Episode 3: Next-generation beta-glucuronidases, modernizing lab workflows and more with Michael Twilbeck (Kokua Analytical Consultants)

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:55 Michael Background and Services
02:17 Claire on Enzyme Quality
03:22 Crude Enzyme Pain Points
05:15 Why Purified Enzyme Wins
09:39 IMCSzyme RT
14:12 Efficiency Explained Simply
16:29 Overcoming Cost and Change
21:54 Owner Price Sticker Shock
22:16 Price Per Sample Math
23:16 Value Props By Role
23:58 Cost Of Poor Quality
25:29 COVID Supply Chain Lessons
29:51 Why Include Buffers
32:03 Training Techs And Errors
35:37 Mass Spec Friendly Buffer
36:17 How To Reach Michael
39:13 Learning Resources And Communities
41:39 Future Of Toxicology Labs
42:27 Smaller Volumes Faster MS
45:34 Wrap Up And Where To Follow

Andrew: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Imagine More, create Solutions. I’m your host, IMCS co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Andrew Lee.

Today, our guest is Michael Twilbeck, and he’s actually based out of Hawaii. So that’s pretty exciting. I’m very jealous. That’s why I actually posted this background here, this virtual background. So welcome, Michael, to our podcast series. But today, we’ll kind of discuss the historical progression of beta-glucuronidase.

You actually pointed out some experience you’ve had migrating from an older version of the beta-glucuronidase and moving to the newer generation of beta-glucuronidases over time. So I’ll hand it off to you, Michael.

Michael: Thank you, Andrew, and I appreciate you guys having me here today. As soon as I [00:01:00] got the invite, I was actually pretty excited about this.

So again, I want to appreciate you for that. My name is Michael Twilbeck. I have a company that does consulting services. It’s Kokua Analytical. I’ve been doing this for about a little over 10 years now, and different parts through different parts of the years. And I finally kind of narrowed down exactly what I think I can do that helps my clients the best.

Whether you are starting up a lab, a lab that’s already going, or just have some general questions, I’m here to help. I specialize in quality control, quality assurance, I do method validation services with a primary focus in toxicology. However, not limited to that. The company, as well, does lab directorship services, technical supervision services, and even employee training.

So it’s a little well-rounded. And again, we’re just here to help with whatever needs the client may have. And again, I’d like to thank you both for [00:02:00] allowing me to partake in this little journey today.

Andrew: Well, thank you for that introduction, and it sounds like you’re doing a lot of different things for the laboratory services.

Claire, we also have our director of sales. Do you mind doing a short introduction?

Claire: Hello, I’m Claire Collins, director of sales. I have extensive experience within the pain care industry, growing large reference labs from a thousand specimens a week up to 10,000 a week. During that time, I got to be very intimate with the different types of beta-glucuronidase.

Which most people don’t focus on beta-glucuronidase. But it’s a very important part of the toxicology testing process. So that’s why when the opportunity came along with IMCS, we started testing the new enzyme. I was absolutely blown away by the [00:03:00] difference in the quality of this enzyme.

So going from a crude enzyme to a genetically modified enzyme is just night and day; there’s no comparison.

Andrew: Let’s kind of build upon that. I mean, Michael, you’ve got some prior experience with these crude enzymes. Do you mind elaborating a bit on with your prior experience?

Michael: Sure, of course. I find it funny because, similar to what Claire has mentioned, I haven’t noticed through the years. I always did take a focus on the enzyme, and I think the main reason is that, in the past, at least before I was using your enzyme in some of my labs. I think I just thought whatever the labs were using was just kind of industry standard. And maybe at the time, that’s kind of all that was available. Right? And I just remember how much trouble I used to have with instrumentation issues.

You know, whether that’s changing guards, clogs in the [00:04:00] line. You know, the mass spec getting dirty, little things like that, just became like a hassle. I almost felt like I could barely get through some of my runs. I remember specifically the day, and I don’t know if it was a sales rep that came on site, or how I became aware of your product.

And, you know, the pitch was something along the lines of, you know, less guard columns used. And, you know, that’s obviously a good pitch for the owner of a lab, right? Like less things you have to purchase, less wear and tear in the machine. I think my primary goal being in the lab was that I just wanted a run that could run through the night.

