Meet the 29 Year Old Man Who Just Launched Biotech Startup Advanced Modular Instruments (AMI)
January 27, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
What do you do when you’re a 29-year-old graduate student holding six patents? Start a company, of course. Meet Tony Hoang, founder officer of Advanced Modular Instruments (AMI).
Hoang, a PhD chemistry candidate at the University at Albany (New York) launched AMI just last month. It is a “scientific accessory company” that gives researchers tools to increase efficiency and productivity.
The company has two areas of focus. One digitizes what Hoang refers to as “dumb” instruments. It allows researchers to monitor experiments in real time. The other focuses on diagnostics. Based on one of his patents, it can detect micro RNA, which at the moment has no competition on the market. Bioscience Technology writes, “Since the instrument is able to detect such a small strand, it can actually then be retrofitted to detect larger strands like viruses, bacteria and fungi.”
Hoang told Bioscience Technology, “This will change the way diagnostics will happen. We have the potential to detect strands much quicker and much faster than any other conventional instruments out there.”
He also has a patent for a centrifuge attachment that allows researchers to monitor particle separation as it happens. Although proprietary, so there are currently few details, they are modular, so researchers can swap out the instrumentation based on their needs.
“There’s a base that has the brains of the instrument,” Hoang said, “the computer system and everything, and then there’s the modular instrument part where you literally just swap it out like a Lego brick and can then put in whatever detector desired.”
Hoang grew up poor and spent much of his childhood playing with broken electronics his parents bought at thrift stores. The family didn’t have cable TV, so his primary entertainment was PBS. He cites “Bill Nye the Science Guy” as his hero.
With two bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and biochemistry and a soon-to-be-completed PhD in chemistry, Hoang won the Albany Business Review’s Technology Entrepreneur Award this month. The Albany Business Review Tech Awards celebrate business and individuals’ technology and achievements in the Capital Region. Other winners include SI Group FLOS Research and Development Team for Technology in Manufacturing, Pradeep Halder, Interim Dean of the College of Nanoscale Engineering and Technology Innovation for Technology in Energy/Sustainability, and Alan Boulos, chair, Department of Neurosurgery at the Albany Medical Center for Technology in Health Care.
Previously, back in April 2016, Hoang entered and won Albany’s first Blackstone LaunchPad competition, receiving $17,000. He was then invited to the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit to pitch his company. That didn’t work out, but he was nominated again and said it was an amazing experience. He was very impressed by the other entrepreneurs.
“They thought outside of the box,” he told Bioscience Technology, “they did things that most people either criticized them for or were confused by why they were doing it. But at the end of the day they were extremely successful, so that gave me a lot of inspiration to just continue doing what I’m doing.”
He also credits Jan Woodcock, the director of the Blackstone Launchpad competition, for his help. He also mentions two academic advisors, Alan Chen, assistant professor at University of Albany and Ken Halvorsen, senior staff scientist at the RNA Institute.
AMI is at the very early stages. Hoang has published peer-review validation articles, has patents in place, and is now focused on commercialization. He’s wrapping up a final prototype that he hopes will lead to mass manufacture.
Hoang expects to graduate this year and hopes AMI will take off and potentially get bought up. If it doesn’t get bought, he sees himself continuing the company. “I would love to be able to provide them [scientists] with a tool that they can use to be able to increase their efficiency, not spend a lot of money, and not be hassled with a bogged down experience.”