In this new episode of omg OMx, Kate Stumpo talks to Bruker’s Mike Greig about the incredible potential of mass spectrometry in pharma. Discover selected highlights or watch the entire episode below:
Mike Greig | omg OMx Podcast | Ep. 9
What are some important lessons you’ve learned in your career and are there important people who have helped you along the way?
When I started my career in biotech, my boss was Rich Griffey. He led our team as a Ph.D. program. Before leaving Isis Pharmaceuticals, I had nearly 20 publications covering everything from gas-phase nucleotide chemistry to structural analysis of native mass spec.
Being in biotech in the 1990s, you had to learn a lot of different things. You also had to contribute fundamental science to prove to Isis that these different biotech companies were worth funding. It was a great time to be in biotech. Even now, in a small biotech company, you have to learn everything to make a meaningful contribution and make the company successful.
While at Isis Pharmaceuticals, I had the opportunity to be a visiting scientist with Marshall’s group, which resulted in an ASMS. At my first ASMS, I met Jared Rader and Chris Hendrickson. Chris Hendrickson is now the director of MagLab.
I met them in an elevator at ASMS. We talked and became good friends. About three ASMS later, we discussed our bulk specifications and respective fields. That’s when I went to their lab and started working with them as a visiting scientist.
Is there an “OMG” scientific moment, even if not related to mass spec, that made you love the field of chemistry?
I went to Buffalo Grove High School in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I took AP chemistry with Dr. Bowles. He was an amazing person — extremely energetic and made the class very enjoyable, which is very remarkable for an AP chemistry class.
A couple of weeks before Christmas break one year, we did an experiment with sugars. We mixed all these compounds and made two ropes, one red and one white. We turned them and he told us to give them a turn. Everyone in the class suddenly realized that we had just made candy. That’s how he turned science into candy for us. It showed us that science could be all kinds of things and it could be fun and delicious.
What developments have you noticed in the fields you’ve been in, whether in pharmaceuticals or other fields?
The developments in drug discovery throughout my career I have been amazed at how approaches, performance and speed have evolved. What a scientist can contribute now is remarkable, mostly thanks to technology and the internet.
The cool thing about working with Bruker now is that I get to visit people in other pharma and biotech labs and talk in detail about the science they’re doing. What everyone does in these workshops is just amazing on an individual level.
In terms of mass specifications, the advances in instrument usability and robustness have been astounding. When I first started, I used a single quad instrument with fusion pumps. I had to rebuild this instrument every other day to keep it working. While this was great because I learned a lot about mass spec by building, rebuilding and replacing parts, I wouldn’t recommend it for a high performance lab.
Now, instruments, software, hardware – everything about mass spec is easier to use. Twenty years ago, you would never see instruments in mass spec and biology labs. Now, it’s everywhere.
Image credit: White_Fox/Shutterstock.com
Can you tell us more about the drug development process?
Most parts start with a disease or therapeutic area and then you decide what your target will be. There are many publications, such as Time Magazine, that say, “Oh, cancer is cured. We found the next target.” Whether it’s Time magazine, Analytical Chemistry or Science, it’s a constant bombardment of new targets for oncology, heart disease or other therapeutic areas.
I worked mostly in oncology for the last 10 years at Pfizer, so I’m more familiar with that area. But you keep seeing all these targets that have the potential to treat different types of breast cancer, as well as other types of cancer. So the first thing we do in pharma is to validate these targets.
After a target has been validated through multiple biological, analytical, and other methods, we proceed with a high-throughput screening campaign. While this high-throughput screening campaign continues, there is also much work in biology, which includes analytical chemistry to determine the mechanism of action.
If the mechanism of action can be determined, the chances of success in clinical trials increase dramatically. The next stage involves progressing through the pipeline, obtaining a lead compound and searching for biomarkers. Having good biomarkers also greatly increases the likelihood of clinical success.
As you move down, you enter the preclinical or pre-human studies. Then you move on to testing the first phase of human studies. This phase generally checks whether the drug is tolerable in humans. Then you move on to the second and third phases, where the effectiveness is evaluated and finally, the drug is ready to go on the market.
What are some major barriers to the commercialization of mass spectrometry in the pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical industry?
Mass specifications it is already highly marketable in the pharmaceutical industry. Almost every pharmaceutical laboratory has a mass specification instrument in operation. To enhance marketability, the key is to improve ease of use and software.
There are a lot of mass spec labs where the people in the lab are gearheads who want to do everything with the instrument and do a lot of exploration. On the other hand, there are also recombinant protein labs where the focus is on producing proteins for the project teams and they just want to test and get an accurate mass of the intact protein.
These labs want the mass spec to be just a navigational instrument. There are already many walkup instruments for chemistry and biology. So the ease of use is already there. Now, the only question is whether we can make these complex experiments easier to do and reproduce.
The most common types of experiments are already established. We are now pushing into advanced spheres such as top-down sequencing of biofluids. As sample complexity increases, so will the need for additional innovations.
About the speaker
Mike Greig is Executive Director and Global Pharma/BioPharma Market at Bruker Scientific, LLC.
omg OMx host: Kate Stumpo, Senior Market Manager at Bruker
About Bruker Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry
Discover new ways to apply mass spectrometry to today’s most pressing analytical challenges. Innovations such as Trapped Ion Mobility (TIMS), smart beam and scanning lasers for MALDI-MS Imaging that offer true pixel fidelity, and high-resolution FTMS (XR) technology that can reveal Isotopic Fine Structure (IFS) signatures are driving scientific exploration to new heights. . Brooker’s Mass spectrometry solutions enable scientists to make breakthrough discoveries and gain deeper insights.
