Post by stcks on Apr 25, 2017 20:02:43 GMT
This Is Neat: Billionaire Vinod Khosla Is Betting On A Handheld Diagnostic Test
Apr 25, 2017 @ 07:34 AM
A picture of the diagnostic device, courtesy of Two Pore Guys.
Two Pore Guys
A picture of the diagnostic device, courtesy of Two Pore Guys.
Vinod Khosla, the billionaire Sun Microsystems founder and venture capitalist, is today leading a $24.5 million financing of a whimsically named diagnostic company, Two Pore Guys, that he says could fulfill a long-held goal: making the blood test business more like the software industry.
Wait, didn’t we just hear this story? The field of diagnostics just had one of its most dramatic scandals in Theranos, which was valued at $9 billion by its investors, who then saw that evaluation evaporate in a cloud of vaporware and scandal. Part of the problem, many VCs have said, is that diagnostics is just a tough business. But Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, insists Two Pore Guys, which utilizes a technology called a nanopore to detect chemicals with high sensitivity, is the real deal.
“What Silicon Valley is good at is taking an old idea and doing it so much better with new breakthrough science that it becomes an attractive platform just when everybody thought it’s not interesting,” says Khosla, “If lots of people have ways to do the same technology, then it’s going to be a crappy business. If you have a proprietary way of doing it, then it’s going to be a great business. This is proprietary and dramatically changes the economics of testing for almost anything, and not just DNA: DNA, RNA, proteins, small molecules, it could test any of those things.”
Here’s the outline of the Two Pore Guys story, according to chief executive and cofounder Daniel Heller: William Dunbar, a UC Santa Cruz professor, had codeveloped a biological nanopore that was licensed to Oxford Nanopore, a company valued at $1 billion that is using nanopores to sequence DNA. Dunbar had hatched a cheap nanopore that could be made entirely out of silicon. Instead of working on DNA sequencing, which looked like a saturated market, Dunbar and Heller chose to focus on using the nanopore to detect small bits of DNA, or other substances like antibodies.
The result is a handheld device (Heller imagines it costing in the neighborhood of $500) that can use paper strips with reagent on them to do tests that would otherwise require far bigger machines. Unlike a lot of effort in this space, Heller says this is a solid piece of silicon and electronics, without a lot of tiny tubes. It wouldn’t work on many types of tests, like blood cell counts.
Heller doesn’t see Two Pore Guys developing its own diagnostic tests at all. Instead, it would form partnerships with existing diagnostic test makers (think Roche, Cepheid or Abbott Laboratories) to port existing diagnostic tests on its machine. In the analogy favored by Heller and Khosla, the Two Pore Guys device is the iPhone and other companies would be app developers. Two Pore Guys would sell the handheld device and get a royalty on the tests; there might also be single-use devices for things like infectious diseases, where you might not want to reuse a test.
Initial uses probably wouldn’t be in human diagnostics but in areas like agriculture and food safety, which are less regulated. Right now there is no way for a company buying seed from a farmer to rapidly tell if each seed has the same genotype (that it’s genetically modified, or, for that matter, if it’s not). Livestock companies could use ways to rapidly genotype animals. Food companies could use a way to rapidly detect pathogens. Diagnostic test applications would come online several years later, as partners went through the process of getting approval from the FDA. (Khosla refers to this strategy--first agriculture, then people--as having a base camp on the way to Mount Everest.)
Two Pore Guys won’t name any of its partners. Vijit Sabnis, a partner at Khosla Ventures, says that one thing that captured the firm’s investment is that it confirmed the existence of real commercial interest. The Two Pore Guys technology has been described by a single scientific publication, in PLoS One. The company has also announced a clinical trial with UCSF to look for cancer DNA in urine.
Launching new healthcare technologies is difficult. Devices that seem like they’d change everything can end up flopping because there’s not a clear enough market for them. There’s not enough public information out there to really understand what Two Pore Guys has. But it’s a neat effort backed with real money, and it bears watching to see if real partners–and real products–emerge.
