Genz Biotechnology is a biotech company focused on developing novel IVD diagnostic solutions, with a mission to deliver a consistent stream of innovative, affordable, and accessible diagnostic solutions and make a remarkable impact on people’s lives. In this interview, CEO Umut Ağyüz discusses the company’s advancements and their potential impact on the future of healthcare.
Please share the story behind Genz: What sparked the idea and how has it evolved so far?
Genz is a university spinoff biotech company, developing software for population-specific oncogenetic (cancer genome) analysis, biomarker discovery, and decision-making bioinformatics algorithms for early diagnosis and prediction in breast cancer, since 2017. It is our motivation and mission to be able to give birth to novel diagnostic solutions helping women fighting breast cancer. During the pandemic, Genz also developed Sars-Cov2 antibody testing systems. The state of the art point of care (POC) test system and quantitative IgG ELISA test. Genz is currently at the level of its late seed and preparing for series A fund-raising.
What makes Genz unique to other diagnostics companies?
Our team and our technology are our strongest assets. Genz became a partner with the biggest medical suppliers in the region. Genz’s concerns are less on financial issues, but more on developing groundbreaking technologies and social impacts. Genz’s motivation is to lead the diagnostic market with its innovative technologies.
What are your key areas of focus?
We have two major focus points, early diagnosis for cancer and new pandemics. For this purpose, Genz is studying cancer signaling pathways, systems biology, and novel technologies on fast and precise molecular diagnostics. One of our main concerns is to make our technologies reliable, affordable, and reachable. We believe that healthcare is a right for everyone and our products should reduce the inequalities among people for reaching reliable diagnostics.
What have been your biggest accomplishments since launching Genz?
We developed GENZPRO, a lab accurate point of care testing system, manufacturing our proteins, microfluidic chips, analyzer stand-alone device, and our software. This is just the beginning and after series A we plan to develop the fastest and the most accurate POC diagnostic devices in the market. We want to be a market leader who leads the technology trends in the POC diagnostics market.
In your opinion what has been the most significant development in Biotech in the past few years?
Definitely, CRISPR is the most exciting novelty in the market. That is a promising technology for most challenging problems and personalized therapeutics. That is why we are focusing on home care and personalized medicine. Personalized diagnosis and patient tracking will gain importance in the following 10 years.
What trends and technologies do you expect to see more of in the coming years?
So many things changed in the pandemic. One of them is the way healthcare is delivered. Remote healthcare became popular and technologies were developed that enable telemedicine. It looks like we will see more technologies supporting point-of-care patient tracking and diagnostic tools in the future. People will not need to visit a doctor for simple routine tests. Mobile, stand-alone diagnostic instruments will analyze our samples and send the results directly for the physician’s opinion. That will definitely increase the savings in medical care.
How do you envision the future of the industry in the next five years?
It looks like Covid will stay in our lives in the next 5 years. We understood the importance of correct diagnosis during the pandemic and diagnostic solutions still will be one of the trending topics in the market. Diagnostics devices will have a larger capacity, thousands of tests per run, and full automation for central labs that need mass testing especially with high-frequency routine test parameters, or the devices will be smaller, portable, cloud integration and more accurate for pharmacies, doctor clinics or even home use for rare diseases, low-frequency test parameters or custom designs. However, semi-automated conventional devices with medium capacity will not be preferred. Additionally, the testing reagent technologies will change. The fundamental science, chemistry, and material science will contribute to the invention of more durable, standard substrates, buffers, and reagents. We hope to be one of the research and development companies that contribute to that mission.
