March 12, 2007
Bruker Daltonics
Dr. Herbert Thiele
Worldwide Head of Bioinformatics
How has your company adapted and responded to the changing economic climate in the past five years when so many others companies did not?
Bruker Daltonics has become perhaps the leading developer and provider of innovative life science tools based on mass spectrometry through an extraordinary level of close customer contact worldwide with leading universities and top pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We have participated in leading scientific organizations such as the Human Proteome Organization’s Brain Proteome Project and their database activities, where the BPP has now standardized on our bioinformatics software worldwide for their proteomics project database and project management. This close bioinformatics customer contact has often allowed us to anticipate life sciences organizations’ bioinformatics needs even before they themselves realize those needs, and develop innovative bioinformatics products and solutions of all sorts to address those scientific needs as they develop, providing us with a competitive advantage.
What is your vision for the future of the life sciences market over the next several years?
We see numerous opportunities for significant growth, especially in chemistry, metabolomics and metabonomics, proteomics and structural biology. Regarding clinical research, we expect to continue to be important players regarding research in the growing fields of biomarkers, molecular imaging, molecular diagnostics, personalized medicine, IVD, theranostics, and infectious diseases. Other markets that will continue to be of importance to us, and probably of growing importance, include drug discovery and development, including early drug discovery, pharmacoproteomics, and pharma forensics.
What products and services does your company provide and what special capabilities do they offer the life sciences market?
We provide an extensive product array of innovative life sciences instruments and rather sophisticated bioinformatics software, all based on mass spectrometry. These include recently announced, new-generation MALDI time-of-flight and TOF/TOF, electrospray time-of-flight, ion trap and fourier transform spectrometers, which now -- amazingly – are going all the way up through 15 Tesla magnetic fields.
Regarding our extensive Bruker Daltonics array of bioinformatics software products and solutions, we have designed and created these software solutions so as to feature optimal functions and tools for the desired applications in the life sciences fields within mass spectrometry. Accurate, fast and comprehensive evaluation of mass spectra is of particular importance to scientists in achieving maximum of data reliability from each sample. We have designed Bruker Daltonics’ bioinformatics software so as to perform with excellence in a user-friendly way.
Partnerships are an effective way to track life science advances and ensure that your company delivers timely products and services. Which life sciences companies or organizations have you partnered with or invested in and why?
We market some of our life science systems through strategic distribution agreements with leading firms like Agilent Technologies in the ion trap mass spectrometry arena and Sequenom.
We have found Sequenom to be committed to providing the very best genetic analysis products that translate genomic science into superior solutions for biomedical research, agricultural applications, molecular medicine and non-invasive prenatal diagnostics research, and, potentially, clinical utility.
Where do you see your company in five years?
Our strategy is to capitalize on our proven ability to innovate and generate rapid revenue growth, both organically and through acquisitions. We believe our commitments to be an even more significant leader within our markets, including bioinformatics, to maintain above industry-standard revenue growth and to leverage our continued research and development and distribution investments, will further enhance our scientific performance and value to the research community. We intend to build on our cutting-edge product offerings where we believe our current offerings provide various advantages to our customers such as high performance and specificity, integrated solutions for specific applications, and increased productivity.
Bruker Daltonics is pursuing and will continue a strategy of differentiation built around excellence, including excellence in bioinformatics. We are going to maintain and even enhance our very innovative R&D and engineering processes, creating more differentiated high-performance, high quality products—further enhancing our excellent brand recognition position. We will continue to have strong intellectual property positions in various technologies. We will further increase our strong focus on solutions for customer-driven applications. We plan to continue to drive above-average organic growth. We may look at selective bolt-on acquisitions that leverage our brand and global distribution, and provide value to research scientists. We at Bruker Daltonics will continue to enhance the world-class organization we are known for around the world.