5.10.23-Ecosystem-DxLab

HO-JUN SUK: Thank you for this opportunity to speak here today. My name is Ho-Jun. I am one of the cofounders and the CEO of a company called DxLab, where we're working to bring rapid and accurate testing to wherever it is needed most. Myself and my cofounders are all associated with MIT, either through PhD work or post-doc work, but for myself, essentially, I did my PhD here at MIT through a program called Health Sciences and Technology and got my PhD in 2019. And I started a company with my cofounders, who I found in my PhD lab, in 2020.

Myself and my co-founders, we got together to work on this company because we saw how infectious diseases and infections are just threatening everyone in the world. We're seeing, over the last two decades, more and more pandemics and epidemics emerging and re-emerging. And also, unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of different pathogens and viruses and bacteria jumping the species line, infecting people from animals, and causing a lot of illnesses, and that's around the world every year. So we asked ourselves, how can we address this issue with infectious diseases? And our answer was to detect these infections early so that we can manage their spread.

But then the follow-on question was, how do we achieve that? And our answer was to use a testing technology that is compact so that it can be used anywhere where there is a need. It has to be-- it has to be fast so that you can get the results in a timely manner, but also, the fast result has to be accurate so that the results can be trusted. But also, it has to be multiplex capable, meaning you have to be able to process multiple samples for multiple targets.

Unfortunately, the current existing testing methods and solutions out there have clear limitations. On one end of the spectrum, I think we're now all familiar with these at-home tests and point-of-care tests that are great because they're compact and fast. But at the same time, they are relatively insensitive, and also, they're usually singleplex, meaning they can only process one sample for one target. On the other end of the spectrum, we have these lab-based PCR tests, which are much more accurate and multiplex capable, but they're also much more bulky and slow.

So our idea was to really bring or develop a platform technology that can combine the best of both worlds, and I believe we have achieved that by utilizing a robust and proven chemistry technology called loop-mediated isothermal amplification, or LAMP, which is essentially a simpler and faster version of PCR that gets you the same level of accuracy as PCR but much faster than PCR. And on top of that, we have developed a toaster-sized point-of-care multiplex testing platform that we call the DxHub-- which is, again, the size of a small toaster-- that can be used anywhere where there's a need.

As mentioned, we have been able to receive the emergency-use authorization for this platform from the FDA last year, and one of the key features, other than being a small-sized instrument, is the fact that we have added on what we call the random-access testing base, or random-access testing feature, which allows you to process up to eight samples, or run up to eight tests, in a truly random-access manner, which makes our testing platform one of the most flexible point-of-care testing platforms that are available. And also, utilizing the LAMP technology, just like PCR, LAMP, in theory, virtually can be used to detect any DNA or RNA as your target, meaning you can use our system to detect various pathogens that are of interest.

So for example, we have been able to apply our technology for COVID-19 testing, as I mentioned before, and got the FDA clearance for-- under the EUA. But we have also utilized our technology to be able to detect flu A/B and other bacterial targets such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, which are the top two bacterial pathogens for STI. But we can also utilize our technology for other human diagnostic testing indications ranging from respiratory infections all the way to STI and GI infections, but we're also very excited to apply our technology in other use cases ranging from food safety testing to animal testing as well.

This is a quick summary slide as to how we compare with other currently existing solutions that are out there, but essentially, we are the only platform that combines the small size, rapid speed, but also the random-access testing modules that really increases the testing throughput utilizing a single system. Just to quickly talk about our use case, we have worked with a urgent care in Massachusetts and also an emergency room in Massachusetts, to show how we can reduce the time to result utilizing our system for COVID testing. So we have tested more than 500 patients as part of this study, and we have been able to show that we could reduce the time to result from 12 to 24 hours to 10 to 25 minutes utilizing our system.

So I'm here today to look for different codevelopment and strategic partnership opportunities, especially centering around the human diagnostic testing applications, but also, as I mentioned, food safety testing and animal testing would be great discussion points that I would love to talk to you about. But also, we're looking for different distribution and sales partnership opportunities here for both the US and around the world. We have some ongoing conversations with different potential end users, but we'd love to work with some other distribution partners who can help us get more conversations going. So this is my contact information. But also, as mentioned, we have the toaster instrument right next door at our exhibit table, so please come by our table and play with the toaster. Thank you.