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The tech of ChromaCode to boost COVID-19 testing is backed by Bill Gates
ChromaCode has gained new funding from Bill Gates-backed Adjuvant Capital, boasting a technology that can significantly increase the ability of existing polymerase chain reaction ( PCR) research to identify people contaminated with COVID-19 and other illnesses.
"We want a good solution for a resource-limited world," says Alex Dickinson, founder and CEO of ChromaCode, a serial entrepreneur who has been collaborating with Caltech researchers spinning out companies since the early 2000's.
The invention was based upon work conducted by Aditya Rajagopal, a graduate of the California Institute of Technology. A former Google researcher[x] working on innovative methods of medical imaging, Rajagopal is the inventor of HDPCR, the software at the heart of the ChromaCode drug.
According to Crunchbase, with the aid of Dickinson, Rajagopal spun out the technology he had developed to form ChromaCode in 2012 and raised his initial capital to create a diagnostic tool that could use algorithms and new sensing technologies to increase the number of targets that can be tested by conventional PCR.
In 1985, Kary Mullis, who worked as a chemist at the Cetus Corp., invented the polymerase chain reaction tests and used copies of very small amounts of DNA sequences that are amplified in a series of temperature change cycles. It is one of the bases for genetic analysis.
Although conventional PCR research relies on color-based target differentiation, the HDPCR technology developed by the co-founder of ChromaCode uses signal strength to classify several specific targets and to denote them as curve signatures encoded in a single color channel. Think of the technology as using gradients of color to identify multiple targets in a test rather than just one color.
It is like compression of the image, said Dickinson.
Specifically for COVID-19, the use of ChromaCode 's technology could expand threefold the available testing capacity, the firm said.
The baseline test is looking at three different things right now said by Dickinson. These machines have wells and are capable of performing 96 tests at a time. The challenge is usually that you'd need three of those wells for each test. We let them do the whole test in one well, which would give you a multiple of three times.
That means laboratories would be able to perform 96 tests at a time instead of testing 32 individuals using existing PCR equipment.
The potential of ChromaCode 's technology to recognise certain illnesses alongside COVID-19 is even more important. What we are preparing for is the fall when we are going to take the current COVID check and flu and other diseases layering, Dickinson says.
The ability to monitor for multiple pathogens has important consequences for the ability to effectively diagnose, track and track disease transmission in low- and medium-income countries that are currently experiencing their own outbreaks. In Africa, the problem is that everyone has a fever and it could be COVID or it could be Dengue fever, Dickinson said.
Diagnostics and physicians can tell the difference using the ChromaCode technology without having to use new machines.
According to Dickinson and his co-founder Greg Gosch, it's the ability to work on existing technology which sets ChromaCode apart from competitors like BioFire Diagnostics and Cepheid.
"The testing supply chain will continue to be strained, so that people will look for more efficient mechanisms," Gosch said.
According to managing partner Jenny Yip, Adjuvant Capital, the investment fund spread from a collaboration between the Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase, ChromaCode had already identified as a potential investment target well before the pandemic hit.
In the summer of 2019, the investment firm started talking to ChromaCode and was drawn to the company for its ability to expand testing capacity well before the COVID-19 outbreak brought into sharp relief the problems of adequate testing.
"From a global health perspective, the ability of ChromaCode to install technology in its existing technology base is very powerful," Yip said. Considering the low resource base in some of the countries where testing is most required, it is impractical to demand the deployment of a whole new suite of hardware and software equipment — let alone the creation of a supply chain that can support and maintain the technology.
According to experts, the lack of adequate testing in the United States remains the biggest obstacle to a safe restart of the country's economy and ensuring that any future disease outbreaks can be successfully managed.
Testing is your first fundamental step in a plan to prevent susceptible people from getting infected, Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li, Harvard's Global Health Professor and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told The Atlantic.
There is a strong sense that the White House knows that much more testing is needed than we have right now, he said. "That's both cool and frustrating."
Image Credits: Andrew Brookes / Getty Images
