Pieris ProteoLab was founded in February 2001 to commercialize anticalins, a novel class of antibody mimetics based on a lipocalin scaffold. Due to their molecular architecture, anticalins offer some distinct advantages over antibodies; Pieris will exploit these advantages in developing new drugs for oncology and inflammatory diseases.

Plenty of companies have tried to commercialize protein chips, but it's been very hard to do. Zyomyx believes it has overcome problems that flummoxed others. It has just launched a chip--and specialized reader system--that measures 30 human cytokines. In essence, the chip is a standard sandwich assay, only miniaturized. Zyomyx is hoping its ease of use will encourage people to test for cytokines in phases of drug discovery and development where that's never been possible before. The company believes that measuring proteins that are actually present at a given point in time, versus genes that may or may not be influential, will be of immediate practical value.

Avalon Pharmaceuticals Inc. hopes to harness the explosion of target information to identify promising drugs without having to rely first on finding new targets. It is employing its target-independent platform to look at the activities of compounds much earlier in the discovery process than conventional screening methods.

Germany's GPC Biotech has taken a frugal and tortuous journey from platform to product company. As the customer base for its new-target discovery platform grew less receptive, it attempted to move its business towards products, but was prevented by its lack of management and its illiquid Neuer Markt shares. Thus it leveraged its Bristol-Myers connections to build an oncology team and create a pipeline, at the same time largely refocusing the company on in-licensing. In the meantime, rather than disbanding its discovery work, GPC is trying to reorient its entire platform towards applied uses in order to attract corporate funding and to feed its own pipeline. The result: a business model increasingly relevant to a financially troubled and largely directionless biotech industry.