Since its September deal with Walgreens to offer rapid on-site lab services in some of its stores, Theranos and its 30-year-old founder have generated a lot of buzz around its potential to disrupt healthcare.
Those who have been following the company know that Theranos has been purposefully stealthy about what it’s doing. Last week, Wired published a pretty extensive interview with founder Elizabeth Holmes. But the comments on the story underscore one piece of the fascinating Theranos story that’s still missing — how it actually does what it says it does.
The story is compelling: A 19-year-old interested in microfluidics and nanotechnology drops out of Stanford to start her own company, which goes on to raise at least $45 million in venture capital and ink a deal with one of the largest pharmacy chains in the U.S.
Then there’s the value proposition. Theranos says it can run up to 30 common laboratory tests within hours using just a few drops of blood. Automating the processing of those samples cuts out much of the opportunity for human error that occurs in some traditional lab tests, Holmes has said in interviews. And, the company publishes the set amount it charges for its tests on its website.
Cheaper, faster and less scary blood draws? Sounds great. But the company has yet to tell the most interesting part of its story — the technology it developed to allow it to use such a small sample, optimize so many different tests and offer them at such low prices. The most insight Holmes has given into the science behind Theranos was when she told Wired:
“We had to develop assays or test methodologies that would make it possible to accelerate results. So we do not do things like cultures. In the case of a virus or bacteria, traditionally tested using a culture, we measure the DNA of the pathogen instead so we can report results much faster.”
The company appears to have been granted upwards of a dozen patents related to new methods for processing fluidic samples, methods for calibrating fluidic devices and a modular point-of-care device, and has been working on its processes for nearly a decade. And Holmes has said that it’s generated initial revenue from providing its infrastructure to pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
That sounds like good validation of promising technology. But here’s hoping we get to hear the science piece of the story some way or another. Until then, you can ready the Wired interview here.
