Managing a laboratory operations team

In this episode, John Curran, Vice President of Laboratory Operations at BostonGene, talks about his experience in LabOps management after having been a research scientist.

He details the steps and decisions taken throughout his career that led him to BostonGene, where he oversees laboratory operations around the development of a platform that harnesses the sequencing of RNA and DNA to get insights into patients’ diseases. He thinks it is very important to recognize LabOps team employees, as he finds retention to be the biggest challenge LabOps face, with a very high turnover for roles that are not considered glamorous.   He explains the automation processes labs can undergo to integrate equipment with information management systems to reduce errors to the minimum, have higher control over processes, and increase the quality of the generated data.

Summary:

Hear from a research scientist turned into a LabOps manager!

About John Curran:

John is an experienced Laboratory Director with 20+ years of experience in clinical molecular diagnostics, most recently in Next Generation Sequencing in the Oncology space. He has extensive experience in assay development, technical transfer to a production environment, and laboratory operations management in CLIA, CAP, and NY State-certified clinical laboratories running highly complex assays. He is experienced in the identification, evaluation, and execution of new business opportunities. He is recognized for professionalism, an innovative approach, know-how, and the ability to build, motivate and manage cohesive teams at all levels of the organization. He has a proven track record in leadership, new assay design, clinical diagnostic performance, technical writing, new product identification, and regulatory compliance.

Things You’ll Learn:

• BostonGene sequences the whole exome of each patient’s tumor as well as the transcriptome. 
• BostonGene’s RNA sequencing gives you more information than a DNA one, with more powerful insights into the patient’s disease.
• Nine out of ten successes isn’t necessarily a good result for LabOps, as it equates to 90/100, or 900/1000, which would mean 100 failures for every thousand samples.
• The hardest element in LabOps management is employee retention.
• The biggest cause of errors in laboratory diagnostics is transcription errors.
• In tumor samples, at least 20% of that tumor sample needs to have cancer cells. If you have less than 20% of sample tissue as cancer cells, it becomes difficult to make the right kind of calls on the data, and there’s a higher chance of error.

• Connect and follow John Curran on LinkedIn.
• Follow BostonGene on LinkedIn.
• Explore the BostonGene Website.
• Connect and follow Kerri Anderson on LinkedIn.