Oxfordshire company Vastox is looking for a new name after taking over two privately-owned biotech companies in a £16.5m deal.

Vastox, which employs 70 staff at Milton Park, near Abingdon, aims to reduce the failure rate of experimental drugs by testing them on zebra fish and fruit flies.

It is acquiring DanioLabs, whose 35 staff will remain in Cambridge, using zebra fish to test drugs. The second company, Dextra Laboratories, which employs 17 people in Reading, specialises in the chemistry of drug compounds.

Vastox, a spin-off from Oxford University's chemistry department, raised £15m from investors two years ago, joining the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.

It has a cash pile of £60m and generates income by selling its services to drug companies. It is also developing its own drugs to treat Parkinson's Disease and muscular dystrophy.

Six Oxford scientists - Prof Steve Davies, Prof Graham Richards, Prof Kay Davies, Prof Edith Simm, Jean Paul Vincent and Derek Stemple - own shares in the company, which will employ 133 people after the takeover.

Company secretary Darren Millington added: "The name Vastox doesn't represent the sort of business that we are now, and we are constantly expanding."

More than 400 biotech executives are in Oxfordshire this week at BioTrinity, the South East's largest annual biotech business convention yet.

It is organised by Oxfordshire Bioscience Network, whose director, Jon Rees, said: "Our 2007 survey found there are now over 120 biotechnology and healthcare companies in the county."

Biotrinity is today and tomorrow at the Oxford Belfry Hotel, in Milton Common.

10:39am Tuesday 27th March 2007

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