This summer, biocrates celebrates 20 years at the forefront of metabolomics. To mark the occasion and take a look back over the highlights of the last two decades, the global team got together in Innsbruck in July. Beyond the workshops, company and sales meetings, there was plenty of time for exploring the city of Innsbruck, visiting the Stubaital and of course our 20th anniversary party, held in a former crystal factory.

biocrates and metabolomics

biocrates has a long history in the field of metabolomics. The term “metabolome” was introduced to the scientific community in 1998 (Oliver et al. 1998, reviewed in Kell et al., 2016), and biocrates was founded just a few years later. Metabolomics and biocrates have grown up together.

After 20 years, biocrates is a synonym for standardized and reproducible metabolomics. biocrates’ kits and services continue to make metabolomics accessible to help scientists all over the world to understand mechanisms of health and disease.

Dr. Therese Koal, CTO at biocrates, gives this useful analogy to demonstrate the power of biocrates’ mass spectrometry-based kit technology: “If you dissolved a cube of sugar in Lake Constance (and you´d be able to stir the lake) you could detect the sugar from 1 glass of lake water using biocrates kits.This gives you a flavor of the sensitivity of our measurements.”

How it all started

In 2000, three leading professors decided to found a company dedicated to developing a standardized metabolomics kit platform. Prof. Adelbert Roscher (University of Munich), Prof. Hartmut Glossmann (Medical University of Innsbruck), and Prof. Günther Bonn (University of Innsbruck) together with the company Bionorica (Prof. Michael Popp) and supported by Herbert Weissenböck (Tirol Kliniken) soon obtained Austrian government funding and started the company early in 2002 with 3 employees.

How biocrates got its name?

Wondering where the name biocrates came from?
Florian Bichteler, one of the first employees of biocrates, explains:
“After long discussions with different ideas, the founders decided to take a mixture of biology and Socrates, the wise Greek philosopher,” he stated.

This idea is shown clearly in the company’s first logo in 2002, though later versions of the logos merged the two concepts.

Milestones

2002
Biocrates Life Sciences GmbH was founded.

2003
The operative work began. The founders started building the team. biocrates settled in Innsbruck, Innrain 66. Seventeen employees were working for the company by the end of the year.

2004
The company grew to 34 employees, focusing on kit and software development.

2005
Biocrates won the Tyrolean Innovation Award and got its first ISO 9001 certification.

2007
The company converted from a limited liability company into a public company called Biocrates Life Sciences AG.

2008
The first metabolomics kit was launched. AbsoluteIDQ® p150 already enabled standardized quantification of 163 metabolites out of four compound classes.

2010
AbsoluteIDQ® p180 led the way of metabolomics into mainstream. The successful application of the kit has been demonstrated in hundreds of published articles, making it the most frequently chosen metabolomics approach of its kind today.

2013
The company relocated to its current headquarters location on the Eduard-Bodem Gasse 8 in Innsbruck.

2015
The US affiliation Biocrates Inc. was founded.

2017
The AbsoluteIDQ® p400 kit was launched. This was the first ready-to-use, standardized solution for broad lipid and metabolic profiling on Q Exactive™ mass spectrometers. It provides quantification of more than 400 metabolites and lipids from 11 compound classes covering central metabolic pathways.

2018
Launch of biocrates’ targeted metabolic profiling kit MxP® Quant 500. It allows reproducible quantification of 630 metabolites from 26 biochemical classes additional to more than 230 biologically meaningful metabolite sums & ratios.

2020
A new corporate design was introduced with a new logo and a slight variation of the company name into biocrates life sciences gmbh.

2022
biocrates received ISO13485:2016 as well as ISO 9001:2015 certification.
In its anniversary year, biocrates employs 69 people worldwide and continues to push the boundaries of metabolomics research.

What does the future hold?

We are dedicated to developing and making state-of-the-art metabolomics technology accessible to scientist working in applied in research, disease prevention and personalized medicine. We welcome collaboration with others in the field to push science forward, expand our collective knowledge, and help people profiting from the power of metabolomics.

Moritz Seuster, CEO of biocrates since 2019, says:
“The field of metabolomics continues to grow, offering exciting new insights into disease prevention and personalized medicine. Year by year, it has become an integral part of standardized multi-omics analysis. I’m proud that biocrates’ ground-breaking kits, technology and software are part of that equation. I’m excited for the next chapter in biocrates’ story, where we continue to develop metabolomics as a vital solution to today’s scientific and diagnostic challenges.”

If you want to keep up with the next chapter of biocrates’ story, sign up to our newsletter.

For more information about biocrates, visit our website.

References

Kell D. et al.: The metabolome 18 years on: a concept comes of age (2016) Metabolomics | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-016-1108-4

Oliver S. et al.: Systematic functional analysis of the yeast genome (1998) | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-7799(98)01214-1

Although they are present in relatively low concentration in our bodies, steroid hormones play a crucial role in a vast variety of biological processes, from maintaining pregnancy to regulating mineral and glucose balance in the organism. However, their roles and interactions are still far from being understood. Two recent papers investigating steroid hormones in the KORA cohort shed further light on how these powerful metabolites define health and disease.
Prof. Jerzy Adamski, one of the co-authors of the articles, summarizes the findings and their relevance:

Androgens associate with mortality risk

Although too high or too low levels of androgens are associated with osteoporosis or cardiovascular disorders, there is no established threshold level for steroids in these diseases. Furthermore, there is a need to understand all-cause mortality mechanisms on the metabolic level. Schrederecker et al. studied human serum samples for changes in sex hormone binding globulin (SHGB), testosterone and its active metabolite dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in comparison to survival in a German cross-sectional KORA F4 study. The authors found that higher SHBG concentrations were associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality both in men and women. Lower testosterone and calculated free testosterone as well as higher DHT concentrations in women were associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality. This manuscript contributes to the knowledge that androgens impact survival also in women.

Sex hormones and normoglycemia

Sexual dimorphism is observed in health and disease but the mechanisms underlying different frequencies of disorders are not fully understood. Progestogens and estrogens were considered to be of limited importance to male metabolic homeostasis up to now. However, a recent study by Lau at al. demonstrated that we might have to rethink the importance of these steroids in males. The specific research topic in this project was impact of progestogens and estrogens on normoglycemia in both women and men. The analyses of steroids were performed in the well characterized KORA study cohort and contained both cross-sectional and prospective samples. The mass spectrometry-based assay ensured specific quantification of steroids not blurred by the cross-reactivity of antibody-based assays. The outcome of this study is somewhat surprising. Progesterone, its metabolites 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and 17β-estradiol are independently associated with glycemic traits indeed in men as well as in women.

The researchers involved in the KORA study had already previously addressed the “female health-survival paradox”, i.e. the fact that in industrialized economies, women live longer but also suffer higher rates of serious health challenges. The current studies shed further light on the similarities and differences in how steroid hormones contribute to aging, disease and mortality in men and women. Most importantly, the studies add to our understanding of how progesterons and estrogens influence male health, as well as our understanding of how androgens are involved in aging in women.

Schederecker, F., Cecil, A., Prehn, C. et al.: Sex hormone-binding globulin, androgens and mortality: the KORA-F4 cohort study. (2020) Endocrine connections | https://doi.org/10.1530/EC-20-0080

Lau LHY, Nano J, Cecil A, et al.: Cross-sectional and prospective relationships of endogenous progestogens and estrogens with glucose metabolism in men and women: a KORA F4/FF4 Study. (2021) BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2020-001951