Devices & Diagnostics, Diagnostics, Health IT, Pharma, Startups

Peter Thiel’s ‘futuristic’ Breakout Labs funds three new life sciences startups

The Peter Thiel-backed Breakout Labs just funded three new life sciences startups: Neumitra, E3X Bio and Ion […]

The Peter Thiel-backed Breakout Labs just funded three new life sciences startups: Neumitra, E3X Bio and Ion Dx – with platforms in the wearables, diagnostics and high-throughput screening spaces. They’re all prototypical Breakout Labs companies – super early stage, but showcasing an ambition and vision that shies away from playing it safe.

“We’re after companies that have deep, hard science,” said Hemai Parthasarthy, the scientific director of Breakout Labs.”We’re trying to invest in the most radical and groundbreaking things we can.”

This means that, unlike your risk-averse venture capitalist (is that a thing?) that chases startups with a single targeted therapy for a disease, Breakout Labs is more interested in fostering the growth of a new platform, Parthasarthy said.

Breakout Labs works as a philanthropy that accepts applications on a rolling basis, and funds startups up to $350,000 – aiming at those that fit in the gap between the bench and venture-sexy.

“We have a little bit of a futuristic world view, in that we’re not necessarily trying to disseminate technology to help solve particular problems,” Parthasarthy said. “It’s a bottom-up approach to empower great scientists and entrepreneurs to just follow their vision.”

An interesting approach, given that so many venture firms are after fast returns. Breakout Labs, on the other hand, works a bit like a grant program with convertible debt – it only taking equity if a company’s successful.

“Our projection is that hopefully we’ll get back about half the money we put in,” Parthasarthy said.

Breakout Labs has gotten perhaps 1,000 applications since its 2012 launch; it’s invited more extensive conversation with about 20 percent of these, Parthasarthy said. With the three new companies, Breakout Labs has funded 22 companies. Here’s a closer look at the new members:

Neumitra

Stress sucks – it takes an untold toll on the body and mind, manifesting itself both physically and mentally. Boston-based wearables startup Neumitra helps quantify stress in an individual, but feeds the info back to a database that allows researchers understand stressors on a population health scale.

Founded in 2010 by a couple of MIT classmates,  the folks at Neumitra say they use mobile software to link contextual data – events, locations, activities – with the symptoms of stress manifesting itself in the body. The company, which is also in the Rock Health portfolio, does this by using embedded biomodules that measure the moves of the sympathetic nervous system.

It’s pretty cool – Neumitra’s “neuma biobands” can measure the body’s fight or flight response just by measuring temperature, electrodermal activity and condensation on the skin. This determines that stress sweat is what it is – and not a side effect of a sunny day or a jog – by factoring in weather and motion data.

“We aim to address questions of daily brain health with objective data streams – from veterans with PTSD and mothers with newborns to CEOs with constant travel schedules and nurses with long work hours,” the founders say. “Neumitra aims to address brain health concerns with data– driven technologies.”

Ion Dx

Interested in biosimilars? Keep an eye out for Ion Dx. The Bay Area startup, founded just last year, is building a new platform for both medical diagnostic tests and for characterizing biosimilars. That second bit’s particularly interesting – it’s meant to tell researchers how similar a biosimilar actually is to a biologic. The new analytical technology should, in theory, help reduce drug discovery costs, hone the accuracy of diagnostics and help hasten FDA approvals.

Ion Dx uses mobility spectrometry – similar to that used by the TSA to sniff out explosives and dangerous chemicals – but it’s been reconfigured to detect the subtle differences in large molecules.

“Proteomics has been slow to deliver biomarkers, in part, because protein conformation is lost in the discovery process,” founder Henry Benner said. “We intend to remedy this delay by commercializing technology that measures protein conformation rapidly and economically.”

Thus far, the company’s been operating on an SBIR grant and funds from friends and family.

E3X Bio

One of the many tricky enzyme classes in drug discovery are the E3 Ubiquitin ligases – a medically relevant set of proteins that have been rather inaccessible to high-throughput drug screening.

The current assays are cumbersome and complex – but this Bay Area startup says it’s streamlined screening to allow “a simplified, pragmatic drug discovery approach to identify first-in-class small molecules” that are specifically directed to these ligases.

Founder Lori Rafield says the company’s “convinced we’ve discovered a new paradigm for high-throughput screening.”

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