Integromics Intends to Reign Beyond Spain

Since initial publication, Bio-IT World has learned that Michael McManus left Integromics in December 2011. The company has not publicly announced an interim CEO.  

CEO Michael McManus candidly discusses software market priorities and challenges.   

By Kevin Davies                                                                                               

February 23, 2012 | In the heated field of genomics and proteomics informatics providers, new Integromics CEO Michael McManus has his work cut out to grow the business in a much more inclement economic climate than the one he experiences on his frequent visits to company headquarters in Madrid.   

“There’s lots of market pressure squeezing a lot of small vendors,” says McManus. “We number among many. I worry that some of these companies—not just us—have to weather this economic turmoil. We have to be cost efficient and try to distinguish where we’re unique.”  

The Spanish software company is best known for its offerings in microarray data analysis and some impressive papers in top-tier journals in the past year, collaborating with researchers at Helicos on new insights in transcription regulation. That analysis was based on SeqSolve, the company’s tertiary analysis tool for next-gen sequence (NGS) data.  

McManus, who has a rich history in the bio-IT space including stints with GenomeQuest and Fujitsu, aims to raise Integromics’ profile in a competitive market. “That’s why they brought on an American CEO—to improve visibility worldwide and help with fundamental marketing techniques to broaden visibility,” says McManus.  

McManus points to Integromics’ strong scientific base—the co-founders are respected scientists at Spain’s equivalent to the National Cancer Institute. Moreover, labor is relatively cheap in Spain and in eastern Europe, where the firm’s engineering base is, so the company’s costs are significantly less than in North America.   

McManus sees some parallels with GenomeQuest, which was “a well-known French company that became recapitalized as an American company and started taking off. We’re not quite at that stage yet, but I see the same pattern repeating itself.”  

Omics Office  

McManus presents an interesting contrast: while he insists that there is still a robust business in microarray and quantitative PCR (qPCR) data analysis, he also sees opportunities in the clinical market.   

As far as NGS analysis, goes, “Microarrays are still not dead,” McManus insists. The field is in a twilight period where there is still a need for microarray analysis and qPCR, before NGS is sufficiently validated to replace those technologies.  

“We are getting a lot of requests from companies for custom chip design. The press often says that NGS will replace microarrays. That’s true in the very long term, but in the short term, I see a very big gap between the practical approach of replacing a sunset technology. After you validate a target, for example, FDA still requires you to show how you got it and proved it. That’s still largely done with microarrays and qPCR. Pharma hasn’t moved yet.”  

In fact, the evolution of qPCR to high-density runs—examples including Biotrove (now ABI’s Quant Studio), Fluidigm, WaferGen, and Nanostream—suggests a need for software to deal with this transition. “We see qPCR in this high-density format as more likely to replace microarrays than next gen,” says McManus.  

As users are increasingly employing qPCR and NGS systems together, the Integromics software has to provide that spectrum. One of McManus’ early initiatives was to create Omics Office, a grouping of microarray, qPCR and NGS tools. “We see our audience needs to do these comparisons, but has problems trying to do these comparisons working in different software. We cover the whole spectrum from microarray to NGS.”   

Integromics uses the Spotfire platform for its products, providing a familiar visual interface to many users inside pharma/biotech. (Integromics even resells Spotfire as part of the offering; alternatively, Integromics can provide R and other computing tools.) Every product is connected to Ingenuity, so any gene can be cross-checked to its signaling pathway.   

The Omics Office includes a proteomics software package as well. “Doing both proteomics and genomics is not that common,” says McManus. “We see an interesting trend—people who provide the [mass spec] instruments typically provide the software. But if you’re in a lab with multiple instruments, you can’t compare the data in a facile way. Our tool allows you to take the data, store, and compare. It’s more data management and analysis, but it’s interesting—any mass spec facility has multiple manufacturers, and it’s hard to do these cross-instrument comparisons. It’s almost like silos have been created.”   

Users can compare NGS and qPCR data with the same set of tools. “People typically do qPCR, NGS or microarrays. They want 2 out of the 3 together, and some want 3 out of 3.” Integromics has already released tools for RNA-Seq and Chip-Seq data analysis and also plans to add a tool for DNA resequencing.  

Clinical Moves  

Given the company’s medical expertise, McManus sees an opportunity to move established tools into the clinic. “Ultimately, I believe a lot of the advancement in genomics will come out of the hospital setting. How can we use these methods to improve human health? When I see our founders involved in cancer research and care, and others very medically oriented, that capability is something that is wasted if you don’t employ it.”  

McManus admits it will be a challenge to transition a small company focused in informatics into the clinical environment. “It’s not easy—you have to survive in the market,” he says. “But in a big shift like this, often the early adopters get washed out. The question is, when to make that move? I’ve seen what happens if you’re too early. It’s not necessarily better than if you’re too late!”  

One early clinical collaboration between Integromics and a prestigious medical genomics lab involves the Ion Torrent platform for disease detection, but McManus is also thinking further afield to diagnostic devices in the clinic and perhaps eventually the home, involving qPCR-based diagnostic tests.   

“The holy grail is [the diagnosis of] a series of illnesses [where] the “worried well” will buy a device that can be used with cards or inserts, invest in the device and test regularly… That requires a lot of FDA approval. It has to be rock solid. We’re still years away. But before it reaches the consumer, much can be done in the doctor’s office.”  

“We see this often in technology—someone has an idea, but you have to work hard to go from an idea to a validated technology. Seldom do we see this massive transfer from the old way to a new way with nothing in between.”