The Bath search-engine disruptors on the hunt for disease-busting antibodies
University of Bath spinout CiteAb gives researchers free access to its reagent database to accelerate science.
Antibodies are invaluable to science and medicine. In our bodies, these immune-system proteins bind to foreign substances (antigens) and destroy them, and this ability to target and latch on to specific proteins makes them crucial in research too – not least to help scientists diagnose and treat diseases.
A University of Bath spinout company has revolutionised the way researchers source antibodies and other reagents (substances used to test or create chemical reactions), making it far easier and more cost effective for labs to zero in on the best proteins for their research and avoid those that are likely to fail in their experiments, costing them time and money.
The company – CiteAb – was launched in 2014 and has flourished over the past decade to become the go-to place for sourcing lab-produced antibodies. It provides this service to researchers for free, making its money from life-sciences companies. It’s now the world’s leading life science data company and is estimated to save the industry well over $1bn a year.
A Bath success story
The enormous success of this spinout can be pinned on the entrepreneurial spirit of Dr Andrew Chalmers, the Bath academic who saw an opportunity to improve the way scientists sift through vast libraries of antibodies to find what they need. This was paired with the technical and commercial expertise of Adam Pope and David Kelly, two Bath graduates and co-founders of the firm Storm Consultancy.
CiteAb and Storm both received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for innovation in 2022. This prestigious award (now carrying the King’s name) recognises outstanding achievement by UK businesses.
“Without the diverse skills and experience brought by Adam, a computer scientist, Dave, who specialises in startups and all things commercial Computer Science, and me, a biology researcher, CiteAb would not have succeed,” said Dr Chalmers.
The team also received support from the University.
“A colleague put me in touch with the Innovation team and they were incredibly helpful in helping me navigate the spinout process,” said Dr Chalmers. “It was all terribly new and alien to me – I had no web or commercial experience.
“I was helped with both the legalities and the practicalities, starting with help preparing a business plan to take the concept forward. Armed with this plan, I went to the University’s Venture Board, and, despite my lack of business experience, they approved it – they could see the potential in an independent antibody venture and supported me fully.”
He added that being employed by a mid-sized university almost certainly played in his favour.
“It meant I got a chance to explain my idea and really be heard out,” he said. “With a bigger university, I doubt you’d receive as much help as I did unless you had a drug candidate with a patent pending and with obvious commercial value.”
Initial investments from the University and Storm (Both contributed £50,000) served the spinout well: CiteAb now enjoys seven figure revenues, and employs 12 people full time, including biologists and computer scientists trained at the University of Bath.
Further seed funding came from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s ‘Knowledge Transfer Champion Fund’ and from the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s ‘Innovation Fund’.
Mr Kelly from Storm Consultancy said: “When Andy first approached us to discuss his thoughts on a database being created to make it easier for academics to find the best possible antibodies for their experiments, he was doing research for an academic project on the subject. It became clear to me that there was a huge opportunity in the data the project would begin to collect. It was at that point that I really pressed Andy to consider CiteAb as a possible business spinout and not just a project.”
Dr Andrew Chalmers wanted to improve the way scientists sift through vast libraries of antibodies to find what they need.
Dr Andrew Chalmers wanted to improve the way scientists sift through vast libraries of antibodies to find what they need.
David Kelly from Storm Consultancy brought technical and commercial expertise to the startup
David Kelly from Storm Consultancy brought technical and commercial expertise to the startup
Less waste in sourcing antibodies
Antibodies are essential research tools for biologists, neuroscientists, immunologists and cancer researchers. In fact, almost all scientists involved in pre-clinical medical research use antibodies. But before the launch of CiteAb, sourcing suitable antibodies for life-sciences research was painfully hit and miss.
Choosing the right antibodies for research is critical, and it involves several considerations to ensure the molecules selected from a database are compatible with the experimental design and to maximise the researchers’ chance of finding an antibody that can bind to the target antigen.
Scientists have long relied on biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturers to propose and supply antibody candidates for the work they do. A customer will choose their supplier – of which there are many – by trawling for reputable names online.
The answer to many research frustrations
But this business model is far from perfect for the purchaser: all antibody search engines established before CiteAb are either limited in the information they offer, or they lack impartiality. Typically, a supplier will pay to be top-rated, or rankings will be based on customer reviews, which can be biased or difficult to collect.