I wanted to run plates back-to-back. When you have a sample with a high throughput, you know, you want to maximize that instrument as much as you can versus having to buy two, for example. So that was kind of my goal in all this. And yeah, I just remember when we switched to your product at first, [00:05:00] it was a night and day difference.

I couldn’t believe it. We were able to finally successfully get through a run through the night. I’ll never forget that moment of seeing like a full batch finished without any interruptions. I feel like from that day forward, I never looked back.

Andrew: That’s a fantastic story. I mean, just being able to go through a whole batch without disruptions, no surprises.

The crude enzyme, it’s extracted snail juice, right? It’s just brown abalone snail, a mollusk, ground up extract. And that contained a mixture of different glucuronidases that was used as an industry standard back then. This was probably, yeah, 10 years ago. And we came in the market 2013 and we actually proved that a single genetically modified beta-glucuronidase will work for this toxicology space.

How does that purified enzyme actually improve a lot of [00:06:00] these systems? I mean, Michael pointed out less guard columns, less clogging. You can run a whole batch. Why would it do that? Why would having a crude versus a genetically modified IMCSzyme make such a difference?

Claire: What you stated was true. IMCSzyme came about, and it was an industry disruptor, where it changed the industry so dramatically.

It was such a different enzyme compared to the ground-up brown enzyme that smells and needs an hour and a half incubation. So you have a, I don’t wanna say contaminated, but you have a brown enzyme, crude enzyme that had a lot of contaminants. And typically, what you would see, especially with abalone, is an interfering peak right before amphetamines; it was always there. And sometimes you could [00:07:00] misinterpret it if you weren’t careful enough. So it had, it wasn’t just enzyme in there, there were lots of other contaminants in it. And even if you did SPE for some reason, those brown contaminants would still come out. And they were all different types of proteins. So, you know, proteins are not great for a mass spec, so you’d have your guard column, and I would change my guard column every week, and it would be dark brown.

With these contaminants and then some of them would still pass through your guard column and get into your regular column, so that your column is going south weekly. Which is very expensive, and then that just causes a dirty mass spec. So you’re coating all the inside of the tubing, and the source gets dirty with proteins and then you have failed runs.

Your QC at the end of your run [00:08:00] is not in, so that 12-hour run, you got to do again, and Michael’s here, you’re laughing

Andrew: Very much, you know, remembering the old days of this. Is that a common event that was occurring before? You know, IMCSzyme?

Michael: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. I think Claire said that perfectly, and it’s. bringing back haunting memories.

Because imagine you spend all, you know, most of your day in the lab and all you want is to run, to finish successfully. You know, the last thing you need is to also go tell the boss, your manager, like, sorry, the samples failed. I have to rerun it again and wait another 24 hours.

And you know, physicians are already up your throats for turnaround times. So, yeah, that, I think, just hearing that, it just hit me a little different again, just bringing back the old days.

Claire: Right, and there’s so many different pieces that go into preparing a sample for your mass spec. Preparing some urine, the urine for the mass spec, [00:09:00] there’s lots of different reagents that go into it.

Your mobile phases and all the different prep that you do. Whether you do dilute and shoot or SPE, and to narrow it down to one poor-quality reagent that you can see the damage of it. So you have one small piece of this preparation, and it’s of poor quality. You wanna save some money. And you just cost yourself a lot more.

So along came IMCSzyme, and it’s a pure enzyme, and it’s just a game changer, as Michael said.

Andrew: So, I have another follow-up question, and you know, it’s directed to both of you, Claire and Michael, but maybe Michael, you can answer this first, is now, you’re using the second generation of IMCSzyme, right?

It’s the IMCSzyme RT or room temperature. It’s previously different, or it’s different [00:10:00] than the previous generation, that it now doesn’t require incubation or elevated temperature. Works more efficiently than the previous generation. About 10, 15 minutes at room temperature. How has that now changed how you service your labs and work with others?

Michael: Sure. I would love to say that it’s been my most favorite product thus far. When that was first released, I remember looking at some of the data and, you know, just checking on like the recovery and just kind of just seeing, because it, struck my attention. Wow, we don’t have to incubate. And, even more so than that, it was the time difference.

