The vision behind SomaLogic has always been to use protein data to improve human health and healthcare, and under Roy Smythe’s leadership, SomaLogic is realizing that vision. When Dr. Smythe was appointed CEO in 2018, he began implementing innovative business approaches to commercialize a new class of diagnostics built on the SomaLogic technology platform. The SomaScan® Platform accurately and reproducibly measures thousands of proteins simultaneously in complex mixtures such as blood and then uses computational tools to translate those protein measurements into actionable health information.

When Dr. Smythe joined SomaLogic, it had been a private company for nearly two decades. Determined to move the company to a more sustainable and scalable path, Dr. Smythe led the team to secure more than $200M at the end of 2020 from Wall Street investors to improve, expand and commercialize SomaLogic proteomic products in both the clinical and life sciences markets. He then led the company to successfully complete its IPO in September 2021, putting another $630M on the company’s balance sheet.

A dynamic leader driven by the mission to integrate new technologies into medicine to create better healthcare solutions, Dr. Smythe believes that SomaLogic’s proteomic technology could radically change the practice of medicine from a reactive system that treats disease to a proactive system that prevents it.

"The world’s leading life sciences and pharmaceutical research organization and transforming their discovery and validation pipelines with our groundbreaking proteomic technologies."

Roy Smythe, M.D.

1. Who is your role model and how have they assisted you in becoming a successful CEO?

I’ve been very fortunate to have had many role models throughout my life and career. The first was my father who taught me respect, tolerance, and the importance of hard work and integrity. Another was Dr. Clyde Barker, the department chair when I was a surgical trainee at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barker epitomized the gentleman surgeon— erudite, accomplished, and devoted to the professional development of his trainees and faculty. Lastly, when I was a board member at a major healthcare system, one of my role models was the board chairman Drayton McLane, a brilliant business mind who taught me valuable lessons about innovation and management — lessons that I’m still absorbing and learning from today.

2. What is the most challenging aspect of your role as CEO? What is the least?

The most challenging part of being CEO is also what I enjoy the most, which is managing people. I firmly believe that companies are nothing but the people in them and the things they agree to do together. Managing those relationships can be difficult when each person has different ideas, goals, and ambitions, but that’s what gives me the energy to tackle challenges.

I’d say that the least challenging part of being the CEO of SomaLogic is thinking of ways in which proteomics and our technology platform can improve patient care and make healthcare more accessible and effective for everyone.

3. To fully realize the potential of precision health, SomaLogic has developed a large and growing set of SomaSignal™ tests. How are these enabling people to optimize their health and to prevent disease?

Precision medicine is still largely focused on genomics, even though only about 5% to 10% of diseases are driven by your genes. Proteomics gives us a window into the other 90 to 95% of diseases because unlike genes, proteins in the body respond dynamically to environmental factors and can provide information on a person’s current health and their health trajectory in real-time.

Our SomaSignal™ tests are derived from measuring thousands of proteins in thousands of people and then using AI and machine learning tools to identify specific protein patterns indicative of a particular disease or health condition. We have a SomaSignal test that can predict a person’s risk of a heart attack within the next four years. We have another test that can diagnose non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) from a blood sample, rather than a liver biopsy. Our tests are also sensitive to changes in lifestyle or medications, so they can be used to monitor patients over time. This type of precise health information can help focus resources on the people who need them the most, evaluate treatment effectiveness, improve quality and outcomes, and lower costs of care.

In 2021, SomaLogic launched the Proteomics for Precision Medicine Initiative, the first large-scale, clinically focused partnership effort aimed at bringing these new diagnostics to healthcare providers to inform decisions at point of care. Initial partners included Emory University, Intermountain Healthcare, CommonSpirit Health, UPMC, UCHealth, and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center with disease-focused clinical trials in diverse therapeutic areas such as Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The insights gained from these partnerships will help pave the way for future product pipelines and payer reimbursement.

4. Can you share a few case studies where clients have benefitted from SomaLogic's technology? What problems did they face and how did SomaLogic help solve those challenges?

Several cases come to mind. One study recently published in the journal Science by researchers at the University of Cambridge combined SomaScan proteomic data with genomic data to reveal a network of gene-protein connections that drive human diseases spanning a variety of medical specialties and organ systems.

Another study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used the SomaScan Platform to analyze samples from people with Castleman disease, a potentially life-threatening blood disorder. They not only identified a set of proteins that predicted which patients were more likely to respond to the only FDA-approved treatment for Castleman disease, but also identified candidate drug targets for non-responders.

A final example has been our work on COVID-19. Early in the pandemic, we realized how uniquely valuable our technology could be in understanding the biology of COVID-19 and wanted to make it widely available to COVID-19 researchers. To do that, we established protocols to process COVID-19 samples and obtained a grant from the Gates Foundation to help fund research projects. We have since run thousands of COVID-19 samples, helping researchers around the world use proteomics to predict disease progression, identify complications, aid clinical trials, accelerate treatment development, and facilitate vaccine development and evaluation.

5. What are some upcoming developments in the pipeline that will improve SomaLogic's offering to clients or improve its technology?

SomaLogic is both a life science tools company and a clinical diagnostics company, which is rare. On the life sciences side, we provide large-scale proteomic data to academic and pharma customers pursuing early research and development. Our current focus is on making the technology more deployable, putting it in the hands of researchers themselves in a more modular way. On the diagnostics side, we are expanding our portfolio of SomaSignal tests and launching clinical trials with health systems to evaluate and speed adoption of this new class of diagnostics. Over the next decade, we will be leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence to improve capabilities in biology, business, and the creation of next generation platforms.