V Swing World. Second Story

An equal sign can be placed between the success story of Estonian biomedical technology and Professor Mart Ustav. His journey as both a researcher and an entrepreneur in the landscape of scientific innovation is a good example of constant consideration, implementation and evaluation. However, an emotional factor led Ustav to entrepreneurship - his mother's illness with melanoma and her death. Because of his mother's illness, Mart Ustav noticed a gap in the market and, thanks to a thorough knowledge of the field, managed to take advantage of the opportunity he had discovered.

In 1999 Quattromed was founded as a spin-off company of the University of Tartu. The business started as a diagnostics company, which is where their success was based. Doctors and clinics needed a molecular diagnostic method. The quick and accurate service provided by Quattromed allowed for a better diagnosis. A good example of assessing the situation and knowing the market is the company's skilled activities with licences and patent rights. For example, Ustav and his team saw the potential for commercialization in the technological solution of Finns for determining the latex allergy. One of the reasons was very lively. It is a labor-intensive allergen determination method that could be used in Estonia because labour costs here were lower than in Finland. However, the company was aware that while around 10% of medical professionals and around 1% of the general population are allergic to latex, the need for allergen testing promised to decline in the long term due to latex substitutes. In 2008, it was decided to sell the molecular diagnostics section, and today it has become the company Synlab.

Mart Ustav: "Patents have a time limit. The patent entitles its owner to operate in a particular geographical area for 20 years. If a discovery has been made and a patent has been taken on it, then this discovery will be made marketable in the product development process, for example, in drug development it takes an average of 12 years. The developer will have the last eight years to recoup all expenses incurred during the development cycle with the sale. If a preliminary calculation of the development of a medicinal product shows that, after the product has been placed on the market, its sales turnover is less than one billion, the development will not start because the developer will not be able to make up for its expenses.” (Sirp)

Mart Ustav has admitted there was a deep hole after the sale because the profit-making part of the company was sold. All activities were focused on biotechnological development and sales revenue was initially modest. The new profile was the development of own products and the company was named Icosagen Plc. Icosagen received a large grant from Enterprise Estonia for the project “Creating a New technological Platform for Cell Tests”, which began in 2009. A grant of million euros helped to bring the company out of its slump and to create a network of customers.

The company's anlyclicality and rapid response is well illustrated by the BioBlock nasal spray, which came on the market at the height of the spread of COVID-19, or the recent investment of EUR 40 million in the construction of a new plant that will enable Icosagen to provide full service to biotech and pharmaceuticals customers and to become a universal contracted research, development and manufacturing organization. The plant is expected to begin work in 2024.