2013年3月13日 星期三

Rich biotech talent pool yields CyVek’s disease-screening kits

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 quality solarlight 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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