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March 10, 2020

Rothberg working 'round the clock' on virus home test

IMAGE | PIXABAY.COM
By Natalie Missakian

Connecticut bioscience entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg is on the fast track to develop a low-cost home test for the COVID-19 coronavirus, New Haven BIZ has learned.

Rothberg, the serial entrepreneur and innovator behind next-generation, high-speed DNA sequencing and groundbreaking medical devices like a pocket-sized ultrasound wand and portable MRI machine, started brainstorming and crowdsourcing ideas for his coronavirus test on Twitter over the weekend.

He told New Haven BIZ on Monday that he and his team at Homodeus, one of seven startups housed in his Guilford-based life-sciences incubator 4Catalyzer, are now “working around the clock” to develop an instant home test that is based on the genetic code of the virus.

He added that the test will be as fast and easy to use as a home pregnancy test.

Homodeus’ work involves designing enzymes to do things normally done by machines. The company plans to leverage that expertise to create a coronavirus test that uses custom-designed enzymes to do the work of specialized lab technicians and equipment, Rothberg explained.

“So you can spit into a tube and get results. No lab. No technician. No expensive machines. No wait,” he told NHB. The idea is for patients to be able to get results in 20 minutes and then scan them into a smartphone to receive further help.

The test uses the same idea as the home pregnancy test, Rothberg said, but would not be based on antibodies.

“We don’t want to use antibodies for this coronavirus pandemic because antibodies happen after the initial viral attack and take days to come up in a person,” he said. “And we want you to know as soon as you get the virus. And also when the virus is gone and it’s safe to go out. Antibodies don’t tell you when you are no longer [contagious].”

Jonathan Rothberg / PHOTO | COURTESY 4CATALYZER

Rothberg hopes to dovetail on a project the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is spearheading in Seattle that involves mailing nasal swabs to people’s homes and having them send them back to a regular lab for testing. (The foundation is already a major investor in Butterfly Network, another Rothberg-founded startup, which launched a hand-held ultrasound device in 2018.)

“We are not yet working with Gates on this. But I’d love to do this with them,” said Rothberg, who tagged Gates in the Twitter thread. “So we can send people their standard test. That gets mailed back and read at a standard lab. And also send our instant home test. And compare the results.”

He said the company also plans to work with Yale and the University of Pennsylvania to test the kits to prove they are equivalent to the “gold standard” laboratory tests — a threshold the company would need to reach to obtain FDA clearance.

That’s the same testing model Rothberg used to gain regulatory clearance for his ultrasound and MRI devices. 

Rothberg, who lives in Guilford, is no stranger to the infectious disease space. He said his former company, Ion Torrent, used fast DNA sequencing to help with previous outbreaks, while machines from another company he launched and later sold, 454 Life Sciences, were used in a fictional outbreak in the 2011 science thriller Contagion, a film about a flu-like pandemic that originates in China.  

“So I’ve thought about this a lot,” said Rothberg, who was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama in 2015 for his pioneering work with those companies. “This time we’re helping with a low-cost at-home test.” 

Asked how soon he could produce the at-home testing kits, Rothberg said only that his team was “working around the clock to get [the product] to academics so they can test.” He said he is also in discussions with multiple manufacturers. 

In his Twitter thread, he acknowledged “all the issues with regulatory approvals I’ll face in many countries,” but said that he expects government regulators “will move with record speed.”

“This is a national emergency. This is a one in 100 year pandemic,” he said.  “To beat this, we need to test. And test a lot.”

Contact Natalie Missakian at news@newhavenbiz.com.

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