BIOTECH company Summit, which has spent the past 12 months struggling for survival, has received City backing for a £8.2m share offer.

During the past year it has slashed its workforce at Milton Park, near Abingdon, from 100 to 25, and sold the rights to a promising method of testing new drugs using zebrafish, plus a lab in Reading.

But in a change of fortune, it has persuaded stockbrokers Singer to underwrite a £6m fundraising, and is asking investors to put up a further £2.2m to secure its future to next December.

Chief executive Steven Lee said: "This re-financing represents a re-launch of Summit and will secure the financial future of the Company until at least December 2011. This investment will be used to support key activities as Summit seeks to exploit the potential offered by our iminosugar technology platform that I believe offers the opportunity of discovering new medicines to treat a range of major diseases."

Summit's hope for the future is the patents it owns for iminosugars, chemicals found in plants which could be used to treat diabetes and other diseases.

It has also secured a £2.2m grant from The Wellcome Trust to develop a drug to treat Clostridium difficile, a superbug which is proving a worse threat to health than MRSA.

Mr Lee said: “Our C. difficile programme targets a significant and growing healthcare threat and the two years of funding will act as a potential value driver for the business as the programme is developed into a valuable commercial opportunity.”