Description
Tolani E
Vitas originates from the Institute for Nutrition Research, from the research groups of the Professors Rune Blomhoff and Christian A. Drevon. In the 1980-90ies Blomhoff and Drevon were studying the metabolism and biological effects of fat-soluble vitamins A, D and E. In addition to publish several papers and educate many PhD students it was an increasing awareness of the clinical importance of the fat-soluble vitamins in fetal development, cell differentiation, bone metabolism and antioxidant defense of importance for development of cardiovascular diseases as well as cancer.
The rapid scientific progress promoted enhanced demands for measurements of the fat-soluble vitamins among patients with several types of diseases. Because Blomhoff and Drevon had analytical methods for measuring vitamin A, D and E they were often asked to measure these vitamins for clinical purposes. As the demand for these demanding analyses (in the early 1990ies) enhanced the idea about creating a public company in an understanding with the University of Oslo grew strong enough to become a reality in January 1994.
Shortly after the establishment vitas entered into collaboration with the clinical central lab Fürst in Oslo doing analysis of fat soluble vitamins and methylmalonic acid (MMA) for the Norwegian primary health care.
Vitas subsequently moved to Oslo Innovation Park and have stayed there up to now after gradual expansion from just performing a few analyses per week with Thomas E. Gundersen as a Master student setting up and performing the actual analyses. There are in 2015 15 people full time employed, with analyses of hundreds of different compounds from biological material as well as from the pharmaceutical and oil industry.
Important customers have been scientific collaborators in The European Framework programs in the last 5 years.
The main analytical platform has been chromatography of all different types, although there has been a gradual expansion of analytical methods including immunological techniques (RIA and ELISA) as well as ICP. In addition, there is increasing demand for advice concerning regulatory support, design of experiments and expert advice concerning purification, stability and metabolism of drugs under different conditions.
A large number of customers have been recruited from universities and research institutes all over the world, to a large extent due to the scientific network of Rune Blomhoff, Christian A. Drevon. In later years Vitas reputation as a high quality service provider is well established and attracts customers from the whole world.
As one the pioneers in modern use of dried blood spots, Vitas is recognized as a leading player within this field. The high throughput DBS facility currently receives, analyse and report about 5000 DBS sample every month. It is expected that this number will increase to 10 000/ month within the end of 2015
In 2014 it was 20 years since Vitas was established. We are proud of what we have achieved during these years. It is our impression that Vitas offers a good workplace including highly educated very motivated and friendly employees. All permanent employees are offered stocks in Vitas at a reasonable price to enhance the feeling of ownership to the company and its activities. The professional staff is challenged every day in such a way that our analytical and chemical competence is developing continuously. We also believe we have made some significant contributions to the scientific community, providing a valuable service to our customers and giving our stockholders a significant return on their investment.