Greenville startup Scout Scientific filling niche in analytical testing

Shawn Wyatt knows how to make the most of a corporate layoff.

Wyatt, a chemist, had worked in progressively bigger roles at two pharmaceutical development and manufacturing companies, Metrics Inc., and its successor company, Mayne Pharma (now Catalent), at the same site in Greenville, N.C., for 16 years.

Then, unexpectedly, he and 40-plus colleagues were let go by Mayne in a 2019 downsizing.

“It was a shock, especially after reaching my goal of becoming a Principal Scientist,” Wyatt recalled in a LinkedIn post. “But instead of dwelling on the setback, I chose to turn it into an opportunity ─ a giant leap toward my dreams.”

That leap was the launching of Scout Scientific, an analytical testing and research laboratory to serve the pharmaceutical industry. The Greenville-based company, formed in January 2020 only two months after Wyatt’s layoff, allowed him and his family to remain in the eastern North Carolina town they had grown to love and also scratched his latent itch to become an entrepreneur.

Starting a new company from the ground up in mid-career wasn’t the easiest path for the father of four, but he is glad he took it.

“I enjoy it so much; I’m so happy,” Wyatt said, in an interview with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. “I enjoy working with the different clients and hearing their ideas and solving their problems.”

Wyatt got a rolling start on his company dream by attending evening lectures on small-business formation at Pitt Community College’s Small Business Center while still working at Mayne Pharma. He even began writing a business plan, not knowing he would soon be putting it into action after a layoff.

The downsizing was just the push he needed. Otherwise, he said, he might not have been willing to give up a steady, good-paying job with benefits.

“If I’m ever going to do this, this seems like the right time,” Wyatt recalled thinking at the time.

He leased office and lab space at the Technology Enterprise Center, a science and technology incubator owned by Pitt County Economic Development. Though ample and affordable, the space was devoid of the equipment, instruments and supplies he would need. Nor did he have any investors, grants or loans backing him. 

So Wyatt began bootstrapping the startup company with funds from his severance package, personal savings and a total cash-out of his retirement account.

“If you’re going to go in, go all in, right?” he said. 

Wyatt started shopping for lab equipment on the cheap. Mark Phillips, vice president of statewide operations and executive director of NCBiotech’s Eastern regional office, steered him toward a pharmaceutical company in Research Triangle Park that had an 18-wheeler truckload of surplus equipment, but it came with a catch. Wyatt would have to pay to move the heavy equipment across the state.

“It cost a lot of money,” he said. “It was like moving a house. But it was worth it.”

Wyatt kept what he could use, sold what he didn’t need and bought the rest of what he required from other sources.

Over the years he had formed a good relationship with Waters, the global life sciences technology company, and the local office temporarily loaned him a demo instrument for liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry that it couldn’t showcase to customers due to the COVID pandemic. 

The system’s complementary instruments allow for the precise separation, identification, quantification and structure analysis of molecules within complex mixtures. The system is run by Empower 3, a sophisticated software system that’s well known in the testing industry.

Wyatt later bought the system through a lease program, and the investment has paid off.

“When I share that I have this equipment with this software, with its capabilities, companies tend to understand the seriousness I have for doing the work,” Wyatt said. “It has proved very useful for getting the type of clients that I want to work with.”

“It’s very expensive,” he added. “Every time I walk into my lab I look at my equipment and say I can’t believe I have all this, but also that’s my savings, that’s my 401K.”

Visitors to his lab are typically surprised by its wide range of equipment, which allows Wyatt to help pharmaceutical clients with method development and optimization, custom high-performance liquid chromatography design and troubleshooting for novel compounds and complex mixtures, expert method and sample investigations to resolve product issues and analytical hurdles, and early phase R&D stability assessments to support rapid decision-making in drug discovery.

Scout Scientific’s mission is to provide the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors with a high-integrity, non-GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices), low-overhead alternative to large-scale contract organizations. The company aims to save clients time and money by providing fast, flexible and affordable problem solving.

“I have witnessed the cadre of analytical services that Shawn has been providing for companies, who not only need his level of expertise, but also his nimbleness in providing these services, which are essential to the client’s overall success,” said NCBiotech’s Mark Phillips.

Because Scout Scientific operates as a non-GMP facility, it can bypass the rigid administrative hurdles required for late-stage manufacturing, allowing Wyatt to pivot quickly to meet urgent client needs. He and his clients are careful to distinguish, however, that "non-GMP" is not a synonym for "non-scientific." By using industry-standard software like Empower 3, Wyatt said he can ensure that the lab’s data integrity and scientific rigor remain at the highest level, even within an agile research environment.

“He turned around something that I expected to take three to four days, but he turned it around in less than a day and a half,” said Laurie Keilholz, executive director of pharmaceutical development for Celcuity, a Minneapolis-based biotech company that’s developing cancer therapies for solid tumors. “I was impressed. It was very helpful for us because otherwise we could have potentially lost money.”

Keilholz said she also values Wyatt’s broad and deep knowledge base and his 25 years of experience in assessing test results. 

“He has a good sense of analytical procedures but really can get the better answer of how accurate is something, how appropriate, how robust,” she said. “I can pay anybody to get an answer, but you’ve really got to understand all of those three things to understand the impact of that answer. I think he does a really good job.”

Wyatt also welcomes small projects that many contract research organizations won’t take on.

“I enjoy those types of projects,” Wyatt said. “Those one-offs remind me of why I’m in science.”
While Scout Scientific is focused on serving biotech and pharmaceutical companies, it also works with clients in the nutraceuticals, food and beverage, and agricultural industries.

Wyatt has steadily grown the client base and now can afford to pay himself on a regular basis ─ a milestone for any entrepreneur.

“I would love to expand,” he said. “I’d love to be able to bring in some people locally. I’m not quite there yet, but that’s the direction I want to go.”

Kelly Andrews, director of economic development for Pitt County, is among the many supporters rooting for Scout Scientific’s success.

“North Carolina continues to be a leading state for life sciences, and we are proud to have Scout Scientific as part of Pitt County and the BioPharma Crescent’s growing life sciences cluster,” Andrews said. “Shawn Wyatt, as an experienced scientist and budding entrepreneur, took risks and built Scout Scientific using his talents and available resources, and those risks have begun to pay off. We will continue to support his business to ensure its continued growth and success.”