Tomorrow’s World Today® Podcast
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Tomorrow’s World Today® Podcast
Biomarkers & Beyond: LabConnect’s Role in Oncology Research
Blood is the currency of clinical trials—and getting it from patient to lab within 48 hours can make or break a study. In this episode, LabConnect CEO Wes Wheeler joins us to discuss how a lab-agnostic model, purpose-built software, and disciplined process design are transforming global clinical research.
Wes breaks down why LabConnect chooses not to own labs and how this decision enables speed, scale, and flexibility across seven key regions where trials are conducted and patients reside. He also unpacks the technology powering their connected ecosystem—unified LIMS, ERP, sample tracking, and data integrations that convert scattered specialty testing into submission-ready data. The result: a network that supports roughly 80% of the data used in new drug applications, while preserving audit trails and regulatory integrity for agencies like the FDA and EMA.
Looking ahead, Wes explores how AI, machine learning, and digital twins are reshaping clinical development—from modeling preclinical safety to identifying recruitable patient populations and flagging anomalies before they impact results. With cell and gene therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, and radiopharma driving the next wave of precision medicine, he shares how LabConnect’s innovation mindset keep trials moving forward.
Along the way, Wes reflects on the mentorship, engineering mindset, and leadership lessons that took him from mechanical engineer to global healthcare executive.
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And today we have Wes Wheeler with us. He is from a company called Lab Connect. Welcome to the Uh. Good to be here. Thanks very much. So, Wes, I was hoping you'd share with our audience today a little bit about uh your experience with this organization. Can you walk us back and tell us about LabConnect?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the company was founded about 20 years ago by a couple of entrepreneurs that decided that there was a niche in the market for small pharmaceutical companies that really didn't have expertise in laboratory work. And so they decided to start this company pretty much like this typical story out of a back of a garage.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Found a lab in Johnson City, Tennessee, that was willing to do clinical trial work out of their laboratory and focus on small biotech startup pharmaceutical companies that really needed expertise. Over time, you know, they got to the point where they could do more than that. So they started to reach out to larger companies. And and now, of course, we're we're we're seeking to really globalize the company and digitize the company, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that actually that's a great entry point right there. So as we start to expand our wings, so to speak, can can you walk us through how you're planning on doing some of that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think first to talk about what the company actually does. The currency of clinical trials is blood. You know, moving blood from patients around the world that are recruited for clinical trials, as well as other types of substance like urine, of course. But blood is the main currency of clinical trials. So what we do is we collect blood samples from patients around the world that are involved in clinical trials, and we move those samples to a laboratory. We collect the testing data, and then we turn the testing data into real data that can be used to file for new drugs. So that's what we do. What we're doing now is moving into more late phase clinical trials, so we can do more than just phase one and phase two, with phase one being healthy volunteers of maybe 10 to 20 healthy volunteers, to phase two, which is more like 100 or so patients, to phase three trials that are thousands, so that we can do more volume for more trials for more companies in more countries around the world.
SPEAKER_02:So if if you were to walk us through this, maybe the audience needs to understand a little more about, you know, doing these trials. Ultimately, what are we looking for, these trials to tell us for the audience market out there? I mean, you're doing all this work, blood work, testing work, etc. What are you looking for in order to get clarity to the uh pharmaceutical industry?
SPEAKER_01:We're a very highly regulated industry. The FDA in the US, of course, and the EMA in Europe, and many, many other regulatory bodies around the world, very heavily regulated. You cannot get a drug approved anywhere in the world without having gone through a very rigorous series of tests. We call them clinical trials, and clinical trials go through phases from preclinical when we're testing in animals and perhaps digital twins, to phase one healthy volunteers to patients in phase three. And you have to prove that first of all the drug is safe. So the safety is done both in the animal phase and in the first phase when healthy volunteers volunteer to have the drug put into their body and then we test, we test for safety. After safety is confirmed, we bring real patients in that have real disease, and they're tested with the same drug, but at different doses to make sure that we get the right combination of dosage and what we call efficacy, which is how the drug works in the disease. And so until you have safety and efficacy, you don't have any data to file. We produce about 80% of the data required to make a filing. So that's what we do. We work for pharmaceutical companies and clinical research companies that need us to protect the trial integrity, but also to bring the testing results in the data.
