7 February 2018: Symcel – the company behind the revolutionary cell-based assay tool for real-time cell metabolism measurements, calScreener™ – is expanding to bring its patented technology to the clinical antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) market. With an increased global focus, Symcel forecasts that calScreener™ will become the gold standard for combination testing of antibiotics against multi-resistant bacteria within the next 5 years.
The company is currently commercially leveraging the Horizon 2020 funded Phase II AST project – in which multi-resistant bacterial infections will be clinically validated using Symcel’s screening method.
“Our business development strategy is to target growth both from sales to the big clinical microbiology market, and increase revenues from key research markets including metabolic, microbiology and 3D culturing applications. Currently, we are focusing sales activities on the microbiology research market – targeting developers of antibiotics in academia and industry, plus scientists working on solutions to biofilm formation and antimicrobial resistance,” commented Jesper Ericsson, CEO of Symcel.
To execute its global ambitions, Symcel has brought in a number of business drivers. Dr. Marta Veses Garcia, Symcel’s new application scientist and expert in AST methods, will lead the experimental work within the Horizon 2020 project along with scientific partners from the Karolinska Institutet and other European research institutes. Dr. Karin Gillner joins Symcel as a project manager tasked with running the Horizon 2020 project from an innovation management perspective. Pelle Friberg joins Symcel as its sales lead, working closely with the CEO on the sales and marketing strategy.
The newly recruited personnel will facilitate the advanced expertise of the company’s senior executives responsible for driving the company’s corporate and scientific development. This includes the CEO, Jesper Ericsson – recruited last year due to his proven entrepreneurial skills in bringing new technologies to the research community combined with his advanced technical and scientific knowledge – and the CSO, Dr. Magnus Jansson, and seasoned BD Manager, Göran Conradsson. Jansson has 25 years experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical development industries, with extensive expertise in laboratory disciplines including assay development and target discovery research.
Symcel’s pioneering calScreener method has already established significant sales and research projects amongst scientific and clinical key opinion leaders in the antimicrobial resistance and AST fields – a factor which underlies Symcel securing the Horizon 2020 grant.
Ericsson added: “We are pleased to welcome Marta, Karin and Pelle to the company at an exciting time in its development. We look forward to utilising their respective skills as we clinically validate our innovative technology in AST and initiate our 5-year plan to enter into the clinical space.”
