4.4.23-Health-DxLab

HO-JUN SUK: Thank you, Katerina. And thank you for this opportunity to tell you about our company and our technology. My name is Ho-Jun. My co-founders and I all did our PhD work here at MIT. I, myself, got my PhD from the program called Health Sciences and Technology, or HST, here at MIT in 2019. And in 2020, my co-founders and I started a company called DxLab to bring rapid and accurate testing to wherever it is needed most.

We started this company because, as we have all seen, infectious diseases are just threatening us more than ever. We have seen more epidemics and pandemics emerging and re-emerging over the last two decades. And unfortunately, we're also seeing a lot of known but also unknown pathogens and infections spreading from animals to humans.

As a result, we see billions of illnesses and millions of deaths caused by infectious diseases worldwide. So we asked ourselves, how can we really manage these infectious diseases so that we don't have to worry about the threats that they pose? And the answer we found was to really detect these infections early so that we can limit their spread and manage them effectively.

But the follow on question was then, how do we achieve that? And our answer was to use a technology or build a testing technology that has four key features, namely being compact so that you can use the technology wherever it is needed most. It has to be fast so that you can get the critical results in a short time. But the results have to be accurate so that you can trust the results that you get. And also, it has to be multiplex capable so that you can test multiple samples for different targets.

Unfortunately, we see clear limitations with currently available testing solutions. On one end of the spectrum, I'm sure we're all now familiar with these point of care tests that you use at home. These are great because they're compact and fast, but they're also unfortunately relatively inaccurate and they are singleplex, meaning they can usually only test one sample and one target at a time.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have these lab based tests which are much more accurate and multiplex capable but they're super bulky and slow. That's why we came up with our technology that combines the best of both worlds. We do that by utilizing a proven and robust nucleic acid amplification based technology called loop-mediated isothermal amplification, or LAMP, which is essentially a simplified version of PCR that has similar or sometimes better accuracy than PCR to really achieve fast and accurate detection of our targets.

To really bring this LAMP out to the point of care, we also developed our unique point of care multiplex capable testing platform that we call the DxHub. And I have to mention that our technology that combines LAMP with DxHub has received the emergency use authorization from the FDA for use at the point of care.

The DxHub brings this small toaster size form factor to the point of care testing and it also brings this unique feature of providing a, what we call random access test space, that gives you the ability to test or process up to eight different tests either in a sequence, or staggered manner, or in parallel.

We really focused on developing our platform so that we can detect essentially virtually any DNA or RNA. And we have achieved that by really designing our LAMP assay to be able to provide robust amplification and detection of various DNA and RNA from different pathogens.

So, so far, we have been able to show that we can use our technology to provide rapid and accurate testing for COVID, which again, we received the emergency use authorization for from the FDA. We also showed that we can use this to really test influenza A and B, chlamydia and gonorrhea, but we are also very confident that we can use the same technology to test other respiratory infections, sexually transmitted infections, UTIs, GIs, and other human diagnostic applications. In addition, we think that we can have a great application in the field of food testing and animal testing.

Compared to the existing point of care molecular tests, we really bring the unique combination of small form factor with rapid speed and the ability to run multiple tests using a single testing platform, really increasing the testing throughput at the point of care.

We were able to see the impact that we can make with our system through our clinical trial that we have done at an urgent care location in Chelsea, Massachusetts and the emergency room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For COVID testing, we have been able to test more than 500 patients and we were able to show that we were able to reduce the typical test time to result from 12 to 24 hours to 10 to 25 minutes using our platform.

Here, we're really right now, looking for different opportunities from MIT ILP members. We're first looking for co-development opportunities in the field of human diagnostic testing, but also in the food safety testing and animal testing fields. But also, we're looking for distribution and sales partnerships, both for the US and other countries.

We currently have ongoing conversations with different potential customers and users, but we would love to get help to really expand our conversations to be able to reach additional customers. So again, my name is Ho-Jun. We have an exhibit table right next door. I actually have our device there for you to see, so please drop by our location and ask me any questions. Thank you.