We are delighted to feature in the Eastern Daily Press with a follow-up article on Iceni Glycoscience winning the Disruptor of the Year award.
Our CEO Martin Stocks told the newspaper: “Every type of cell in our body has a unique sugar coating. Whenever bacteria or viruses, or even parts of our own immune system, interact with the body, they need to interact with this ‘sugar code.’ At Iceni Glycoscience, we are developing ways to unlock this complex code to offer new ways to diagnose and treat disease – earlier, faster and more accurately.
“We are proud to be spearhead the ‘glycorevolution’, pioneering the use of glycoscience for diagnostic and therapeutic benefit. Having the credibility and expertise to be able to offer our services to other companies will help get much-needed next generation products to market quicker.
“Continued concerns about coronavirus mutations and rising incidents of influenza (human, equine and avian) mean the need for new and improved diagnostics and therapeutic modalities to address infectious disease has never been greater.
“The pharmaceutical world and, by default, society has become fixated with proteins or nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) as the main routes for developing diagnostics and therapeutics.
“But glycoscience methodologies have the potential to pick up on new variants or mutations far quicker than standard tests which typically work by detecting viral nucleic acids or proteins, both of which require prior knowledge about the virus structure
“Glycoscience enables the early detection of potentially deadly mutant variants or viral hybrids capable of cross-species jumps, which can help to limit their spread.
“But glycoscience is not limited to viruses. Iceni Glycoscience is broadening the scope of its operations as the role of carbohydrates in human disease becomes increasingly apparent.
“We recently transitioned the name of the company from Iceni Diagnostics to Iceni Glycoscience to better represent our core focus and broader R&D strategy, as well as our service offerings.
“A rapidly expanding understanding of the glycobiology of other human and animal diseases, including cancer and autoimmunity is providing new points of intervention to impact on these conditions, using glycan targets or glycan-based drugs to affect the progress and outcomes of these diseases.
“There is now an enormous buzz around the potential of glycoscience to deliver both diagnostic tests and new therapeutic interventions across a variety of applications in human and animal health.”
