SiO2 was founded in 2012 to develop and produce a proprietary container technology which fuses the benefits of glass and plastic, without the key drawbacks of either, to address major unmet needs for container systems in the molecular diagnostics and pharmaceuticals industries.

Molecular diagnostics is an emerging and rapidly growing segment of diagnostic testing. The breadth of new assays across various diseases (e.g., cancer) with higher accuracy using next-generation sequencing technologies and lower pricing has driven strong growth in the field of genetic/genomic testing. For example, the growth in liquid biopsies is expected in the long-term given the range of addressable applications from screening to monitoring to companion diagnostic testing.

In 2021, SiO2 commercialized a blood collection tube with a proprietary preservative to address the genetic testing market.

Traditional glass containers (e.g., vials, cartridges, and syringes) were developed with conventional chemical drug compounds in mind and have seen limited innovation and improvements over the last fifty years. In contrast, biologic development has given rise to drug formulations with higher sensitivities to particles, metal ions, and other environmental contaminants, and while biopharmaceuticals comprise only 30% of FDA-approved drugs and vaccines on the market today, they comprise approximately 70% of drugs currently under development.

Over the past ten years, SiO2 has worked collaboratively with our customers to design, produce, and commercialize vials and syringes specifically for biologic drugs formulations, including bioengineered vaccines (mRNA), antibody drug conjugates (ADC), and cell and gene therapies (CGT).