Kris Franklin, MS, SC(ASCP)

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clinicore Laboratories, with responsibility for the laboratory’s scientific direction and method development.

The methods Clinicore developed rather than purchased — the LC-MS/MS steroid panel, the small-volume microsampling approach, and the custom molecular panel — were designed and built in house. Validation of each is executed by laboratory staff rather than by the person who designed the method, and every method is reviewed and approved by the Medical Director before it is used for patient testing.

That separation is deliberate. The designer of a method should not be its sole validator; independent execution is what makes a validation meaningful rather than self-confirming.

Background

The laboratory-side career spans the full range of CLIA-defined roles in high-complexity chemistry, from bench medical technologist through general and technical supervision to scientific officer. That progression is why Clinicore’s method development is done by someone who has also run the bench work, prepared the validation packages, and answered for them at inspection — including preparing multiple laboratories for COLA, CLIA and CAP inspection.

The graduate work at Vanderbilt was in toxicology and pharmacology; the five years at Merck that followed were in drug metabolism — what a compound becomes in the body, and at what concentration.

That question is the origin of two positions the laboratory takes today: toxicology reported as a concentration rather than as a presence or absence, and steroids measured by mass-to-charge transition rather than by antibody binding. Both answer the metabolic question directly rather than by inference.

The undergraduate degree is from Southeastern Louisiana University, thirty miles from the laboratory in Mandeville.

Experience

Twenty years across clinical chemistry and pharmaceutical research: fifteen years in clinical chemistry, in roles including Chief Scientific Officer, Technical Supervisor, General Supervisor and Medical Technologist; and five years in drug metabolism research at Merck.

Clinicore is majority-owned by KCFA, Kris Franklin’s company.