Bob Ulrich, a managing director at Vanguard Venture Partners, says Xeotron's manufacturing method could produce a custom biochip in a matter of days versus the industry standard of several months. The cost savings have yet to be determined, but Ulrich predicts it will be substantial. What I see them being able to provide customers is the ability to create high-density custom chips very rapidly at a reasonable cost. I think that capability extends beyond gene chips into the emerging market of protein chips. Lindenberg says there's a bigger need for peptide and protein chips because that's what researchers ultimately want to study.
Peptides are the building blocks of proteins.
So nothing happens in the body until DNA becomes a protein, he explains. Xeotron is working on a product line of DNA chips and a separate product line of peptide and protein chips. The company already has begun shipping some DNA biochips to collaborators as part of a testing process. Xeotron intends to ship its first commercial product in about a year. He officially joined the 10-employee firm late last year.