Nanomix Corp. (NNMX)

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Fighting for Our Lives
At the first signs that a pandemic would be radically disrupting our lives, some of the East Bay’s brightest minds got busy. From creating effective coronavirus tests to contributing to vaccine development, local thought leaders brought their A games to the fight against COVID-19.

RAPID RESULTS

When David Ludvigson’s mother moved into an assisted living facility, he asked about its COVID-19 testing process. Staff and residents’ samples were sent to a lab, he learned, with results coming back two or three days later.

“When you’re dealing with a critical infection, two to three days make for very difficult patient management,” says Ludvigson, CEO of Nanomix, a developer of mobile diagnostics in Emeryville. “We said, why wait two to three days? Why not wait 10 or 15 minutes? Then you know exactly what to do with that patient at that point.”

Nanomix has expertise developing quick, highly accurate diagnostic tests. In 2014, as Ebola spread in West Africa, Nanomix helped to develop a prototype system to identify Ebola via a 10-minute blood test. “We knew that our system would work well with highly contagious viruses,” Ludvigson says. “And we had some confidence that we could do rapid product development, ?because we had done it in the past.”

With a platform already in place, Nanomix?had a significant head start. It developed?a 10-minute blood test to detect the presence of antibodies in people who’ve ?recovered from COVID-19. It also developed a 15-minute nasal swab test for detecting the active virus in symptomatic people.

In both tests, the patient’s sample is put on a single-use cartridge, which is placed into a handheld reader. “You get an answer, positive or negative,” Ludvigson says. “And the person doing the test does not have to be a trained medical person.” So the technology?can be used nearly anywhere—in an ?ambulance, an assisted living facility, or ?your local pharmacy—with results being ?sent via Bluetooth to whoever needs them.

Recently, the company completed the FDA filing for its antigen test, which was named a finalist in the Xprize Rapid COVID Testing competition. “People were excited to work on potential products that could help,” Ludvigson says. “Now [we’ll be] shifting to the next challenge, which ?is producing and delivering a lot of product. The challenges don’t end.”

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