By Candace Stuart
Small Times Senior Writer
June 19, 2001 — In the next four weeks, a corporation best known for its cell phones and semiconductor business will release two new small tech products that have little to do with communications or computing, but perhaps everything to do with its future.
Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) expects to begin selling two biochip technologies that analyze genetic material, but serve different users. Its two-pronged approach may give it a foothold in some potentially lucrative markets – genetic diagnostics and the research branch of the pharmaceutical industry.
Motorola faces competition, but none with such a marque. And each of Motorola’s biochips has a novel component that could give it an edge in the marketplace – a small but potentially significant boost for a corporation that has seen sales and profits tumble this year.
“Motorola is the sleeping giant,” said Valerie Kellogg, an industry analyst and author of the recently released report, “The Surging Microarray Biochip Business.” “They’re not the key player right now, but they could be if they stick with it.”
Motorola’s Clinical Micro Sensors in Pasadena, Calif., will send its first shipment to Europe “in the next few weeks” of a diagnostic biochip that detects genetic alterations in food, said Randy Levine, CMS director of business development. Laboratories will use the device, the eSensor, to screen out genetically modified crops shipped into parts of Europe where such foods are deemed unsafe.
The eSensor can identify up to 36 different genetic alterations per chip, and clients can designate which genetic bits they need on the chip. One chip is about a square inch and disposable. CMS also developed a reading device that can analyze 48 cartridges at a time.
The eSensor has medical applications, as well. Doctors one day may use it to identify what strain of bacteria is causing a sore throat, for instance, allowing them to prescribe exactly the right medicine. Or a clinic could test patients for common genetic flaws that interfere with drug therapies. If the patient is a carrier, then the clinic will know to never dispense that drug.
Motorola’s BioChip Systems, based in Northbrook, Ill., expects to unveil another biochip technology in the next month that is targeted for genetic researchers and drug companies, said Jodi Flax, manager of new business strategy.
The system, CodeLink, can test thousands of strands of genetic material at a time and helps scientists pinpoint exactly what segments in a gene are flawed. CodeLink also lets them observe if and how a potential drug interacts with the diseased gene. Because it eliminates guesswork, the approach can save researchers and drug developers time and money.
In that way, Motorola serves both clinical users with the eSensor and industrial users with CodeLink. “They’re complementary markets,” Levine said.
Many biochips, Motorola’s included, use a version of a microarrays. Microarrays usually are tiny slides or chips dotted with snippets of DNA, the biological blueprint in genes that dictate how a life form develops. The system takes advantages of DNA’s structure, which is based on two complementary molecules that bind together to form a double helix. The chip contains one exposed strand of the helix.
The test sample, after a preparation process, holds similar strands that will bind onto the exposed helix if they are the same DNA segments. Fluorescent additives in the sample light up when any binding occurs, and a scanning device determines the DNA type by its location on the chip.
The biochip market totaled about $397 million in 2000, Kellogg wrote in her report, and is expected to top $1 billion by 2005. That includes sales of not only microarrays but also the auxiliary technologies – the preparation regime, scanning tools and interpretive software. She estimated the microarray market alone will be $536 million by 2005, with an annual growth rate of almost 19 percent.
Kellogg said her figures are deliberatively conservative. Depending on market conditions, biochip sales could exceed $1.5 billion by 2005, she said.
“It will get that high eventually, but not quickly,” she predicted.
Motorola made several key alliances in the late 1990s to pave the way for its entry into the biomedical arena. In 1998, it entered into a licensing agreement with Argonne National Laboratory to develop Argonne’s three-dimensional technique for gene analysis. That same year it launched its life sciences division in suburban Chicago. Argonne is also in suburban Chicago.
Motorola entered into an agreement in 1999 with Clinical Micro Sensors, a start-up that had created an electronic DNA biochip. Motorola acquired CMS the next year for $280 million, and this year incorporated CMS in the life sciences division.
Argonne’s biochip technology has two advantages, said Flax, who has worked at Argonne on the biochip project as a graduate student at nearby Northwestern University: It uses a gel to attach the DNA segments, and it exposes the DNA strand out rather than on the chip surface.
“With two dimensions, you only have the top that you can be detecting,” she said. “From a biological perspective, this makes a lot more sense. It is more sensitive because there is more surface.”
The gel has the benefit of being, like cells, aqueous — “a much nicer environment for biology,” she said.
Clinical Micro Sensors took an unusual approach in designing the eSensor. Rather than rely on fluorescent dyes, lasers and expensive scanners to detect binding, CMS found a way to tag DNA strands with electron-heavy molecules. Any coupling of the treated DNA strands with their helix mates creates an electronic charge that jolts the electrons in tag. Electrodes then detect the signal.
“It’s not a chip in that sense,” Levine said. “It looks more like a printed circuit board.”
The technology includes a molecule-thick insulating layer that is thin enough to pick up the charge released in binding but thick enough to prevent false readings, Levine said. The entire system is in a disposable cartridge that fits in an electronic reader for quick analysis.
CMS has partnered with GeneScan Europe AG of Freiburg, Germany, to sell eSensor in test kits in Europe. Motorola’s BioChip group is collaborating with the Mayo Clinic and Rochester, Minn., to use CodeLink as a research tool.
But even with those associations, Motorola faces competition.
“There are a huge number of home-brew microarrays,” Kellogg said, that like the eSensor test for a handful of DNA strands at a time. Academic researchers have jury-rigged their own devices, for instance. “There’s even instructions on the Internet on how to make one.”
The market for high-density microarrays, which refers to systems that test a thousand or more DNA strands at once, is dominated by Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. Kellogg estimates that Affymetrix has cornered as much as 90 percent of the market. Its clients, which have included Pfizer, GlaxoSmtihKline and other large companies, purchase an instrumentation system as well as the chips. In 1999, that system cost as much as $200,000 – an upfront investment a company might be loathe to write off in favor of CodeLink.
Motorola itself is facing a poor year, mostly due to the decline of its mobile cell phone segment, according to Morningstar analyst Todd Bernier. Bernier follows the wireless and cable industries for Morningstar, a Chicago-based company that tracks mutual funds and provides investment strategies. In three years, Motorola has gone from the industry leader in mobile phones to No. 2, supplanted by its rival Nokia, he said.
Motorola’s mobile phones sales totaled $2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2001, down 29 percent from the first quarter of 2000. Softening in demand for semiconductors, its other core business, led to a 22 percent drop in sales, to $1.5 billion. Overall revenue for that quarter was $7.75 billion, down from $8.77 billion.
Its stock has also suffered. Its highest posting for 2001 was on Jan. 13, at $24.69. It closed Monday on the New York Stock Exchange at $13.07.
“The problem is they don’t do one particular thing well,” Bernier said. “They need to focus on a few things.”
Both Flax and Kellogg see Motorola staying in biotech for the long haul, gradually making its mark on the industry. Motorola converted its expertise in chip making before, for instance when it became a supplier of MEMS accelerometers for airbags. And it is building a reputation in microfluidics, which deals with channeling minute amounts of fluids such as a blood sample to various chambers in the chip for a series of analyses.
Microfluidics can turn a biochip into a mini laboratory, Kellogg said, a crucial step in making small tech diagnostic tools for the home or doctor’s office.
“Motorola is thinking long term and they have the pockets to do it,” Kellogg said.
“Everyone’s going through tough times now with the economy slowing down,” Flax said. “Motorola believes in us…. Motorola sees the value in the future. It has been around since 1928 and it wants to be around in 2028.”
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Candace Stuart at [email protected] or call 734-994-1106, ext. 235.