Omics2Image has won the NGI Venture Challenge Spring 2013. The team members Odile Basedow, Ron Heeren, Hans Roeland Poolman and Chris Retif participated in the challenge. Omics2Image had the best business plan and pitch: they were awarded €25,000 to further develop their venture.
‘We take molecular photo’s of tissue, for example from breast cancer,’ Ron Heeren explains. Current mass spectrometers take 95 days to take one high-resolution molecular image of tissue. The IonPix camera, an add-on for mass spectrometers, reduces the time to make a high-resolution molecular image from months to minutes. The IonPix camera revolutionizes mass spectrometry with more than just speed: its broader dynamic range and higher sensitivity reveal information that has never been seen before. ‘To investigate the type of tissue, researchers normally use a labeling technique, which only detects one protein a time. Our IonPix camera makes a picture and detects all molecules at once; not only the proteins, also the lipids, fatty acids, the DNA molecules, and many more.’
Omics2Image is a spinoff of the BIMS group led by Ron Heeren at AMOLF and it’s part of the holding Particle Physics Inside Products (P2IP). With P2IP, FOM, AMOLF, Nikhef and 1 & 12 Ventures invest en participate in several start-ups arising from knowledge institutes AMOLF and Nikhef.