By Diagnostics World Staff
March 21, 2017 | The second annual Swimming with the Sharks competition was held this past February at the 24th International Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference. For the chance to be crowned the “2017 Tri-Con Most Promising Company,” representatives from several companies pitched their value propositions to a panel of judges, much in the same vein as the show, Shark Tank.
This year’s session proved to be extremely competitive, with Deton claiming first prize, followed by Geneoscopy as the runner up, and Selfdiagnostics placing 3rd.
The panel of judges included Harry Glorikian, Healthcare Consultant; Mark S. Boguski, Founder & CMO, Precision Medicine Network, Inc.; Chris Heid, Treasurer and Board Member, Berkeley Angel Network; and Jenny Rooke, Managing Director, 5 Prime Ventures.
At an awards ceremony at the event, Deton received a plaque for first place, while both Geneoscopy and Selfdiagnostics received recognition.
1st Place: Deton
Deton’s mission statement is, “Improve patient lives by enabling better diagnostic results through better sampling.” According to Deton, challenges arise when obtaining good samples for diagnosis of respiratory infections. The real problem with the collection of these samples comes from a reliance on sputum samples, as they can be difficult to obtain and are often contaminated. As a solution, Deton has developed an open platform device called the Cough Collector.
The application is simple; a patient coughs into Deton’s device several times over several minutes. From a technical standpoint, The Deton Cough Collector captures an aerosol of infectious droplets from a cough. Contaminants are separated out, and the bacteria are deposited through a nozzle onto a collection disc. This disc is ejected into a sealed container for easy, rapid, and reliable diagnosis of lower respiratory infections. Lower respiratory infections affect 150 million patients every year, causing 3 million deaths. It’s important to note that these numbers exclude chronic conditions.
In his pitch to the panel of judges, Deton’s CEO, Patrick Sislian, laid out the company’s business strategy, which is to partner with other companies that sell or are developing diagnostic tests for respiratory infections. The terms of such a partnership would include Deton receiving a share of the overall revenue for the test. In August 2016, the company received a seed funding round of $600,000.
2nd Place: Geneoscopy
Andrew Barnell, Geneoscopy’s CFO, addressed the panel of judges on behalf of the diagnostics company. Geneoscopy is developing a noninvasive, stool-based, preventive screening test to diagnose and treat colorectal cancer (CRC) in high risk individuals through the analysis of biomarkers from stool samples. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. The gold standard for screening is colonoscopy, which presents numerous challenges and patient resistance, reflected in limited compliance with screening recommendations. Current non-invasive screening tests suffer from limited accuracy, poor sensitivity, and the inability to detect precancerous signals that can be detected.
Geneoscopy’s approach involves the detection of gene expression biomarkers isolated from stool samples. Other genomic biomarker approaches have relied on sequencing of DNA, in part because of the instability of mRNA in these samples. In addition to IP on the specific biomarkers used for screening, the company has also developed proprietary methods for stabilization of mRNA in the samples and for differentiation of the signal from human gene expression from the background of bacterial gene expression.
The company envisions patients providing a sample for screening once every four years, which is more frequent than current recommendations for colonoscopy, but would be at a lower cost and more convenient.
Based on the results, most patients would be able to skip a colonoscopy, resulting in a reduction of these procedures, while a small subset would be instructed to get more extensive testing, in most cases sooner than they would otherwise.
3rd Place: Selfdiagnostics
Selfdiagnostics is developing a line of rapid, point-of-care tests for infectious disease. For this competition, the company focused on a set of at-home tests for chlamydia and gonorrhea. The tests make use of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) approach which can provide clear results within 30 minutes without an instrument. The company claims much higher accuracy than other home kits, with sensitivity comparable to laboratory based PCR testing. The single use, disposable device uses a urine sample and requires no training. The current version of the device will provide simultaneous detection of several pathogens, but plans are in place to expand the range to include up to seven different pathogens in the same test.
The aim is to provide patients with an easy way of detecting these infections, so a patient can then meet with a physician following a positive result to quickly initiate proper treatment. The price of the test to the patient would be approximately $50, which would be an out-of-pocket expense. Tests could also be made available at physician offices, clinics, and other healthcare facilities, where the cost would be reimbursable. “Our mission,” according to the company website, “is to empower people to take more active role in healthcare. We bring lab level diagnostics to home.”