I think most of my labs, which most of them are like, you know, POL labs, they’re physician office laboratories, so they’re smaller, and it’s something where there might be just one or two techs that work in-house and they’re doing multiple jobs. They might be running the immunoassay, prepping a plate, [00:11:00] switching back and forth.

And it’s one of these things where I thought this could help free up a lot more time for the technician. There was always like a standard routine I found: Techs would try to prep the plate in the morning. Incubate over lunch, come back at lunch, and then finish. And I found there were always issues with that.

I used to tell techs, ‘Don’t do it’ because if something happens, you’re not there. Especially if they left site, you get in traffic, you come back ruined, and you have to redo it. You’re either staying late, or it’s pushed back a day. So when the RT came out, I loved the idea first, that it was just a time saver.

This is something where, you know, when they get to the particular point where they’re adding the enzyme to their specimens. They could work on either something small or stay in the preparatory room, and there wasn’t that much time to finish. They could clean up and set up the next part of their dilution step, for example.

And it never occurred to me about the incubation part being waived at first, because I thought there was such a great benefit to the time saved. [00:12:00] This was changing. With all my labs, I would say I started trying to move people over, you know, as soon as I could. And that was a, you know, maybe another question that we could discuss.

But, you know, once I started getting techs to do that, I found they were able to get more work done, which was huge. It was a game-changer for the industry, and I felt like the techs were happier techs, they could leave work early. A lot of that at the end of the day, you know, that means a lot. Are your techs happy in the position that they’re in?

Right? And if they could leave early, some of them have kids, pick them up from daycare. I mean, these are all little small stories, but this enzyme and this particular product in the second generation was a huge game changer that I directly saw with all my clients. So it was pretty incredible for me to like, observe and note the difference.

Andrew: The R&D that went into this, I mean, we’re going from an incubation [00:13:00] temperature, 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, and cutting that down by 30 degrees Celsius. The typical rule for enzyme activity is that every 10 degrees you have a doubling of activity, and that means that by decreasing at 30 degrees, we’ve actually decreased it at least, or we have to increase the activity of an enzyme at least tenfold.

To make sure that it performs the same as we, but then on top of that, this enzyme requires a lot less amount than the previous amount. So now we have even double or triple of the efficiency. Um, and then the incubation time was cut down from 30 minutes to an hour, all the way down to 15, 10, 15 minutes. So we’re looking at exponential improvement of the RT versus the first-generation product.

And that’s how, really, it makes a huge difference. We were talking about crude enzymes. There’s all these other proteins and other components, [00:14:00] but not only did we cut down on the beta-glucuronidase amounts by improving the efficiency. We still have a very clean and efficient enzyme, so that’s why it’s working so well.

You know, one of the things that you mentioned briefly, and I think Claire, you probably can point this out, is very similar to what I just talked about, is, you know, I pointed out the technical aspects of how I, as a scientist, define efficient enzymes, but for the lab directors and lab operations, the definition of efficiency is quite different.

I mean, Michael pointed out having a happy technician, allowing them to leave earlier. Getting the workflow done early is attributed to efficiency. But, Claire, I think you pointed out something about a slower enzyme versus a faster enzyme, a more layman’s comparison of efficiency.

Claire: So, yeah, you can think of it in [00:15:00] two ways. One way is that the hydrolysis goes to completion faster. So instead of a 90-minute incubation or even a 30-minute incubation, you have a 15-minute room temperature incubation, but also, the enzyme has a greater affinity for that glucuronide bond, so that it actually hydrolyzes is better.

So you get better recoveries, and you’ll end up with less retesting where the screen doesn’t match the confirmation test or vice versa.

Andrew: You know, you were talking about the affinity, and it’s kind of an uncommon terminology that’s used here, right? For the enzyme scientist, affinity of a bond or a substrate is [00:16:00] a common topic that we love to study.

But maybe a simpler analogy, I think you had, was a swimmer in a pool with the red ball in the pool. And a high affinity swimmer would be somebody who could go grab those red balls faster and then split it apart. So our enzyme is that faster swimmer and they can access those red balls faster. I think you pointed that analogy out, Claire, and I really like that analogy behind it.

