The Matchmaking Market

#marketplaces { font-size: 11px; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; width: 525px; }#marketplaces thead td { font-weight:bold; }#marketplaces td { padding: 2px; border: 1px solid black; } By Jef Akst The Matchmaking Market Wanted: Small biotech, enjoys sequencing antibodies, manufacturing, and other temporary services. Call me. © Ken Orvidas Last August, Kunhua Chen, CEO at Exon Biosystems—a

Written byJef Akst

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Last August, Kunhua Chen, CEO at Exon Biosystems—a San Diego–based contract research organization (CRO) specializing in protein services—got a request from Elan Pharmaceuticals for a quote to sequence 14 antibodies. Recognizing the fit between his company’s abilities and the requested work, he responded right away. Two weeks later he got an email that Elan was ready to order. A month after that, he struck a deal for $80,000—the biggest project in the company’s three and a half year history.

The request came through an online service called Assay Depot, which Exon Biosystems had joined when Assay Depot started the year before. When the service’s sales team came and pitched their idea to Chen—basically an online marketplace for service providers in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries—he immediately thought it would be good for his company, which doesn’t have much of a marketing team. “Our company’s basically focused on research,” he explains. ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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