Dr. Anita Goel has developed new point-of-care diagnostic technology that provides fast results, and can be used in rapid diagnosis of cancer and infections.
Dr. Anton Titov, MD. How can people use Gene-RADAR technology? Dr. Anita Goel, MD. We have just received our first FDA approval for Zika virus tests on the Gene-RADAR platform. In the last mosquito season in Miami pregnant women were waiting anywhere from one to five weeks to get an answer whether they have Zika virus infection. Because they had to take their blood samples. We ship it to a centralized CDC-approved state testing lab. They wait that much time. There was some backlog in the running of the samples until they could find out whether they had Zika or not. Dr. Anita Goel, MD. Now, if you're pregnant and you're trying to make a decision about the pregnancy, that could be a very long period of time to be waiting. With Gene-RADAR, first generation system that we have just received our FDA approval. It enables you to run the diagnostic test in about an hour. Our longer-term vision is this. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You would be able to do this kind of infection testing in real time, out in the clinic. Our first system is designed to work in a CLIA lab or in a hospital's CLIA lab. But eventually the vision is to bring this out to the doctor's offices, to people's homes, to rural remote villages in the developing world. So we are taking the ability of diagnosing disease outside of a centralized lab and an infrastructure. We are bringing it out into a mobile device that can fit in the palm of your hand. Dr. Anita Goel, MD. Our device can be used in a decentralized setting, doctors offices, people's homes, rural villages. So you can have information about your own health on demand. The traditional kind of testing for these infectious diseases can cost a few hundred dollars per test. It can take a few weeks sometimes by the time you send your samples in and you get your results back. With our kind of diagnostic test we are eventually trying to make it very affordable.