This matters because lab antibodies are expensive and buying the wrong ones – which happens often without impartial advice – can have a significant negative impact on a research project.
Dr Chalmers estimates that 50% of the antibodies that are bought by labs aren’t suitable for the research they are intended for.
“There are millions of pounds of waste in research every year caused by the purchase of the wrong antibodies"
CiteAb is a simple, unbiased antibody search engine – the only one of its kind. It gives a far clearer idea of the effectiveness of given antibodies than other search engines, free from commercial influence.
It ranks 7.4-million antibodies and 10-million reagents in an entirely new way: by citations in academic papers. This means the only way an antibody can move up the ratings is to be used successfully in research and be cited by other researchers.
“The core ethos of CiteAb is that we’re completely impartial,” said Dr Chalmers. “The only way an antibody can move up the ratings is to be used successfully in research and be cited by other researchers.”
Though antibodies is what the company was founded on, in recent years, the company has expanded its product line to include other research ‘reagents’, such as non-antibody proteins and biochemicals, using the same ranking model as it does for antibodies.
A reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction or to test whether one occurs. Chemical reagents initiate chemical reactions. They can also be used to detect the presence or absence of specific substances (for instance, by causing a colour change) or measure the concentration of a substance.
With its fresh approach and strong team, the company has disrupted the antibody search-engine industry and is now the largest independent antibody search engine in a $2billion industry, ranked number one by Google. Its revenue is derived from selling the data collected from online searches to large life-sciences companies.
The idea of CiteAb was conceived as a result of Dr Chalmers’ direct experience of antibody wastage.
In his Life Sciences lab at the University of Bath, where he worked as a cancer-cell researcher between 2005 and 2020, he encountered the frustration of ordering expensive antibodies, paying thousands of pounds on them every year, only to find they were incompatible with his needs.
He said: “We could spend weeks or even months working with a given antibody only to find it was the wrong product. This would set our research back a lot. And then we’d have to absorb the cost of repurchasing antibodies and hoping, with no guarantee, that these would be the right ones.”
He says the “aha” moment that he could improve the antibody acquisition landscape came to him gradually.
“We were running a small lab with a limited budget, and we absolutely needed to make the process of choosing antibodies far more efficient, using an unbiased tool that made the purchasing process more dependable. It slowly dawned on me that I might be able to make this happen.”
In the early days of the spinout, Dr Chalmers continued with his research and teaching duties – something he would have struggled to do without a lot of help from colleagues.
“My department was very supportive – particularly my head of department,” said Dr Chalmers. “He pushed for the search engine to be a success even when it was just a protype. And during the spinout launch phase, he arranged for a teaching fellow to cover my teaching. This was really essential to me making the business work – I couldn’t have done all three things – research, spinout and teaching.
“Eventually, I went down to part-time teaching and now I run CiteAb full time. But I’m still a visiting academic at Bath, which is really important to me. My colleagues in the Department of Life Sciences still keep me informed about what’s happening in the research world – what are the trends and new techniques coming along? This is really helpful to us in our drive to constantly improve our services to keep the search engine as relevant and helpful as possible.”
New culture
Mr Kelly from Storm added: “When CiteAb initially spun out, I stood in as CEO, which is not an unusual set-up and something I’ve done with a number of businesses in which Storm has invested. What impressed me most was the speed with which Andy developed and honed key commercial, organisational and cultural skills – the kind of thing that would have been entirely new to most academics.
“It wasn’t long until Andy was ready to take the reins as CEO. I would go as a far as to say he is the most capable and impressive academic-turned-CEO that I’ve had the pleasure to work with”.
Today, the CiteAb search engine receives 800,000 visitors a year. Among these are top biotech companies and hundreds of universities – among these, institutions ranked in the top 1% globally.
“Most importantly, we’re reaching our very clear objective, which is to help researchers save millions of pounds every year,” said Dr Chalmers.
He added: “I’m truly grateful to all those at the University of Bath who have helped with the development of CiteAb, especially the RIS team, the Research, Development and Support Office, Legal Services and my own department, Biology & Biochemistry.”
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