SPEAKER_02:I see. So because it's third party and not connected to the pharmaceutical company itself, it's more uh bankable, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01:We think so. We we are a very unique central laboratory company. We have some competition, of course, we all do. We think we're unique in that we are agnostic when it comes to the laboratories we use. We don't own the labs. We actually broker and contract with the labs anywhere in the world to do the required testing for these clinical trials. Many, many companies have their own labs, which means they have the maintenance aspects, they have labor, they have capital requirements to keep those laboratories operating. We don't have to do that. Yes. We are agnostic when it comes to labs.
SPEAKER_02:So that makes sense. So as an entrepreneurial company trying to grow, making labs all over the uh entire world would be quite a capital expense. Right. So you've so how are you getting and collecting all this data? From what I've been hearing, there's something that's connecting all these labs together. Can you talk a little bit about this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, let me talk about the uh digitizing in a minute.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's important to know that the drugs that are being developed today are becoming more complicated. More than 50% of all trials today are in oncology, so cancer. The cancerous trials that we're doing now are requiring more and more specialty testing. We're looking for biomarkers in patients that indicate the kind of cancer they have, the kind of receptor we're trying to hit with the drug. And so, because of that complexity, we're having to find more and more specialty labs around the world that can do these specialized assays. So testing certain biomarkers, certain types of cells in the in the body to try to find the right balance of testing around the world to get the data we need for our patients, for our clients. Can you talk a little bit about bumps in the road you've hit trying to do this? Yeah, because we because we don't own the labs, we have to develop a relationship with the labs. So we have to develop, you know, first of all, find the right ones. And I'll back up and just say one of the objectives we have to globalize the company is to find partner labs in seven regions of the world. And the seven regions are decided by where we believe the patients are coming from. So the US is obvious, Europe is obvious. Beyond Europe and the US, we're going to China, we're going to Australia, we're going to South Korea, and we're going to Latin America. And so we pick a lab that represents those regions, and then we have to develop a relationship with them, develop a contract with them, and actually build a facility of our own next to them so that we can actually manage the movement of samples and the data in and out while the testing is being done by our third parties. The bumps in the road are the digitizing of the company to make sure that all the data can come into one platform. All those labs are operating in a different system. We have our own system, they have their own system. So finding a way to connect all these labs to our system is the challenge. We've hired recently a new uh chief commercial officer commercial officer as well as chief technical officer to make that happen. So we're now in the process of digitizing all of our systems and connecting our systems to their systems so that we can bring all the data back in a consistent format.
SPEAKER_02:Sounds pretty efficient once you get through these uh initial stages. So as you're scaling, you're probably able to do this at a at a better margin than that's the point.
SPEAKER_01:Scalability is the point. That's the whole point. We have been more or less a family-run type of company until now. We've decided as a new CEO coming in to invest in technology. So we have invested in a new uh what we call a laboratory information system that's across the globe. We have a new uh enterprise resource system, which is like SAP, for example.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:We are developing a new sample tracking system, a new uh proposal system, project management system, and others that are all going to be digitally connected so that we can easily add a site to our network and we can have them all digitally connected.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. What a great project. And so there's some new technology that's being developed around this digitization, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think you can imagine that we're dealing with Australia, China, Latin America, all the European countries, and even now we're considering Middle East and Africa. Patients are more and more coming from these remote locations. So finding the labs that are local, because the blood has to get to the lab within 48 hours maximum. If it goes beyond 40 to 48 hours, it becomes unusable. Yeah, we c we we we call it uh it it it tests out at that at that point. So we have to find labs that are local, that are compliant, they have to be compliant, they have to be operating under what we call good clinical practice by the FDA. And then they have to have systems that can integrate with us. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes we have to take a flat file, you know, from a remote lab somewhere in the world, and convert that flat file into our file. So the the challenges we have really are finding the labs that work that are regulated and that are compliant, but also that they have systems that can be integrated into our system. And without that, we don't have the data that we need.
SPEAKER_02:I see. So you've developed a new system that's connecting these labs together. You're getting better scale from that, I imagine.
SPEAKER_01:We're having fun with kaijan events. So we're bringing this the teams together. In fact, we have come one coming up next week where we can bring 25 people together and we don't leave the room until we fix the process. So we're mapping the entire process from beginning to end, and we're identifying along the way where each of the digital systems have to integrate. So we're finding ways where we have to connect systems to systems within our company, and also systems from outside the company into our so the challenge is really process design, integration of all the digital inputs, and then getting a final output that's usable for the FDA for filing.
