Birmingham biotechnology firm leading the fight against bone marrow cancer
An award-winning Birmingham biotechnology company has won full approval from specialists for the use of a product that detects and monitors a form of bone marrow cancer.
The Binding Site, a privately owned diagnostics company based at Kings Heath, has developed Freelite, a new assay, or blood test, used by doctors treating patients with multiple myeloma (MM) which has already been taken up extensively throughout the world.
MM, which currently affects about 20,000 people in the UK, used to be confined mainly to people over 60 but is now becoming more common among younger age groups.
According to The Binding Site’s website, more than 15,000 new cases are being diagnosed each year in the US alone.
Freelite will not cure sufferers but can increase their life expectancy by providing doctors with a sensitive test to the effectiveness of anti-MM drugs, the company said yesterday.
New clinical guidelines to be published in February by the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) in Leukemia, a leading haematology and oncology journal, will recommend Freelite as a “first line” product.
Revenues from Freelite have been growing at a rate of about 50 per cent a year and will expand even further with the publication of the guidelines, Binding Site chief executive Paul Duncan said.
The product generated sales of £12.5 million in the 12 months to September last year. That represents some four million tests at £3 each.
Mr Duncan said Freelite is a unique assay that detects tumour markers known as free light chains (FLCs).
The IMWG guidelines represent a “prestigious endorsement” of the product, which has been under development since the early 1990s, Mr Duncan said.
“Not only does the use of Freelite considerably improve the assessment of prognosis in virtually every plasma cell disorder, it also increases the accuracy with which diseases can be monitored, thus improving the overall quality of life for patients.”
Mr Duncan stressed: “Freelite is not a cure. It is a diagnostic tool. MM is not curable but it is treatable. There is no other test like it in the world.”
The product is manufactured at The Binding Site’s Birmingham laboratory, which employs about 350 people.
Eric Low, chief executive of the charity Myeloma UK, welcomed the IMWG endorsement. He said: “MM is a complex and difficult disease that destroys the immune system and also leads to bone destruction which causes severe pain for patients. It also affects the kidneys. It is an unremitting disease that has no cure.”
But by allowing specialists to monitor the treatment received by patients, Freelite will “have a big impact on survival rates”, Mr Low said.
“I hope that now, this test will be widely used in hospitals throughout the UK,” he added.
The Binding Site is expected to publish its 2007/08 financial results soon and is expected to announce total revenues of £38.9 million, an increase of 26 per cent over the previous year.
The company was founded in 1983 by researchers at Birmingham University. Last year it won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise and was also a winner of the monthly Birmingham Post Enterprise Award.
