1. Could you tell our readers what your company will be showcasing at PrecisionMed Exhibition and Summit 2022?
At the PrecisionMed Exhibition we will be showcasing Olink’s capabilities to perform high-throughput multiplex proteomics in a very specific and sensitive manner. Non-invasive measurements of protein biomarkers in bodily fluids are increasingly important to help understand biology, to stratify patients, to develop diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and to find new drug targets. This information will be vital to help drive precision medicine forward, both by ensuring that the right drug gets to the right patient at the right time, as well as developing better therapeutics to meet these goals.
2. Tell our readers about your company’s focus and products for the show.
Olink’s focus is to present our innovative Proximity Extension Assay (PEA) technology which has overcome all of the quality-related problems previously associated with proteomics at scale. Our latest product, Olink® Explore 3072 for example, enables the measurement of almost 3000 different proteins simultaneously using less than 10 µL of sample volume. This high-throughput platform can process ~4600 samples per week from one NGS instrument, generating around 14 million protein data points. Olink technology has now been cited in over 850 peer-reviewed papers covering a huge range of applications and disease areas. The Olink Explore platform is already making a big impact in areas such as COVID-19 and cancer research.
3. Why is the Middle East a key area for your business?
We see an increase in R&D activities in precision medicine in the Middle East region and we believe we can add value with our unique proteomics platform. The Middle East is on the forefront of genetics and by adding proteomics we can together build multi-omics capabilities to further fuel precision medicine and enable a focus on the population of the Middle East.
4. What is your silver lining during Covid-19?
Olink works closely with the scientific community, and this resulted in some important collaborations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Olink’s technology for example was used in studies to characterize the complex immune responses involved, understand why some people respond more severely to the SARS-CoV-2 infection and to gain insights into some of the serious co-morbidities associated with it. With these data, Olink technology contributes to new insights into what drives COVID-19 disease, which ultimately may lead to biomarkers for better clinical decision-making and new therapeutic targets.
5. How do you see the hospitals of tomorrow?
Future healthcare will depend on a new generation of therapies. Development of these therapies will be driven by a much deeper knowledge of the biology underlying human health and disease, as well as a precision medicine mindset to get the right treatment to the right patient at the right time. Proteomics, the comprehensive study of many thousands of proteins and their actions, is poised to be at the center of this revolution.
6. What healthcare technology do you think will make a big difference in the future?
I would say the promise of proteomics: together with our customers, Olink is accelerating proteomics to better understand human biology and develop future healthcare. We are on a journey to explore the low-abundance plasma proteome to uncover actionable insights that can drive the development of precision medicine.
7. As you look to the future, what is one innovation that really excites you?
There is a growing trend for large-scale “systems biology” studies that combine different “-omics” technologies to generate a comprehensive picture of all the cellular and molecular components involved in disease biology. We believe that proteomics will take center stage of these multi-omics studies, contributing unique insights into the dynamic phenotypes of health and disease and helping to build a more detailed picture of human biology than anyone thought possible until now.
