Article Excerpt:
TWST: We'd like to begin with a brief historical sketch of Ciphergen Biosystems and a picture of the things you're doing at the present time.Dr. Fung: Ciphergen is a proteomics company that is over 10 years old, initially named Abiotic Systems. The company in the last eight years has been commercializing a proteomics technology that came out of Baylor College of Medicine called SELDI, which is a new form of protein preparation for mass spectrometry. Modern day proteomics is really about sample preparation and the ability to look at how proteins can be separated in preparation for analysis. That's what the technology called SELDI from Baylor is really well equipped to do. The original business model was to be a proteomics instrumentation company that built instruments using SELDI technology, marketing and selling this technology to researchers in academia, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. We have sold over 600 instruments around the world and people who have purchased our instruments have been very successful. There have been over 600 peer reviewed scientific publications that have utilized this technology with numerous patent applications arising out of discoveries made using this technology. So it's a very powerful technology. In fact, it's so powerful that Ciphergen itself has been using it to do biomarker discovery. Biomarker discovery is really the new way to look for disease markers that form the basis for novel diagnostic tests. Having utilized the SELDI technology successfully to discover biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic purposes, we have come to the conclusion that Ciphergen could actually be a successful specialty diagnostic company. So in the last two years, and accelerating this year, our focus has turned toward commercializing diagnostic tests. We have therefore entered into a variety of relationships, both on the scientific side as well as on the business side, that are aimed at accelerating the commercialization of diagnostic tests that have risen out of intellectual property that we have discovered using the SELDI technology. On the academic side, we have a variety of biomarker discovery collaborations with world-class investigators such as at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, University College London, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Working with these renowned physicians and scientists, we have been able to accelerate the pace of our biomarker discovery and validation with the aim of turning these discoveries into diagnostic tests. We call these biomarker discovery programs translational proteomics programs because they are intended to translate biomarker discoveries into diagnostic tests. These projects are primarily focused in oncology, with an ovarian cancer differential diagnosis test being our lead candidate product, but we also have programs in hematology, cardiovascular disease, and infectious disease. On the commercial side, in the summer of 2005, we signed a strategic alliance agreement with Quest Diagnostics, which is the largest clinical laboratory in the world. This is really a powerful outlet for us to start offering these diagnostic tests. The idea behind this alliance with Quest Diagnostics was that Ciphergen would engage in the discovery and validation activities with organizations such as Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson, and University College London. When we moved the programs far enough along that we and Quest felt comfortable with the data to support commercialization of a diagnostic test, we would work very closely to do the final assay development and the commercialization activities so that we could offer these tests in a clinical setting. We're now working very closely with Quest to work on commercialization of our first candidate test.
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