Goodbye Dolly: PPL rescue plan fails

PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish firm set up by the Roslin Institute to exploit the cloning technology used to create Dolly the sheep, announced last week that it is selling off its remaining assets. A last-minute rescue attempt, in which it was to relaunch focussing on a wound-sealing treatment called Fibrin-1, has fallen through. The company, once valued at £100 million but now worth £6 million, has apparently faced repeated criticism for pursuing interesting science at the expense of business opportunities.

PPL had planned to develop a new drug treatment for lung diseases, by harvesting large quantities of the blood protein alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) from the milk of genetically modified (GM) sheep. But earlier this year its German pharmaceutical partner company, Bayer, withdrew from the project. PPL recently announced that it would have to slaughter its flocks of GM sheep.

Chief executive Geoff Cook said the company had tried to convince its shareholders of the 'significant long-term' value of Fibrin-1, but had failed to win enough support to continue its development. Biotechnology analyst Erling Refsum said that the technology developed and envisioned by the firm was still the leading idea in their field, but added that 'they just didn't have the commercial wherewithal'.