84N Analyst, June 1996, Vol. I21 Interviews With Professor G. Guilbault and Mr. R. Lundin At Sensors and Signals 111, held in Malahide, Co. Dublin, on 26-27 October 1995, the Managing Editor of The Analyst Harp Minhas (HM) and one of the organizers, Professor Malcolm Smyth (MS) took the opportunity to speak to two of the leading participants: Professor Georges Guilbault (GG) of University College Cork, Cork, Ireland and Mr. Rune Lundin (RL) of EDT Instruments Ltd., Dover, Kent, UK. Professor Georges Guilbault HM: GG: HM: GG: HM: GG: MS: GG: Can you give us a brief autobiography, telling how you came to be where you are today? After graduating from Princeton in 1961 I took a short stint with Proctor and Gamble, trying to develop a fluoride electrode. Then I was called into the Military because of the Berlin Wall crisis in 1961 and was assigned to Edgeward Arsenal, MD, where I was given a position as head of detection research for the US Army.The Commanding General gave me my first task, which was to build an alarm for NATO that was completely specific, very sensitive and had to respond within five seconds because that was the limit of the reversibility of the nerve agents that soldiers might be exposed to. The only way I could think of achieving this was with immobilized enzymes. I built the first enzyme alarm back in 1962; a prototype was used by all the NATO countries until about 1990. In 1964 I built the second alarm system, based on ion-mobility, with the help of a physicist, using time of flight of a mass at atmospheric pressure, and that is the current NATO alarm system used today.In the time at Edgeward we did several things, one of which was to develop a fluorescent staining system for enzyme location in histochemistry, which is still very widely used today and isoenzyme separation methods. I built a system for Dade that is used today in the Pheonix Instrument Astra, which is based on measurement with immobilized alkaline phosphatase on a paper strip for thyroxine or digoxin and other similar substances. In New Orleans I accepted a Professorship in 1966 and spent almost 30 years there until this current year when I accepted a Professorship at University College Cork in Ireland, and that is where I am right now. I have always been interested in gadgets and building new systems and I started with Universal Sensors in 1981 and we did about $5000 of business.This last year we did about $800 000 of business and I am in the process of opening the company in Ireland, with a couple of new products I have in mind, which are different from what we did before. Can you tell us more about your research projects? Here in Ireland or before? Well, I assume that you are continuing some of them? The main interests I have now are in immunosensing with immobilized antibodies in different modes and various transducer systems. In optics now we are trying to develop the first prototype for aflatoxins in grain based on the direct binding of the aflatoxin to an antibody on an optode and measuring the fluorescence of the aflatoxin. In a piezoelectric device we have just developed through the company, which we hope to market in Europe for the first time, Universal Sensors Ireland has a new pz tools computer program to drive the piezo instrument to make it operate exactly like the BIACORE, that is so we can monitor antigen-antibody drug receptors or any type of interaction directly on a crystal continuously in a flow system, read the response on the computer, calculate all the binding constants for the reaction and output the results on computer tape.The other products we are trying to develop now are on-line biosensors for the food industry, particularly in bacteria, Listeria, E . Coli and Salmonella, developing a method that can be used directly on-line to measure the contamination of food in production and to measure the concentration of lactoseflactate fermentation in the cheese industry, or to measure alcohol in Jamesons, for example, or several other products.We are working with pharmaceutical companies in Cork on developing this piezo immunosensor to look at drug receptor interactions directly. Also in the clinical field I have contact with a company in Ireland to build a sensor being sponsored by the Forbrit to the Irish Science Foundation, isoenzyme electrodes that could be used directly as probes to measure for LDH 1 and 5, alkaline phosphatase esterophosphatase prostate-specific antigen and other similar new clinical tests. Can I ask you, now that you are an academic, and all academics are now forced to work in applied areas and get involved with company research, how do you, as you have bridged the gap and set up your own company, see the relationship between academia and industry? Well, I view every project as having to have a specific aim to benefit mankind; some specific thing that will be of benefit to somebody and not just do basic research like maybe physical electrochemists do.It’s more applied. All my research has been applied and I think it works very well.in Ireland, because all the research appears to have been goal oriented. Now, ForbritAnalyst, June 1996, Vol. 121 85N HM: GG: MS: GG: MS: GG: HM: GG: MS: GG: HM: GG: HM: GG: HM: GG: HM: GG: is looking directly for final product oriented research and they don’t support basic research anymore. So I think the analytical chemists have the key. How does that compare with the situation in the United States? It’s the opposite.They are more basic research oriented and if something comes about then that’s fine. The only applied research we can get in America is through the, so called, small business grants which are funded