In the end it comes to the question what added value above the current approaches you could offer. If you increase the success rate of crystallizability and good diffraction data from a given protein by a factor of two or more it becomes interesting - I am afraid this is not the case for microg grown crystals ...
Jan On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Jack Reynolds <jdr7...@yahoo.com> wrote: > --- On Sun, 5/9/10, Klaus Fütterer <k.futte...@bham.ac.uk> wrote: > >> Dear Jack, >> >> I believe your venture would enter a mature market, and, if >> you were to offer growing growing crystals in microgravity, >> a market characterised by very high costs and (presumably) >> very low margins. > > I wouldn't offer crystal growth, I would offer access to the data from x-ray > diffraction of space-grown crystals. Is the data from significantly improved > crystals not a valuable commodity? > > If the pharmaceutical industry (and other researchers, for that matter) could > grow crystals in space, and extract critical data from the x-ray diffraction > of these space-grown crystals (in space); AND > > if costs could be reduced by 30-50%; AND > > if the end-product is the data, not the crystals . . . > > do you still think (profit) margins would be nominal? > > Is your assessment of "very low margins" based on assumed "very high costs?" > > Jack > -- Jan Dohnalek, Ph.D Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Heyrovskeho nam. 2 16206 Praha 6 Czech Republic Tel: +420 296 809 390 Fax: +420 296 809 410
