Who we are

Company founded in 2010, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

We develop metabolomic workflow tools that automate the measurement of biochemicals using internal standards.

Our internal standards are readily easily identified in mass spectral data using software algorithms and can be spiked into biological samples, i.e. blood, urine, biopsies etc. to identify and quantitate 100s of metabolites.  Our software corrects for ion suppression which is the leading cause of unreproducible data.

The IROA Workflow provides Quality Assurance for platform performance.  Better data translates into biomarkers for diseases, diagnostics and drug development.

Chris Beecher, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer

Chris has more than 25 years of experience in metabolomics, drug discovery and development, and holds 15 patents and 100+ publications. His Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (specialty, Natural Products Chemistry and Biochemistry) is from the University of Connecticut in 1986.  He has served as Director for Drug Development with Ancile Pharmaceuticals and Associate Director for Natural Products Drug Discovery for Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).  Chris was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago before joining BMS.

Chris is one of the original pioneers in metabolomic platform development.  In 2001, he was appointed as the Director of Metabolic Profiling at Paradigm Genetics, Inc. where he was responsible for building the world’s first parallel metabolomics platform. In 2004, he became the sole technical founder of Metabolon, Inc. where he continued to build more accurate and reproducible metabolomics platforms and work in discovery. Following the discovery of the metabolite biomarker sarcosine in prostate cancer, Dr. Beecher became a Professor in the Department of Pathology, at the Medical School of the University of Michigan and assumed the position of founding Director of the UM Metabolomics Center. Chris later joined the University of Florida, as the Associate Director for the SECIM Metabolomic Center at UF. The fact that both the UM and UF Metabolomics Centers were ultimately awarded as 2 of only 6 NIH-recognized and funded Metabolomics centers is a testimony to the strength and quality of these Centers.

Chris is currently Chief Scientific Officer for IROA Technologies where he oversees the continuous development of next generation metabolomics, data generation and data interpretation platforms.  Novel protocols for IROA, including the TruQuant workflow, ion suppression-correction, and sample-to-sample normalization have all been recent developments.

Felice A. de Jong, Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Felice de Jong has an extensive and distinguished career in metabolomics, and life science. She holds a post-graduate degree in Technology Management from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; MSc in Nutritional Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut; and a doctorate in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Dr. de Jong was Technical Manager, Biochemistry at Boehringer Mannheim (Roche), Australia and the founding President of Sigma Aldrich Australia, developing her first company to a successful venture from the ground up. Dr. de Jong returned to Sigma-Aldrich in Boston, USA where she ran Sigma’s neurobiology subsidiary, RBI, as its President.

Felice has been an active leader and proponent in the field of metabolomics since its emergence.  During her 6 years as Senior/ Director of Business Development for Metabolon she gained strategic partnerships, developed new markets and led sales teams.

Her current focus as the CEO of IROA Technologies is to develop services and products that facilitate core laboratories to identify compounds and achieve reproducible data.  Among the unique compound libraries that she has created is the IROA “flagship” MSMLS library with over 600 key primary metabolites, as well as libraries of phytochemicals, bile acids, fatty acids, amino acids and microbiome compounds.

Part of her quest to make compound identification and quantitation reproducible for the commercial industry has been the development of internal standards whereby hundreds of compounds can be accurately measured simultaneously.  IROA currently has two internal standards; 1) for the identification of hundreds of compounds in blood, urine, feces, cells, and biopsies and 2) a cannabis internal standard for the accurate measurement of cannabinoids, flavonoids and terpenes.