"Creation of companies travels the road of convergence between disciplines pursuing the target market"

Carlos Luri, General Manager of CIC microGUNE

CIC microGUNE is a high performance platform integrating the research activities in the Basque Country in the scope of microtechnologies. CIC microGUNE's General Manager, Carlos Luri, recounts to BioBasque News the areas the centre is focusing on and their commitment to health sciences. He clearly establishes that his main priority is to access the markets through the convergence of diverse disciplines.

CIC microGUNE is a well-established Cooperative Research Centre specialising in microtechnologies. How has it evolved since its inception and which are the main areas the research focuses on?

CIC microGUNE was created at the beginning of 2004 with the goal of bringing together the existing research mass in the scope of microtechnologies, although it was only incipient at the time. This is a small country and the research groups are small too; being well positioned inevitably implies having an appropriate research critical mass, if we wish to compare ourselves to other highly renowned international groups and belong to the first class.

In summary, CIC microGUNE was created with the idea of becoming a high-performance cooperation platform between the different research groups distributed throughout the Basque Country, working on market-technology projects. This is a consequence of a strategic alliance between the Research Centres Ceit-IK4, Ikerlan-IK4 and Tekniker-IK4, the Universities of Mondragón and Tecnun, the collaboration of IMEC, Belgian research centre, and support by the Mondragón Group.

We currently have a research group comprising about 70 people, with laboratories (clean rooms) of classes ranging between 100 and 10,000, depending on their area of research.

The microtechnology activities that we develop include the design, manufacturing and packaging of microdevices and components that may be used in a large range of applications such as biosciences, the automotive industry, energy and Its.

These activities are developed through our three research units specialised in Microsensors, Microfluidics and Micro/Nanoengineering. In these areas we work in electrochemical and immunomagnetic detection of biological species; micro and nanostructuring of metals and polymers; micro-performance on polymers; organic micro-optoelectronics; nanostructured materials for gas detection and integration of micro/nanosystems.

The centre develops a significant part of its activities within the broad field of biosciences and will participate in the upcoming edition of BioSpain 2010. How does CIC microGUNE contribute to the Basque BioRegion, to BioBasque?

CIC microGUNE has chosen to direct most of its research in the upcoming years towards Health Sciences. In fact, over half of its current research activity is devoted to this field. Here is where we consider that we have the best chances of developing new products to improve the current technology and, in the long run, contribute to improve people's welfare.

And, within this area, the main niche is quick diagnosis: the development of devices that allow for immediate detection of pathologies and in any patient-care scenario.

Progressive ageing of the population, due to an increasing life expectancy; the increased prevalence and incidence of diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes, obesity, etc.; and endemic infectious diseases, together generate a potential universe of people requiring healthcare. In our opinion, this new context has become the battle ground of the public health services, due to the difficulty of responding to the current demand, and, at the same time, due to the constant increase of the hospital care costs. This situation requires new alternative formulas to implement portable advanced quick diagnosis solutions to enable prompt diagnosis, which is cheap and simple in different scenarios (hospitals, airports, medical practices, police road controls, and environmental applications), and to assist in the increasing demand for "personalised monitoring" of diseases.

The advances in technologies such as genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, micro and nanotechnologies and ICTs will enable the development of devices capable of conducting diagnosis through quick biomolecular analysis. Such devices will be small, low cost and disposable, which coupled with their ease of use may be used in any patient care environment.

The introduction in the markets of products or devices offering these features requires close collaboration of different technological disciplines, such as those mentioned above. The market demands these products, therefore, at microGUNE we understand that separate and profound research in the aforementioned technologies (bio, micro, nano, etc.) is necessary. But playing an active role in the increase of competitiveness of the Basque industry and in the creation of new companies based on knowledge must go down the road of convergence between disciplines, aiming on the eventual development of applications.

CIC microGUNE can contribute to the Basque BioRegion its expertise in microtechnologies especially focused on quick diagnosis. In other words, our generic contribution is "application of engineering concepts (physical and chemical) to solve medical and biological problems".

As regards to your commitment to technological convergence for the development of radical innovations; what projects of this sort are you working on and who are the centre's partners?

Perhaps the project that best illustrates our interest in quick diagnosis and the reason why we have stressed the urgent need for technological convergence is the development of a very low cost "lab-on-a-chip" without compromising the response time, sensitivity and ease of use of the tests. Several European partners, specialised in the scope of medicine, molecular biology, environment and micro-nanotechnologies have joined forces in the development of this project. The user would receive the test results through a popular interface, a smartphone (a telephone with a specific accessory) and a set of labcards (lab-on-a-chip, similar to a credit card) and skin patches (similar to a band aid), where the preparation and detection of the samples takes place.

