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Profile: Quantum Dot Corporation
An interview with Andy Watson, Vice-president of Business Development
nanotechbulletin.com
An interview with Andy Watson, Vice-president of Business Development
Can you give us a layperson's explanation of Quantum Dots?
Quantum dots are tiny semi-conducting crystals. We make use of their optical properties. It's much like the LED's you now see in traffic lights. But regular LED's are made out of large pieces. It turns out that when you reduce the size of the pieces you change the band gap, affecting the wavelength of light emitted. So you can control the crystals' color by changing their size.
We're working on a host of different technologies, one of them is our bead technology. We combine the differently sized quantum dots to create color codes. These labels can be attached to individual cells or even molecules.
How are the dots made?
We use a solution method, set them up in big reaction flasks. By controlling the heat of the reaction, we can cause the particles to grow to different sizes and shapes--spheres, rods, triangles, or other shapes.
What kind of volume or numbers are we talking about here?
For biological applications a few micrograms goes a long way. Let's say we make a few hundred milliliters of solution-phase quantum dots. There are many billions of quantum dots in there.
Do you foresee any major research breakthroughs based on your technology?
The real holy grail is to look at live cells and their internal functioning. That's one place where quantum dots are likely to play a big role in allowing things that just weren't possible before.
What is the current and future market for your product?
We have quite an extensive number of academic groups that are using the quantum dots in their labs in various ways. Then, there are a huge number of ways this technology can be applied in biology, and a whole host of different markets. We're looking at a vertical application in drug discovery. We also aim to collaborate with leaders within specific markets. We'll supply the quantum dots as a way of making their products perform better, and create new products complementary to their existing product lines. That way we can leverage their existing sales, marketing and support infrastructure.
Scale of manufacturing is a major bottleneck with most nanotechnology. Is that an issue with QDC?
We've made several inventions that allow us to make not only high quality materials but also to dramatically scale up our batch sizes. In fact, currently we're able to meet all our needs for biological applications. But some time in the next year or two we'll start investigating how to leverage that into other markets, electronics, for example.
What's the technical background of your team?
The company has about 50 employees, with approximately 30 in our R&D group. We have a large number of PhD-qualified people from MIT and Berkeley. We sprang mainly out of research from Berkeley and MIT. Myself, I'm Vice President of Business Development. I've been involved with a lot of instrumentation and technology development in biotech projects, and made the shift across to the business development side just a couple years ago.
What kind of funding has the company received?
To date, we've raised over $37.5 million in financing from preeminent venture groups including Versant Ventures, Abingworth Management, Technogen Associates, Schroder Ventures, Frazier & Co, MPM Asset Management, and CMEA Ventures.
Any advice to the aspiring nanotech entrepreneur?
Nanotechnologies can often be applied to many different markets. Focus on the applications where you bring unique benefits, and set up partnerships to exploit the other applications. Be honest about the competitive nature of the complete product that you will create--just because its 'nano' does not mean the products will be great.
What kind of criteria would you recommend for separating solid investments in nanotech from the hype?
Look for good underlying Intellectual Property protection; a team that combines technical know-how and target market know-how; show demonstrations that the technology requires development, not research, to make products; none of these are too much different from any investment criteria used for technology based companies, although the development effort required needs additional diligence. |
