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Tools for Medical Research
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Innovative
tools from St. Louis biotech firms are leading the way to research.
By Christopher Brown
For those possessed by the entrepreneurial spirit, a fundamental
question arises immediately: gold or pans? Put less cryptically,
the question is, will you make your fortune by panning for gold
or by selling pans to those who pan for gold?
Above:
Dr. John P. McAlister, III, chief executive officer and president,
Tripos, Inc.
In St. Louis, there is a strong tradition of selling the pans. Take
Henry Shaw, for example, who became rich in the 19th century selling
tools and supplies to those who were settling the west, and later
donated land to the city for Tower Grove Park and Shaw’s Garden,
now known as the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Among Shaw’s contemporary followers are several local biotech companies
that have dedicated themselves to providing tools—of the modern,
high-tech kind—for prospectors in the field of medical research.
Tripos
Tripos is a “discovery research company,” says vice president Trevor
Heritage, providing tools and consulting services to a wide range
of pharmaceutical, biotech, and agrochemical companies. Among the
tools in the Tripos product line are libraries of chemical compounds
that can be used by researchers who are investigating critical biological
processes.
But Tripos also offers help to companies in a typically modern problem:
making decisions based on a sometimes overwhelming flood of information.
A major problem facing such companies, Heritage says, is dealing
effectively with the sheer volume of data that is produced by their
research, both from individual research projects, and at the company-wide
level.
“Most pharmaceutical companies struggle to provide consistent, straightforward
access to the data they have generated over the years,” Heritage
says.
“They have data stored in different formats, in Excel spreadsheets
and in text files; and for larger companies, it’s also spread around
the country or the world in different data-silos. “It can be almost
impossible to browse through and figure out what it means.”
To help researchers analyze the data produced by their projects—and
decide what steps to take next—Tripos offers “decision-support software.”
At the company wide- level, Tripos offers consulting services using
its MetaLayer technology, which allows researchers to find information
anywhere in a company’s data storage location using search technology
comparable to that employed in Internet search engines.
Linco Research
Linco Research is the maker of test kits used by researchers who
study diabetes and obesity from within the esoteric sounding field
of immunodiagnostics. In other words, if you are at all interested
in the reasons why one person is thin and another is fat, then the
obscure and jargon-filled work of Linco Research has something to
say to you.
The field recently received front-page attention from The Wall
Street Journal and USA Today with the publication of
research showing the importance of a newly discovered protein called
ghrelin that plays an important role in weight control.
The contribution of Linco Research to obesity and diabetes research,
according to president Rick Ryan, Ph.D., is the development and
sale of test kits that allow researchers to measure the presence
of key hormones in the blood.
Within the study of diabetes, one example is a kit that helps researchers
measure the amount of insulin in the blood, as well as peptides
that are produced through the body’s normal processing of insulin.
Within the field of obesity research, it means kits to help researchers
measure the amount of ghrelin and other hormones.
Linco is now beginning to market the world’s first “Active Ghrelin”
kit, Ryan says, an example of how quickly the company moves to fill
needs in the medical research field. Linco has become a leading
producer of research diagnostic kits by developing all-in-one kits
that take much of the drudgery out of lab work, Ryan says.
“You could compare it to making a cake from a Betty Crocker cake
mix versus making it from scratch,” he says. “With our kits, you
get the reagents along with the protocol or procedure, and if you
follow it, it’ll work just fine.”
Linco has been pushing its edge in the field with the development
of even more powerful kits that allow the simultaneous measurement
of numerous target hormones, allowing researchers to save time and
make more efficient use of tissue samples.
“As new technology comes along, there are always new ways being
developed to do these tests,” Ryan says. “We are committed to staying
on top of these developments and offering researchers the most powerful
tools available.”
Coretech Holdings LLC
Above:
Coretech Holdings founders Jim Unnerstall (left) and Doug Martin
(right)
You can never be too rich or too thin, goes the old saying. Coretech
Holdings has been focusing its attention on the second half of the
proposition, developing devices that allow medical researchers to
make thinner and thinner slices of tissue for examination under
a microscope. How thin? Try 10 microns, or one-one hundredth of
a millimeter.
The devices go under the somewhat musical name of “vibratory microtomes,”
and are essential to many kinds of research. Coretech got its start
with the purchase by founders Doug Martin and Jim Unnerstall of
the manufacturer of an earlier generation of tissue-sectioning equipment.
Within months, the two had re-engineered the company’s vibratory
microtome, produced five new models, and begun working on a line
of accessories.
Currently, Coretech is the world leader in vibratory microtomes
for use with fresh tissue sections, Martin says, and among the leaders
in two other important categories; microtomes used with frozen tissue,
and with tissue embedded in parrafin.
The company markets the devices through its Vibratome Company business
unit. Another unit, MyNeuroLab.com, produces miniature operating
tables for use in brain surgery and other delicate procedures performed
on small animals. Working with these tables, which are known as
stereotaxic instruments, has traditionally been a laborious and
error-prone process that has required researchers to make complicated
calculations of coordinates for surgical insertion points pretty
much on the fly.
With the MyNeuroLab.com tables, which are computer controlled, the
calculation of insertion points happens automatically, with a dramatic
reduction in the error rate.
St. Louis, a world-center of medical research, has been a perfect
place in which to develop its instruments, Martin says. “The research
community here has been a great resource for us with a body of talented
people that we can show our prototypes to for comments and suggestions,”
he says. “All of our divisions work closely with local researchers
and benefit from their hands-on expertise.”
Chris Brown is a St. Louis-based free-lance writer. |
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