Now, Michael, you actually pointed out the other aspect of this cost, their quality aspect of it and converting some of these labs, especially the labs that are kind of ingrained into their workflows and they’ve got a system that’s working.

But then to change them, it always requires some inertia, right? Or change of inertia. And that’s always a hurdle. You mentioned, you know, these other previous enzymes, the brown juice [00:17:00] or the cloudy enzymes, they’re cheaper. So the financial incentives initially isn’t there. Now I’m spending more on a reagent, and then I have to spend the time and energy to validate this.

Who would wanna do that? Right? So how do you actually battle this kind of challenge?

Michael: It has been a tough battle through the years. I guess I’ll start by saying that with any labs that I was setting up that was new, it was easy because it was a part of my template from the beginning, and there was no questions asked.

And you know, I just said, this is what we do, this is what we’re gonna validate. This is we’re gonna run with, I’ve never had any issues with directors actually, other than labs that are mid, you know, like mid change. Right? Some directors just don’t want to revalidate something if it’s already working.

You’re correct. Yeah. The biggest challenge for an owner is the cost part of this. And if they see something that they have been doing for years, working and working for a [00:18:00] set price, you know, they don’t wanna spend the money on it and that one’s kind of difficult. Call me like your sales guy in that sense.

Because that’s kind of where it benefits me, also benefits you guys, but it benefits me in my role. Benefits the techs to change to your product. And it’s something that I had always had a difficult time trying to push. And for each client, it’s been different ways. You know, I get the techs on board, start educating them about it that way.

They’re like, “Oh wow”, you know, “I can leave earlier”. This is great for the process, you know, and they kind of help. So then things are like starting to get filled in management’s ears and the down low. And then that’s when I can kind of say like, “look, we can start with this. This is gonna be the cost, but it’s gonna save you more time on the backend. It’s gonna save you more money on the backend column costs, the guards or the cartridge cost”.

I mean, those are things that I’ve always remembered labs to have complained about the most. How much are we spending on columns? How much are we [00:19:00] spending on the guards and the filters, and how often are we replacing those?

Right? Can’t get through a run in the middle of the night. Then, you know, you’re just kind of beating yourself against the wall here. So when I was able to start pushing like, yeah, you’re spending this much money upfront. However, you won’t be spending this money like weekly or monthly on your columns and guards.

I found most owners really love the idea when you told them you’d save money on columns. I feel like that’s one of the consumable supplies in the industry that I’ve noted for whatever reason that most laboratories say they think they spend the most money on, whether they do or not, who knows.

But that’s the one thing that I’ve noticed that most owners have always said, like, we’re spending all this money to these column companies. You know? And so once I could kind of. Tell them and convince them. And it took time. I mean, it took years for some of these places, you know. And uh, [00:20:00] once I could get one client to switch, I could start seeing a direct cost difference too with their inventory supplies.

That was easier for me to share with the next company. And then I could slowly get them over. And it wasn’t an overnight thing, but my life just got easier and easier over time. I’d like to say maybe four or five years ago, my last laboratory switched. Now I can say that thankfully all my laboratories use your product and I’m so much appreciative of for that as I’m sure you guys are.

But it took some time, and again, I’ve never been like the sales guy or someone of that nature, so it was actually an interesting process for me. I just wanted to use the product that I thought that was the most beneficial, and I was just trying to figure out a way, how do I convince these guys.

And I’m sure you guys know most of the owners, they don’t know a whole lot about what goes into the process of the laboratory and they don’t need to. That’s why companies like mine, you know, exist, and some of the others, right? [00:21:00] They put all their trust in the people that set up their laboratory and run it, and that’s what they’re supposed to do.

So it just took some time to kind of get them into understanding. And I’d say once you could, or I could, share with them, you know, the amount of money that it saved, the time, less errors. They started seeing reports getting out quicker. Then I started getting positive feedback and that was a game changer for the industry, especially for my direct clients.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like word of mouth. Once you got over that first hesitation, you were able to propagate that positive result and then distribute it across multiple clients. Congratulations. That’s great. And we’re glad to help.

Michael: Thank you.

Andrew: But then there’s also another aspect of the story, uh oh, sorry Claire, it sounded like you had something to add.

