VDP-82 [Assessment]: Siphox Health: at-home blood-based diagnostics

TLDR: Siphox 5’s tagline captures it: “Better health by measuring more”.

Problem: Our understanding of blood biomarkers and their relevance to disease has greatly increased over the last decade. Detailed tracking of these biomarkers is instrumental to longevity, but cumbersome with current technology which is limited to infrequent blood draws at a lab or unreliable at-home tests.

Innovation at the hardware level is required to equip consumers with usable biomarker data to tighten the feedback loop for therapy.

Solution: SiPhox miniaturizes the phlebotomy lab to bring accessible, frequent, and cheap blood testing for key biomarkers into consumers’ homes, paving the way for tightly integrated personalised therapies with measurable effects on healthspan.

Problem Details:

42% of US adults are obese; 33% have metabolic syndrome. 30% of Americans use a wearable health device, yet lack actionable, frequent biomarker data (with the exception of glucose monitoring via CGMs) Evaluating hormones, inflammation, metabolic health requires costly & slow clinical visits and vials of blood. Infrequent draws means biomarkers cannot be deeply understood or used to evaluate lifestyle changes. At-home dried blood testing (via mail) is possible but requires significant quantities of blood; tests are unreliable Miniaturizing hardware for frequent, convenient, cheap, low-volume at home testing is necessary

Solution details: Current offering: Mail in blood. 17 blood biomarkers to measure inflammation, hormones, and metabolic + cardiovascular health. Cortisol, DHEA-S, Testosterone, Folate, hsCRP, HCY, Ferritin, Vitamin D, HBA1C, Insulin, Triglyceride, HDL ratio LDL Cholesterol HDL, Cholesterol, APOA1, APOB. Measurement via fingerprick (8 drops). Results in 3-5 days. Starting at $95/test. Additional pricing details are available on their website.

Coming soon (protoyping and testing): At home reader where users receive results within minutes. Reusable reader with inexpensive ($5) disposable cartridges. ~5 microleters of blood required (typical drop of blood is ~35 microliters) Arm blood collection - no blood handling necessary. Engineering units 3rd party validated in a study via Boston heart Diagnostics and Wyss Institute researcher.

Longer term (roadmap): Wearable subdermal continuous protein monitor. Would make 5-10 biomarker measurements every 15 minutes, with a 14-day sensor (similar to CGMs).

28 biomarkers in pipeline. Indicative first product: hsCRP inflammation test. CRP is an inflammation marker that predicts heart attack, stroke, coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, sudden cardiac death. Siphox has completed an external hsCRP validation study in line with FDA reqs, beta testing in Q12023, FDA submission 2024

Currently the product offering is designed for monthly testing, but the vision is for daily testing and eventually real time protein monitoring via a subdermal implant.

Relevance to longevity

• Siphox is doing fundamental R&D to reduce the cost of blood assays, through silicon photonics. This contrasts with popular testing companies like Everlywell etc that use commodity, off the shelf hardware and are primarily marketing-based.

• Siphox increases the frequency and reduces the cost and frictions involved in obtaining vital biomarker data. Frequent data enables the following: -- Quantitatively assessing impact of pharmacological longevity interventions -- Evaluating physiological response to dietary, lifestyle, and fitness interventions with high fidelity (Siphox’s beta platform already allows for correlating data against other wearables)

• Siphox allows users to detect biomarker abnormalities proactively, rather than reactively after symptoms emerge (and a Dr’s visit), leading to better health outcomes -- For instance, one Siphox user had high Ferritin levels investigated, and found they had hereditary hemochromatosis - enabling them to treat it early before symptoms developed -- Biomarkers are often out of range long before a chronic disease becomes symptomatic. Frequent biomarker analysis allows for early detection and lifestyle or clinical intervention.

• More frequent testing enables better measurement for essential biomarkers that exhibit seasonality. Routine testing allows users to eliminate this source of noise and have more confidence in their biomarker data -- For instance, cholesterol fluctuates on a seasonal basis and due to changes in metabolism, as well as physical activity. Go to market:

B2C: Currently how the product is distributed. Membership model so users only pay for kits they use.