by the Federal Government; we have several of those in the company with the Agriculture Department (USDA), where we built the food analysis electrochemical system that we offer through Universal Sensors for direct monitoring of substances in food. We also built a sulfide optical sensor for the USDA to measure sulfide as a preservative in food, and under Department of Defense (DOD) grants the piezoelectric system for nerve agents and for toxins in the air, brevotoxin, saxitoxin and ricin; we built piezo and electrochemical systems for all of those. You have mentioned your work with NATO and DOD; are the armed forces still very interested in sensor technology? I think definitely, not particularly in Europe but in America.In Europe it is primarily collaborative grants between different countries, but in America the DOD has the most money still and, with Congress on a cutting spree, the last area that hasn’t disappeared yet in basic research funding is military research. The larger corporations in America, I hear, are thinking of getting out of pure research and basically funding pure research in the Universities? Well, they are going more into applied research: I think, everyone is really. The days in America of basic research are just about finished now that the Republicans are in power.The next ten years is supposed to be the sensor revolution. How do you see sensors in ten years time; you have already been through 30 years with them? That’s a very good question; it took many years for the electrode to finally come about. I guess the first amperometric electrode was by Clark in 1962 and only recently with Medisense and other companies really marketing these have we seen a boom in biosensors. I think the problem was the medical doctor, who was very opposed to getting into this area. Once that was solved I think the biosensors have taken over. Medisense did a lot for the electrode world with the glucose electrode, even though it still needs some development: I was at the diabetes centre a few weeks ago and they didn’t recommend the Medisense because they said it had too high a degree of variability in response compared with the colorimetric procedures, but I think its an inroad.What I am trying to do is really build electrodes to measure substances like bacteria directly with a ‘pen’ electrode; toxins or isoenzymes for just about anything built the size of a pen. The other area of research is the optrode, and the optrode has been touted as a very good idea because it eliminates the selectivity problems that exist in electrodes, particularly in the brain and blood, where you have many different electroactive compounds, but no one has ever built a small optrode. That is a problem, and even people like Wolfbeis, who pioneered this area, have already given up hope of ever building a tiny optrode the size of an electrode.Whether they will ever come, I don’t know, but I think we can build one maybe twice the size of a pen that works very well. Maybe that is sufficient, I don’t know, but it does have a lot of promise in different areas to the electrode. This conference has tried to bring together people with sensors experience and those with chemometrics; how do you view the whole area of signal processing? Signal processing is a wonderful area, in fact I have a colleague back at the University in New Orleans who is a physical chemist who says it’s ridiculous to talk about 2 : 1 signal-to-noise: he would like to talk about 1 : 15. He claims he can resolve any signal by a suitable chemometrics program in the midst of a hundred other things and there are still limits to what you can do, so I think obviously chemometrics has a strong place in the future.What do you think the future holds in this field? In biosensors? Yes. I think single self-contained probes for assays in the environmental and clinical fields, and in food chemistry is very important. I view immunosensors as being ultimately very important and other areas coming to the fore recently are non-invasive sensors. We built an electrode for glucose 10 years ago using the transbuccal mucosa, and the only problem was the physiology of the patient; not that we could not build the electrode. Today, the Japanese have a wrist watch that athletes can wear to monitor their lactate in sweat while they are exercising, so I think these non-invasive sensors will be very important in the future too.Saliva testing is also important. Do you see any major obstacles in this field, in the field of sensors generally? The only obstacle I can see is really the electronics and how small you can build them and how reliable. I think the basic biochemistry can be solved by designing new antibodies for almost anything now. Professor Guilbault, thank you very much for your time and for imparting your experiences to us. Thank you, the pleasure was mine.86N Analyst, June 1996, Vol. I21 Mr. Rune Lundin HM: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: HM: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your academic background and how you came to be where you are today? I am a chemical engineer by education. In 1969 I joined a company called Bifok AB.Amongst other things I became involved in both the development and selling of ion-selective electrodes. This being a new technique at the time, my colleagues and I would give lectures on the theory and use of ISEs and it was at this time that I first met Jaromir Ruzicka. Some years later Ruzicka presented the first lecture on flow injection analysis, at Lund University. I immediately became interested in the technique of FIA and the possibility of commercializing it. What company were