Meet our Chief Scientific Officer Tatsiana Lobovkina

1. Please introduce yourself?

I am a scientist, and for me that means doing research is very exciting. I am originally from Belarus but have lived and studied in four different countries. I have received my Ph.D. in Chemistry from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. After that, I spent three years at Stanford University in the U.S. as a postdoctoral scholar where I was exploring new scientific areas and absorbing the ambitious Silicon Valley working culture. Following my postdoc, I chose to come back to Gothenburg to start my own research group at Chalmers in 2013. Feeling I was now ready for new challenges after about 10 years in academia, I made the transition to starting at Fluicell. I find living and working in Sweden fantastic for many different reasons, which is why I consider this home. Particularly, it offers great opportunities for professional growth and development and, at the same time, it is encouraged to have a good balance between personal life and work.

2. Could you tell us about your current responsibilities at Fluicell?

I started to work at Fluicell in March 2018 and was thrilled to join this dedicated and ambitious team. As the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), I am responsible for finding new scientific applications for our existing and pipeline product portfolio. This means that we are dedicated to advance our products by pushing the boundaries of what is thought to be possible within single-cell investigations while upholding the highest quality possible.

I will also be responsible for the company’s scientific publication portfolio, which helps to raise our visibility as well as strengthen our credibility within the scientific community. Our ambition is to produce publications in the high-ranking journals that are well-read in the science area. Lastly, I will work to foster our good relationship with industrial partners and academia.

3. What are the most important attributes you bring to Fluicell as the CSO?

I am bringing my diverse scientific background and wide range of experience, which is at the sweet spot of physics, chemistry and biology. It is my belief that my skills in managing research projects, my analytical thinking ability, as well as my enthusiasm can help Fluicell to further build on its success.

4. What is interesting about Fluicell products and its unique niche in single-cell investigations?

Fluicell offers high resolution single-cell platforms for pharmaceutical screening and testing. One of our products, BioPen, allows for controlling of the chemical microenvironment around individual cells without contaminating the whole sample. Furthermore, I believe that Fluicell has the potential to provide game-changing products for drug screening, medical technology and pharma professionals.

To understand such a disease as cancer, it becomes critical to generate multicomponent tumor-like structures that represent miniaturized disease models. These structures allow to identify the cells character, their interplay, and response to anticancer drugs at highest possible level of details. It is our goal to develop novel single-cell platforms for generating relevant tissue-like models, drug screening, and obtaining high quality data.

5. The Biopixlar™ Retina bioprinter prototype has shown great results. When marketed, how do you see this device changing the research?

Biopixlar™ Retina is a new approach for high-precision cell printing onto a surface in 2D or 3D. Imagine that you as a treating physician want to come up with an optimal scheme to treat a cancer patient. To do that, you will take a small amount of tumor cells directly from the patient, and after a simple processing, you will print multiple miniaturized tumor-like structures on a surface. These small structures will capture the disease properties and will be used for testing multiple treatment approaches. The outcome will be a personalized treatment plan for the patient. Today, this might sound like science fiction, but we believe that the solution might be waiting for us in the near future and come to change industry standards in such a difficult disease as cancer.

6. What advice would you give to people interested in joining your team?

We are always looking for new talented people with the right profile, who can strengthen Fluicell’s team. If you have a genuine interest for life science and would be excited to be a part of Fluicell’s technology transformation in medicine and biology, don’t hesitate to make the jump!