‘Dolly’ cloning firm shrug off investment fears
The Scottish firm involved in the cloning of Dolly the sheep was tonight ‘‘fairly confident’’ it would avoid a cash crisis because of a lack of investment.
PPL Therapeutics in Midlothian is currently looking at alternative sources of funding after failing to raise £45 million for further research and development over the next four years.
The Roslin Institute-based biotechnology firm admitted that research work would grind to a halt within a year unless further investment could be found.
PPL and the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh hit the world’s headlines in 1997 with the cloning of Dolly the sheep.
The firm’s managing director, Ron James, said that the company was currently losing about £10 million a year and is expected to make further losses of between £10 million and £12 million per year over the next four years.
One possibility, he said, was now to look at raising the same amount of money, but not asking shareholders for the full £45 million straight away.
He said tonight: ‘‘The feedback has been that there is still a lot of support from existing shareholders.
‘‘It’s obvious that if we can’t raise the money that we will be in trouble, but we don’t expect that to happen.
‘‘We have sufficient funds to keep us going for the year and we are fairly confident that we will be able to raise the money needed during that time.’’
The company is currently involved in research for the US government on anti-germ warfare and its American arm has produced the first genetically-modified cloned piglets.
