AlphaSniffer changes technology course, raises money

BOULDER – Although his training from Moscow State University is in glaciology, Misha Plam hasn’t spent much of career working with snow and ice. His genius is taking other people’s technology and turning it into commercial products.

Plam’s latest venture, three-year-old AlphaSniffer LLC, uses technology developed by Nobel Laureate Jan Hall to create a fast, inexpensive, easy-to-use method of detecting viruses, bacteria, proteins and other very small particles.

Hall, scientist emeritus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and fellow of JILA, a joint research institution of NIST and the University of Colorado in Boulder, came to the rescue when AlphaSniffer’s original technology hit a brick wall about a year ago.

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AlphaSniffer originally was formed to meet homeland security’s need for a portable, low-power device to detect chemical and biological warfare agents. Plam had licensed technology developed by CU physics professor Dana Anderson that used optoelectronics in the form of a holographic detector to find out if substances were explosives or biological agents like anthrax or smallpox.

It worked, Plam said, but not well enough for the military. “They wanted it to measure one part per billion in one second. We were very close, but we didn’t make it. They always set up requirement with the hope that maybe somebody could do it. I will work for money, but I refuse to work against the law of physics.”

Anderson suggested that Hall, a colleague of his, take a look. Hall arrived at the same conclusion – it couldn’t meet the requirements, “but he liked our team,” Plam said.

The team includes Director of R&D Slava Petropavlovskikh, who worked with Plam at his previous startup, Sievers Instruments; Mechanical Engineer Oyvind Nilsen; Polymer Chemist Bilge Hacioglu; and Biochemist Chad Greef.

Hall added an optoelectronic analytical technique known as common path interferometry to the mix, “And to our great amusement it worked immediately,” Plam laughed. “We were able to breathe into it and it worked.”

The sticking point, Plam said, is that very sensitive biochemical reactions need to be performed on liquids, so the airborne detector wasn’t quite good enough. Petropavlovskikh came up with the idea to add another optoelectronic technique called surface plasmon resonance.

Success, Plam said. “Everything happened fast, within six months. Not because we are so smart but because of our previous experience.”

Since its inception, the company has raised $2.4 million in angel funding, is on target to raise $10 million in venture capital this year and should have its first beta customers by the end of 2007.

Investors so far include Jim Blair, partner of Princeton, N.J.-based Domain Associates; Bill Coleman, director of Lafayette-based Colorado Venture Capital Associates; Kinney Johnson, partner with Boulder-based Sequel Venture Partners; Jim Schlater, chairman of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Cell Biosciences; R.C. “Merc” Mercure, founder of numerous Boulder Valley companies; and Plam. Plam is careful to note that these men, not their companies, have invested.

The company also has raised $320,000 in Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grants and is awaiting response on two Phase II grants worth $600,000 and several more Phase I applications.

The initial version of AlphaSniffer could only detect one type of particle at a time, but the company is aiming toward having an array of 100 “dots” on a single chip to measure up to eight types of substances at a time. Ten or more “dots” per type allow for redundancy, Plam explained.

Plus, 100 could simultaneously test for eight biological warfare agents at one time, “because mankind only knows how to kill each other with eight things. It doesn’t mean that in biological warfare all the agents will come through together, but the system will be ready to recognize one of them.”

AlphaSniffer is working toward having a prototype with four dots ready by April to unveil at a Department of Defense’s SPIE Defense and Security Symposium in Atlanta. “We’re not going to offer it for sale, but we are going to ask people who would like to be in line to get the first beta sites,” Plam said.

AlphaSniffer’s business plan calls for selling its technology to different markets. “Because this instrument is on the border between possible and impossible, a lot of people don’t believe it will work. We will sell to academia, big pharma and big military contractors first. They have to publish papers, and it will take time to verify our claim.”

Defense contractor General Dynamics Corp., which develops instruments for detecting biological and chemical warfare agents, has expressed interest, Plam said.

Besides defense, the company is exploring medical markets. The AlphaSniffer device is being designed to be small (about the size of a shoe box), relatively inexpensive (although Plam would not state a price), and easy for technicians to use. Applications include, for example, testing blood for HIV, hepatitis C and other contaminants prior to transfusion, measuring operating rooms for the presence of germs to avoid infection during surgery, diagnosing heart attack quickly and performing genetic testing.

Currently, AlphaSniffer has seven employees, five of whom have Ph.D.s, and Plam envisions building it into a $100 million, 200-employee company within five to seven years.

Contact Caron Schwartz Ellis at 303-440-4950 or csellis@bcbr.com.