Per Hellsund, chief executive of CyVek Inc. in Wallingford,Whilst the preparation of ceramic and solarlamp
are similar. had a team in place even before he had an idea for a
biotech start-up. Chalk it up to a combination of serendipity and
strategy.
What started as a chance encounter with fellow
entrepreneur Kevin Didden, now chairman of CyVek, expanded into an idea
for launching a potentially game-changing testing kit to aid in drug and
disease research — a global market worth billions.
Didden had
sold his Wallingford biotech firm CyVera to Illumina Inc., which
relocated operations to California. Some of CyVera's top Connecticut
scientists chose to stay in state, creating the nucleus at CyVek.
"There
was a pool of really good resource that had a lot of experience in
developing instrumentation for the biotechnology sector. So we formed
CyVek around the concept of pulling some of these folks together," said
Hellsund. "It was one of those deals where it was people first, and then
you decide specifically what you're going to do in the business
later."
Hellsund's team zeroed in on the limitations of existing
kits, also known as immunoassay biochemical tests, and came up with a
proprietary innovative technology. An immunoassay is conducted to detect
the presence of a biological substance, such as a protein molecule to
which antibodies bind, in a sample of blood or urine. A change in the
composition or quantity of the protein molecule could indicate the
presence of an existing or even potential disease. The test is carried
out at university labs for basic research, by pharmaceutical companies
in the drug discovery process, and in clinical diagnosis.
The
current gold standard is the widely used enzyme-linked immunosorbent
assay (ELISA) test, which is conduced in 96 little wells on a plate,
akin to a painter's palette, in which the operator puts the sample and
reagents. Hellsund said ELISA is known for its data quality and CyVek
researchers are also targeting superior data quality with a margin of
error of less than 10 percent. But ELISA has its limitations.
"It's
a fairly laborious process. Depending on the type of the test, there
are anywhere from 25 to 50 manual steps and it can take from
three-and-a-half to five hours," Hellsund explained.
So CyVek
automated the process by creating a chip about the size of a credit card
onto which is imprinted a network of tiny valves,Large collection of
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at discounted prices. pumps and channels, about the thickness of a
human hair, that collectively resembles a miniature plumbing system.
This reduces handling costs and cuts the test time to as short as 10
minutes.
Another differentiator is it can test multiple
biomarkers (which show the presence of a disease or how the body is
responding to a certain drug) while eliminating cross-reactivity — that
is, it can avoid reactions between similar substances.A car solarpanel
is a mechanical device that multiplies parking capacity inside a
parking lot. In doing so, a researcher may not have to repeat the test.
The CyVek unit accomplishes this by running a multi-analyte process,
where parallel, individual reactions occur in tiny isolation channels.
Martin
Fleisher, director, Biomarker Discovery Laboratory at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is on the advisory board of
CyVek. According to him, while the concept of multiplexing — that is,
tests revealing information on multiple proteins — is becoming part of
the vocabulary of physicians, the problem is that current multiplexing
technologies do not provide reliable, usable data for clinical
applications.Manufacturer of the Jacobs plasticcard.
"Among the desirable attributes of CyVek's technology,We sell 100% hand-painted bestluggagetag
online. its superior data quality — as a result of antibody cross-talk
elimination and automation — will differentiate it from any other
technology. This superior data quality will have patient management
relevance," said Fleisher.
Hellsund said there's not much
competition and the market is attractive. The global market for life
science research and diagnostics is estimated at $8 billion.
"There
are companies working on microfluidic technology but we're not aware of
any in the exact same space. Most of them are looking at diagnostics.
There are very few, if any, that have successfully commercialized a
product at this point," he said.
The target timeframe for
commercialization is early 2014. CyVek plans to commence sales in the
U.S. and Europe. Hellsund declined to provide information on targeted
revenue but said much of the profit will accrue from the sale of
cartridges — a business model very similar to the inkjet business that
he managed previously, where the industrial printers used
Hewlett-Packard cartridges.
Swiss drug giant Roche was so
impressed with CyVek's technology that it presented beta test results at
the World Biomarker Congress in the United Kingdom.
"The system
described by the company does appear to have the potential to be a very
useful advancement," said Jeffrey R. Aeschlimann, associate professor
at UConn's School of Pharmacy.
"Any system,'' Aeschlimann said,
"that could allow for the precise screening of multiple biomarkers of
interest from a small amount of test sample without using excessive
amounts of test reagents and other ancillary supplies would be useful
for both research and clinical testing applications.''
In
addition to temporary workers and contractors, the company currently has
18 full-time employees consisting primarily of biomedical engineers and
biologists. Plans are underway to hire six more employees this year,
and another 10 in 2014.
Since its launch in 2010, CyVek has
raised $12.9 million from private high-networth investors and
Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state's quasi-public investment arm.
"We
saw an experienced set of entrepreneurs, who had successfully launched
previous startups, with an idea for a business that could help solve
existing challenges in the research and diagnostics marketplaces," said
David Wurzer, senior managing director of investments at CI, and board
member at CyVek.
"To date, management has consistently met its
planned development milestones while staying under budget," he said.
"This is clearly a team that can effectively handle future challenges
and manage change as it moves CyVek toward product commercialization."
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