Agreements

* On May 20, 2013, Epistem, the UK biotechnology and personalized medicine company with expertise in skin biology and delivery of dermatological testing services, and ScandiDerma, a Norwegian  company with expertise in developing new dermatological ingredients from biomass, have announced that they aim to develop a new in vitro human living skin equivalent model for testing inflammatory responses. This is a novel method that will add to the field of dermatological testing as a whole and help create more activity in extracting high value compounds from biomass. The collaboration is made possible through the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, and Innovation Norway following a successful application for funding in the “Sustainable high value chemical manufacture through industrial biotechnology” competition. The project will last from May 2013 to March 2014 and will run from the project leader Epistem’s facilities in Manchester UK and ScandiDerma’s facilities in Barents Biocenter,Tromsø, Norway.