Advancing Cancer Diagnostics with Mark McDonough, CEO of Chromacode

In this episode we interview Mark McDonough, the CEO of ChromaCode. The episode explores McDonough's journey to ChromaCode, from his early career as a naval officer to his roles at various medical and diagnostic companies. Under McDonough's leadership, ChromaCode has excelled in creating a high-definition PCR platform which enables fast, accurate, and affordable cancer diagnosis. The platform is particularly beneficial as it requires less patient tissue, provides rapid results, and has a lower cost than traditional diagnostic methods. McDonough also discusses the importance of partnerships in their go-to-market strategy and shared his insights on hiring and team development in today's competitive market. Looking ahead, ChromaCode expects to become a leader in developing innovative products for disease diagnosis, with a focus on patient-centered outcomes.

https://www.chromacode.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mcdonough-b1055216/ 

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
00:40 Meet the Guest: Mark McDonough, CEO of ChromaCode
01:47 Mark's Journey to ChromaCode
06:05 Insights on Leadership and Building High Performing Teams
08:10 ChromaCode's Innovative Approach to PCR Testing
10:36 ChromaCode's Contribution to Precision Medicine
13:50 The Importance of Partnerships in ChromaCode's Strategy
16:33 Future Prospects for ChromaCode
18:27 Getting to Know Mark: Personal Interests
19:13 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

About Mark McDonough
Mark has over 25 years of experience helping build high growth HealthCare organizations. He is passionate about his team, his customers, and the patients that he and they are privileged to help serve. He most recently was the CEO of Pierian (now Velsera) which he led to a successful sale to Summa Equity, a private equity firm, in 2022. Prior to Pierian, he led CombiMatrix for five years, culminating in a sale to Invitae in 2017. Over his career, Mark has held various executive and commercial positions, and served as a US Naval Officer.

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Music by keldez

Transcript

0:01

Hi there! Welcome to the From Lab to Launch podcast by Qualio, where we share inspiring stories from the people on the front lines of life sciences. Tune in and leave inspired to bring your life saving products to the world.

Meg Sinclair: 0:17

Hi, everyone. And thanks for tuning in to From Lab to Launch by Qualio. I'm Meg, your host. Glad to be here and really excited about today's episode. Before we get started, we'd love it if you rated the podcast. It's easy to do and share it with any of your science nerd friends. We know you've got some. If you'd like to be on the show, please see the show notes for an application. Mark McDonough is the CEO of ChromaCode, where he and his team have created an innovative, high definition PCR platform that utilizes proprietary cloud based signal processing to allow for enhanced multiplexing and detection of clinically relevant biomarkers. This rapid and accurate approach generates higher throughput from existing laboratory equipment for broad biomarker testing without the cost delay, or analytical complexity of next generation sequencing. Under the leadership of CEO, mark Crow coma has, excuse me, chroma code has pivoted strongly after winning the xprize. Rapid Covid testing competition in 2021 to oncology commercially launched their non-small cell lung cancer se. and develop partnerships with protein, bio diagnostics, and with MedGenome, the latter in an effort to bring affordable diagnostics to India and the Middle East. So let's get to it. Welcome to From Lab to Launch, Mark.

Mark McDonough: 1:44

Uh, thanks Meg. I'm happy to be here.

Meg Sinclair: 1:46

Great. To kick things off today, can you tell us a little bit about your background and journey that led you to leading ChromaCode today?

Mark McDonough: 1:54

Uh, sure. So I, um, was a naval officer for six years after graduating from college and ROTC program at college. And then when I was 28 years old, I had an opportunity to, uh, despite not having a terribly deep biology background, I was a finance major and, and, uh, college. And then, You know, a combination of navigation and some engineering on, on board ship. I was fortunate enough to get into a cancer diagnostic company called Ventana Medical Systems, which eventually sold to Roche, um, for several billion dollars. Uh, um, and I joined that company in 1997 and, and really my career kind of took off from there, focusing mostly on sales and marketing roles, um, and, uh. I did, uh, about four plus years at Intana, did another six years at a, an anatomic pathology company where we focused on molecular diagnostics as well as, um, all types of cancers from solid tumor to hematopoietic diseases at a company called U. S. Labs as a central laboratory. It's now a part of LabCorp. And then the last 15 years that really pivoted my career. Solely on molecular diagnostics and, and mostly in, in smaller organizations. So ran a sales organization for a venture capital backed company out of the Bay Area for four years. And then, um, joined, uh, the former CEO of US labs. It was a mentor of mine, 2012 at a, at a small public company. And lo and behold, a year later, he let me know that I was part of a succession plan that I didn't really know about. And I took over for him as CEO. And, uh, was quickly a CEO of a public company in 2013, and did that till we successfully sold the company in late 2017. And since then, um, have run, uh, uh, three different private companies, one of which we were able to sell to private equity last year. And then, uh, the 4th CEO role I have is that chroma code where I joined. At the JP Morgan conference this past January, so I've just been in the seat about a year now, but, um. You know, I've been very fortunate, uh, in my career, most of it all in, uh, uh, the healthcare space, certainly almost all of it in, uh, cancer diagnostic space from ranging from capital equipment to being a reference laboratory to software sales. So a lot of fun along the way. Sounds like it.

