DxDiscovery is a small business spinoff company located on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno. Research and development is funded by highly competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense. DxDiscovery’s initial goal is to license technologies to partner companies who manufacture and distribute diagnostics. A long-term objective is in-house production of those products best suited for manufacture at the DxDiscovery site.
Our mission is to reduce the burden of infectious disease in both developed and resource-limited countries. Although the specific needs are very different in these two environments, many requirements for diagnostics are quite similar. Diagnostics should be affordable, give rapid results, and be usable at the point of patient care or need.
DxDiscovery targets development of diagnostics that will be disruptive for improvement of patient care. Current diagnostics are reactive to patient symptoms. DxDiscovery’s goal is to produce diagnostics that can be used early in the course of symptomatic disease or for proactive screening before the onset of symptoms. Early diagnosis leads to more effective treatment.
DxDiscovery builds tests based on the antigen-detection immunoassay platform. A familiar example of this test platform and approach is the at-home COVID-19 antigen test. This type of test detects molecules made by pathogenic microbes during disease. Detection of these microbial biomarkers tells the clinician that an active infection is present.
We apply this platform to diseases where i) there is no existing diagnostic, or ii) existing diagnostics are too slow, expensive, or inaccessible due to high infrastructure requirements. Infrastructure can take the form of needing expensive equipment, electricity, or specialized user expertise. Overall, DxDiscovery’s product development pipeline prioritizes diseases where clinicians require a point-of-care diagnosis (i.e. fast turn-around time, minimal infrastructure, and low cost).