Claire: Okay. I do. You know, a lot of the owners look at, you know, okay, here the 10 ml bottle [00:22:00] and this supplier will sell it for $50 for 10 mLs. And then you have another supplier that sells a cleaner enzyme and that same bottle is $300. So the owner says, well, I want the $50 bottle because it’s cheaper.

Well, if you look at it, because the enzyme is not of high quality, you only can test a hundred samples for that 10 ml bottle. And if you do the math, that’s 50 cents a sample. But the $300 bottle will give you a thousand samples. And you know what? That more expensive bottle is cheaper. It’s only 30 cents per sample, so it’s important to calculate your price per sample so you can get a higher quality enzyme and save 20 cents a sample [00:23:00] so it is cheaper.

And so you have to look at it as price per sample and not cost per bottle. So, that’s you Michael. You’re shaking head yes.

Michael: I’m thinking, Claire, this is why you lead the sales team.

Andrew: That’s a great point. But I mean, it sounds like their savings on, you know, both fronts, right? The value add is different for each level of the people.

For the technicians, you know, they’re in there day in, day out, and they want to be on a routine schedule that they can rely on. They have kids, they have family, they need to get home, and then the lab directors, they need to get these reports out and they need the instruments up. They need those services. As for the owners, they wanna see more profit margins, right?

They don’t want to use as much consumable as possible. So for the owners, for the lab directors, you pitch different value propositions, but it sounds like we’re hitting on all of those points.

Claire: Andrew, I just [00:24:00] want to talk about one thing. What is the cost of poor quality? So you can actually calculate it, it can add up what sample prep time.

How much does that cost? False negative confirmation results. When you have a false negative, that causes a lot of problems and there’s so many hours spent on a false negative, especially when a client calls you back up and you have to spend hours investigating that and retesting, and then repeat testing.

How many repeats do you have each week in your lab? That can be hundreds depending on how many samples you run. Column life. Columns are expensive, and if you have a shortened life, you’re wasting money. Instrument maintenance. Every time you do instrument maintenance, you shut down that instrument, and it could be for a few hours or it could be for a whole day.[00:25:00]

What is your reagent cost per sample? You should know that. How much, how much are you spending on reagents per sample? So that’s something that’s the cost of quality. And Michael started off with it is, cost of quality is failed runs, how many failed runs do you have? So it’s something to think about.

Andrew: Uh, one of the things I remember I was talking with Michael earlier on. During COVID, I know COVID is somewhat over. I think there is a resurgence of COVID recently. Some people are getting COVID again or a new variant of COVID, but during the COVID years, I think it was March of 2020, all the way for the last two years or so, you had some challenges in Hawaii, with these supplies.

Was it with our enzymes or just general [00:26:00] supplies?

Michael: General, it was supplies. And, and I would like to say I don’t think it was necessarily like maybe a manufacturer’s fault. I felt like in Hawaii in general, we just struggled getting anything in. We had boats at sea that were delayed. We had things stuck at the port. And you don’t think about it much, but a lot of solvents cannot come by air.

For example, big bottles of methanol have to come by boat. That’s a three week shipment time to the Port of Oahu. And then it’s a one week shipment time to the port of big island. So if you’re out of methanol, for example, it’s a one month minimum. And so these are the things that living in Hawaii, I’ve also learned, you know, to be a little bit more prepared by.

So I will say this, during that time, and it was during COVID, we did have trouble getting supplies in. I know some of the labs that I had on the mainland had some of the same issues too. [00:27:00] Those were a little bit different stories. Some of my labs are pretty good about, and again, I leave that up to them if they want to or not.

But most of them all will help out each other. They had something extra they will share in an IOU back, so I know there was some of that going on with the enzyme as well, which for me always made me happy to see, you know, even though two labs might be competitors, but they are helping each other out at the end of the day.

For Hawaii, we were in a little bit different shoes. We didn’t really necessarily have anybody to go to. I remember going across the island’s a two hour drive, and the only laboratory at the time that I knew about was a prison laboratory. And when I went and talked to them about enzyme and, some solvents, they were just clueless and I found that they just did a small point of care, so they wouldn’t have had anything like that anyway.

But, yeah, it was, it was definitely an interesting time there. And all I can say is I was just thankful for everybody’s patience during that [00:28:00] time. For you guys, I can only imagine some of the heat you might be getting from some clients. I know in particular there was something we ordered from you guys and it took us three weeks to get it.

