They Still Live in the Shadow of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes

Aug 24, 2021
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Girls at tech start-ups wrote to her thanking her for saying what they’d been feeling, Ms. Esponnette mentioned.

Lola Priego, 30, the founding father of Base, which gives at-home blood and saliva assessments which might be processed at conventional labs, hears a Theranos comparability at the least as soon as every week, she mentioned. The references come straight or not directly from potential companions, advisers, traders, clients and reporters, she mentioned.

She mentioned she understood the necessity for skepticism, since new well being care corporations ought to be checked out critically to forestall malpractice. Usually the comparisons stopped after individuals discovered that Base works with Quest Diagnostics, a multinational firm, for evaluation of its assessments.

“However the further bias and skepticism is difficult to beat,” Ms. Priego mentioned.

The largest blow got here from a scientific adviser whom Ms. Priego mentioned she had tried to recruit in 2019. The adviser took the assembly solely to inform her that bringing know-how into well being care was doing a disservice to the business, identical to Theranos. It precipitated Ms. Priego to query whether or not she may rent the caliber of advisers she had hoped for.

“It was fairly demoralizing,” she mentioned. She has since recruited six advisers.

In July, Verge Genomics struck a three-year partnership with the pharmaceutical big Eli Lilly to work on medication for the therapy of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., Ms. Zhang mentioned. The corporate additionally revealed a paper about its strategies in a scientific journal final yr and recruited a chief science officer this yr.

It was a aid to have one thing to point out to those that have been uncertain, Ms. Zhang mentioned.

“Essentially the most fragile a part of the corporate is the earliest stage, when you need to purchase into the individuals, the imaginative and prescient and the thought,” she mentioned. Reflecting on Ms. Holmes and Theranos, she added, “It’s the place most of these associations may be actually dangerous and curtail potential.”

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Supply- nytimes