About Us

Michael Horton

When I was a child, all the way into college, I worked on tobacco farms every summer.  We harvested the fields in the mornings and placed the tobacco into the curing barns in the afternoons.  In the fall, we would take the tobacco out of the barns, at this point it was the golden color one would identify with tobacco and we took it to market.  The curing process for tobacco is a temperature and humidity-controlled environment and as cannabis was already ubiquitous, this being the 1970’s, I always wondered if the same technology could be applied to cannabis.

During my career I have been able to work in a number of industries and see science from a lot of different points of view.  My first job out of college was as a sampling technician for a company called Entropy Environmentalists in 1983.  My job was to travel to company sites with smokestacks like power plants, incinerators, etc. and to climb the smokestack with sampling gear to perform a chemical test as well as to monitor for particulates.  Those tests were EPA Method 5 and EPA Method 17. This job sparked my interest in chemistry, but had so much travel associated with it that I ended up taking a position locally in a sheet metal fabrication facility.

For the next 12 years, I worked in sheet metal fabrication and various other industrial jobs.  In the sheet metal business, I learned quite a bit about how to make sheet metal parts, as I progressed from a grinder/sander (as boring and dirty as it sounds) but also programmed instruments and developed blueprints.  In the meantime, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to raise a daughter!

In 1996, I made the decision to go back to school.  I went to school with a limited budget and a 10-year-old daughter, but we were able to make it through.  I worked on weekends and holidays in construction to make ends meet. In the end though, I had a degree in analytical chemistry and a real ability to work on instruments as I performed maintenance and repair on the instruments at my school in trade for instrument time for side projects.

In the years after graduating, I have spent time in each job working on instruments as well as developing instrument methods.  I have developed methods for pharmaceuticals, tobacco, agricultural products, and toxicology. I enjoy both the work of method development and working on instrumentation. 

Frank P. Maurio

I am the son of blue-collar parents that took over ownership of a delicatessen that was first started by my father’s parents.  My father is an entrepreneur and has worked several jobs during his life such as a car salesman, wine distributor after selling the deli business and starting his own check cashing business, which he still owns to this day after being in business for over 25 years.

I knew I wanted to be in science as a child and it just grew as I got older and started working my way through school.  During my junior year of college, I interned at a small biotech company that encapsulated drug formulations in lipids for targeted delivery, specifically geared towards efficacy and safety.  Once I graduated a year later, they hired me full-time where I worked for four years before heading to North Carolina to do research for GlaxoSmithKline. I spent 12+ years at GSK doing research on mRNA and the effects of various drug formulations on the up and/or down regulation of proteins in various pathways for both animals and cells.  I was an excellent researcher and made my way up the ranks. I was additionally getting very proficient with bioinformatics and understanding the up and down regulation of mRNA/protein and its effects on various pathways and if these differences were statistically significant.

In 2007, through a mutual friend, I was asked to start up a toxicology lab from the ground up.  I was a trained molecular biologist at that time and had really no knowledge of toxicology. However, I was able to successfully build a toxicology lab from the ground up called Andor. While at Andor, I met and hired Michael Horton a couple years later and we worked together until we both decided it was time to leave in 2015 due to circumstances that tested our integrity. We knew that we could no longer be a part of that business.  It was a very tough decision and very hard to let something go that I had put my heart and soul into, but I was not willing to compromise my integrity or to be put into questionable situations. Bittersweet, as I had learned a ton, but it was time to move on.

A few months after leaving Andor Labs, I joined a Toxicology/Genetics lab, Vantari, in Orange County CA where I brought my expertise in both molecular biology and toxicology to help guide them into a mature, fully functioning lab.  I flew out once a week every month for a year. It was a great experience and I learned so much more. However, with the uncertainty of start ups and the ability to generate revenue in question, a young daughter at home and a separation from my spouse, it was time to look for opportunities back in Raleigh, NC.  

In early 2016, I came across Mako Medical as another young start up toxicology lab.  Ironic, because it was Michael Horton whom I worked with at Andor, who then worked for a Mass Spec company (AbSciex, installing and repairing LCMS) that was one day installing a mass spec at Mako and contacted me indicating that I needed to work for Mako as they could use my knowledge and experiences to clean things up and to help put them on the correct tract.  I started working at Mako in Jan 2016 and soon after recruited Michael to come and work for me as the Technical Director/Supervisor of Toxicology. Before Michael’s arrival, I was the acting Technical Supervisor and VP of Lab Production. Michael joined the team in 2017 and we have been rolling ever since. Additionally, during my time at at Mako, I served as the Technical Supervisor of Genetics overseeing the Pharmacogenomic testing and custom sequencing capabilities as well as overseeing the entire Toxicology Lab and the Client Service Department. 

Our goal is to build partnerships and friendships that are centered on communication, commitment, and trust.  We look forward to meeting and building a relationship with each of you and hope to add to your success as we enjoy the ride together!

Frank P. Maurio & Michael R. Horton