(MENAFN - ProactiveInvestors) Jim Phillips makes no apologies for his ambitions for () which listed on AIM late last year.

He wants it to be one of the few success stories of the life sciences industry which has had more than its fair share of failures over the past three decades.

The US has successfully created some monsters of new wave medicines the grande dames Amgen and Genzyme and more recently Biogen Idec Gilead and Celgene.

While not strictly a biotechnology firm as well see later it is at the forefront of nano-medicine Midatech still wants to emulate the American model.

Phillips is not shy in revealing this means building a business valued at billions of pounds rather than hundreds of millions or tens of millions as it is today.

To help it do this it recruited an institutional shareholder base that understands and backs the Midatech model.

At the IPO last December which raised 32mln of new money it brought in the influential Neil Woodford who used to run one of Britains largest funds for Invesco but is now going it alone.

He is joined on the investor register by well-known City names such as and Octopus as well as Finance Wales in fact around 70% of the firms equity is in the hands of long-term holders.

Meanwhile in chairman Rolf Stahel they have a man who helped create Shire a multi-billion pound healthcare business and one of possibly two sector successes that have been incubated by the UK capital markets (the other being ).

Stahel and Phillips worked together on EUSA a private cancer specialist they sold for around 480mln in 2012. The plan this time around is very definitely not to cash out.

More:

Midatech Pharma aiming skyhigh with revolutionary targeted therapies