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Citation 12:
DeltaDot-QSTP JV to Create Qatar's First Proteomics Facility
June 18, 2009
By Tony Fong
UK firm DeltaDot and the Qatar Science and Technology Park have partnered to bring proteomics to Qatar in full fashion.
On Tuesday the two announced a three-year, $15 million joint venture to create a 500-square-meter (5,382 square feet) proteomics facility headquartered in Doha that would be the Arab emirate's first such facility.
Work at the center, expected to become operational later this year, will concentrate on biomarker discovery and validation with a focus on diseases that are of special concern to the Qatari people, such as cancer and diabetes. Eventually, new technology development will also be included, and contract services will be available, officials connected to the facility said.
The idea for the center began forming two years ago when the executive chairman of QSTP, Tidu Maini, asked John Hassard, the founder and chief technology officer of DeltaDot, to set up a proteomics facility in Qatar, Hassard told ProteoMonitor this week.
QSTP serves as a base and incubator for both established and start-up technology companies in the country and provides services to the firms to commercialize their technologies.
For DeltaDot, creating such a facility in Qatar was an opportunity to broaden the reach of its technology to a geography that could be described as a pre-emerging market in proteomics.
DeltaDot has a "unique set of tools, which make it quite appropriate for a country like Qatar, which is going to try to leapfrog old technologies and go into new areas in the rapidly growing field of proteomics," Hassard said.
The company has developed technology for label-free analysis of biomolecules. According to the company's website, the technology is derived from particle physics techniques to characterize sub-atomic particles.
Compared to traditional gel electrophoresis and chromatography technologies, the company claims that its Peregrine High Performance Capillary Electrophoresis and DeltaTiter systems offer faster run times, improved ease of use, and greater resolution, sensitivity quantification, reproducibility, and robustness.
"Qatar's got very clear national goals to do with the healthcare of its people," said Hassard, who will become the CEO of the joint venture, called DeltaDot QSTP. "We have technology that is ideally suited for building up biomarker panels and one of our main jobs is to help in the development of biomarker panels for diagnostics, and the treatment and mitigation of these diseases."
Of the $15 million investment by QSTP into the project, $5 million is an equity investment into DeltaDot, and the balance is to set up the proteomics facility, said Danny Ramadan, the technology investment advisor for QSTP, which currently houses 21 firms in a 45,000-square-meter complex, including Microsoft, General Electric, and EADS.
Over the next few months a space chosen within QSTP will be "fitted out" to meet the requirements of DeltaDot, he added. In addition to DeltaDot's technology, Hassard said that the facility will be outfitted with instruments such as mass specs and bioinformatics software.
According to Judit Nagy, director of the proteomics facility at Imperial College and head of the scientific advisory board at the Qatar facility, among the instruments that the Doha space will have is a MALDI mass spec which will be the workhorse instrument for high-throughput protein identification; and an LC-MS platform with an interchangeable MALDI in the front end for research in post-translational modifications and quantification, as well as more in-depth proteome analysis.
Officials said they are close to making a decision on which mass spec platforms they will purchase but declined to name them.
The DeltaDot technologies will be interfaced with the mass specs to "make the facility more high throughput, much more cutting edge than anything that you've seen," anywhere, Nagy said.
The 5,382-square-feet center is expected to open by the end of the year and will concentrate initially on biomarker discovery and validation with a focus on diseases that are of special concern to the Qatari people, such as cancer and diabetes.
…
Citation 12:
DeltaDot-QSTP JV to Create Qatar's First Proteomics Facility
June 18, 2009
By Tony Fong
UK firm DeltaDot and the Qatar Science and Technology Park have partnered to bring proteomics to Qatar in full fashion.
On Tuesday the two announced a three-year, $15 million joint venture to create a 500-square-meter (5,382 square feet) proteomics facility headquartered in Doha that would be the Arab emirate's first such facility.
Work at the center, expected to become operational later this year, will concentrate on biomarker discovery and validation with a focus on diseases that are of special concern to the Qatari people, such as cancer and diabetes. Eventually, new technology development will also be included, and contract services will be available, officials connected to the facility said.
The idea for the center began forming two years ago when the executive chairman of QSTP, Tidu Maini, asked John Hassard, the founder and chief technology officer of DeltaDot, to set up a proteomics facility in Qatar, Hassard told ProteoMonitor this week.
QSTP serves as a base and incubator for both established and start-up technology companies in the country and provides services to the firms to commercialize their technologies.
For DeltaDot, creating such a facility in Qatar was an opportunity to broaden the reach of its technology to a geography that could be described as a pre-emerging market in proteomics.
DeltaDot has a "unique set of tools, which make it quite appropriate for a country like Qatar, which is going to try to leapfrog old technologies and go into new areas in the rapidly growing field of proteomics," Hassard said.
The company has developed technology for label-free analysis of biomolecules. According to the company's website, the technology is derived from particle physics techniques to characterize sub-atomic particles.
Compared to traditional gel electrophoresis and chromatography technologies, the company claims that its Peregrine High Performance Capillary Electrophoresis and DeltaTiter systems offer faster run times, improved ease of use, and greater resolution, sensitivity quantification, reproducibility, and robustness.
"Qatar's got very clear national goals to do with the healthcare of its people," said Hassard, who will become the CEO of the joint venture, called DeltaDot QSTP. "We have technology that is ideally suited for building up biomarker panels and one of our main jobs is to help in the development of biomarker panels for diagnostics, and the treatment and mitigation of these diseases."
Of the $15 million investment by QSTP into the project, $5 million is an equity investment into DeltaDot, and the balance is to set up the proteomics facility, said Danny Ramadan, the technology investment advisor for QSTP, which currently houses 21 firms in a 45,000-square-meter complex, including Microsoft, General Electric, and EADS.
Over the next few months a space chosen within QSTP will be "fitted out" to meet the requirements of DeltaDot, he added. In addition to DeltaDot's technology, Hassard said that the facility will be outfitted with instruments such as mass specs and bioinformatics software.
According to Judit Nagy, director of the proteomics facility at Imperial College and head of the scientific advisory board at the Qatar facility, among the instruments that the Doha space will have is a MALDI mass spec which will be the workhorse instrument for high-throughput protein identification; and an LC-MS platform with an interchangeable MALDI in the front end for research in post-translational modifications and quantification, as well as more in-depth proteome analysis.
Officials said they are close to making a decision on which mass spec platforms they will purchase but declined to name them.
The DeltaDot technologies will be interfaced with the mass specs to "make the facility more high throughput, much more cutting edge than anything that you've seen," anywhere, Nagy said.
The 5,382-square-feet center is expected to open by the end of the year and will concentrate initially on biomarker discovery and validation with a focus on diseases that are of special concern to the Qatari people, such as cancer and diabetes.
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