12.8.21-DemoDay-Peter-Antoinette

PETER ANTOINETTE: We're Xibus systems, founded by Professor Tim Swager of MIT. And we're a VC backed startup. We're over in Watertown in one of the incubators there outside of Boston with five employees. Our focus, which we'll talk about, is how to really get to the detecting pathogenic bacteria and foods faster. And this core technology was invented both in Professor Swager's lab, as well as Hadley Sikes, both of MIT and licensed from MIT.

So why do we care about food borne illnesses? I guess prior to COVID, food borne illnesses had a tremendous amount of attention. There's over 400,000 deaths, more than 100,000 deaths annually. A third are from children. Major amount of impact economically. On our lives, we've probably all had exposure to it. And as the WHO says, safe food supplies underpin sustainable development.

So what's the problem? I mean, finding out whether pathogens are in food takes one to two days. Well, when products are constantly degrading after harvesting, they're starting to spoil. And so products are shipped very often at risk. That puts a significant pressure on the supply chain. And the supply chain today still spends $8 billion a year on food pathogen testing. And despite all that, there's continuing recalls and massive waste. This past week, 150,000 pounds of food was recalled because of listeria contamination.

So what problem are we solving and how are we solving it? We are taking the bacterial specific molecules that are invented there at MIT and licensed by Xibus, and we're creating specific linkers. Those linkers are then conjugated to nano scale fluorescent beads that are proprietary to Xibus, and we create a functional reagent.

That is then turned into a system where you add these reagents to food samples. On your lower left is leafy greens that you'd buy for salad. The Xibus beads bind to the specific targeted pathogens that are also viable, the living ones. Labelled pathogens are captured, and then they're read. And using that fluorescence, we determine the pathogenic presence.

And on your right here, you can see you have listeria monocytogenes. This is the one where if you get it, that's a 20% fatality rate. And we can do these tasks in 12 hours or far less versus the one to two days. And you see the green dots there. Those are the Xibus beads bound to the living listeria. So why does that matter? Well you can ship tested foods, safely tested foods, much faster. That will improve public health, reduce food waste, and enhance sustainability.

We're in the initial commercialization phase. We've got three tests that are targeting the major big three on food contamination-- listeria, salmonella, E-coli. And we're bringing out reagents and prototype readers, which you see on the right there, into the marketplace for evaluation. So what does the marketplace care? Well, we're starting in the US.

There's a high concentration of where the processors are and where the grocers are. Europe and Japan will follow. We're looking for pull from the end of chain suppliers, because they want quality and safety, obviously, in the food market when we go to buy them. Push from the processors, because they want economic benefit of being able to get their product out faster with a higher level of safety.

We use the traditional media marketing that all would use, and our reagents will be the majority of revenue. And what we're looking for right now are engagements and interactions with the different levels of the supply chain for alpha testing.

Are there questions that need to come up here?

SPEAKER 1: Let's see. We have-- in your approach, would the last [? side ?] of analysis be before food sales? And who would do that or where?

PETER ANTOINETTE: Right now, foods are being analyzed by everywhere, from the processors to the distributors. And some of the larger grocers have their own labs. So it goes before it comes into the markets-- is where our initial penetration will be. There may be an opportunity to do something right on within the markets, but that won't be the first place we'll go. We'll go where the testing is being done. And we're taking tests. We're already doing them now for one to two days, down to a matter of just a little more than a shift where that will have the maximum economic benefit.

SPEAKER 1: And talking about that, could you expand a little bit on the cost?

PETER ANTOINETTE: Yeah. Right now costs of food testing runs-- the best tests are running in the $40 range, and we believe we can come in under that nicely and do something in a much faster turnaround time. So we'll be competitive with today's current costs.