Biotech Bizz: Ya' Want Peptides With That?
Maynard co. stays focused by branching out
Alfred Chi's big idea, the one he has invested $150,000 of his personal savings in, the one that compelled him to quit the lab management business and go to business school for, isn't making him any money.
But his company is doing just fine, thank you, and without any substantial venture capital or investment backing, due in large part to a business plan that creates demand for one product while satisfying customers' needs for a more basic product.
Chi, founder, president and CEO of CHI Scientific in Maynard, has a grand vision of standardizing the way primary cells are cultured.
Primary cells are living cells taken directly from a living organism like a mouse, a rat or a human. Because they are faithful copies of actual cells, scientists prefer to do research on them, but often can't because they are fragile and difficult to produce.
Modern Mutations
Instead, scientists do the bulk of their research on mutated cell lines - modified cells that can live for long periods of time in a lab environment, but which sometimes don't faithfully copy their biological doppelgangers, which can lead to mistakes in analysis, or drugs that act differently when introduced into the human body, instead of the lab.
The process for culturing the preferred primary cells currently takes months, Chi said, and because of the fickle nature of the process and the differing materials used, consistency from batch to batch, and lab to lab, is rarely achieved.
Mutated cell lines may not be perfect, but when time is money, their convenience is hard to ignore.
Chi hopes to change that when he introduces a standardized kit for producing primary cells, one that follows a strict set of protocols and uses consistent base materials to produce primary cells in days, not months, and produces them consistently - batch to batch, lab to lab.
This kit is Chi's big idea, and he's spent the past three years perfecting it. When introduced, it promises to be a lucrative item, equally at home in a classroom or lab, teaching the fundamentals of cell culturing, as it would be in a major research lab where time is short and expectations are high.
But that's just it. Chi hasn't introduced this kit yet.
What Chi has done is create a market for the discounted peptides, proteins, reagents and RNA materials that comprise his kit. Instead of entering the market with his kit already assembled and perfected, and selling the individual components of it as replacement parts, so to speak, Chi has quietly made a market niche for himself selling only the components, while planting the seed for the larger kit to come.
Chi has agreements in place with foreign companies, including many in his native China, that produce the various chemicals and solutions labs use every day. Because he goes right to the supplier, and is willing to take on the risk associated with dealing with foreign companies, Chi is able to supply his clients with these compounds at a significantly lower price than more established companies that charge for fancy labels and convenience, Chi said.
Chi is using the revenue generated from his current sales efforts to further refine his kit and to keep his business afloat, all without outside investment. The way Chi looks at it, he could spend 70 percent of his time trying to court VC investment, explaining his ideas and wishing someone would bite, or he can spend 95 percent of his time developing a product he knows they would be silly to ignore.
Nobody ever said advancing scientific progress couldn't also advance the bottom line.
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