you working for at this time? By this time I was the sole owner of Bifok AB. I was happy to have working for me my old friends Torbjorn Anfalt and Bo Karlberg. As a result of the early demonstrations and lectures that we gave on FIA, many larger organizations showed an interest in forming a partnership with my comapny.Eventually I teamed up with Perstorp AB. With the backing of Perstorp we were really able to develop the FIA system. After two years I sold my company to Perstorp and joined Pernovo AB, the New Business Development arm of Perstorp. At that time, Pernovo’s main business areas were in Plastic Additives and Noise Abatement. The only company in the group on the analytical side was Tecator AB. The aim of Pernovo was to highlight small enterprises such as university research projects, small start-up companies and so on and then to support them with mangement skills and money to help them to grow to a position where they could be absorbed into one of the Perstorp business areas. Tecator had been, in fact, one of the small start-up comanies taken on by Pernovo.At that stage it had consisted five people in a small flat, using their bathroom as a chemical laboratory! When I left Pernovo about five years ago, there were around 30 companies in the analytical/biotec group, which today has a turnover of around 2100 million. Why did you leave? Well, because I did a management buyout of one of the companies in the analytical group, EDT Instruments Ltd. EDT had been one of the companies acquired by Pernovo. We thought it would provide us with a good platform in the UK and improve our links with British universities. EDT were producing low cost products whereas the other analytical companies in the group were producing capital items. This meant that it wasn’t easy to fit EDT products into the sales structure used by Perstorp Analytical.It was difficult to use the same sales person to sell a &20,000 instrument one day and one for &300 the next. For this reason Perstorp decided to sell EDT and so I bought it. Actually my connection with EDT has started as far back as 1978. Bifok had developed and patented a nitrate electrode. EDT bought the membrane under license from us and also became our UK agents for the FIA analysers. I have now been running EDT for 5 years working solely with the electrochemistry products. In fact I threw out all the other product lines. You threw out the spectroscopy? Yes. Whilst areas such as optoacoustic spectroscopy are fascinating, I personally do not have either the background or competence in such techniques.People such as Gordon Kirkbright were no longer with EDT when I bought it, so I felt that there was no champion or driving force for this type of product within EDT. When you were with Pernovo you worked with start-up companies for about I0 years in Science Parks and Universities. What is your view of Science Parks? I think it is a very good idea. You know that a lot of the prospects or ventures coming up will not survive, for a variety of reasons, but there are plenty that not only survive but grow. One of the most difficult aspects is to get someone interested in a project that was developed in a university. People are generally scared to get involved with these products. Do you mean the industrialists? Oh yes. It is difficult when it happens that way round.Of course it is much easier, from an industrialist’s point of view, if they initiate the project or are involved with it from the beginning. What are you, as an industrialist, looking for from an academic? How should that relationship really develop. What are the characteristics of that relationship? It is really a difficult question and I’m afraid there is no straight answer. Sometimes, a company comes to a scientist and asks them to develop something. The scientist does it because it fits a ‘gap’ or ‘niche’ in the industry itself. Or it can happen the other way around too. If we talk of a company operating in the food market sector. Suppose someone was to develop a newAnalyst, June 1996, Vol. 121 87N fat extraction techniqiie. It might well be the case that it would suit this company to take on and develop the new technique, hopefully improving ur perhaps expanding their existing product range.On the other hand, if you are working on a new idea that has no obvious market niche, then it is very, very difficult. In fact, it was identifying this type of project that formed the basis of our work at Pernovo. We would support such projects and either find a suitable place to slot them into within our group or even help the inventors to create a new company. There are few organizations that work in this way. Some of the venture capitalists do of course, but others are more concerned with the financial aspects. How to make capital gains. That is why 1 believe that Science Parks fulfil a useful function.It means that the scientists have to involve themselves in the business side of things. The Science Park environment helps them understand how to begin to commercialize their projects and, even though this may still be a difficult task, it allows the whole process to start on a small scale. There’s less risk involved. HM: RL: HM: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: MS: RL: Do you personally favour that sort of contact, i.e. with the Science Park, rather than a laboratoryluniversity contact. Yes, I would say that this is probably the only way to be successful to sell an idea. Who can ‘see’ when they come out of a laboratory? Academics are often sure that their special project will have a big market and earn big money. It is often very difficult to convince someone from this