And normally this stuff comes two day by air and I remember saying, you know, I’m worried about the stability. You know, it wasn’t sitting on ice, it’s actually outside in 90 degree weather, and it was just stuck with one of the shipping carriers at the time. And I remember someone from your technical team emailed me back a very descriptive report, graphs, charts, everything to make my lab director and myself happy.

Just explaining actually that the enzyme would be okay. We used it had no issues with recovery and we were grateful for that. So it was an interesting time. I’m glad you pointed that out because it’s something that, you know, when we all look back at COVID, how each industry was affected in different ways and how ours was right.

A lot of companies were hurt pretty bad and I’d say, fortunately for me, my business started taking off in [00:29:00] a good direction. During COVID, there were a lot of labs starting up including in the toxicology industry. And so, you know, I was pretty thankful for that. But then I had new challenges and new barriers at that time.

Right. So.

That was a fun time, I guess I’d say.

Andrew: Yeah. We’ve also had challenges on our end with supplies, plastic, even pipette tips, right? There were millions of tips being used for PCR testing, and there was a limit on the number of tips that people would get.

Michael: Yeah, I think all of the suppliers were, you know, and I think, you know, it’s hard to say which test is more important, but at the time, you know, most of the PCR labs were getting all their designation.

Andrew: The government was prioritizing them. One of the things that you mentioned was that reagents or these buffers, methanol, solvents, you know, IMCS, we started out providing these free [00:30:00] buffers.

Just the buffers were pre-made. We gave specific ratios to use, and I think that was a real concept, that, you know, as a scientist, we make our own buffers in the lab, and we’re like, you know, don’t charge me for it. Or even if you give it to me for free, you probably charged me on the enzyme side of it, so don’t give it to me.

But Claire actually pointed out an interesting concept with the buffers that, we needed to supply all the buffers. Claire, do you wanna elaborate a bit?

Claire: A lot of people don’t realize that enzymes are optimal at a very certain pH, and it’s a small range of pHs. So buffer is extremely important to have the correct amount, as urine samples can have a pH of four all the way up to nine, depending on how long they’ve sat around, and bacteria have grown in them.

[00:31:00] So, not all labs can make proper buffers, because you have to have a pH meter and you have to have some scientific technique. And, so, when we started to distribute this product, I said to Andrew that we must provide the buffers, we can provide them, they’re relatively inexpensive and we can give them away as they’re such an important part of enzyme hydrolysis.

So, that’s why we started, I believe the first in the industry to give our buffers away with our enzyme just to make sure that we had people had optimum hydrolysis.

Andrew: So I’m assuming on your end, Michael, you always get the enzyme buffer mixed together, and these are very useful tools for the technicians in your POLs, right?

Have you, I guess, previously in the first generation, even before IMCS. I [00:32:00] guess you have to train them for making buffers and pH, those glass probes breaking..

Michael: Yeah, this was interesting because, while most people in the laboratory, you know, do have a science background, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are, you know, fully understanding on, you know, one, how buffers work and how all the technical aspects in the lab work. And just because you’ve taken a science lab or quite a few with your chemistry degree, for example, doesn’t mean you were fully competent and aware of every step in the way.

And I’d argue too, for some people who got into this industry later on in life, maybe they’d barely even remember. So, you know, I did remember this specifically because for me it was shortly right out of college and I felt, you know, for myself, I was like, wow, this is, you know, kind of exactly what we were doing in school.

And I felt a little bit more involved. Clinical is very different than my [00:33:00] experience in the past with like environmental lab, and it was just so different and unique to me, but still involving all these techniques that I was just recently introduced to. For some, it was a training aspect, and the question comes: do you train a technician just to perform the task that they need to do, or do you train the technician to actually understand what they are doing?

For example, making a buffer. You could just provide a recipe, right, and just tell them exactly what to put, and they could do that. And if they do it, great, that’s fine. Right? But then there are the techs who want to learn more about what they do and actually understand each step in the way and how it affects the overall, you know, portion of the specimens.

I think as the industry moves on making the role easier for the techs, for example, like the buffer that’s included, something like that, where they have less room for air overall. So if the buffer is made incorrectly, and [00:34:00] I’ve seen this a million times, and the lab technician makes a mistake.

