whether I am well trained, and I was like OK, maybe I am
not. So it was fun. Yes, I do miss that but I keep getting a
taste of it.How long has it been in your current role?
It has been 2.5 years in the present responsibility, and
at Bio-Rad that is just the beginning. We are a company of
people with really long commitments and our average
tenure is 10-15 years. So when I came in, we were looking
into an environment of what we can do here in the next 5
years. We are already half way there and still have lots
more to do. I am all excited about that. It is important in
business to make money, we need to do better all the time
but you need to do your mission well. We are a very
science oriented company, with diagnostics and medical
healthcare. I work with the R&D team and their work
helps science. Everybody wants a good pay. But it is most
important to do good science. My job is to bring back
evidence to the team that science is doing well out there.How much of your revenue is dedicated to
R&D?
It is a little more than 10 per cent, which is good. We
just need a good vision and we keep going. We invest in
the challenges we see.What is currently cooking in R&D?
We look into all the upstream and downstream
aspects of the research that is going on. We have been
busy with the launch of ZE5, a new flow cytometer. We
have spent more than a year for the training part. We
have been working 40 to 60 hours for the past one year
for testing and checking the software features. We have
been building the antibody portfolio. Time and money
has been invested in the validation. We have also been
investing in the next gen di-conjugates to go with the
flow cytometer system. We have also been working in
lines of non-coding RNA and developing content for
that. We all are very curious to find out what is in there.
This can provide valuable insights for medicines. We
found at our alpha trials that people are finding stuff to
make them go back and do RNA sequencing. So we want
to add content in this area like adding the right enzyme,
so that people can be more positive about the right
discovery. Droplet technology is also very exciting forscience in the future. Thousands of things can be done
with droplets.How long does it take to bring out a new
product?
It depends on the kind of product we are working on
but typically it takes 18 to 36 months. We have a high
standard to prove that the product really works. We
should be able to test it with 20 to 30 customers.
Sometimes the feedback is not that great. So we need to
be in a position to hear that.Bio-Rad has a dedicated research area to
cancer. What about other global health concerns
such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes?
Our diagnostics have been focused on diabetes. And
there is a lot of discussion on tuberculosis as well. But
you cannot miss cancer since it is everywhere. And the
best part is that you test the blood of a patient and not do
biopsy, and are able to offer a medicine for it. To be a part
of a team who develops the test and the medicine is so
exciting. So we focus more on that aspect with cancer.
Digital droplet technology is being used for HIV, but it
has not been an area of focus of our life science group.
But the company is interested in finding ways to connect
the dots on these other diseases.What are the series of events or stages
involved from discovering a new drug target till
the manufacturing process?
It is a really long process from drug target discovery
to process development. We have been able to be an asset
to our partners in our drug discovery group. But very
often we deal with different kind of people who are
working on different pieces of this process. We might go
to a very big drug company, or a small CRO (contract
research organisations), and tell them that we have these
capabilities. It all depends on the person we are talking
to, like someone who is really doing the upstream work
in the drug discovery, we will talk about our technologies,
how to reduce buyers and so on. But if we are talking to
someone from the processing team, then we talk about
stability, reproducibility, security supply, audit process.
We need to present things accordingly. We believe that
Bio-Rad has a standard technology and a commitment to
get things done. We come with 50 years of protein
experience and 35 years of DNA experience and frankly
our biggest request is help.
Manbeena Chawla
[email protected]For more information visit website
http://www.biospectrumindia.comWe will continue to develop more in cell biology,
cellular analysis which has always been upstream
of the gene and protein analysis. We are looking
for Next Gen solutions on all fronts especially
protein analysis so that we can help people
succeed in multiplex technologies and find better
ways to tie up the protein results.(^36) BIOTalk BioSpectrum | May 2017 | http://www.biospectrumindia.com