Our history

Discover the beginnings of HAWK Biosystems

2016

Our beginnings

HAWK Biosystems was founded by leading scientists of Parker’s Laboratory at Cancer Research UK/Francis Crick Institute. Initially known as FASTBASE Solutions, our journey began in 2016 and since our creation, we have had a goal of creating high-quality technologies for the quantification of protein and biomarker function within patient tissue samples. By promoting scientific excellence and taking the approach to assess protein function, rather than expression, we have been able to accelerate translational biomarker research and identify functional biomarkers with clinical value. Ultimately, our goal is that these technologies better the lives of patients and researchers worldwide.

Francis Crick Institute

2022

A growing company

Moving forward to 2022, we now have a talented and motivated international team who are constantly driving our company to newer heights. We started the design of our Violet 3.0 benchtop microscopy solution, aimed to allow QF-Pro® to be accessible in house to any research lab in the life science sector, removing the perception that FRET-FLIM based technologies were only suited to physics and imaging laboratories. Meanwhile, we embarked on a study to showcase the power of QF-Pro® and how it could benefit cancer patients, by demonstrating the power of functional proteomics in the field of immuno-oncology. In a study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, we demonstrated that the ability of QF-Pro® to quantify PD-1/PD-L1 interaction states in the biopsies of lung cancer patients. This proved to be a metric which could accurately predict response to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies, far more robustly than the current clinical gold-standard biomarker, PD-L1 TPS score. The results were ground-breaking, QF-Pro® could triple response rates to these therapies and double overall survival rates in lung cancer alone.

2022 - Present

Introducing HAWK Biosystems

In the summer of 2022, we changed our commercial brand name to HAWK Biosystems, a move to reflect our changing direction as a provider of breakthrough technologies able to spatially quantify proteomic events at an unrivalled precision. We continue to apply and work to achieve CE marking and EMA/FDA approval for the use of QF-Pro® in the clinical immuno-oncology domain where it can benefit hundreds of thousands of patients each year.

applications

Dive into our repertoire of clinical case studies, where QF-Pro® has been used to detect several biomarkers in various pathologies. As a leading example, find out how QF-Pro® can predict patient response to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies in lung cancer.

Validated Biomarkers

Find out more about the wide range of validated QF-Pro® assays that we offer, ranging from immune checkpoint interactions to dimerisations or kinase activation states. Our flexible technology can be applied to quantify the function of any biomarker in any disease setting.