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The business aimed to replace the traditional diagnostic tools and methods used at the time, he says. Pharmacia recruited people from pharmaceuticals, from biotechnology, and from several Swedish universities. In 1990, it launched the Biacon instrument to study molecular interactions and bindings; for example, covalent bonding of peptides, DNA, and drug candidates. Pharmacia's various structural changes, including the 1995 merger with Upjohn, led it to a strategy to focus on pharmaceuticals, Löfås says. "Our business was not of strategic interest; we were spun off and placed on the Swedish stock market and on NASDAQ with the name Biacore." The company specializes in bioanalytical instrumentation, based on surface plasmon resonance, to generate unique biological data. The technology can help determine whether a drug molecule is binding to its receptor, identifying specificity, kinetics, affinity, and concentration. In 1999, Biacore focused its R&D effort on drug discovery. And in 2001, it launched a new generation of software that enables the study of small-molecule interaction. "Where we first came into the pharma companies was in the analysis of a new molecule: Does it hit a receptor? But now," Löfås adds, "we are also analyzing the lead compounds to see how they bind to their receptors. What pharma companies have learned is that high-throughput screening gives lots of compounds, but not necessarily with the right binding. There is a lot of useless information. You can get thousands of hits, but many will bind to anything nonspecifically. Then you need to go in with alternative technology to fish out the good information." |
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