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Feb. 17, 2003 — What if you had a lock on a potentially groundbreaking particle manipulation technology that could become a cornerstone of nanoscale manufacturing? Would you sell the manufacturing equipment? Or become a manufacturer yourself? So far, Arryx Inc.’s answer is, “Whatever works.”
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Chicago-based Arryx isn’t the first company to make a “laser tweezer” — an instrument to trap particles using light. The technique has been around research labs for years and several companies make commercial instruments.
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But it is the first to commercialize a method of controlling hundreds of pairs of laser tweezers at once through holography — a breakthrough that came out of research at the University of Chicago. The technology can be used to manipulate cells, organelles — even molecules, depending on how it’s “tuned.” It can trap and move organic particles using points of light. It can also move metal particles (which avoid points of light) by corralling them in a “vortex.”
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“This was the biggest thing I had ever seen, and I came out of biotech,” said Lewis Gruber, Arryx’s chief executive, Lewis Gruber, who retired in 2000 from his most recent startup, Hyseq Pharmaceuticals (now called Nuvelo), to get out of California and back to the Midwest. He visited the University of Chicago to look at intellectual property available for licensing, and came away hot about HOT (holographic optical trapping). Arryx now holds exclusive licenses on three U of C patents for the basic technology, and has filed several more applications of its own.
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So far, the company has attracted $7 million in venture capital. Arryx’s investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the Silicon Valley firm that has made small tech one of its cornerstones. Partner Steve Jurvetson calls the company “a great example of the hybrid bio/infotech opportunities of the future.”
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Gruber plans to exploit the technology “any way we can,” and has plans for instruments and products. He envisions manufacturing components for the telecommunications industry, or creating sensors and detectors to fight bioterrorism. But instruments are the first order of business.
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Arryx’s first product, the research-oriented BioRyx 200, was introduced last March. Its 200 pairs of tweezers are controlled by a computer mouse and are designed to create bioarrays and perform other cell manipulation tasks for cancer and genetics researchers and drug developers.
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The first one was sold to the University of Maryland for a price in the low six figures, and several more sales are in the pipeline, Gruber said. Last July, the instrument made R&D magazine’s “R&D 100” list of the most technologically significant products introduced in 2002.
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The next product in development, MatRyx, is a high-throughput cell sorter slated initially for use in the cattle industry to sort X and Y sperm for breeding, so that breeders can reliably produce cows for dairy farmers and bulls for beef ranchers.
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Dan Gamota, manager of organic and molecular new product development at Motorola Inc., considers Arryx’s technology a “strong player” in “noncontact” manipulation techniques. “Their platform has created great excitement in the micro and nanotechnology spaces,” he said.
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And can the company be both an instrument maker and a manufacturer? Gamota thinks it may have little choice because it needs to justify a high capital investment.
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“Initially, most equipment development companies will need to become vertically integrated and offer manufacturing services to accelerate the diffusion and acceptance of their platforms.”
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Company file: Arryx Inc.
(last updated Feb. 17, 2003)
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Company
Arryx Inc.
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Headquarters
316 North Michigan Avenue
Suite CL20
Chicago, IL 60601
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History
Incorporated in November 2000, Arryx holds the exclusive license to technology developed at the University of Chicago. ARCH Development Corp., the University’s technology commercialization and licensing division, acted as the company’s co-founder alongside Lewis Gruber and David Grier.
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Industry
Microphotonics
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Employees
12
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Small tech-related products and services
The company’s flagship product is the BioRyx 200, which uses proprietary holographic optical trapping (HOT) technology to manipulate thousands of microscopic objects with 200 sets of tiny laser beam “tweezers.” Each beam traps and moves microscopic objects in a computer-controlled process. Potential product applications include nano- and microscale manufacturing, drug development, genetics and microsurgery. Arryx is developing a second product, MatRyx, a high-throughput cell-sorting tool.
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Selected strategic partners and customers
Arryx has sold its product to several universities, including the University of Maryland.
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Investment history
Shortly after its incorporation, Arryx raised $2.9 million from ARCH Development Partners LLC, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the University of Chicago and individual investors. In March 2002, the company raised $2.1 million, adding new investors East Lake Partners and Fahnestock. An additional $2.1 million came in during November 2002, provided by Draper and individual investors.
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Barriers to market
In order to bring about speedier acceptance of its product and technology, for some time Arryx may need to act as both a purveyor of manufacturing equipment (i.e. the BioRyx 200) and a manufacturer.
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Competitors
While no companies have perfected large-scale manipulation technology similar to Arryx’s, several companies are working with micro- and nanoscale manipulation systems, including Verimetra Inc. and Zyvex Corp.
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Goals
Short term: To expand the basic platform into the industrial realm. Long term: To focus on the highest-value applications they can find, and develop dedicated products for specific applications.
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Why they’re in small tech
“This technology could play a role in nanotechnology similar to the one that plasmids play in biotechnology,” said CEO Lewis Gruber. (Plasmids are the bacterial DNA that make recombinant DNA techniques possible, and the techniques for using them were a breakthrough for biotech.)
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What keeps them up at night
“Everyone is looking for the economy to improve, and I worry about that, but most often, the thing that keeps me up at night is the excitement of doing new things with the technology,” Gruber said.
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Relevant patent
Apparatus for using optical tweezers to manipulate materials
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Recent articles
Where’s the nano business action? Look no further than the lab
Arryx completes $2.1 million third round
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Contact
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— Research by Gretchen McNeely
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