Integrative Biology: At The Tipping Point

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader magazine

I recently met Gustavo Salem, VP and general manager of the Biological Systems Division at Agilent Technologies. Salem believes integrative biology is at a tipping point for producing major breakthroughs in the drug development. At Agilent, he is responsible for three core businesses platform technologies around genomics, high-end mass spectrometry capital equipment, and bioinformatics software. According to Salem, "We [Agilent] try to translate data into knowledge for customers. It's primarily driven by statistics and visualization packages to aid customers in interpreting the data that comes off our instrumentation." During our conversation, I posed several questions regarding recent industry developments and why he believes the tipping point is upon us.