Industry Insight: United they stand

Late last year, Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific merged to become Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., the world leader in serving science. European Pharmaceutical Review spoke to Marc Casper, vice president of Thermo Fisher Scientific and president of its analytical technologies group to discover the impact this has had on the industry.

“Although the merger is still in its early stages, we are pleased that the integration is going very well,” begins Casper. “We are actively designing and assembling new solutions in a more integrated fashion, delivering the full spectrum from consumables to analytical instruments based on the truly unique breadth of capabilities that Thermo Fisher has to offer.”

But what does the new company hope to achieve as a result of this merger?

“Global customers now have a one-stop-shopping capability that is unprecedented in our industry, and this will forever change how the market buys products and services.”

Meeting technology demands

“The importance of mass spectrometry continues to grow and we are seeing an accelerating adoption of mass specs in the drug discovery process. In addition, the need to better integrate workflows in the lab is something that our clients in the drug discovery process have been asking us to help them with. The second area, integration of laboratory workflows, plays to our strengths as a newly merged company. We’ve always understood how end-to-end workflows accelerate drug discovery, and now we’re better able to build these complete systems for our customers, from sample prep through final analysis.”

Proteins are key

“The transformative potential of proteomics continues to drive R&D investments globally. Since nearly 90 per cent of all drugs interact with proteins in some way, scientists demand advanced technologies to more rapidly identify and quantify proteins.”

But what does that mean for Thermo Fisher Scientific?

“The ultimate goal in life sciences is to optimise the discovery process and we believe we’re uniquely suited to help do this,” answers Casper. “Our solutions help to accelerate proteomics discovery and this is precisely why we’re so excited about our newly-merged company’s unmatched ability to deliver optimised lab solutions.”

What role will Thermo play in facilitating the advancement of drug discovery?

“Today, we are actively collaborating with customers to push the boundaries of innovation in life sciences, especially in more promising areas such as proteomics, biomarker research and metabolomics,” says Casper. “A good example of this collaboration is the exclusive license we recently obtained for electron transfer dissociation (ETD) technology from the University of Virginia. We expect this innovative new ion fragmentation technology will provide sequence information previously not available and will shed new light on many unanswered questions in biology today.”

About Marc Casper

Marc Casper is executive vice president of Thermo Fisher Scientific and president of its analytical technologies group.

Casper joined Thermo Electron Corporation in December 2001 as president of its life and laboratory sciences segment. He was also named senior vice president of the company in December 2003 and in March 2005 was given responsibility for all of Thermo Electron’s operating divisions.

Prior to joining Thermo, Casper served as president, chief executive officer and a director of Kendro Laboratory Products. Before Kendro, he was president-Americas for Dade Behring Inc., a global manufacturer and marketer of products and systems serving the clinical diagnostics market.

Casper received a master of business administration from Harvard Business School and is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics.