There are currently no effective pharmacological treatments to prevent scarring following trauma or surgery. Renovo, a spin-off from the University of Manchester, was set up two years ago with this market in mind. Renovo has two anti-scarring compounds in clinical trials, based on Transforming Growth Factor Beta 3, which appears to promote healing without scarring in embryos, and an antagonist of Transforming Growth Factor Beta 1 and Beta 2, growth factors which appear to be associated with scarring in adults.

Senexis Ltd. spun-out of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to develop novel therapeutics and diagnostics for currently incurable aging-related disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes. In addition to being more prevalent in the older population, these diseases also share a similar underlying etiology; they are all associated with amyloidosis.

Encouraged by successes in the biotech space, public market investors' interest in the device arena has returned in 2004 to support 10 companies' IPOs so far. Windhover's analysis of the valuations achieved indicate that private investors in these companies have, on average, enjoyed larger returns than their biotech counterparts.