Pros:

• Synergistic with most longevity therapeutics companies because they need to track biomarkers to see changes. Also, Siphox has a captive audience of test takers that are more likely to be open to joining experiments/trials.
• Ready-to-go opportunity enabling VitaDAO to demonstrate success earlier than more early-stage projects.
• Proven chips team with success in miniaturization in various domains, and prior multi-$B exits
• Protective patent portfolio. 22 patents and provisional patents pending in areas ranging from silicon photonics to bioassays to software and wearables.
• Integrations with popular wearables: Apple, AccuCheck, Oura, etc to make correlations with Siphox data and evaluate impact of lifestyle, diet, fitness on biomarkers
• Enterprise plan to complement consumer plan. Enterprise plan allows using Siphox infrastructure (tests and shipping logistics) while allowing one to showcase their own brand.
• If they can get FDA approval for at-home blood assay for any of their biomarkers, revenue opportunities are colossal. The only other FDA-approved embedded blood testing device is the continuous glucose monitor - and that’s a $6b/year market.
• Competitive positioning -- Vs mail-in testing companies by having own equipment -- Vs biomarker analytics firms because those require clinical phlebotomy visits -- Vs standard clinical visits because those are infrequent and generally require insurance and cumbersome scheduling, hospital visits
• VitaDAO could potentially leverage Siphox’s growing customer base to incentivize $VITA token adoption by incorporating it in Siphox’s customer acquisition/sales.

Cons:

• Series A is later than VitaDAO typically evaluates projects.
• Unclear cost-to-benefit ratio for younger/healthy people who don’t need to check their blood more frequently.
• Digital phenotypes like HRV and images being pioneered by other companies are potentially more scalable and more predictive than the molecular solutions Siphox is offering.

Company: Founded in Boston 2020, raised $10m to date (primarily went into chip R&D)

Team: World class chip & healthtech team with multiple exits. Team boasts a strong track record of miniaturization.

Diedrik Vermeulen PHD, CEO/Cofounder

• Pioneer in silicon photonics (Acacia Comms, acq.)

• Research scientist at MIT, 20 patents, >100 papers

Michael Dubrovsky, CPO/Cofounder

• Materials chemist known for silicon photonics (21 patents)

• Cofounder and Director of R&D at Simply Grid (acquired)

Gavin Chen PHD, Lead Process Scientist

• Led surface chemistry at QuantumSI (protein sequencing) for 7 years

Alex Vinitsky PHD, Lead Assay Development

• 20 years experience in protein biochemistry & assay development

• Founded Affina Biotechnologies & ARVYS Proteins

Kyle Preston PHD, Photonics Design Lead

• 16 yrs experience in silicon photonics for medical applications

• Led systems integration at QuantumSI

Sarat Gunduvarapu PHD, Lead Photonics and Electronics

Pavel Korecky MD, Lead of Product Operations

Lauren Weiniger MBA, CMO

Prior exit in healthtech (Safely)

Three years of R&D into photonic chips.

Development: 6 PHDs on core team, one MD, 20 full time staff.

Team prior exits:

• Acacia Comms, $4.5b IPO

• QuantumSI, $1.5b IPO

• SimplyGrid, acq. MOVE

• Caliopa, acq. Huawei

• Safely App, acq. Mayo Clinic

Fundraising details

The Series A is being led by Khosla Ventures & (redacted). Additional investors include YCombinator, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Buchheit, Jared Friedman, Metaplanet, R2, Ilya Volodarsky, Calvin French.

Opportunity: Well-known crypto investor, Nic Carter 3, is offering equity allocations in his SPV, Starling SPV.

Poll result: 16 out of 24 (67%) agreed that Siphox was a good opportunity. 7/24 (29%) disagreed and 1/24 (4%) requested more information.

Potential Siphox-VitaDAO partnership

We’d also like to determine the interest in partnering with Siphox to increase the utility of the $VITA token while getting people healthier by using Siphox’s testing. Should VitaDAO pursue a partnership with Siphox?

Poll result: 17 out of 24 (71%) agreed that partnering with Siphox would be a good opportunity. 5/24 (21%) disagreed and 2/24 (8%) requested more information.

Shephard: Tim Peterson

Senior reviewers: neuroscientist/investor, data scientist/investor, diagnostic company CEO, drug discovery PhD scientist. Average senior review scoring was 3.5 from four reviews.

Senior reviewer highlights:

Pros:

• Experienced team with multiple exits

• Test comprehensive biomarker panels across a range of indications

• More testing means detecting disease earlier in asymptomatic customers

• Provided a manuscript with data to back up their claims and describe their pipeline in detail.

Cons:

• Lab-on-chip is a crowded market with ~100 startups that have similar pitches. The key question would be what make Siphox stand out against other startups. There is very little talking about competitors in Siphox’s materials.

• High valuation - upside maybe limited

• Blood biomarker variability will naturally be increased by small sample size and interstitial fluid

• Only showed data for a single analytical validation experiment (despite bragging over 15+ biomarket tests)