Page 6 August 11, 2016 EL SEGUNDO HERALD TerriAnn in Torrance Changing The World, A Drop at A Time By TerriAnn Ferren Have you ever had blood drawn at the doctor’s office or lab? I have. The thought of it nearly makes me weak. Technicians with sharp needles, looking for a ‘good’ vein makes for an anxious situation. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if blood tests only needed one drop of blood for testing? That dream is coming true. A few weeks ago, I met with Fasha Mahjoor, Chief Executive Officer of Neoteryx, a spin-off company of Phenomenex, at their home office in Torrance, California. The ultra-modern, relaxing, comforting atmosphere hits you the moment you enter the building - designed by Fasha. As with Fasha’s other company’s buildings, (Phenomenex), the working space inside this facility radiates elegance, fine art, respect for the employees, and a touch of fun. And because this company, Neoteryx, deals with wellness, Fasha wanted the building to reflect just that. One drop of blood for testing is beyond comprehension to me, but with Fasha’s use of a drop of blood etched on glass throughout the building, I am constantly reminded of what a breakthrough this concept really is. Touring through Neoteryx, Fasha showed me labs and said, “This is for product development to develop products that enables the scientists out there, or the customers that have to be able to collect the blood better, and analyze it better. We have to come up with new products depending upon demand of our customers.” As we made our way to the conference room, also designed by Fasha, his imprint was undeniable. Fine art on the conference table, walls, and furniture reflecting the theme of wellness, helping others, and a sense of calm surround you in this special room. I was then introduced to Kelvin Lin, Neoteryx Senior Business Development Manager – North America who showed me one of the devices used to collect the drop of blood from people. The container was purple, about three and a half inches tall, one inch wide, and one-half inch thick. The top part split open to reveal two absorbing sticks, similar looking to cotton swabs. With no training at all, I was handling a ‘blood gathering’ device. Kelvin said, “Remember the last time you went to the doctor and they had to draw blood? Painful experience. He takes a needle about this big – takes about 5 mls, and you think they are done – then they take more and more and more. And then after that, they have to put it [blood] into a refrigerator…then they have to send it into centrifuge and drive it in a truck to the lab. You prick your finger, you put this on, [Kelvin demonstrates taking the tips of the open device and touches the skin – as one would touch the blood] it takes the blood – the contact point is about 6 seconds per tip – you can’t draw more. It will take perfectly a precise amount of blood (20 microliters, appr. one drop) on each tip. It absorbs it - you close the device, (by the way it has serial numbers and tracking – this is your sample) put it into the package. And you know what you do next? You put it into the mailbox and you are done.” Wow. This sounds like something that would happen in the far away future but Neoteryx has made this a reality for today. After the blood has arrived at the lab, the results are then sent to you and your doctor - with that one drop of blood. “As long as you can take a drop of your blood with our device – you can be in the middle of Africa – put it into post where it can be sent to a lab and tested, at designated laboratories, and that’s it,” said Fasha. “I can tell you this is not hopes and dreams,” continued Kelvin, “We just got confirmation this morning of our fifth human clinical trial that this device is being deployed and in our short history that’s very fast. We are in 10 of the 10 major pharmaceutical companies, as well as major universities and medical centers around the world.” When a company comes up with this big of a ‘game changer’ they refer to it as a ‘disruptive technology’ because people wouldn’t be used to it. I was told usually it takes five years for a product to ‘gain traction’. All this technical talk began to make sense. Although the drawing of blood would be revolutionarily easy, it is obvious more labs are needed for testing, and less need for clinics where blood is currently drawn. The infrastructure must change. Think of cassette tapes, and the shift to CD’s and MP3’s. Or the VHS tapes we had before the change to DVD. A similar shift will occur. And although the change was better, more efficient, and made a whole lot more sense, it took time. The same is true for this. After talking with Kelvin Lin, I was even more excited about this blockbuster technique of gathering blood and testing that would free so many from looking for a lab every few weeks or months. This will forever change how blood is drawn. Fasha then told me the history of this amazing ‘game changer’. The concept came from one of Fasha’s British scientist colleagues in England. In a nutshell, this colleague observed that some pharmaceutical companies, in their research, when they needed to draw blood from small animals in their testing, such as mice, had a problem. Sometimes extracting the blood from very small animals proved extremely challenging. Fasha listened to his colleague’s ideas, initiated research and development at Phenomenex while collaborating with several USA and European pharmaceutical companies, within four years, developed this wonderful product. What followed, was interest from other big pharmaceutical companies who wanted to use the product. Ultimately, this will change the conventional way of taking blood. At this point, a new company, Neoteryx was born in 2014, owned by Fasha Mahjoor. “Although we developed this for ‘pharma’ use, we have learned it’s got far, far greater use, such as in time, all doctors could be using this instead of drawing 5 milliliters of blood, they can use this for not all their assays that they do, but for some of them. Obviously, we are continually developing product and finding things that it may be soon used instead of drawing tons of blood at doctors office for many of them – this could be done with a drop of blood, at home, instead of going to the doctor, or… of course sent to a licensed laboratory and they would send you the information and your doctor would be involved as well.” At this point, I thought of my daddy who has his blood drawn at a local lab every month, and how much easier it would be for him to prick his finger at home and send the blood into a lab for testing. Amazing. Next, I was introduced, by Fasha to Bert Rietveld, President of Neoteryx, who told me, “If you have a full time job, do you really want to go at 7 a.m. in the morning and sit in a waiting room, a week later, make an appointment with your doctor to hear the results when you can do it from the comfort of your home and get the results back?” I then asked when would this product be available? “Large organizations have already been testing it, have been proving to themselves that this works. The largest clinical labs in the world; Consultant and clinical chemistry fellows from the Mayo Clinic and other major medical centers in the US presented their work on this device at MSACL [Mass Spectrometry: Applications to the Clinical Lab] this year. Various ‘pharma’ companies have presented posters and lectures on how good this works,” said Bert. Thinking about uses for this simple device really excited me because of how easy it is to use. From taking blood in a hospital, to routine blood taking at an office, this device truly is game changing. Saving money in the health care business cannot be understated. Millions of weeks reduced in the hospital by a simple blood test done at home would save an astronomical amount of money. Imagine if you had to have your blood tested every month and you were on holiday, or if you lived somewhere, where there are no laboratories nearby for this type of analysis? How remarkable would this be for rural areas in this country? The opportunities are endless. “Big labs in the US have all the infrastructure, but shipping that blood – you can only work with patients within the United States. One big attraction with this is, you can now sample in Brazil, for example, and ship it to the United States... This brings high quality clinical analysis to places that today don’t have it,” added Bert. I learned blood needs to be shipped frozen, which is very expensive, and this testing device renders dry blood, which can be shipped via regular mail because it has been determined that dry blood isn’t a bio-hazard. What an absolutely wonderful device! I can’t see one downside to this product, other than the addition of more testing facilities. Finding how to analyze thousands of ‘sticks’ per day is the challenge. But Bert told me, “Next year we will see this in the marketplace.” Amazing. Science leaps forward every moment and companies such as Phenomenex, which fosters innovation, and creativity lead to spin-off companies like Neoteryx, which will change the way we live. And to think, all this takes place in Torrance! • Bert Rietveld, President of Neoteryx. Fasha Mahjoor, Chief Executive Officer of Neoteryx. Device used to collect blood. Conference Room in Neoteryx.
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