iXpressGenes
There are 4 kinds of Biotech companies1:
A lot of the things claiming to be diagnostics, end up being research tools. A lot of the others are better in a way nobody really cares about and fail5.
Some don’t work at all.
Others end up being novel and interesting! Which camp does today’s company iXpressGenes fall into!
iXpressGenes is developing “RT-qPCR RNA Gene Expression Panel for Inflammation & Neuroinflammation”. Technically this doesn’t sound very challenging. There doesn’t seem to be any novel technology in the readout. But a solid RNA based readout for inflammation
iXpressGenes couldn’t have a more shocking origin story:
“In 2010, the founder of iXpressGenes, Dr. Joe Ng—a molecular biologist and professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville—was in a routine faculty meeting. Tragedy struck when a colleague pulled a handgun from her handbag and murdered three people in front of him. Joe fortunately survived but in the aftermath, he witnessed a haunting spectrum of resilience among his colleagues.”
The event in question appears to be the 2010 University of Alabama shooting. The CEOs testimony to congress expands on trauma to PTSD and suggested they provide an objective measure:
“PTSD and trauma-related illness have long been treated based on symptoms and subjective reports. But now, with RNA transcriptome analysis, we can assess it objectively—offering a novel approach for diagnosing, treating, and even preventing trauma-induced disease.”
This makes me a little skeptical. Being objective is a great quality for a metric. But it seems more important that it accurately measures underlying trauma.