SPEAKER_02:And the invention of a better system like this, what's that gonna do for the uh customers of the world out there? The the pharmaceutical customers, but ultimately the consumer.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we're we're inventing new medicine. We're we're we're a big part of the creation of new medicines, and we're very proud of that. We uh we're very involved with cancer, very much so. We are doing a lot of complicated studies now that are curing all the different forms of cancer that you see that you see and hear about, and some you don't know about yet. And we're working on 380 trials right now. I would say probably more than half of those are cancer related. Wow. And so you know, being part of a company that's helping to develop new medicine is an important thing to do.
SPEAKER_02:Very much so. You know, there's a it's it's easier to do the work when there's a noble cause attached to it. So of course. So ultimately, if I was to ask you to project into the future for us, what do you see in the future in tomorrow's world with the technology you're working on?
SPEAKER_01:It's interesting that AI is taking a big place in pharmaceuticals finally. I think uh we've been talking about AI for a while in the world. It's not only it's just been pretty recently that the pharmaceutical industry has started to adopt AI. So one example would be instead of using animals in preclinical trials for testing safety of drugs. There are companies that are experimenting with using AI to simulate using a digital twin, which is simulating what a patient might how a patient might react to a drug instead of putting that drug into an animal. That's just one example. We're using AI for mining our data to see if we can find pockets of populations of c of patients that we can recruit, finding better ways to align the data together, finding different ways to interpret a clinical protocol and turn that into a testing regime. And so we'll be doing a lot of work with AI going forward. I think that's one of the future issues. I think the other is that we haven't talked about cell and gene therapies, you know, we're actually modifying people's cells, we're not talking about radiopharma, where you're attaching an isotope that can kill a cell to a delivery mechanism that gets it that isotope to your cancer tumor. There's a lot of that going on now, and in terms of trying to kill cells, cancer cells without harming the individual. And you'll see more of that with what we call conjugate antibodies, CDCs we call them, and also with radiopharma. You'll hear more about that in the future. But more drugs targeted to very specific parts of your body.
SPEAKER_02:Well, we've come a long way from the early the early days of alchemy and you know, running these crazy little experiments in dark rooms and trying it out on people, haven't we?
SPEAKER_01:We have. We've come a long, long way. And in a very short time, I'll say.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But medical technology is is remarkable. And we're very proud to be part of it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, good work. Thank you. Let's talk a little bit about how you established yourself in the industry. I mean, you didn't start the company, but you're the CEO of it today. Can you walk us through a little bit of your history? I mean, of course, you know, the young people in the world they look at us and say, I don't understand how you get where you are. But at one time you were back in school, and so was I. So you know, it might be nice to share with the audience a little bit of that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Where are you from? I'm an engineer. Uh I was born in New York. I uh went to school in Massachusetts uh for engineering, mechanical engineering. Uh my goal was to build power plant power plants for a living. That was my goal. I thought that it would be uh at a designer's desk designing power plants. I thought that was my my objective in life. I got got recruited instead to work for Exxon when I was very young, and I spent 12 years uh working around the world for Exxon building refineries instead of power plants. And so after that I got a call from nowhere to join a company called Glaxo, which is now called Glaxo SmithKlein. They're probably the number six or seven pharmaceutical company in the world. Back then they were very small. Yes. I was recruited to come over to build the research campus uh in North Carolina, and that's how I got to North Carolina, where I live now. And after 13 years of mer merging Glaxo with Glaxo Welcome, Glaxo Smith Klein, and merging all the manufacturing facilities around the world, that was my main job. I was put into marketing for a short time after I got my MBA. And that I never looked back when I went to marketing. I've been a marketing commercial guy since then. And since then I've run five companies for various in all in pharmaceuticals, you know, from BlackSo to Patheon to DSM pharmaceuticals to a company called Marken, which is now owned by UPS Healthcare. I built the US UPS Healthcare division during COVID and uh got involved in Operation Warp Speed, was very much involved with the U.S. government during COVID, uh moving vaccines around the world. And then I retired and uh thought I was retired, joined five boards, and then I got a call from the board of Lab Connect to be their CEO. I hadn't planned on coming back full-time, but I am here again and in the chair. Yes. I'm very much enjoying it.
