
Type	Private Company
Founded	2006
Location	Dundee, Scotland, UK
Industry Industry Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...	Biotechnology Biotechnology Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
Products Product (business) In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...	Biochemical reagents, procedure kits, specialized research products
Services	Proteomics, DNA cloning, gene synthesis, antibody development, protein expression and purification
Website Website A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...	http://www.dundeecellproducts.com/

Dundee Cell Products (DCP) is a biotechnology company headquartered in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom.
The company is a bioreagents and life sciences services company which commercialises research tools for biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

, molecular biology

Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

 and cell biology

Cell biology

Cell biology is a scientific discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level...

 research, and provides services in these areas to the life sciences community. The company’s key business activities include research and development of new innovative products and services, commercialization of products in-licensed from academic institutions, distribution of life sciences research products from commercial partners and supply of contract research services to both academic and pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies customers.

History

Dundee Cell Products Ltd was founded in 2006 as a spinout of the internationally renowned College of Life Sciences of the University of Dundee

University of Dundee

The University of Dundee is a university based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee on eastern coast of the central Lowlands of Scotland and with a small number of institutions elsewhere....

 by Dr Paul Ajuh and Prof. Angus Lamond, scientists working at the institution. Since spinout the company has maintained close interactions with researchers at the institution and a strong relationship with the University. In 2007 the company secured equity investment funding from a syndicate of angel investors to finance and expand its activities with follow up investment secured in 2009 from angel investors and the Scottish Co-investment Fund (SCF). The investment was secured to support the business’s growth plans. Over the last four years DCP has enjoyed significant growth in its products portfolio and turnover.

Research and Innovation

In the last 2–3 years, the company has developed and commercialized several new products e.g. SILAC ready to use media and has been involved in proteomics research collaborations with scientists in both academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Some of these projects have been designed to investigate the effects of virus infections on cellular proteomes in order to elucidate the mechanisms and cellular pathways involved in virus–host factor interactions. DCP has also collaborated in a phosphoproteomics

Phosphoproteomics

Phosphoproteomics is a branch of proteomics that identifies, catalogs, and characterizes proteins containing a phosphate group as a post-translational modification. Phosphorylation is a key reversible modification that regulates protein function, subcellular localization, complex formation,...

 project designed to study the molecular mechanisms in the pathogenesis of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion

Prion

A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form. This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents which must contain nucleic acids . The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection...

 disease. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are fatal diseases associated with the conversion of the cellular prion protein to an abnormal prion protein leading to damage of brain and neural tissue. Examples of prion diseases include bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy , commonly known as mad-cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 30 months to 8 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of...

 (BSE, also known as "mad cow disease") in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. There is currently no treatment for prion diseases, which are usually fatal to the host.

Current R&D projects within the company have been focused on developing applications for SILAC quantitative proteomics in predictive toxicology. These projects are designed to provide data that will be used in developing predictive models for drug toxicity early on during the drug discovery and development process.

Portfolio

DCP initially developed antibodies, mammalian cell fractions for precursor mRNA splicing research and tissue culture media specifically formulated for SILAC

Silac

SILAC is a technique based on mass spectrometry that detects differences in protein abundance among samples using non-radioactive isotopic labeling. It is a popular method for quantitative proteomics.-Procedure:Two populations of cells are cultivated in cell culture...

 quantitative proteomics. The first products commercialized by the company came from the research interests of the founding scientists who saw an opportunity in the market for developing and commercializing high quality research products and services in the research area to other colleagues. The company has subsequently expanded its products and services portfolio into many other areas of life sciences research to better cover the needs of its customers.

Product lines

Dundee Cell Products commercializes a broad range of life sciences research products (many of which have been developed in-house) including cell culture

Cell culture

Cell culture is the complex process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions. In practice, the term "cell culture" has come to refer to the culturing of cells derived from singlecellular eukaryotes, especially animal cells. However, there are also cultures of plants, fungi and microbes,...

 media for quantitative proteomics, mammalian cell fractions e.g. nuclei, nucleoli, mitochondria and cell fractions for quantitative proteomics, antibodies, recombinant proteins and molecular biology kits for DNA

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

 and RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 purification. The company’s SILAC ready to use media have been specially formulated to facilitate the use of SILAC technology by non-specialists in proteomics and scientists who are interested in the application of unbiased high throughput quantitative proteomics approaches in their R&D activities.

Research services

As well as offering research products, the company’s portfolio has grown to include research services designed to accelerate the research activities of scientists in both the academic and biotech/pharmaceutical industry sectors. Some of the research services that DCP offers include gene synthesis

Gene synthesis

Artificial gene synthesis is the process of synthesizing a gene in vitro without the need for initial template DNA samples. The main method is currently by oligonucleotide synthesis from digital genetic sequences and subsequent annealing of the resultant fragments...

, DNA cloning, recombinant protein expression and purification, stable cell line development, custom monoclonal

Monoclonal

Monoclonal cells are defined as a group of cells produced from a single ancestral cell by repeated cellular replication. Thus they can be said to form a single "clone". The process of replication can occur in vivo, or may be stimulated in vitro for laboratory manipulations...

 and polyclonal antibody

Polyclonal antibody

Polyclonal antibodies are antibodies that are obtained from different B cell resources. They are a combination of immunoglobulin molecules secreted against a specific antigen, each identifying a different epitope.- Production :...

 development and various proteomics services i.e. both quantitative (e.g. SILAQ^TM, iTRAQ

ITRAQ

Isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation are a non-gel-based technique used to quantify proteins from different sources in a single experiment. It uses isotope-coded covalent tags...

, ICAT

ICAT

ICAT can refer to:* Image College of Arts, Animation & Technology* Isotope-coded affinity tag: a method for quantitative proteomics* The iCat robot* Another name for CTNNBIP1* International Center for Automotive Technology...

, label-free) and qualitative.
In collaboration with scientists at the University of Dundee, the company is developing novel and innovative products and services in the areas of proteomics, molecular biology and cell biology focused on the needs of research scientists in academic institutions as well as those in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Corporate Information

Brenda Reynolds - Chairman

Paul Ajuh - CEO

Angus Lamond - CSO

Robert Preston - Non Executive Director

Stewart Brymer - Non Executive Director