Meg Sinclair: 4:20

What is it like to step into a CEO, CEO role at a new company? What surprises you about stepping in brand

Mark McDonough: 4:27

new there? Yeah, no, good question. So number one, you really want to get to know the team right away. And, um, you want to let people know, unless you, unless you were brought in specifically with a mandate to make dramatic changes. Um, which happens occasionally when one of my roles, you know, um, here, I really wanted to come and meet the team, uh, establish trust with them, understand what we did really, really well, chroma code, because we do a number of things really, really well, and then also understand where there's opportunities, uh, to improve and so make sure I'm communicating with the board and our team and at the same time, learning as much as you can about our customers, uh, the technology, how we can help patients. Um, just so, you know, I can have more and more credibility. And ChromoCode is a really highly technical organization. And so, you know, I'm still at the infant stages of learning all the technical nuances of what we do, and it's pretty, uh, it's, it's pretty interesting and complex, but what we enable our customers using our software and our proprietary chemistries, we, um, we do make things easy for our customers. So while it could be. Uh, complex than the technology in some instances, what we deliver to our customer base is, is easy to use and easy to adopt. Um, so, um, but yeah, that's, that's really it. I think learning the team, understanding your board, uh, learning your customer base and then understanding your technology are the kind of key things for me when I joined ChromaCode. Perfect.

Meg Sinclair: 6:05

Many people listening to our podcast are in leadership positions or entrepreneurs starting out. Can you give us your take on hiring today and developing a high performing team?

Mark McDonough: 6:16

Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, I think, um, and I know my video is going in and out, sorry, but, um, I think it's really important that you focus on just that latter part there, which is you want to get everyone to being a high performing team. So Perfect. Thank you. You know, to me, um, I think establishing trust with people is really important and then, um, understanding that if they have the requisite training for what you're trying to achieve, what you don't want to do is, is, uh, either give someone so little structure joining an organization that he or she doesn't feel like they're Being adequately trained, um, yet on the same time, you don't want to put so much structure in where they feel like they're being kind of suffocated. So, you know, I think training is really important in acclimation, um, to develop highly performing teams and then, you know, making sure that he or she is developing a good rapport with their. Their manager, I think, you know, uh, obviously in, in the economy today, you want to make sure you're paying people. Well, have have quality of life and balance. Those are all really key criteria for anyone wanting to stay at a company or to, um, to build a career. But the other thing that's also very critical that may be cliche, but it's true is people typically leave or stay based off of, uh. Their supervisor relationship and so, you know, if they have a good manager or they feel like. Leadership is looking out for them. I think they have a better chance to stay. And so that's really important. Um, you know, especially when you're emerging technology like us, which there's challenges in the space and you want to retain your talent. You want to make sure people feel like, okay, these are folks that I can trust and and work with.

Meg Sinclair: 8:07

Those are great insights. Shifting back to ChromaCode, what have been the traditional challenges with PCR testing and how is ChromaCode with its high definition PCR platform solving those challenges today?

