Want to find the coronavirus’ infamous spike protein that allows it to latch onto human cells?
Look no further than Atum, a 17-year-old Newark firm specialized in making synthetic genes and proteins.
Like other firms in the biotechnology-heavy Bay Area, Atum has rapidly refocused on the pandemic. It’s now playing a vital role supplying cellular pieces to researchers who use them to build coronavirus antibody tests, drugs and vaccine candidates.
When the first publicly reported COVID-19 cases arose in the United States several months ago, Atum co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Claes Gustafsson didn’t think his company would play such an active role. In fact, the management team started thinking about winding down Atum’s operations, given that most of the company’s clients were working in non-virus areas and some appeared to be shutting down.
“The first reaction was, ‘Everything’s going to come to a screeching halt,’” Gustafsson said.
Then new customers came along and old customers pivoted.
“To our surprise, good and bad, I think we doubled,” he said. The next few weeks (were), probably, the biggest weeks we’ve had when it comes to both orders coming in and production. It went a completely different way.”
The company, which works out of a roughly 4,500-square-foot office near the Dumbarton Bridge, essentially buys “buckets” of tiny biological building blocks that it can assemble in various ways, according to Gustafsson.
Atum’s ability to make components such as the spike-shaped protein and antibodies that neutralize the virus is crucial. It helps other researchers begin quickly working with the pieces they need to make tests or therapeutics — instead of having to rely on a live, highly infectious virus.
“It really changes the concept,” Gustafsson said. “If you go back prior to synthetic genes ... the process to go from research into a product was much, much longer, much more expensive and, frankly, a lot more dangerous.”
Atum has more than 100 or so employees and thousands of worldwide customers, a few hundred of which are working on the coronavirus, Gustafsson estimated. He couldn’t discuss them at length, but the Stanford Daily student newspaper recently reported that Atum helped researchers at the university make an internal test to identify whether someone has antibodies for the coronavirus.
All of Atum’s revenue comes from charging other firms for services, and it became profitable within about two years of its founding, according to Gustafsson, though he declined to share specific figures. He said he and the other co-founders started the company without relying on venture capital or private equity.
“We started small and have just been growing ever since,” he said. “To this day, we don’t have a single penny from outside investors.”
Atum joins a long list of Bay Area efforts to beat back the pandemic, from Gilead Sciences’ COVID-19 drug remdesivir to various initiatives and studies under way at UCSF, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente and elsewhere. Other local companies building tools to combat the coronavirus include LakePharma, which has offices on the Peninsula and in the East Bay, and San Francisco’s Twist Bioscience.
“Companies that are doing the cutting-edge project development — they don’t exist in silos,” said Sean Randolph, senior director at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “They depend on a very diverse biotech and life science ecosystem of companies that provide materials and ingredients and different reagents and virus pieces. ... Having companies that fill very specific needs for other companies is part of how the system works.”
One benefit of using synthetic products is that they can be modified, said Gustafsson, the Atum co-founder. For example, Atum can help tweak the virus’ spike protein to “make it more recognizable, make it more soluble, make it express better,” he said.
Santa Clara’s Antibody Solutions, a contract research organization, uses Atum products in its work helping other companies identify drug candidates, including to combat the coronavirus.
“Some people say if you’re going to make a fine wine, you have to have great grapes. Maybe in Atum’s case, they’re really making the grapevines that make the great grapes,” said Antibody Solutions co-founder and President John Kenney. “As the technology has become more complex ... you can’t do everything,” Kenney said. “You have to rely on people who can create that great tool for you.”
Randolph compared the efforts of Atum and companies like it to the many different kinds of businesses that support the automotive industry. Their presence in the Bay Area now, he said, should underscore how the region’s business importance does not lie solely with the major software companies in Silicon Valley.
“What’s going on right now with COVID should remind us how important and how big biotech is in the Bay Area,” he said.
J.D. Morris is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris
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