Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/433487
The founders of DxS were originally employed by Zeneca within its diagnostics division, which had operations in Oxfordshire and a staff of 25 people in its R&D group in Northwich, Cheshire. They controlled an R&D budget of £2-3m per annum. The Zeneca unit had, in turn, its origins in the ICI diagnostics divisions. Zeneca merged with Astra and decided to close the business and offered the staff jobs elsewhere in the company. However, two of the staff decided to set up a personalised healthcare business focusing on the needs of the drugs industry, based on the technology they had invented while at Zeneca and bought out with them on the closure. DxS was initially funded with a total of £3.5m and had revenues from the start, due to the proprietary technology which was licensed out. The company intended to focus on personalised medicines. It was able to recruit a good team of scientists in Manchester, about half of whom wished to relocate to the area, while the balance were already here. By 2009 sales were taking off, with three drug companies as partners and a significant partnership pipeline. DxS was then acquired by QIAGEN, a global provider of sample and assay technologies, for £85-90m, with a brief "to establish leadership in the personalised medicine sector by working with drug companies to codevelop companion diagnostics to aid doctors in selecting therapies for patients." At the time of sale DxS had revenues of over £12M pa, earnings of over £3m and over 60 people working in Manchester. DxS 'Manchester has always had the talent – but now it's got the experience to manage a diagnostic business' 32 UNIVERSITY SPIN-IN "The key to a successful business is great people and Manchester has always been full of talented professionals with diagnostic experience" "The best place to set up a business is where the people are..." a view that led to DxS being set up in the Manchester Incubator Building at the University's Innovation Centre in 2002.