Thanks to a recent collaboration, a young Rio Rancho biotech company has learned a lot more about how its flagship protein purification instrument can be made more effective.
Sergey Dryga, Ph.D., a native of Russia, founded Q Biotech in the fall of 2022. After finding its first lab space about a year ago in a Rio Rancho office building, Dryga has been working to grow Q Biotech by producing more of the startup's personal chromatography systems, which can be used by bioscience and life science companies to purify proteins.
Part of that expansion, Dryga said, has been finding customers to help evaluate Q Biotech's chromatography instruments, which it calls Inceptum. One of those customers is Mercury Bio, a Santa Fe-based company and 2024 Startup to Watch scaling a biomolecular drug delivery platform.
Dryga first met Mercury Bio at a local entrepreneurship networking event in spring 2023, he told New Mexico Inno. The two companies had a conversation and decided Mercury Bio could be one of Q Biotech's early evaluators; the Rio Rancho startup has one other evaluation customer currently.
Fast forward about a year, and Dryga said Mercury Bio's feedback has been a "tremendous help" in evaluating and updating different components of Q Biotech's Inceptum instruments.
In particular, Dryga said a senior research scientist at Mercury Bio gave him suggestions on how to improve a software system used alongside the instruments to display readings from the devices. The Santa Fe company's suggestions surrounded the overall usefulness of the software and different functionality and features of the software, including unit readings and where to place labels — "many" of which Dryga implemented, he said.
That software provides a fluid diagram of Q Biotech's Inceptum instruments and also allows users to control different mechanics within the instrument without having to adjust individual pieces manually. The instrument itself utilizes disposable cartridges to hold protein samples that take about two minutes to load and begin purifying, Dryga said.
Q Biotech currently has three completed Inceptum instruments and has another five in production. That's a big jump over one year ago, when the startup was still in the testing phase with one inaugural prototype machine.
Between then and now, Dryga said the Inceptum instruments underwent both mechanical and software updates to improve reliability, performance and user-friendliness. He added Q Biotech is looking for more customers for its Inceptum systems and eyeing a large distribution partner to help scale those systems' commercialization.
The instruments cost around $10,000 — much cheaper than alternative systems, Dryga said — but the cost is negotiable, depending on how specific customers plan to use the instruments. For example, he said reagent rental is available for Q Biotech's instruments, a type of lease agreement between customers and producers of clinical systems.
Besides revenue from its Inceptum instruments, Q Biotech also pulls in money through consulting services, which include molecular biology services, assay validation and medical device development assistance, Dryga said.
And to help with ongoing expansion efforts, Dryga said he plans to attend the BIO International Convention, scheduled for June 3 through June 6 in San Diego, with Q Biotech.