They have like 10 to 15 seconds to decide, do I continue on prepping this batch, or do I toss it and start over? Right? And I’ve seen it plenty that a lot of techs will just keep going. Right? And just kind of see if it passes, see if it fails. So, we don’t want that. And I think in the industry, if we can help minimize situations like that, kind of, have something in the ready state position, it only makes more sense.

Right? So I think that’s something that. Maybe someone might argue you’re pulling more of the science away from that role. That’s kind of true. But in the other sense, it’s gonna be better for the industry as a whole. And if you look at patient healthcare, at the end of the day, that’s what everybody wants.

The best patient healthcare you can have. And if something like this can provide that, then I think that’s the better option.

Andrew: That’s [00:35:00] fantastic, kind of, summary of, you know, with the, providing the buffers, you know, the value added with the buffers. And it’s interesting that there are people who would be curious about preparing a buffer or the technical rationale behind it.

I guess my point would be that it frees them up to do some other technical aspect, right? So, like we would automate some routine assay, and now the technicians have more time to learn some other chemistries behind it. But that’s an interesting take on it. One of the things that we switched from our first-generation buffer to our second-generation buffer is that it’s a mass-spec friendly buffer.

So the RT buffer is now acetate based, so acetate is volatile, and it ionizes nicely on your mass spec. So you don’t get these crumbs of salt crystals on your ionizer or your spray [00:36:00] and your mass spec front. I don’t know if a lot of people do that, but I think that was quite an achievement to find the right enzyme that performs really well, but also to perform in a volatile buffer like the acetate buffer.

I want to switch gears and I want to kind of talk to you, Michael, about, would a physician get in touch with you? I’m listening to this, and now I want to find and contact Michael. I’m based in Hawaii, and I’d like to do some of this urine drug testing. What sort of communities or affiliations are you kind of associated with?

Michael: Thanks for asking. I am affiliated with the ASCP, the American Society of Clinical Pathology, the AACC, which is the American Association of Clinical Chemistry, the AAB, which is the American Board of Bioanalysts, and the NRCC, the [00:37:00] National Registry of Clinical Chemists. I have certifications in some, and I’m at least a part of their annual community base, so people can reach out to me through there.

My company, Kokua Analytical Consultants, we do have a webpage. It’s www.kokuanalytical.com. That webpage is growing to start expanding some of our other services, and people can always reach me by email as well, which is kokuaanalyticalconsultants@gmail.com. And if people would like to, I’ll also provide my phone number, if that’s all right.

The area code is (615) 509-0146. I work off text messages, I work off phone calls. I am on Hawaii standard time, but I have clients on the East Coast. I have clients on the West Coast, and I’m kind of all over. I’m always flying. I’m always traveling. I was at a lab visit over this weekend in California, so I’m pretty [00:38:00] accessible and I’m really flexible with my times as I know, you know, I don’t suit most people’s time needs.

Living in Hawaii. My biggest pitch from living out here to some of the clients is I can help monitor some of their runs in the evening, since just my evening might be over in the morning for them. So if a client wakes up in the morning with a text message, with a notification or something, I can resolve remotely, I found that to be a great help.

I do have people on my staff that do live on the East Coast and all the way on the West coast as well. So we’re starting to get scattered around, and that was my intention with the company was, you know, I love living where I do, and I see where it can affect someone negatively.

So I have to make up for that somehow. So if I can provide a good support team that’s spread out throughout the United States, and that’s what I’ll do.

Andrew: And Claire, do you wanna add to how our customers or our prospects could reach out to you?

Claire: Sure. [00:39:00] I’m available by calling IMCS. We have our website, IMCStips.com. Or you can, email me at Claire.Collins@imcstips.com.

Andrew: Now, are there any particular websites or educational sites that kind of discuss these different toxicology workflows?

Claire: The two places that I like to get information, they are JAT. They have great articles and the other is the trade show, SOFT, Society of Forensic Toxicologists.

There are so many different toxicology professionals there that really promote the industry. So, those are my favorite places to find good data, good research data from real pain care labs. The poster presentations are fantastic.

