From code to clinic: New lab tech from Qamcom and Mabtech
What happens when two companies from entirely different domains team up, and stay teamed up? In the case of Mabtech and Qamcom, nearly a decade of collaboration has led to EYRA: a new research platform designed to streamline high-precision lab work in immunology.
Mabtech, a biotech firm specialising in immunoassays and instruments for research, brought the scientific insight. Qamcom, an engineering company based in Kista, contributed deep technical expertise. Together, they’ve built a system that makes it faster and easier to detect dozens of immune-related analytes — and is poised to being used across various research fields such as vaccines, inflammation, and infectious diseases.
Making lab work easier
EYRA, a purpose-built confocal microscope, supports a method called multiplex immunoassays, which allows researchers to analyse many immune markers in a single run. The platform delivers high-sensitivity with minimal manual work — no calibration, fluid handling, or clean-up required — and is designed to support long-term studies without compromising consistency.
“What really makes an advanced instrument like EYRA different is the simplicity,” says Christian Smedman, CTO at Mabtech. “It’s so user-friendly that even someone with no lab experience could use it — and that’s not something you could say about competing systems.”
Its intuitive setup also supports automation, a key factor for labs scaling up to clinical trials and larger research programmes.
Combined expertise, shared goals
The development of EYRA wasn’t a one-off assignment. It was the outcome of a long-term R&D collaboration that started in 2016 and kept evolving through two full-scale product development phases, feature upgrades, and continued joint refinement.
Mabtech guided the scientific direction and core functionality. Qamcom provided the complete design and development of the laser-based instrument.
“We don’t have the technical know-how to put together a sophisticated instrument like EYRA,” says Smedman. “But we helped shape it by working together with Qamcom’s engineers toward better performance and a more intuitive user experience. From the very beginning, we’ve talked about our cooperation with Qamcom, since it gives us credibility in an area where we don’t have expertise.”
Ann Louise Johansson, General Manager at Qamcom, notes that the working structure played a big role in building alignment and trust over time.
“From day one, we’ve met face-to-face every four weeks to set directions, handle issues, and decide on next steps,” she says. “Even when we weren’t in active development phases, we kept that rhythm. That consistency helped us stay aligned and ensure focus on the right things.”
As Johansson sees it, strong expertise and trust — across disciplines and over time — are what made the project succeed.
“It’s at the intersection of disciplines where the most powerful breakthroughs happen. No single team could have done this alone. But together, we’ve built something that can make an impact and genuinely improve outcomes in bioscience and public health.”