ChromaCode Pioneering Advancements In Bioinformatics forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Well-known technology contest organizer XPRIZE named five winning teams in its $6 million Rapid COVID Testing competition on Tuesday and three of them are from San Diego County.
ChromaCode and Reliable-LFC, both of Carlsbad, joined the La Jolla Institute for Immunology as local winners in the challenge, which aimed to spark development of “radically affordable,” accurate COVID testing platforms with turnaround times of no more than 12 hours from sample to result.
Each winner is guaranteed $500,000. They will receive an additional $500,000 over the next few months if they hit milestones for mass-producing their COVID-19 tests.
Moreover, a $50 million venture capital fund called the COVID Apollo Project has pledged to work with XPRIZE Foundation and others to bring testing innovations to market. The fund includes seasoned life sciences investors such as RA Capital and Bain Capital.
MedCity News
Founders of molecular diagnostics company ChromaCode share ambitions for their business
ChromaCode deploys inexpensive reagent kits and software using traditional PCR detection systems so physicians can initiate testing using the most informative diagnostics without having to worry about access or cost.
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ChromaCodeCo-Founders Alex Dickinson, Executive Chairman, Aditya Rajagopal, CTO, and CEO Greg Gosch talk about the formation of their molecular testing startup.
Why did you start this company?
Alex: I had started several companies with Professor Axel Scherer of Caltech, and Illumina acquired our company, Helixis. While I was at Illumina, they were nice enough to let me continue to work on startups independently. One of the things I learned at Illumina was that there was a lot of power in the reagent business. This was new to me as Helixis was an instrument company. I was always interested in what was going on at Caltech, and Axel introduced me to Adity