Andrew: So conferences like Society of Forensic [00:40:00] Toxicologists, and the Peer Review Journal.

Like the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. That’s great. Michael, do you have any preferences on, I know you mentioned like a Reddit, like a social media page. IMCS is more active on LinkedIn.

Michael: Interesting. I am a quite a big fan of Reddit, and there’s a medical laboratory technician thread that I follow, and I found that, most of the users on that group do work in mass spectrometry of some sort. It may not be toxicology specifically, but, I’ve been able to reach out to people and help, and I feel like it’s this good group of the community who, you know, these might be technicians or even some of our directors or other scientists just kind of needing help and just last resort type situations.

And, from there, other people can post different, articles, journals, things like that. And so that’s, that’s been one of my, you know, I kind of browse that every night [00:41:00] and I look for things where if someone asks something that I know, then I get excited to be able to respond. And, you know, I’ve met connections that way, which is pretty great.

I use an app called Slack, and I think it’s just like a community-based group. So I was actually able to put all of my laboratory checks into this one group. So, that’s how they can help each other with supplies, inventory, or other questions and things like that. So I encourage all laboratories out there to do something similar.

Don’t be afraid of your technician reaching out to another lab for help, even if they’re your arch nemesis.

Andrew: That’s a great suggestion. Well, we’ve covered quite a bit of different topics, but mostly focusing on the beta-glucuronidase, starting from the crude enzyme, the brown juice, snail extracts, abalone extracts, mollusks, and then going to the purified, genetically modified beta-glucuronidase.

And then of course, now the room temperature enzyme from [00:42:00] IMCS. The importance of choosing the right enzyme or the right reagents, buffers. We covered some of those, but now kind of going to beyond today’s information, how do you see the needs of the lab changing? Again, let’s start with Claire. What do you see kind of moving forward, like less urine samples or smaller volumes?

Claire: We’re seeing a trend in the, with mass specs, that they’re, very sensitive and faster. So with these, and they’re more costly too. With these faster and more sensitive instruments, you really don’t need a lot of urine. So it’s really cost-effective to cut your urine volume down to, say, 25 microliters.

You know, no longer do you need to use 200 microliters of urine, [00:43:00] you know. God forbid you have a GC, and you have to use two mL’s of urine. So with these really sensitive instruments, you only have to inject one microliter in there. So 25 microliters of urine is more than enough, and that really cuts down on all of the reagents that you have to use your internal standards and your calibrators in QC.

So calibrated the QC internal standards are very expensive, and cutting that all down is really a way to save money. And now with you know, IMCSzyme RT, you really just use a very small amount of enzyme, and you have a clean sample to, um, inject into your very expensive mass spec.

Andrew: Michael, what do you see?

In terms of the growing needs or the future needs of the laboratories.

Michael: Claire nailed this one pretty well and I think one of the emphases that she [00:44:00] said that was the first that came to my mind is these mass specs are getting quicker. And when you think about from a business perspective, I think the goal is how many samples can you put through one machine and how long will it take?

That’s the number one question I get from everybody. And, you know, compared to when I first jumped into this industry, are run times here. A third to a fifth shorter than what they were originally. And as industry standard, like reimbursement rates drop over time. We’ve seen that as a trend.

And so I think the best way that you can compete that is just trying to refine the way your laboratory works. Whether that is making it faster using products like this that make your preparation faster and even saving you cost on these materials. Righ?. And I think as we continue to change in this industry, just constantly seeing what’s a better, more efficient way to do what your lab does.

Constantly changing is a good thing, as [00:45:00] innovation, prestige, as you guys get better too. You know, I can’t wait to see what the next thing you guys produce, maybe this third-generation enzyme. I think, you know, for me it’s just, it’s funny to think about, like, I was so excited for the first, I would’ve been okay with that forever.

And when the RT came out, I was like, “This is incredible”. You know, so now I’m excited thinking. What more could be better than this? So I’ll be waiting for that day.

Andrew: We’ll keep you in the loop once the new ones come out.

Michael: Sure. Hope so.

Andrew: Well, let’s wrap it up, folks. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to stay connected, follow us on LinkedIn, and for more episodes, find us on Spotify or visit our website www.imcstips.com. Catch you on the next one. Take [00:46:00] care.