Mark McDonough: 8:21

Yeah, I think, um, what we've found is that, well, by, by shifting towards our HD PCR, which is, you know, building, using the chemistries in our software to build applications for, uh, digital droplets PCR platforms that are, You know, typically sold by companies such as Kyogen or Roche or Thermo Fisher or Biorad or Stila, uh, these, these platforms provide some pretty cool, uh, quantitative benefits that, uh, genomic applications can really thrive on. And so that's why we pivoted the company into the world of genomics. As you mentioned in your preamble, we're focused on lung cancer, we're focused on acute leukemia, we're focused on early development of organ transplant rejection assay, as well as, uh, We can also build custom assays, custom tests for either academics or the DPCR platform companies, and we're doing, uh, not announced yet, but we're doing a couple of those right now where we can build custom assays based off of what the customer wants to see with multiplexing, which is a simplistic way of saying you're looking at a number of different targets in one sample, as opposed to doing like a single gene test for EGFR, for example, for a targeted therapy. Thank you. We run 15 biomarkers on our lung cancer tests on just one assay with one report so that, you know, the customer is going to get more for one draw where, you know, tissue sample might be a problem, for example. So, you know, traditional PCR has been great for the applications it's used for, and it's not going away. Well, we think for genomics, HDPCR has just, uh, uh, I can't, I won't say infinite, but, but a significant amount of applications that, that we want to be kind of first in, in line in terms of content creation for, and that's what we're, that's what we're doing now. And, um, you know, we're also pioneering here a little bit, so that's not, that's not always easy too.

Meg Sinclair: 10:29

Interesting. That sounds like great pioneering and great, um, Leadership there in that new space. Precision medicine is highlighted as a crucial approach for improving outcomes in lung cancer. How does Chromacode's technology contribute to advancing precision medicine and what potential impact do you envision on the broader landscape of cancer diagnostics and

Mark McDonough: 10:50

treatment? Yeah. So, um, you know, with lung cancer, our thesis is that, um, once you, you have a, uh, you know, a diagnosis of lung cancer and you're trying to figure out Okay, how do we address this, uh, in the fastest, best way possible? Um, we've built our technology so that we can render an answer on these 15 biomarkers, uh, in less than 24 hours. So what's why that's practically important and how that impacts precision medicine is in reality, if a patient. Uh, is their doctor knows about our technology, or they run it in their lab. You run the chromocode test after the sample is extracted, run the chromocode test, and then also run in parallel a test run by a technology called immunostochemistry for PD L1. And within 24 hours, you'll have the PD L1 expression, which is an indicator of whether immunotherapy will be a candidate, a patient will be a candidate for immunotherapy. And if not, they'll also have the answer to the 15 biomarkers from us as a first line. So why that's crucial is if, you know, 56 percent of the time, it's going to be one of those biomarkers on our panel, uh, now that the, uh, oncologist and the patient with the family can. can really craft a plan of a targeted therapy, uh, straight away, um, without a chromocode. So let's do that other scenario. You can still run the immunostochemical test and

12:23

figure

Mark McDonough: 12:23

out if you're a candidate for IO immunotherapy, but if it's negative, it's typically run by next generation sequencing through send out tests, which are very good. Don't get me wrong, but they take, you know, two to three weeks, uh, and can be quite expensive. So By running our test in house, you know, a laboratory can deliver true precision medicine locally, much faster turnaround time, require much less patient sample, which Really gives you a better chance of getting a result. Um, and then the patient can get on the optimal therapy. And for the lab, it's an opportunity also to potentially retain revenue. So they're in the business of helping patients first and foremost, but they're also as a laboratory, uh, trying to, to do. Make a profit, uh, for the hospital or private company and so, you know, doing this, you can get reimbursed for the test as well. So it's a, it's going to have a, we think, a profound impact in lung cancer because we can help people get, you know, really important treatments quicker. And then the same technology. Uh, applies to other disease states where we require less tissue, it's faster, uh, you know, margin to the laboratory and turnaround time is, is better and that's just cause that's just a principle of the HDPCR technology.

Meg Sinclair: 13:44

Sounds like better outcomes for patients all around. That's great.

Mark McDonough: 13:48

Totally. Yes.

Meg Sinclair: 13:50

So it seems like for Chroma codes, partnerships are a critical piece of your go to market strategy. Many founders want to know how to find and develop partnership relationships. Do you have any source on sourcing these or courting partnerships within your industry?

