Seeing red:
Startups use a drop of blood (or maybe a few) to diagnose health problems.
The Palo Alto startup Theranos has received plentiful media coverage, most recently from the New Yorker, for its technology that can reportedly diagnose dozens of health conditions from one drop of blood. Investors have valued Theranos at more than $9 billion.
But it’s not the only local business that sees immense possibilities in a pricked finger. Using technology spun out of Arizona State University, HealthTell of San Ramon wants to use a bit of blood to detect more than 30 early-stage diseases.
HealthTell scientists, who have published some 20 scientific papers in the decade their platform has been in the works, say the method is not only less painful than a traditional blood-draw, but has been shown to detect cancers, and infectious, autoimmune and Alzheimer’s diseases, with an accuracy rate of at least 90 percent.
In an effort to bring the technology to market in 2015, HealthTell has raised $13.5 million. And in December, it won a National Institutes of Health grant to test whether the platform can accurately diagnose brain cancer.
Both companies are angling to upend the worldwide clinical-laboratory testing industry, which is expected to reach $261 billion in revenue by 2020, according to the analysis firm
“It should be much more robust, sensitive and specific than the biomarker route.” Bill Colston, CEO of HealthTell, which wants to use a bit of blood to detect more than 30 early-stage diseases
Grand View Research.
“The old paradigm is, collect a sample and go back to a big central lab,” said Paul Conley, managing director of the Paladin Capital Group, one of HealthTell’s investors. “But a single-drop-of-blood approach enables the ability to actually bring that diagnostic (test) closer to where the patient is, closer to the point of care. It’s less complex, it’s less costly and it’s quicker to be able to do that closer to where you can actually collect that drop of blood.”
HealthTell executives say their approach differs from most diagnostic tools. These traditionally look for biomarkers that are closely associated with a disease, such as a protein on a virus that indicates that a virus is present in the body. But a biomarker is also a sign that a disease has already advanced past the early stages and is now more difficult to treat, said CEO Bill Colston. Also, biomarkers can be associated with more factors than just a disease, which can lead to false positives.
Instead of trying to detect a direct sign of a cancer or a virus, HealthTell tries to track the body’s immune response to a disease with a little device that acts as “one sensor for lots of diseases, very inexpensively and very specifically,” Colston said.
When the body has an infection, it responds by producing billions of new antibodies. HealthTell says it can detect these antibodies with a special semiconductor wafer, the same equipment that Intel uses to create electronic chips. The wafer isn’t coated with electronic components, however, but with peptides, the basic building blocks of proteins.
When a few drops of blood hit the surface, antibodies stick to the peptides in patterns that, when analyzed, can shed light on the characteristics of specific diseases.
“We should measure all the antibodies in the blood that are there at a particular moment in time, and compare ones from diseased people to non-diseased people and look for a signature,” Colston said. “It should be much more robust, sensitive and specific than the biomarker route.”
In studies involving humans, mice or both, the technology has shown promise in detecting lupus, valley fever, Alzheimer’s disease, brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, Type 2 diabetes and other conditions. Scientists have also suggested that the tool could be used to test whether vaccines will work in patients.
Theranos tests for signs of dozens of diseases, such as antigens for certain cancers and hepatitides, and health factors, like cholesterol, that can provide clues about current or future problems. The company strives to be transparent about pricing: on its website, a test for calcium levels is listed at $3.55, compared with the Medicare price of $7.09.
But as some critics note, Theranos has published little data in peerreviewed journals about how its technology works or the quality of its results. Technically, it’s not required to divulge much: The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t monitor most blood tests. CEO Elizabeth Holmes has said the company simply wants to protect itself from competitors as it tries to innovate.
Theranos may have raised more than $400 million and, according to Forbes, made Holmes the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. But Conley, the investor, thinks that HealthTell’s technology is potentially more powerful because it can detect more diseases, and earlier.
“You’re collecting the information about that single drop of blood today,” he said, “and it’s the information you can go back and query in different ways tomorrow and in the future.”