From a scientific project to a global business venture. The company mzio is striving to improve data analysis in mass spectrometry labs
A piece of software which enables researchers worldwide to speed up their work and helps them make scientific discoveries is expanding from science into commerce. Dr. Tomáš Pluskal, who leads a research group at IOCB Prague, and his colleagues have founded the commercial company mzio. They are thus building on the greatly successful volunteer-driven project MZmine, which expedites and simplifies the interpretation of biological and chemical analyses and which has benefited from contributions made by researchers all over the world.
The software offered by mzio can simultaneously process data from all types of instruments used in mass spectrometry laboratories. These technologies are currently progressing at an explosive rate and the amount of data obtained through them is increasing rapidly. However, this information is becoming increasingly difficult to utilize. One reason is that each make of instrument uses a different format and structure of data, so research teams must understand and master a number of software tools for its interpretation. Therefore, by offering a single universal tool, the mzio project makes things significantly easier.
The management of mzio is in hold of analyses showing that mass spectrometry facilities worldwide annually spend about USD 300 million on software. According to Tomáš Pluskal, it is likely that mzio will take a significant slice of this pie.
“Our company is an example of a successful bridge between academia and commerce. Progressive reports on the development of MZmine have been published in renowned scientific journals, including Nature Biotechnology and Nature Communications. On the other side of the nexus, the i&i Prague bio-innovation center, affiliated with IOCB Prague and helping bring promising scientific discoveries to the world, has aided us a lot with our navigation in the field of biotechnology business,” says Tomáš Pluskal.
He founded the company mzio together with three other colleagues. Robin Schmid and Steffen Heuckeroth come from within academia whereas Ansgar Korf, the CEO of mzio, switched his job from a mass spectrometry vendor. In addition, the company's management has been joined by the principal investor, German real estate developer Ludger Rothues.
As part of its services, mzio offers user support and consultations in addition to the MZmine software itself. However, the entire package is still free for customers from the academic environment, and the source code of the software remains open to continuous modification by enthusiastic researchers. Scientists around the world can use the tool to process, examine and compare gigabytes of data on molecules analyzed by mass spectrometry.
- mzio website: mzio.io
