SDS Optic Ready to Expand into US with Research Hub in Philadelphia’s BioLabs at The Curtis
January 17, 2024
A new company is coming to Philadelphia from across the ocean. SDS Optic, based in Poland, is choosing Philly for its US base of operations, so it can tap into the vibrancy of the area’s research base and life science innovation ecosystem. The company will open its new US lab operation at BioLabs Philadelphia.
As highlighted at the recent second-annual Philly Builds Bio event, Greater Philadelphia is home to unique institutional capabilities and a rising tide of commercial ventures that are taking new technologies from the lab bench to the patient bedside. SDS Optic is developing medical diagnostics technology around photonics, specifically its proprietary inPROBE® microprobe platform. The company is scaling up massively in Europe, with plans to produce 50,000 biosensors per year beginning in late 2024.
As Chief Operating and Business Officer Matt Sagan explains, “This technology very much depends on molecular biology.” And that’s where the company’s research must focus, since the fiber-optic technology the system uses is well established. And that led to the need to come here: “Central Europe is great when it comes to technology development,” Matt says, “but unfortunately, we have limited high expertise in molecular biology.” In Philadelphia, SDS Optic found an entire ecosystem of R&D expertise and also funding opportunities, potential corporate partners, and other necessary elements for the company’s growth. A variety of factors went into the decision to choose Philadelphia, including an impressive local ecosystem and what Sagan enthusiastically calls a “huge” talent pool. Everything the company is likely to need, including industry experts, service providers and, most importantly, researchers, is readily available and comparatively affordable – critical factors for a small company that must be frugal with its resources.
DeepTech for Deep Insights
Marrying molecular biology with novel photonics, chemistry, and biomedical engineering gives SDS Optic special value and unique ability to save lives. The company is the first of its kind to come out of Europe, and it is approaching a $14 billion market for in vitro diagnostics.
The team pushing SDS Optic forward includes international leaders in the development of disruptive diagnostics and monitoring tools, whose expertise and commercial experience spans government, academia, and industry in Europe, North America, and beyond. Their shared goal is to move real-time diagnosis and patient monitoring into a new era of access and accuracy, with the vision of increasing the cancer cure rate globally by 30% by the year 2030.
SDS Optic invents and develops a revolutionary opto-biological methodology that allows for instant cellular processes studies including in-vivo cancer diagnosis with single-cell resolution. InPROBE® detects presence and measures concentration levels of the HER2+ cancer cells in breast tumors. We are first ever European based cutting-edge medical DeepTech connecting molecular biology with novel photonics technologies, chemistry & biomedical engineering to create solutions that can revolutionize healthcare worldwide, incl. first ever In Vivo Photonics Immunoassays platform technology inPROBE®.
There is compelling evidence that our disruptive InPROBE® is addressing a rapid growth trend in a high-volume market. Based on Transparency Market Research Report the inPROBE® target market of HER2 biomarker tests is projected to be worth $4.6 billion, with 7.5 million HER2 marker tests performed annually worldwide in 2021 alone.
Late or false diagnosis is a true killer in oncology, and at home in Europe the prognosis for diagnostic capability is bleak–the average age of pathologists on the continent is over 60 years. To build capacity requires augmenting the workforce with technology, and that is what inPROBE® provides.
inPROBE® focuses on key proteins that allow for precision medicine approaches to be utilized, currently focusing on breast cancer and gastric cancer applications. The solution doesn’t only address the medical treatment of disease itself, but also the psychological pain involved in waiting. Patients and their loved ones talk about experiencing the worst week of their lives–or longer–waiting for results from a biopsy. Removing the pain of incision and the stress of not knowing means that SDS Optic is providing benefits as wide-ranging as their technological breadth.
Our aim in the U.S. based R&D facility is to develop biological components for new inPROBE applications, incl. novel molecules/proteins targeting the selected cancer types and disease biomarkers including eye and infectious diseases, protein cloning, protein characterization, binding properties and specificity as well as developing different expression systems for efficient protein production.
We wish to establish new collaborations with US academic centers to work toward novel inPROBE applications in other areas, provide bridge between Poland R&D and US contractors, gain international visibility of SDS Optic, and attract talented scientist to grow at international company.
SDS Optic makes a great new addition to the Philadelphia innovation ecosystem and the BioLabs community. Philadelphia’s life science companies, now including SDS Optic, are tackling some of the most important and transformative challenges in health and medicine and have a strong culture of collaboration that fuels their progress. We will be following the progress of Philly’s newest company at BioBuzz to continue to share their growth and success along the way.
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Over the past 11 years, Chris has grown BioBuzz into a respected brand that is recognized for its community building, networking events and news stories about the local biotech industry. In addition, he runs a Recruiting and Marketing Agency that helps companies attract top talent through a blended model that combines employer branding and marketing services together with a high powered recruiting solution.