Apr 25, 2017 @ 07:34 AM
A picture of the diagnostic device, courtesy of Two Pore Guys.
Two Pore Guys
A picture of the diagnostic device, courtesy of Two Pore Guys.
Vinod Khosla, the billionaire Sun Microsystems founder and venture capitalist, is today leading a $24.5 million financing of a whimsically named diagnostic company, Two Pore Guys, that he says could fulfill a long-held goal: making the blood test business more like the software industry.
Wait, didn’t we just hear this story? The field of diagnostics just had one of its most dramatic scandals in Theranos, which was valued at $9 billion by its investors, who then saw that evaluation evaporate in a cloud of vaporware and scandal. Part of the problem, many VCs have said, is that diagnostics is just a tough business. But Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, insists Two Pore Guys, which utilizes a technology called a nanopore to detect chemicals with high sensitivity, is the real deal.
“What Silicon Valley is good at is taking an old idea and doing it so much better with new breakthrough science that it becomes an attractive platform just when everybody thought it’s not interesting,” says Khosla, “If lots of people have ways to do the same technology, then it’s going to be a crappy business. If you have a proprietary way of doing it, then it’s going to be a great business. This is proprietary and dramatically changes the economics of testing for almost anything, and not just DNA: DNA, RNA, proteins, small molecules, it could test any of those things.”
Here’s the outline of the Two Pore Guys story, according to chief executive and cofounder Daniel Heller: William Dunbar, a UC Santa Cruz professor, had codeveloped a biological nanopore that was licensed to Oxford Nanopore, a company valued at $1 billion that is using nanopores to sequence DNA. Dunbar had hatched a cheap nanopore that could be made entirely out of silicon. Instead of working on DNA sequencing, which looked like a saturated market, Dunbar and Heller chose to focus on using the nanopore to detect small bits of DNA, or other substances like antibodies.
The result is a handheld device (Heller imagines it costing in the neighborhood of $500) that can use paper strips with reagent on them to do tests that would otherwise require far bigger machines. Unlike a lot of effort in this space, Heller says this is a solid piece of silicon and electronics, without a lot of tiny tubes. It wouldn’t work on many types of tests, like blood cell counts.
Heller doesn’t see Two Pore Guys developing its own diagnostic tests at all. Instead, it would form partnerships with existing diagnostic test makers (think Roche, Cepheid or Abbott Laboratories) to port existing diagnostic tests on its machine. In the analogy favored by Heller and Khosla, the Two Pore Guys device is the iPhone and other companies would be app developers. Two Pore Guys would sell the handheld device and get a royalty on the tests; there might also be single-use devices for things like infectious diseases, where you might not want to reuse a test.
Initial uses probably wouldn’t be in human diagnostics but in areas like agriculture and food safety, which are less regulated. Right now there is no way for a company buying seed from a farmer to rapidly tell if each seed has the same genotype (that it’s genetically modified, or, for that matter, if it’s not). Livestock companies could use ways to rapidly genotype animals. Food companies could use a way to rapidly detect pathogens. Diagnostic test applications would come online several years later, as partners went through the process of getting approval from the FDA. (Khosla refers to this strategy--first agriculture, then people--as having a base camp on the way to Mount Everest.)
Two Pore Guys won’t name any of its partners. Vijit Sabnis, a partner at Khosla Ventures, says that one thing that captured the firm’s investment is that it confirmed the existence of real commercial interest. The Two Pore Guys technology has been described by a single scientific publication, in PLoS One. The company has also announced a clinical trial with UCSF to look for cancer DNA in urine.
Launching new healthcare technologies is difficult. Devices that seem like they’d change everything can end up flopping because there’s not a clear enough market for them. There’s not enough public information out there to really understand what Two Pore Guys has. But it’s a neat effort backed with real money, and it bears watching to see if real partners–and real products–emerge.
