BIKE Scientific Inc., a Halifax-based medical device company, may be weeks away from the sale of its new ProTrap XG, a disposable cartridge that simplifies the process of isolating proteins in blood samples.

The company aims to solve the problem clinicians have in isolating proteins in blood samples, which is necessary before blood is analyzed in a mass spectrometer. Some 25 million of these procedures are carried out each year in Canada and the U.S., and isolating the proteins is bothersome and time-consuming.

Led by CEO Michael Barr, BIKE has been going for a few years and was a regional runner up in Innovacorp’s I-3 competition in 2011. Earlier this month, it was a finalist for the BioInnovation Challenge, the pitching segment of BioNova’s BioPort conference. 

The company is taking advantage of the booming growth of proteomics, a relatively young science that studies proteins the way that genomics studies genes. Proteomics has grown to become an $8 billion industry, but it requires scientists to isolate the proteins from contaminants found in blood samples before they can be studied.

“I can get rid of these contaminations at the push of a button,” Alan Doucette, the chair of BIKE’s science advisory board, said at the BioInnovation Challenge. “It works every time if you do it right.”

The ProTrap XG is a simple two-chamber plastic cartridge that fits into a simple centrifuge common to any lab. The clinician places a blood sample in the upper chamber, runs the cartridge through the centrifuge, and seconds later the proteins are separated in the lower chamber.

Doucette so far has produced these little capsules with a plastics injection device in their lab at Dalhousie University. Doucette said the company is still deliberating on the price point of the ProTrap, adding that existing competitors cost about $5 per sample and are less efficient that this device.

Doucette has a history of innovating and commercializing medical instruments. In 2009, he and his team began to develop the GELFREE Fractionation System, which maximizes protein recovery during molecular weight-based fractionation. It sold this technology to a medical device manufacturer in 2012.

In 2009, Doucette told Kevin Buchan of Dalhousie’s Industry Liaison and Innovation office about his plan for a new product, whose capsules would isolate proteins. They worked together to secure early funding from Springboard Atlantic and Innovacorp’s Early Stage Commercialization Fund to begin the process of innovating and testing the prototype.   The technology was then out-licensed to BIKE.

BIKE is now raising funds, and Barr was unable to attend BioPort because he was meeting with potential investors in the U.S. Doucette declined to say how much money the company is seeking.

What he did say is the company is several weeks away from being able to sell the product. The company forecasts revenue of about $480,000 in Year 1. What’s more, the company, which is developing an eCommerce distribution model, is forecasting it will be profitable in its first year.