5 Life Science Spin-outs from the University of Dundee
Dundee’s life sciences industry has grown around research into how cells work and what happens when those processes go wrong. At the University of Dundee, work on proteins, drug discovery and human disease has provided the foundations for companies developing both potential medicines and the technologies used to test them.
The university has also built dedicated infrastructure to take discoveries towards drug development. Its Drug Discovery Unit, established in 2006, brings together the scientific disciplines needed to identify and validate drug targets and develop potential medicines from biological research. Alongside it, individual research groups have generated technologies that have reached industry through spin-outs, licensing agreements and pharmaceutical collaborations.
Providing room for those businesses to grow locally is another part of the picture. Dundee’s Life Sciences Innovation Hub opened in 2025, adding laboratory and office space for university spin-outs and companies moving into the city. In March 2026, Indian contract research organisation Chemveda Life Sciences announced that it had chosen the hub for its first European site, extending the city’s commercial links beyond its own academic research.
The five spin-outs featured here show the range of science emerging from Dundee, from redirecting the machinery that breaks down proteins to maintaining donated human skin for laboratory studies. Some remain in the area, while others have moved elsewhere. This guide looks at the research behind each company and what it is being developed to do.
Amphista Therapeutics
A cell already has machinery for identifying unwanted proteins and breaking them down. Targeted protein degradation points that machinery at proteins involved in disease, so the target is broken down rather than just blocked.
Amphista Therapeutics grew out of research in the laboratory of Professor Alessio Ciulli at the University of Dundee, whose work helped establish protein degradation as a serious approach to drug discovery. Its Eclipsys platform generates Targeted Glue degraders that recruit E3 ligases beyond the cereblon and VHL systems commonly used in targeted protein degradation, using different ligases for different targets: DCAF16 for AMX-883 and the SMARCA2 programme, and FBXO22 for the TEAD programme. The company has drug discovery collaborations with Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck KGaA. In June 2026 the FDA cleared its application for AMX-883, a degrader of the protein BRD9 being developed for acute myeloid leukaemia. The Phase 1 trial, BRAMLIE, is registered with an estimated start date of September 2026.
The company is now based at Granta Park near Cambridge, though its scientific roots are still in Dundee.
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Tay Therapeutics
Some genetic diseases come down to a surprisingly small error in the instructions a cell uses to build a protein. A premature stop codon tells the cell to stop translating a gene too early, and the result can be a shortened or missing protein, even though most of the sequence needed is still there.
Tay Therapeutics is investigating whether small molecules can persuade the cell's translation machinery to read straight through those signals. The company spun out of the University of Dundee's School of Life Sciences in 2020, founded by Dr Andrew Woodland and Dr Mark Bell. It was originally called In4Derm, and two of its earlier BET inhibitor programmes for inflammatory disease were licensed to US biotech VYNE Therapeutics, in 2021 and 2023.
Its Tay-Enable platform is built around stop codon read-through, and the lead programme, TAY-R1, aims to restore functional protein production in diseases caused by nonsense mutations. The lead indication is recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, where nonsense mutations in the COL7A1 gene prevent production of functional collagen VII.
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Glen Clova Scientific
Vaccination usually teaches the immune system to recognise something foreign. Glen Clova Scientific is exploring what happens when you point similar principles at proteins the body produces itself.
Founded in 2022 to commercialise work by Dundee dermatologist Dr John Foerster, the company uses virus-like particles (VLPs) as the basis for what it calls Active Biologic Drugs. VLPs resemble the structure of a virus without the viral genetic material needed to replicate, and their repetitive surfaces are very good at catching the immune system's attention. Glen Clova's are designed to generate antibodies against selected proteins the body makes itself, with the aim of suppressing a disease-driving signal on much less frequent dosing than a conventional biologic.
The lead programme, GCS001, targets IL-31, a signalling protein associated with itch, and is in preclinical development for senile pruritus, with a veterinary version, GCS001c, aimed at itch in dogs. GCS002 is aimed at atopic dermatitis, with further preclinical programmes behind it. After raising a £4 million seed round in 2024, the company moved its R&D operation to the James Hutton Institute's Invergowrie campus, just outside Dundee.
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Ten Bio
Human skin changes the moment it's removed from the body. It is normally held under tension, and a piece of excised tissue relaxes as soon as it's cut free, which alters its structure and biology and makes an untensioned explant a less representative model of living skin.
Ten Bio grew out of work by Dr Robyn Hickerson and Dr Michael Conneely in Dundee's School of Life Sciences, where they had been developing skin explant models for drug discovery. That work led to a patented culture system built around restoring the tension. TenSkin uses full-thickness donated human skin cultured under controlled tension, which the company says maintains tissue integrity for more than two weeks. The model is used across wound healing, dermatology, drug delivery, medical aesthetics, cosmetics and medical device research, sitting between animal models and studies done in people.
PhaSER Biomedical
A compound doesn't stay unchanged once it's inside the body. Enzymes convert it into metabolites, determine how fast it's cleared, and influence whether it interacts badly with other medicines. Many work quite differently in humans than in the animals used to test drugs.
The 8HUM model came out of more than 20 years of work led by Professor Roland Wolf, first with CXR Biosciences and Taconic Biosciences and then in further development at Dundee. It is a mouse humanised for drug metabolism, with 33 mouse P450 genes and two mouse transcription factors swapped for six human P450s plus human PXR and CAR, covering the enzymes behind roughly 90% of human P450-mediated drug metabolism.
PhaSER Biomedical was formed in 2022 to make the model available to other researchers, for work on pharmacokinetics, metabolite formation and drug-drug interactions before a compound reaches the clinic. It is now delivering DAIRR, a project with the MHRA and the University of Dundee funded through the government's Regulatory Innovation Office, which validates AI and computational models of drug-drug interaction against 8HUM data and a clinical study. The product here is the model itself.
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From Dundee research to life science companies
Dundee’s contribution to drug development extends beyond potential medicines. Amphista, Tay Therapeutics and Glen Clova Scientific are developing treatments, while Ten Bio and PhaSER Biomedical provide models for studying how drugs behave and how human tissue responds. Together, they show how research from one university can support several stages of the development process.
Their paths also show why a company’s scientific origins matter alongside its current address. Some of these businesses continue to develop their technology in and around Dundee; others have moved elsewhere. The research behind them remains part of the city’s contribution to the wider life sciences industry.
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