Nexia is tackling a materials-science conundrum that has stumped even DuPont for 20 years:how to synthesize spider silk.

FORBES: Charlotte's Goat

In 1998 Nexia flew 130 goats from New Zealand to its facilities on the Plattsburgh base, so the herd could quickly expand.

FORBES: Charlotte's Goat

But Jeffrey Turner, the molecular geneticist behind the goat gambit and chief executive of publicly held Nexia Biotechnologies, has more pragmatic goals.

FORBES: Charlotte's Goat

Nexia believes it can produce up to 5m doses within two years.

ECONOMIST: REPORTS

Also sitting pretty is Nexia, particularly since it began to focus on the use of transgenic animals to make medicines that can protect against nerve agents.

ECONOMIST: REPORTS

Nexia became known as the spider-silk company, after it created transgenic goats capable of producing spider silk (which is, in fact, a form of protein) in their milk.

ECONOMIST: REPORTS

By injecting the orb weaver gene into the father of Mille and Muscade, Nexia bred she-goats with mammary glands able to produce the complex proteins that make up spider silk.

FORBES: Charlotte's Goat

It then moved into Collingwood Place, with the visit ending in an access road at Copenhagen Way where the prosecution says Bellfield's red Daewoo Nexia car was seen driving away 22 minutes after Milly vanished.

BBC: Milly Dowler trial visits Walton-on-Thames locations