[entee]

I heard from a friend who is fairly prominent in the microfluidics space (doing lab work with much smaller amounts of material than ordinarily required) that initially it was a drug delivery company. Delivering compounds in a reliable time released way is challenging and valuable, and I think their initial foray was in that direction. Apparently it didn't work well early on and they pivoted in this direction, so maybe the VCs were not expert in the space post pivot.

More likely I think they were also enamored with what looked like promising results. I've personally seen situations where technical due diligence on lab tech was poorly done and therefore wrong. Unless the VC has a fairly strong science background/scientific advisors in a related sector, it's super easy to make something look like it's working when it's actually totally busted.

[forgotpwagain]

Microfluidics is a sexy field. About ten years ago, it was nearing the peak of its first hype peak. This brought a lot of attention to the field and corresponded to the first time people started talking about precision medicine and "lifestyle" diagnostic tools.

Theranos was at the right time with a very intriguing idea, but one that was ultimately not a model for reality. They were able to get lots of capital at this time in preparation to develop a product that ultimately never materialized (and more fundamentally, may not be physically possible).

[mk1202]

There are a couple of companies doing the same thing. They seem legit, and are founded by PhDs and university research scientists. If you look at their websites, you will find details about their technology, publications in scientific journals, professional conference talks & awards, etc. But they are not well known or hyped as much as Theranos. Do you really think the technology is not physically possible?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/uvic-blood-te...

http://www.siscapa.com

http://www.genalyte.com

[forgotpwagain]

Oops, missed this comment. If anyone is reading still reading this...

To be honest, I don't know. I think it is possible to get a lot of information out of a single drop of blood. But there are issues with sampling--blood from the capillaries in my finger is very different from blood coming back from my intestine.

Maybe more fundamentally: a lot of "interesting" things are specific proteins. These can be at extremely low concentration--on the order of nanomolar all the way down to femtomolar. It's very difficult to amplify such a signal -- DNA is easy to amplify but proteins are not. At such low levels, the wrong drop of blood may have a dramatically different meaning, due to stochastic effects.