Varro Holdings – an emerging leader in products that disrupt the transmission of infectious disease – announced it has entered into an agreement with Vitalik Buterin to receive 20 million USDC (equal to $20 million) in non-dilutive financial support for developing its novel pathogen detection technology, and to make the technology available via open source. The funding will be provided via Buterin’s scientific finance and direct donation initiative Kanro.
Varro is commercializing breath-based diagnostic devices, indoor air quality monitors, and micro-immunoelectrode biosensors (MIEs) detecting pathogens in seconds in a variety of settings. And the initial target users of the technology include senior living centers, primary care clinics, medical facilities, offices, government and military facilities, and schools.
The company is committed in demonstrating the advantages of the open-source business model in biotech and diagnostics. Toward that end, the company is establishing an open-source community around the technology.
The MIE platform is exclusively licensed from Washington University in St. Louis, where it was created as a collaborative effort between John Cirrito, PhD, a professor of neurology, and Carla Yuede, PhD, a professor of psychiatry, both at the School of Medicine, and Rajan Chakrabarty, PhD at the university’s McKelvey School of Engineering. The National Institutes of Health, through its RADx program, and FluLab, a private foundation, have also provided grants and support.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our tech platform is unique for its ability to detect very low amounts of virus and other pathogens quickly, effectively, and at low cost. Our partnership with Kanro and our open-sourcing of the technology has the potential to transform global public health by changing the face of infectious disease management and enabling innovation. We are proud to share Vitalik’s vision of decentralized healthcare and pandemic preparedness.”
– Tom Cirrito, PhD, Chairman and CEO of Varro
“I’m pleased to support a free and open-source hardware (FOSH) business that will both develop crucial tools for preventing the next pandemic, as well as pioneer a new paradigm of free and open-source hardware development that can enable widely distributed access to tools for personal health and beyond. A d/acc future is one where everyone can verify that the air they breathe is clean and free from airborne pathogens.”
– Vitalik Buterin
