Acoustic Ascension – Mark Fischer-Colbrie, President and CEO of Labcyte – Echo Acoustic Liquid Dispensing Technology That Has Upended the Scientific World Allowing for Experimental Breakthroughs and Development of New Drugs

Mark Fischer-Colbrie, president and CEO of Labcyte (labcyte.com), provides an extensive overview and introduction into the groundbreaking developments in liquid handling and transfer for experimentation.

Fischer-Colbrie is a seasoned executive with over 30 years of experience in the development and launch of innovative products for diagnostics, medical devices, therapeutics, and specific technologies for advancing companies. And since 2008, Fischer-Colbrie has helmed Labcyte as its president and CEO. Other notable positions in his storied career are as follows: senior vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer at Adeza Biomedical Corporation, a successful women's healthcare startup that sold for $450 million; and as vice-president, corporate controller, and advanced technology business manager at a disk drive manufacturer that grew from a small startup to a behemoth $1.2 billion in revenue. During his tenure at Adeza, Fischer-Colbrie was an inventor on 4 patents and 6 patent applications and headed the business development area of the company for three years. He holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and an MBA in marketing and finance from UC Berkeley.

Fischer-Colbrie discusses Labcyte's mission to advance scientific innovations with sound. Labcyte seeks to redefine liquid handling for drug discovery and development, genomics, personalized medicine, synthetic biology, and more. He states that because the novel process of transferring liquids is governed by sound waves, it allows for replication of every single transfer in the same way with such precise uniformity and consistency that it generates better scientific data and more significant results during experimentation for various industries. The accuracy has provided experimenters an opportunity to explore new avenues for experimentation that were not previously available with traditional techniques.

The scientific research innovator elaborates on the many problems and errors that arise when using standard pipettes in experimentation, such as liquids being in touch with surfaces, drops, cross contamination, sterility, etc. Labcyte's innovative technology eliminates all these problems and errors and provides researchers with a more precise way to conduct experimentation and research. And this new technique is enabling new drugs to be discovered that simply could not have been with the old, less accurate, potentially error-prone techniques.

Fischer-Colbrie explains how a wide variety of experiments can be engaged in now with the more accurate Labcyte process. He explains the minute details of how the system works, covering topics such as surface tension, viscosity, and targeting. He outlines how the advanced technology system has been adopted by pharmaceutical manufacturers across the globe for its unique ability to precisely experiment in ways that were not possible previously. He speaks about the tremendous precision of data that is now becoming available thanks to the process, that will impact uses for artificial intelligence.

Fischer-Colbrie highlights some specific examples of how Labcyte's acoustic technique benefits industry, from increased precision and accuracy, to cost savings due to the elimination of expensive chemistry and pipettes, and through a significant reduction of time needed to conduct experimentation and gather results. Additionally, he states that the advanced technique will decrease the need for animal testing as well.

Fischer-Colbrie is currently chairman of the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and also a board member of the Analytical, Life Science & Diagnostic Association. He was selected as National EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2013, the country's most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs.