BioCeryx
Democratizing Precision Medicine Testing

In most aspects of our lives, technology has put us in control and allowed us to live at a faster pace. Sadly, healthcare is a notable exception: people are still called “patients”, a word that originated from “the one who suffers”. Certainly, patience comes in handy: when it comes to laboratory tests it is common to wait several days or weeks for a result that guides the doctor and patient treatment plan. Now, imagine a world where anyone could walk up to any nearest clinic and get cheap, fast and accurate genomic test done. With the vision of making next-generation DNA diagnostics universally accessible—BioCeryx—a molecular diagnostic company spinning out of SRI International is going the extra mile by developing a proprietary sample preparation and analysis technology to extend the reach of real-time precision diagnostics to all patients. “We use technology to automate complex precision medicine workflows, more specifically, nucleic acid diagnostics. By commercializing the technology we licensed from SRI, we empower any lab to routinely provide DNA precision medicine tests and therefore enable more effective treatment of patients,” asserts Robert Balog, the founder and CEO of BioCeryx.

The decoding of the human genome nearly 20 years ago heralded the coming of the genomic revolution. Indeed, the last decades have seen the advent of Precision Medicine: the development of effective treatments that are based on the knowledge of the genetic anomalies linked to a specific disease.

For patients to benefit from such advances, they need broad access to the right test, at the right time. Unfortunately, due to their complexity and cost, these genetic can be performed only in a handful of specialized laboratories.

With BioCeryx’s molecular diagnostic platform, the company aims to democratize precision medicine by enabling any lab to offer high complexity tests with maximal quality and efficiency. BioCeryx is effectively miniaturizing a lab comprised of dozens of instruments into a single piece of equipment, and a laboratory process that would take days and many hours of skilled labor into a fully automated microfluidic card. This will allow any lab to perform highly complex tests easily, cost effectively and quickly. “Nowadays, many laboratories need to perform tests in large batches to cut down costs. However, a local hospital using our platform can run precision medicine tests on demand and provide actionable results sooner. We can’t afford to have a world where genetic testing is for the haves and not for the have nots. We believe in putting science and technology to the service of everybody and that’s why we are focused on making the latest genetic tests accessible,” explains Marc Montserrat, VP of Commercial Operations of BioCeryx.

With the expertise of the industry veterans along with a talented technical team, BioCeryx focuses on fulfilling the massive need for distributed precision medicine diagnostics and making sure that these advances in genomics reach everyone in need. BioCeryx will initially launch in Europe with a focus on women’s health and is actively looking into additional indications such as oncology and infectious diseases. For the future, BioCeryx looks forward to expanding the team considerably throughout 2019 to build manufacturing and sales and marketing capabilities. “As the field of genomic and genetic testing continues to grow, we look forward to partnering with other companies to develop applications on our platform so that we can enable a whole host of tests and make them accessible to patients,” concludes Balog.