SPEAKER_02:That's a nice uh background on where you came from. If I was to ask you uh if you were back in, let's say, high school or middle school, did you have any mentors that kind of got you onto this path of life?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we all have we all have mentors. I had a great one in college. Okay. Uh always what I learned from him most, my mechanical engineering professor, is that every complicated part problem can be boiled down to one simple place. And it was the law of thermodynamics. And the the basic law of thermodynamics, I never forgot the fact that everything we did in mechanical engineering when I was studying fluids and heat transfer is it can come back to one simple equation, the first law of thermodynamics. I I never forgot that because as an engineer, and my team will tell you this, when they give me a problem, my first reaction is to solve it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And I usually try to solve it in simple terms. So that's one. Thank goodness. I also had a uh mentor during all my years at uh at Glaxo who I very much respect. He's a very good friend of mine. He I've worked with him for 17 years, and he was a military guy. So the combination of engineering and military and the precision that he demanded of me made me, I think, pretty much who I am today.
SPEAKER_02:That's wonderful. So there are mentors out there in the world. It's nice when you bump into them and they help you. Sometimes they don't even know how they're moving us forward with our careers, do they?
SPEAKER_01:They just want to help things, things happen. I never expected to be doing what I'm doing today. Again, I could easily be designing power plants right now. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02:So connect the if you could connect the dots. So you've because I don't our audience doesn't get to see people on screen very often that have been through the the process of working their way up to a CEO and then seeing that happen again and again. It might be a little confusing. You know, so how did you uh are you uh did you put your name out there that you were looking for a CEO position? Did they seek you? How does how do you get attracted into the CEO role?
SPEAKER_01:I think it has a lot to do with networks. Uh it's not really you you it's really difficult to put your name out there and say, okay, I'm available to be a CEO. The first call I got was when I was still at at Glaxo Welcome, or Glaxo Smith Klein, as it turns out, where it was a pl it was a plant that was actually still was operated once upon a time by Glaxo, was acquired by three companies since then, and they had a big problem with the FDA. The FDA had shut them down and they were looking for someone to fix it. And I had a reputation for fixing a lot of the manufacturing operations at GSK, and so somehow my name g came up uh to the board of directors of the company called DSM Pharmaceuticals, a Dutch company.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And I I took a chance, I left GSK and I I became my first CEO of a division. It wasn't a a whole independent company, it was a subsidiary of DSM, big, big Dutch company. But that was my first opportunity to really prove to myself that I could do it. And after that, your name just gets out, and it's just all about networking. It's all about the people you know.
SPEAKER_02:So so so in order to get that first slot as a CEO, you you actually turned yourself into a very helpful, productive individual that made you attractive to bring to that role, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it's not just about me, it's about it's about the people you know. And and having had gone through the merger of Glaxo Welcome and Smith Klein Beachum, we had 40,000 SKUs, 40,000 products around the world. We moved half of those from site to site, and we along the way I developed a really great network of people. So when DSM hired me to be CEO of their division in North Carolina, I brought with me my team. And my team, I I I put them around the table and said, we're not, you know, we're we're gonna do this together. And we did within a year and a half, we got all the issues re removed, the FDA was fine, and uh we put the company back on track. Today, that site is one of the largest, most productive sites within the thermofisher world as a contract manufacturing company.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting. It sounds to me like some of the skill sets that that you've built over the years really could uh connected with Lab Connect and where you're now taking it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, again, it's uh it's about the network. So I I I never thought I'd be in the logistics business, but when I was was uh called in to run a company called Marken, it's a small logistics courier company. Six years later we developed, we built that into actually ten years later we built that into a billion-dollar, very, very big company. And along the way, Lab Connect was one of my customers. They were one of my customers for six years. They were a very small company when we started with them. We did a lot of work for them, and we made them, we helped them make some make them successful. And of course, when LabConnect board decided they wanted to change, you know, my name came up.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:That's how it works. It's the network. It's the people you know.
SPEAKER_02:It is. Well, we wish you lots of luck at Lab Connect. Thank you. Many more great days ahead of you. We're looking forward to it. Thank you very much for having me. You're welcome. Well, everybody, that's another edition of Tomorrow's World Today. Thanks for tuning in.
