Content sponsored by BICOJul 5 2022
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we spoke with Héctor Martínez, CTO of BICO, about the technology and services they offer in life sciences research and how they are using science to reduce organ shortages. and improve human health.
Can you please introduce yourself and tell us what inspired your life sciences career?
I am Héctor Martínez, CTO and co-founder of BICO. My training is in engineering. I love engineering and I entered the field many, many years ago. I entered the field of biomedicine about 12 years ago and fell in love with the opportunities and possibilities. My co-founder, Erik Gatenholm, and I founded BICO together six years ago.
You are currently the CTO of BICO, a company made up of 14 subsidiaries covering various areas of the life sciences. Can you tell us more about why BICO was founded and what are some of your core values?
BICO was founded with the vision of reducing the period of organ shortage. We saw that we could make a contribution in this field. We are very committed to this vision. We are also very committed to reducing or accelerating drug development. Right now, the development cycles of a drug are simply too long. We believe we can make a difference and we are passionate about contributing to that.
This is something that will be done in our lives, which is the kind of goal or mission I want to be a part of: I want to dedicate my life to something bigger than myself.
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At BICO, you also focus on combining multiple areas of science such as artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics to improve human health. How important is it to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to research? What are the advantages of this?
It has been the core of what we do. Throughout BICO, if we look at each of the companies we have, it’s all a combination of physics and biology. It is a combination of artificial intelligence with biology or a combination of materials science with biology. The use of engineering technology or robotics for an application in biology is another way in which fields can be combined.
While, of course, each field is very exciting in itself, we choose to combine the two because we know there is a lot of space open to innovation. As a company with nearly 1,300 colleagues, we know we can make a big impact by focusing on these intersections.
We love working at intersections and in particular the intersection where biology meets technology is a dynamic and exciting area.
CELLINK, a BICO company launched in 2016, is responsible for creating the world’s first universal biotin. How did you create this biotin and how did its creation lead to advances in various areas of research, such as drug development and tissue engineering?
This is a very exciting story as it was our first product. When Eric and I started the business, we had this vision of reducing organ scarcity, and we thought bioprinting was a great tool and technology could be used for that.
In 2016, when we launched this product on the market, it was a biotin that allowed scientists to bring human tissues to the organs. This was a creation that emerged from my PhD. in Gutenberg, Sweden, at Chalmers University of Technology: I worked closely with my professor on this technology and it essentially became our first product. Eric and I marketed the product and took it to the market, where this whole image began to emerge.
This is CELLINKPlay
With more than 14 subsidiaries, you work in various fields of life sciences and have many products. Despite its wide portfolio of companies, what else makes BICO unique?
I think what makes BICO unique is mostly the people we’ve managed to attract. We are all very passionate about what we do. Of course, although there may be many companies that can say that, we are of the opinion that when you look at what we have achieved as partners in such a short time, it is unique and quite remarkable.
We like to move fast. I think this is one of the unique features of BICO: when we see an opportunity, we look for it wholeheartedly and get the job done.
Despite the increase in attention in recent years, further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the drug development sector still faces major hurdles to accelerate research into new therapeutics. What do you think are some of the most important challenges facing the drug discovery industry and how is BICO trying to overcome them?
There are many challenges involved. Of course, it is difficult to go into details, but one of the biggest challenges is the task of providing more automation, specifically integrated automation, to processes where there are many studies being done in laboratories.
This is where we believe we can make an important contribution. A second point is to combine automation, digitize the lab, and miniaturize experiments to get more experiments with fewer resources. There are some areas where we want to work closely with our pharmaceutical partners to advance drug development. I would say that automation, digitization, and miniaturization are the fields in which we can best contribute and where we believe there is a great need.
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As an international company with offices in both the United States and Europe, how important do you think Europe is in accelerating the life sciences industry?
In short, the role of Europe is enormous. For example, if we look at the technology coming from Europe, there are some amazing and even beautiful technologies available in the market today because there is a lot of funding coming to these universities. There is a lot of interest in working with the latest and greatest.
All this combined means that you have a lot of research that is open to new companies and that these technologies are finally reaching the industry. I firmly believe that Europe is doing an excellent job of increasing the number of innovations presented.
Europe is also doing an excellent job promoting startups that are making a difference. We are very grateful that we have been granted a number of European subsidies, which have resulted in a number of products that are already available on the market. Whether it is a product or a service, we have been able to transform European funding and turn it into a product, which is phenomenal. Our organization and those who benefit from our products are very grateful: to the institutions that granted us the funding and to the European taxpayer, without whom this important task could not take place.
Across Europe, many countries are leaders in the life sciences. The UK, for example, has an impressive track record in terms of what they have been able to do in the life sciences. Small towns like Cambridge have spawned amazing technologies from such a small center, and there are many more throughout Europe. Particularly for us as an international company, we have access to many very talented people.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a business within the life sciences but doesn’t know where to start? How important is it to find a unique space in a market when competing with established companies and organizations?
There’s not a single piece of advice, but as Eric often says, “You don’t have to be great to get started, you have to start to be great.” I think, in a word, it is essential to be bold. There are many innovations derived from academia that are needed in the industry. To put it another way, I encourage innovators and entrepreneurs to believe in their ideas.
Another major focus of BICO is sustainability, as you are an official signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Global Compact and the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact. How important is sustainability for BICO and how does your sustainability agenda launched in 2021 help achieve the SDGs?
Sustainability is essential. We are all part of a bigger picture. This is the framework in which we want to operate. We believe there is a lot of innovation and a lot of room to innovate new technologies and find new ways of doing things that return to the ethos of doing more with less. This concept can be a guiding force: we can focus on reducing the number of plastics used, reducing the number of chemicals used and still achieve great results. This is how we look at our work; in the larger scheme of things, there must be harmony between people, products, and the planet.
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BICO’s subsidiaries have a variety of technologies within the life sciences, with more than 25,000 currently used in research worldwide. How has technology advanced life science research over the past decade, and how vital will technology be to continue innovation in the field? Is there any particular area that you are excited to see evolve?
Over the last decade, the life sciences have evolved rapidly and very much in areas where we have seen great change. Especially in stem biology, cell research, cancer research, and general drug development, there have been dramatic changes and great progress. We have seen a shift from using 2D cell culture models to 3D cell culture models, which is a fairly important development.
We are proud to be at the forefront of our field, providing the technologies that will allow our pharmaceutical or academic industry customers to finally move from 2D cell cultures to 3D cell cultures. There are multiple technologies we can offer to help them in this transition. As an example, I can see that Pharmaceutical uses several connected tissues in microfluidic devices or organ-on-chip systems where a complete clinical trial can be performed on a plate. I am very, very …