June 13, 2019 | Chris Myatt started his career as a physicist and moved into entrepreneurship shortly after finishing his postdoctoral fellowship. His first business, Precision Photonics, focused on laser photonics, and gave rise to several products. One, a bio sensor, was spun out as MBio in 2009. MBio concentrates on point-of-care technology that allows rapid, quantitative tests in any setting—in the field, in the emergency room, or in a clinic.
As a technologist entrepreneur, Myatt knows the temptation to search for a problem matched to his solution. But he's learned that thorough research and asking lots of questions keeps him focused on addressing important problems in the market. MBio has applications in environmental science, animal science, as well as human health.
Diagnostics is at a turning point, Myatt says. A combination of innovations in detection systems, micro-fluidics, biology, electronics, and more is changing the landscape. “Suddenly you have a chance to do something that for decades has been only a dream,” he says.
On behalf of Diagnostics World News, Mana Chandhok spoke with Myatt about MBio's evolution as a company, how to find the right fit for technology innovations, and entrepreneurship best practices.
Editor's note: Mana Chandhok, a conference producer at Cambridge Healthtech Institute, is planning a Point of Care Special Forum on Expanding Dx Portfolio for Veterinary Applications at the upcoming Next Generation Dx Summit in Washington, D.C., August 20-22. Myatt will be speaking on the program. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Diagnostics World News: Welcome, Chris. Can you give us an introduction to your role at MBio?
Chris Myatt: I am a physicist by training, and went into business pretty shortly after a post-doc. I started a business around laser photonics. It's called Precision Photonics, so it's laser technology, and developed a number of technologies, a number of products. One of those happened to be a bio sensor that we looked into and it started working really well, and it ultimately became MBio. We took that technology, spun it out, and created MBio in 2009, so about 10 years ago. We sold Precision Photonics in 2012, and at that point, I could focus full-time on MBio and we've been developing the business since then. MBio is concentrated on point-of-care technology, technology that allows you to do a rapid, quantitative test anywhere, whether it's outside, in the field, or in an emergency room or a clinic.
We focus on the technology, which is my field, both the instrumentation and the plastic disposables, and then we have a strategy to partner this into a number of areas throughout industry. We have launched products in water quality. We're just about to launch in the veterinary space for animal health, and we have multiple human clinical partners looking at a variety of different disease states—everything from chest pain and potential heart attack to traumatic brain injury and other indications. We're actively working with a number of partners to bring our technology to market in a collaborative way.
What inspired you to join the diagnostic space? What made MBio venture into the animal diagnostic world?
I'm a technologist at heart. We actually had developed our first company into the telecommunications space. We were making devices for the fiber optic network, and if anyone knows the history of the technology world, back in 1999, 2000, it was the hottest thing since sliced bread, but in 2001, '02, and '03, it was an industry that was flat on its back, and most or many of the companies went out of business. It was a pretty grim time in that sector.
So we looked around hard at what other things to do, and we asked a basic question, which was, "We're measurement people, we know photonics really well, we've had some great initial success at that. What's the most valuable thing you could test with our technology?" And we came back to your own health, and that was fundamentally the inspiration for MBio to say, "You know what? Let's do something where you don't need to send off to a fancy lab, but yet you're going to ultimately need the capabilities we have," which is to make high precision, high sensitivity devices at scale and in a cost-effective manner. That was the beginning.
What made MBio venture into the animal diagnostic space?
I think most diagnostic companies face that question: "Boy, I've got an interesting technology, if I go into the human space, you have to get through the FDA; if I go into the animal space, it can be less regulated." We certainly looked at that hard, and in the end, it's true: we can launch some products that get a pretty light touch from a regulatory standpoint. But it's remarkable how much business development we had to do to figure out how the industry is structured, who's important, what are the applications that people care about, and why would they choose one technology over another. So it took quite a while, on top of the fundamental basics of building an excellent technology.
What are some of the common challenges you face when creating diagnostics for humans and animals?
Gosh, we have some tests that are almost one-to-one translations between what the animal marker is and what the human marker is. An example is a marker called progesterone for looking at fertility. It's a very similar molecule in dogs and in humans, and in both cases, an indicator of fertility. That's where the commonality is. The challenges are everything that you do to make a blood test in whole blood, which is not your standard sample in many clinical lab tests, you have the same issue whether you're dealing with a dog or with a human. The samples in the end are very similar if it's blood. You have the same kind of matrix and complications as to how you purify stuff. Biology is messy; both humans and animals are messy.
What new innovations are you excited about, particularly in the point of care space?
A colleague and I were just discussing this. He pointed out that 25 or 30 years ago, he was involved with a big effort to do point-of-care quantitative diagnostics, and that it just didn't fly. They really struggled to get the technologies right, to get the repeat abilities, to have the technological maturity to do that on these sensitive immunoassays.
But now, you're suddenly in a space where it's becoming fairly straightforward with the right technology to do a very sophisticated test in the field or on location. In many ways, it's a combination of innovations: everything from detection systems to micro-fluidics, combined all of that with the biology and the electronics, and suddenly you have a chance to do something that for decades has been sort of a dream.
Do you have any advice for new entrepreneurs who are trying to commercialize their products, either on the human space or in the animal diagnostic space?
As an entrepreneur in general, what I say on a lot of this stuff is, "Don't give up. You probably have a great vision. Keep going!" You can't imagine all the things that come at you. Being an entrepreneur is a marathon, not a sprint, and so you structure your company to survive long-term, and then just keep at it, try this, try that. I have some confidence you'll get through that if you can persevere.
In this corner of the medical space and diagnostics, most of us are one of two varieties: the technologists, which is where I'm coming from, and then there's the businessperson that smells an opportunity and wants to go at it with technology. For the businessperson technology selection is really hard in its own right because the technologies are very complex. It's very subtle what makes one work or not work. In some sense, the classic example is Theranos. They thought they'd pick a technology later, and look how much trouble it got them into.
The flip side is as a technologist, you have a tendency to be a hammer looking for a nail, so a solution looking for a problem. I think it's incredibly important for the technical entrepreneur to do the heavy lifting of going and talking to so many industry leaders, people in companies, potential customers, and finding out what are they looking for, what are the gaps in the market. Really, if you're a technologist, you understand what technology can and cannot do. How do you match those together? It took a while. It's a learning curve.