Mark McDonough: 14:07

Yeah, I mean, so, so for us, there's some, you know, natural sort of choices, um, uh, right out of the gate for us. We're, um We're a software and a kit provider. So, you know, we, we definitely want to look to the companies that provide the capital equipment and platforms and, you know, ask those companies if they want to partner. And, um, you know, so we have a formal partnership, uh, uh, and, and kind of an informal partnership there. And then. We have customers, you know, this is, uh, we're in the early stages of this and there's, there's, we're establishing patterns of reimbursement for this test, which we're very confident we're going to secure because of all the reasons we talked about faster turnaround time, less tissue, quicker treatment, less cost. So there's definitely a justification for. For reimbursement, um, to be paid because it's going to save the health care system a lot of money and patients a lot of money in the long run. But we need in these early days partnerships, like, that's what we have. You mentioned protean out of Florida. You mentioned med genome internationally. We need these partners to work with us as we, um, you know, go to market with these tests and ensure that private payers are paying for it and, you know, health care ministries are paying for it. So, you know, the advice I give is, you know. Seek out who your ideal customer would be and seek out who can also benefit when you are delivering product to market, you know, and then, um, you know, be proactive and reaching out on and proposing kind of win win opportunities for those partners and, um. You know, that's what we've been doing. And then the other thing we do is, you know, just hire talent. I have a very good chief commercial officer and a very good head of business development to, who have relationships or have built relationships with a number of people in our space. And then, so just by reaching out and having commerce, educational conversations about what we're doing, sometimes organically, something we may not have thought of as a potential partner. They may be working on something strategically and say, well, gosh, you know. This could really fit us well. Um, so, you know, that that's kind of the other part of it is, you know, hiring talent who's well connected in the space because they can open up new partnerships as well.

Meg Sinclair: 16:31

That's great advice for our listeners. How do you see ChromaCode and its technology advancing in the coming years? In your crystal ball.

Mark McDonough: 16:39

Yeah, my crystal ball. I think, um, we're going to continue to be trailblazers in this, you know, we're going to need, uh, open minds from, you know, like reimbursement for people to understand how we can help, um, because that's, that's incredibly viable or important for our business. Um, you know, we'll continue to work with, uh, different partners. We're really excited that, uh, the digital PCR platform companies. And by that again, those are kind of the capital equipment companies. They, there's thirsting for content to put on their digital PCR instruments so that they can help more patients. I think there are some. There's some emerging trends where, you know, the reimbursed people want to pay, the payers want to obviously pay a little bit less than they do right now for, for testing, especially so more people can get it. And so we think that trend really bodes well for us that we can deliver faster, less expensive tests that, you know, payers should also be really receptive to. Um, and so, yeah, I think we, uh. Uh, in an ideal world, we're an uber successful standalone company in several years, driving, you know, up to a hundred million plus in revenue, and then. You know, there could also be a world where, uh, you know, our software and our kits are, uh, another company thinks it could really help us accelerate our growth. And, you know, they, they see the value in our technology and we become part of them too. So that's something I, I could see us adding a lot of value to, but whatever we can do to help, you know, significant amount of patients across the world, we, we, we're really game to do.

Meg Sinclair: 18:23

Well, I'm game to see what you guys do in the coming years there at ChromaCode. Our final question for today is more of a fun one. We love to ask each of our guests, if we ran into you, Mark, at a bookstore or your local library, in which section would we find

Mark McDonough: 18:36

you? Oh, gosh, that's, that's a, that's a good one. I think, um, you know, I, I, I enjoy history. Uh, so I think I'd probably be. There, um, there first, if it, if it's a Barnes and Noble or, uh, you know, or the bio, you know, biography section, just reading and learning about different interesting people along the way or, or history, I think that would be, uh, that'd be something I, I, uh, would kind of bury myself in. Yeah, same here.

Meg Sinclair: 19:09

I might bump into you in a local Barnes and Noble there, Mark. Well, Qualio. Where can our listeners go to follow along and connect with

Mark McDonough: 19:19

you? Yeah, um, definitely just check out our website because we've got a lot of really, uh, cool things, uh, of what we're doing at ChromaCode and how we are working hard to make a societal impact. So www. chromacode. com, um, and, uh. You know, otherwise my LinkedIn profile, but I'm, I'm fairly, but fairly boring in that regard. So I don't have a ton of handles and stuff. So, but, uh, thanks for the time today.

Meg Sinclair: 19:48

Thank you so much for joining us. We'll post all of that in the show notes. It was a pleasure, Mark. Thank you.

Mark McDonough: 19:53

Thank you.

19:55

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of From Lab to Launch, brought to you by Qualio. If you like what you've heard, please subscribe and give the show a positive review. It really helps us out. For more information about Qualio, our guest today, or to be a guest on a future episode, please refer to the show notes. Until next time.