MatriCal Inc., a company in Spokanes U District that makes sophisticated research equipment for large pharmaceutical companies, is expecting a strong surge in sales this year and is ramping up its work force.


The 6-year-old companys revenues are projected to jump by 54 percent this year, to $6.5 million from $4.2 million in 2005, largely due to sales of a new product MatriCal rolled out late last year and anticipated sales from the launch later this year of an updated generation of a current product line, says CEO and co-founder Dan Roark.


We think we could do (even) better if the stars line up, Roark says.


With the projected revenue climb, MatriCal plans to add 10 employees this year, which would give it a total of 35 workers, almost double its staffing level of two years ago. Roark says the company expects to hire additional mechanical engineers, field-service technicians, and salespeople, among others.


The new product the company rolled out late last year, called the Matri MiniStore, is a robotic drug-sample storage-and-retrieval unit thats a smaller, modular version of MatriCals main product, the MatriStore storage-and-retrieval system.


A MiniStore unit is about six feet tall and varies in length depending on how many modular units are attached. Generally speaking, though, it can be built at the MatriCal facility and transported to a laboratory, rather than having to be reconstructed in a customers site, as is the case with the MatriStore unit, Roark says. A unit can be configured to hold between 576,000 and 5 million drug samples.


By comparison, the MatriStore is 2 1/2 stories tall, 18 feet long, and 15 feet wide, and holds between 11.5 million and 77 million samples. It almost always is incorporated into construction of a new pharmaceutical-research facility, rather than installed in an established facility, Roark says.


MatriStore units are priced at between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, and MiniStore units are priced at between $400,000 and $1 million.


Kevin Oldenburg, MatriCals president and the other co-founder, says two pharmaceutical companies each have agreed to buy a Matri MiniStore unit. One unit is slated to be delivered in May, and the other is scheduled to be shipped in September. He declines for now to name the customers that are buying the machines.


So far, MatriCal has made products used in early-stage drug development. Roark says that it typically takes 12 years for a drug maker to develop a new medicine and bring it to market, and MatriCals equipment typically is used in the first five years of research.


The storage-and-retrieval units store a drug companys huge library of drug samples, or chemical compounds, and can be programmed to test up to 100,000 separate compounds a day, Roark says.


The units can store samples at temperatures ranging from minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit to 158 degrees Fahrenheit, though most companies use the equipment to store samples either at room temperature, just above freezing, or at sub-zero temperatures.


While MatriCal has worked exclusively with pharmaceutical companies in the past, Oldenburg and Roark say they believe the MiniStore eventually will have applications in other areas. For instance, the company is talking with a forensics-crime laboratory that would use such a unit to store DNA samples. Also, Oldenburg says, a seed company could use such a unit to store hundreds of different seed lines under controlled conditions.


There are quite a few applications, and its just a function of breaking into those other industries, Oldenburg says.


Already, the amount of interest in the MiniStore outweighs interest in the MatriStore, Oldenburg says. Currently, he claims, the company is talking to eight companies that are looking at the MatriStore, but has 30 potential customers for the smaller unit.


In addition to the MiniStore, MatriCal is rolling out later this year a new generation of its high-speed thermal cycler, a box-like, table-top machine that uses heat and specific enzymes to spur a chemical reaction and make multiple copies of DNA, Oldenburg says. Such technology is helpful in identifyingand testing drugs againsta particular protein that might be prevalent in people with a certain condition or disease.


The new-generation thermal cycler that MatriCal currently is developing can run a test faster than older thermal cycling technology and with a smaller original sample, thereby reducing the cost of conducting such tests, Oldenburg contends.


The thermal cycler and MiniStore follow the introduction of the SonicMan product last year. The SonicMan also is a box-like table-top device. It accepts a tray of up to 384 small drug samples, each of which has a small metal prong on top of its container. Through the prongs, the SonicMan sends sonic waves into each sample to fully dissolve them in the solution theyre in, thereby ensuring a consistent concentration.


Were trying not to be a one-product company, he says. Thats way too dangerous.


Oldenburg says the new products allow the company to appeal to a broader range of customers and to develop stronger ties with their established customers.


Hopefully, each of those products will contribute significantly to the bottom line, he says.


MatriCals projected sales growth this year is on top of a strong increase in revenues last year, Roark says. Sales volume in 2005 increased 50 percent to $4.2 million, from $2.8 million in 2004, he says.


Last years results were bolstered by the sale of a MatriStore unit to Orion Pharma, a big Finland-based drug maker. Late last year, MatriCal helped to install that unit at an Orion Pharma facility under construction in Emeryville, Calif.


Roark and Oldenburg started MatriCal in 2000 in Chadds Ford, Pa., then moved the company in 2002 to the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute building, at 665 E. Spokane Falls Blvd., in the Riverpoint Higher Education Park here.


Last fall, the company leased 1,800 square feet of additional office space in the SIRTI building. In all, it now occupies 6,000 square feet of space there.


Roark says the company at some point will need to move to larger quarters outside of the SIRTI building, which is intended to be used as an incubator for high-tech startups.


He says the company hopes eventually to be able to relocate to space that, like its current location, is near downtown Spokane.