This project intends to validate the developed devices in four different applications: A labcard for the analysis of marine algae, seeking to observe climate change by detecting absorbed CO2; a labcard to detect Salmonella and Campylobacter in slaughterhouses and farms; a labcard for colorectal cancer monitoring using blood samples; and a skin patch to detect cocaine abuse in professional drivers. The drastic cost reduction we intend to register with these labcards is based on the use of polymer films instead of the wafer-like substrates that are used in the current systems.

Another type of projects, also geared to quick diagnosis, are those focusing on the development of microsensors for the detection of viruses or pathogens. In such projects CIC microGUNE contributes with its expertise in electrochemical and inmunomagnetic detection, its expertise in micro and nanoelectrodes and its ability for surface functionalisation in orienting and immobilising biological probes. These projects require the convergence of other disciplines, thus other Centres and Institutions -mostly from the Basque Country- collaborate sharing their expertise in biotechnologies and medicine.

As a specific example we could mention that we are currently researching, together with other companies of the biosciences sector and medical specialists, on the development of a cheap and sensitive sensor to monitor the concentration of the inflammation marker (namely, TFN-alpha protein) in the patients' blood reaching protein concentrations as low as 15 pico grams per millilitre. Usage of nanotechnologies in the development of the sensor device will increase detection sensitivity and reduce the device's costs, thus achieving extended usage.

CIC microGUNE positions itself as a partner for biobusinesses in the development of proprietary products from its know-how. Which are the fruits or which could be the fruits of this collaboration?

We are still just starting this collaboration with biobusinesses. At the time being we are approaching these companies to analyse collaboration alternatives.

In fact, our participation in BioSpain 2010 focuses in that direction, to become aware of the specific needs of the biosciences industry and promote potential contributions of microtechnologies in product development. As regards the market, there is a need for "bio" and "micro" products and services as shown by the many benefits attainable through the use of microtechnologies, i.e. miniaturisation, leading to a significant reduction of the sample size and the amount of reactive agents, a drastic reduction of analysis time, a better control of the sample's environment (temperature, pH, pressure), an accurate drug/chemical dosage, a high sensitivity in identification and detection, even on a cellular level, etc.

The results expected from this collaboration, in my opinion, could be summarised in two sentences: To be able to access new market niches that are surfacing right now and to maintain a good competitive position in the current sectors making the most of the advantages offered by microtechnologies (miniaturisation).

Quick diagnosis devices, such as lab-on-a-chip, can substantially change the way we diagnose diseases, provide medical care or monitor the environment. What is the social and economical forecast of such developments? What does the future look like from technological convergence?

Although we have already stated our key reasons for believing in them and despite market analyses foresee great prospects for these devices, there is still work to be done regarding the commercialisation of very small and cheap devices for quick (immediate) diagnosis in any relevant scenario that allow a personalised treatment of diseases. There are some barriers to overcome for these marvellous expectations to become a reality: technological barriers, cost barriers and improvement of device robustness.

We could consider, for example, that these technologies could bring forth a large scale impact in developing countries, since quick diagnosis microdevices could be particularly useful and effective in the diagnosis of infectious diseases, which pose one of the main health problems in developing countries. In fact, pneumonia accounts for 21% of child deaths in Africa and 19% in South-east Asia; malaria causes over one million deaths per annum in poor countries; while 20% of pregnant women in many West African countries have HIV. However, it would be necessary to overcome two main aspects: device cost and product sturdiness. The market cost of these microdevices should not be over one dollar and they should contain reactants that do not degrade easily, being able to endure high temperatures, typical of the African continent.

However, all the market analyses foresee a great future for this sort of devices. Thus, currently there are many research groups and companies working hard on reaching these expectations and turning them into a reality. Their social impact will be huge, since in scenarios close to our patients, we will be able to attend to the increase of the demand of "personalised monitoring" and we will also be in a better position to detect infectious diseases that could be transmitted quickly between continents, an issue that has recently raised a significant concern.

But, to attain this goal, one of the cornerstones is working shoulder to shoulder with specialists from different disciplines: biologists, doctors, microtechnologists, etc. In short, its success and the promptness in attaining this goal will depend on the convergence of the different technologies playing the field. This is a huge challenge, but it is, above all, a great opportunity for the Basque Country. We have the necessary framework, including the commitment to biosciences and nanosciences represented via the BioBasque and nanoBasque agencies.