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INNOVATIONS 2003 Qiagen LIFE SCIENCES Know your CUSTOMERS Customer knowledge is all-important for innovative results, Qiagen CEO Dr Metin Colpan tells Paul Bray. S QIAGEN l INNOVATION AT A GLANCE ome scientists never leave the lab. Not the ones at Qiagen (NASDAQ: QGENF), though. The Dutch biotech company’s 260 research scientists often go on the road with sales and marketing reps, learning about customers’ requirements first hand. “It’s important to understand the customer’s workflow,” says Qiagen’s CEO, Dr Metin Colpan. “Sometimes, we have to anticipate needs, creating a market as well as a product.” Qiagen provides technologies and products for separating, purifying and handling nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). Its products, used by academic and commercial scientists working in the fields of life sciences, genomics and drug discovery, totalled sales worth $263.8 million in the year to 31 December 2001. PAXgene, which stabilises RNA in biological samples such as blood, is an example of a product that resulted from listening to customers. The DNA and RNA (genetic material) in the sample are unstable and can degrade unless deepfrozen quickly. The problem, highlighted to Qiagen in 1993 by an AIDS research scientist, was solved some years later by Qiagen researchers, who discovered a molecule that stabilised organic samples. Launched in 2000, Paxgene “could be one of our most important products in five to ten years” because of the growth in molecular testing, says Colpan. Much of Qiagen’s innovation is prompted by developments in academic science. For example, now the human genome has been sequenced, scientists want to know what each gene does, a process called gene expression profiling. Qiagen is developing products that will enable researchers to test for genetic similarities and differences between, say, healthy and diseased cells, to help pinpoint targets for drug development. As the volumes of such tests increase, automation will be necessary, Qiagen predicts. The company’s automated products for its procedures now account for around 12 percent of sales. Qiagen expects this to increase, and so ploughed $6.9 million into R&D in 2001, 19 percent of net income of $36.5 million. Not everything is developed in-house. One of its most exciting technologies The Biorobot 3000 in the process of purifying nucleic acid. came from Xeragon, a U.S. company it acquired in 2002 for $8 million. Xeragon had a patent for making small, synthetic RNA (siRNA) molecules, which neutralise a gene and stop it working. siRNA was discovered in 2001, and in October 2002 Qiagen launched Cancer siRNA Oligo Set, for 139 cancer-related genes. Colpan predicts that the siRNA market could ultimately be worth up to $100 million, as By blending chemistry, engineering and IT, Qiagen’s SensiChip has “siRNA can reduce a study program from three years to a overcome the limitations of conventional testing methods. few months”. After using siRNA, scienBy getting out on the road and Qiagen, along with tists may need to extract DNA visiting customers, Qiagen bioanalytical company or RNA for testing, using discovered they needed a way of Zeptosens, developed a Qiagen’s gene expression detecting tiny traces of a microdevice called SensiChip, profiling. The company’s aim substance in order to cut out which uses sophisticated is that more and more of the testing errors. Conventional surface chemistry to cut out interconnected processes of testing methods require most of the ‘background life sciences research will use scientists to multiply samples in noise’ from other molecules Qiagen products. “It is importhe laboratory until they contain in the sample, making it tant to devise an integrated enough of the substance to be 1,000-10,000 times more solution for customers,” measurable, but this increases sensitive than conventional concludes Colpan. N the likelihood of errors. technologies. Each SensiChip The SensiChip Microarray Reader (left) enables analysis of limited amounts of starting material, such as cervical cancer biopsies (top). looks for the presence of a specific gene, and can measure the signal from just 100 cells, a sample one-tenth the thickness of a human hair. Paul Bray writes for U.K.-based newspapers the Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. www.qiagen.com NASDAQ JAN/FEB 2003 27