Molecular Devices

Dan O’Connor

Dan O'Connor is based out of Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area and works at Molecular Devices as VP Drug Discovery, Western Markets. He is essentially responsible for drug discovery and bio-pharma product lines in Europe and North America. With general experience is in microscopy and imaging and workflow solutions for the last 22 years, he has been associated with Molecular Devices since the last eight years.

What are some of the trends and challenges you have witnessed in the synthetic biology space today?

Mainly I would like to focus the discussion on the application of synthetic biology in the workflows in medicine relating to plasma preparation, cell engineering or Car T and also in 2D and 3D organoid models. Some of the challenges that we are facing is threefold; scalability, standardization, and the enormous size of the data that needs to be processed and analysed. In terms of scalability, in plasmid preparation specifically, the yield is very low. Scalability and reproducibility in medicine sector needs automation and intelligent workflows that only Molecular Devices offer as solutions in the modern day. As for standardization, we see customers manually writing down their lab processes. We have the capability to facilitate our customers to scale this with automation, electric notebooks and smart integrated feedback loops. All this data is tracked and verified for things like monoclonal verification and clone workflows, this data is sent to the FDA as a data packet for approval and standardization. In terms of data volume management, we have tried to tackle this challenge, however given the vastness of data and that is challenge is industry wide, there seems to be any good solution available in this aspect. We do offer some AI and ML solutions but the medicine sector is very new to these. A major indication of expansion for me would be solving this data management and integration issue, this will help the industry to grow to greater heights.

How do you think has the synthetic biology space evolved over the years, now that you have mentioned the challenges and trends of the space?

Our strategic vision over the last couple of years has been focused around cell line development, clone workflows, 3d and organoid workflows. Given the challenges I’ve mentioned earlier, scalability, standardization and vastness of data, our main mission is to provide customers with the tools that help them to deal with these challenges. To deal with scalability and standardization we now offer fully automated turnkey workflows for both 2d and 3d types of models and workflows, For cell line development and clone workflows we have turnkey solutions that our customers buy today that provide all of the data generation and all of the analysis in one seamlessly easy step.

How do you envision this space in the next twelve to eighteen months?

As I’ve earlier mentioned about AI. Artificial intelligence will help the synthetic biology sector grow to a huge extent in terms of identifying small molecular compounds in drug discovery or certain microbes that have metabolic pathway. In the next twelve to eighteen months what I envision is that automation will become a lot more streamlined. For example computer in its initial days of invention would take up the size of a room, now one can be fin in a palm. It is the authorization of technology to tackle complex workflows and miniaturizing huge workflows that take up multiple instruments into a smaller and more convenient footprint that will make a difference in the synthetic biology industry in the coming years.

Are there any particular projects that you could talk to me about, you know, in the space of synthetic biology as the VP of your organisation?

We are constantly working on new product introductions and new platforms, though I cannot disclose our plans in the next few years but what I can say is that we are working on streamlining our existing product line, so that they can occupy a smaller footprint. We are working on miniaturizing and integration of data management, AI and intelligent autonomous workflows. We are also working as a part of Molecular Devices in Danaher Corporation called IDBS that works on data management and analysis and bioinformatics of cell line development and synthetic biology workflows. At IDBS we are working on pathways to integrate IDBS’s software to our instruments so that there can be a correlation between how a customer may workout synthetic biology workflow. Other than that, we were working on improved and next gen colony picker systems, and monoclonal verification systems, specifically directed at the field of synthetic biology that will, that will help the this sector in the years to come with, with the AI approaches that we're developing.

How some of those current CLD products are worked into the OIC?

Last year in April we created an Ogranoid Innovation Centre in San Jose, which has been the centerpiece for customer collaboration to try out new 3d biology technologies. In the last year and half we have added our cell engineering capabilities to this Centre so that it opens up avenues for gene editing approaches like CRISPR. This helps in more stable organoid production for drug discovery or synthetic meat production for cloning. All of this workflow is based on the Centre at San Jose as its centerpiece. In the coming keeping the Organoid Innovation Centre as a base we are planning on converting multiple instrument usage to smaller footprints that have the same capabilities for cell engineering, monoclonal verification and organoid production into much smaller instruments.

"So artificial intelligence, methods for whether it's identifying certain small molecule compounds for drug discovery, or identifying microbes that have unique metabolic pathways that might be interesting for synthetic biology approaches, I think that this will really help advance the field of synthetic biology over the next few years"

Lastly, what advice do you want to give to the budding professionals in the field today?

When I was at the end of my college life I did not have a clear direction, but today the advice that I can give is to be passionate and being proactive for passion, whether it is for a certain branch of science, be it synthetic biology or the synthetic meat revolution. There are several companies that facilitate a variety of opportunities. You could be interested in the commercial side of things and get into customer management or you could be into bench science, revolutionizing various types of workflows. Your area of interest could also be in leading science in academia. The main focus should be in identifying your passion and then being proactive about going out there to pursue it.