Microsaic Systems PLC (LON:MSYS) Chief Executive Officer Glenn Tracey caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss his position as CEO, mass detection, what makes their technology different, the business model and what we should look forward to in the near-future
Q1: You’ve recently been assigned as the CEO, how is it going?
A1: Very good, thank you. It’s a very busy time and actually you’re speaking to us at a very exciting period as we bring our small footprint mass detection technology into solving big problems in human health, in particular in the manufacture of biologic.
For those of you that know Microsaic Systems already, we’ve commercialised our miniature technology which has historically been targeted at chemical and biological analysis but usually confined to the research laboratory, now what we’re doing is to take the mass spec into places that it usually doesn’t go which is into the manufacturing workflow. This is particularly important right now, we’re seeing an entirely new breed of drug being developed and that requires a very different approach to its design and manufacture by pharma companies and in particular, biopharma are very interested in enhancing their sensing and detection capabilities to drive what they call ‘critical process’ parameters of the biologic workflow and also critical quality attributes of the biologics themselves.
So, to answer your question, what I’ve been busy doing is to ensure that we’re working with the global life science partners who are asking us to participate in this very exciting new area.
Q2: You mentioned mass detection, it sounds complicated, can you tell us what that is?
A2: It’s actually simpler than it sounds. I suppose in a very basic way it’s to elucidate chemical composition of structure within a very deterministic way and it’s this deterministic way that sets it apart from many many other techniques such as optical spectroscopy or measuring the pH of a compound. As you can imagine, if you’re taking a prescription drug knowing exactly what it is or what it isn’t is extremely important to know.
Q3: So, what is it that Microsaic Systems’ technology does differently?
A3: Well, actually, scientists use mass spectrometry all the time in a lot of applications. Now, the difference here with what we’ve managed to do is shrink it and make it robust for drug analysis in the manufacturing workflow, unfortunately, democratisation is being a bit overused but that’s a great way of describing what we’ve in fact done.
The key problem we’re addressing here is to look at how our technology can be used in very very different environments outside the lab where the users aren’t necessarily analytical experts.
Q4: It sounds very techy; can you explain to us the business model?
A4: Fundamentally, what we do if we partner with companies who make separation equipment, which is a very important piece of equipment in pharmaceutical manufacture and scale-up and today, in our small molecule business, we actually partner with companies including Biotarge and Gilson. Ultimately, we do have a very strong technical plan to our business and in fact, if it was easy everyone would be doing it, but that said, our model is pretty simple.
Basically, what it means is we spend the time to understand the problem set by our customers, the separation companies and their end users, and we co-develop a product to repeat unit sales and consumables. So, in essence, what we aren’t is a contract R&D business, we are into creating a sustainable and repeat business. That said, co-development is still very critical for repeat business and we really do need to understand the complexity of the problem from an early stage if you’re going to engineer that into your final product.
Q5: Is this a new approach, we’ve not heard much about this before?
A5: No, not entirely. We’ve always sought partners with a global footprint and a global channel to market who want mass detection integrates with part of their product, what’s new is our focus on longer-term markets in both actually point of care diagnostics and in bioprocessing. Those markets are several orders of magnitude larger than our current markets and actually, I’ll talk about those markets in much more detail at a later date.
Q6: Talking about later dates, what have we got to look forward to in terms of the near-future for Microsaic Systems?
A6: Well, watch this space. We’ve got some really fantastic enabling technology underway for protein and peptide purification and what we’re doing is taking a much more back-to-basics innovative approach to end user even use, this, along with some great partnerships, will hopefully make 2018 very exciting. We’ve also previously announced that we have a tripe quad prototype which will be really a powerful tool in our point of care diagnostics armoury and more of that to follow.