background that there is no market for a particular project or that it will not be financially viable.Stanford University has a good system. They have a license department whose sole duty is to commercialize products and/ or create a lot of contacts. This means they can search widely for the right partner for a particular project. They have been quite successful, but even so I believe there are a lot of start-up companies set up by the individuals involved in the projects. How do you actually see academics? Do you, for example, think, that i f I , as an industrialist, have aproblem, they can provide me with the chemistry and I can take over production and commercialization? Or do you see them as partners involved in the project from start to finish? It would depend on my position at any one time.Certainly, if I have a particular development project ongoing in the company, which needs specialized knowledge from time to time, then I wouldn’t hesitate in using my academic contacts as consultants. On the other hand if, through discussion at this type of academic meeting, I come across an idea that I believe in strongly from both a technological and commercial viewpoint then I would be more likely to view this as a potential joint venture. However, as I said earlier, what a scientist may see as commercially viable I may not. Take the chap who spoke earlier about gas sensors; that was a typical example. It seemed to me that there was a great emphasis put on the need to firstly develop such a sensor and secondly develop one that would sell for $5.00.But why develop this type of sensor and why for this price? Is there really a market for this type of product? To sell a sensor for this price would mean the market would have to be enormous to make it commercially viable. Academics do not often ask themselves these questions and when they do they sometimes come up with the wrong answers. Do you mean it’s all too academic? No it’s not too academic. I believe the science is extremely important. Take a sensor as common as a pH electrode. People often describe the pH electrode as an accessory to the meter. I always say that the meter is an accessory to the pH electrode. The knowledge of chemistry and the ability to solve application problems is crucial. It’s not just about making the cheapest, smartest meter.What I mean is, no matter how clever the chemistry behind a potential product and no matter how cheaply it can be made, it must be sold at a price that provides a big enough market to make a profit. In terms of EDT, ion-selective electrodes are very important? Oh yes. In terms of the new technologies and where ion-selective electrodes are going, do you have any comments, and a feel for where the new technology will lead? I think that if you look to ion-selective electrodes, very little has happened over the last 10 years or so. There have been small add-on features, but I haven’t seen a lot happening. We now have the major research in ISFETS, but it is just the beginning and has no real advantage over the electrodes around today. There are new ligands as well as new materials but again, it’s back to finding the niche where they can be used.The development I see as coming from adaptation of electrodes to create new systems or analysers. I work a lot with flow systems to see what can be done in this area. For example, how does changing the environment around the electrode affect performance? What about the area of development of sensor arrays? That is the next thing that will come, and then, of course, the sensors will not be as important as the signal processing. Having said that, when you put these things together you have in effect got a new multi-sensor. I don’t think that you should isolate the sensor as a small element. Take the glassy carbon electrode, i.e., a universal sensor that can be used in so many different ways.It is not an enormous scientific development itself it is the combination of the sensor, the instrument and the chemistry that allows you to achieve something. Then of course you have to set the right price to get the money back. You always have to combine a number of factors when you are trying to put together a system.88N Analyst, June 1996, Vol. 121 MS: RL: MR: RL: HM: This conference has been about Sensors and Signals, so how important with the sensor arrays is the signal processing and processing information you can get? I think that the processing is the most important aspect. It allows you to use an array of sensors which are not particularly specific and develop an analytical system which is. If the sensors themselves cost between $5 to $20 you can see the added value of selling such a system for $20,000! They say that this is the decade of sensor technology. Do you, as an industrialist, feel that it’s going to be such a decade, and that there is a lot of opportunity out there for companies like yourself to exploit this and create wealth and jobs? The next ten years will, I believe, see a move of much of the analytical technology from the laboratory to on-line situations. The chemists will also find themselves working outside laboratory environments. This being the case, I think there will be a need to develop reliable on-line sensors and that this will be true regardless of whether you talk about the paper and pulp industry or life sciences or whatever. The need for more sophisticated results will, I believe, lead to a great demand for all sorts of sensors outside the traditional on-line ones for temperature, pressure, flow and so on. I see this trend as growing very quickly. Thank you very much, Rune, for your time and agreeing to be interviewed.