IDT’s Trey Martin Describes Why Custom Oligos Are in Such High Demand
August 23, 2006
Integrated
DNA Technologies (IDT), a provider of custom oligo
synthesis, has undergone remarkable growth through
expansion, with a new facility which effectively
doubles its research, support, and production
capacity. IDT has also expanded through its recent
acquisitions of GenBase Inc. and Synthegen, Inc.
Pharma DD talked to IDT’s COO Trey Martin to find
out what factors have been fueling its marked success.
Pharma DD:
Please describe IDT.
Mr.
Martin: We
fulfill custom oligonucleotide orders of any size, on
demand, for sequences of DNA, RNA, LNA, or chimerics—these
can be modified or unmodified, purified or unpurified.
We offer over 100 modifications. Orders can range from
a single primer to many thousands of oligos in plates.
Our menu encompasses products
from dual-labeled probes, to antisense oligos, to RNAi
duplexes. Eighty-five percent of IDT’s
business is done over the Internet, using a lot of
Web-based design tools and order interfaces. Depending
on how complex an order is, products are typically
shipped within 24 hours of order receipt.
Pharma DD:
What factors are driving the growth in this business?
Mr.
Martin: Our
business is expanding in part due to emerging fields
of study, such as RNAi. Those are obviously very big
drivers. There is a lot of renewed interest and work
being done in very high-throughput SNP and other
genotyping screens. These are being carried out for
purposes of therapeutic target validation,
pharmacogenomics, and those types of things. And there
is still a great deal of basic genomic research being
done, including basic sequencing using PCR, et cetera.
Pharma DD:
When you say that there is a renewed interest in
screening, why do you think that is?
Mr.
Martin: I say
renewed because there was a big, dizzying rise of SNP-based
screening companies before the NASDAQ crash of 2000.
Everybody was going to solve human health problems by
having great SNP technologies. A few of those
companies are still around but some new ones have
since emerged. We’re seeing more and more people
doing very large-scale screens looking at SNPs and
specific populations for various [disease] indicators.
Pharma DD:
What technological advances are driving this business?
Mr.
Martin: Our
industry is really competitive. And because of
that—and especially due to price
competition—people have been driven to be extremely
efficient. Since I’ve been making oligos, over the
last 12 years, their price has dropped about 15-fold.
That’s pretty phenomenal. And as the price goes
down, the possibility arises for people to do
experiments that might not have been feasible five,
six years ago due to very high costs.
The
reduction in price clearly drives growth in reagent
consumption. For example, in 2000 IDT was synthesizing
about 7,500 oligos per day. Now we’re doing about
40,000 per day.
So
technically speaking, we have had to become much more
sophisticated to be able to handle these larger
numbers, and get more marginalized profits on those
numbers. That is certainly our biggest challenge. So
toward that end, we put a great deal of emphasis on
Information Services. We have over 30 employees in
Information Services (IS), and they are dedicated
solely to IDT’s oligo production capability.
That
is basically our primary driver. Our goal has always
been to increase our capacity and our capability, but
without sacrificing the quality, service, or quality
control processes.
Our
IS team creates software that allows for the efficient
processing of tens of thousands of custom products
simultaneously. Our in-house LIMS lets operators view
the entire path of each individual oligo made here,
down to who loaded the column, at what time, on which
machine, which lots of reagents were used, which
speedvac it dried down in, etc. Any measurements of QC
are also linked—using
MALDI and ESI mass spectrometry, IDT provides mass
spec quality control for every oligo, including RNA,
long oligos, and all chemical modifications.
Pharma DD:
What are the big opportunities ahead?
Mr.
Martin: Because
the industry is so competitive, I would say there are
many opportunities for IDT in consolidation. We will
continue on our growth path, and keep plugging away at
what has gotten us here. But at the same time, IDT is
actively seeking acquisition opportunities. We have
several pending deals in Europe, with the first likely
to be announced in September.
The
other thing IDT will focus on moving forward is the
maturation of many people’s R&D work into
clinical diagnostics, and the reduction of their
research findings to clinical practice. Many of our
customers—several dozen of them—are moving through
the ranks and are using IDT’s oligos in clinical
diagnostics--whereas they were once used solely in
research in attempts to develop such products. I think
IDT has a great deal of work yet to do in the
diagnostics area, which will ultimately be included in
our offering of GMP-based synthesis services.
URL:
http://www.pharmadd.com/topnews/august
23 2006.asp
|
