SBS looks to buy after making profit

The company provides early stage development services, including tissue pathology, biomarker assay development and pharmacogenomic analysis, as well as services to healthcare providers and life science researchers.

SBS’ latest financials show that it has cash reserves of £7.7m ($12.6m) and Laurie Turnbull, executive chairman of the company, plans to use this to bolster the company’s offering.

He explained that the company will use these “significant cash resources​ to support further growth​”, either through acquisitions or investment in technology platforms.

The company has already installed all the elements of the CellSearch System from Immunicon to improve its capacity for cancer research. SBS has expertise in oncology and believes combining this with its pharmacogenomic analysis will be popular with pharmaceutical clients.

By using this service companies can determine the genetics of diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular or cancer, to help further research. In addition SBS believes this technique can be particularly useful in development of targeted therapeutics.

The past six months have seen an upturn in demand for these services, particularly from top-tier pharma companies. SBS believes that this has been underpinned by its “powerful offering​” that combines pathology services with its genomics offering.

Increased demand has seen the pharma service division generate revenues of £0.4m in the first half of 2009, up from £0.2m in the same period of last year. This increase helped the business overturn a £0.1m loss in the first six months of 2008 and record a £0.1m profit.

Revenues for the whole business grew by 14 per cent to £6.7m despite the “trying economic climate​”.