St. Louis Biotech Startup Raises Funds for Pathogen Detectors

Recall how long it took, in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, to screen yourself with the gold-standard method, the PCR test: You’d swab your nostrils, hand the swab to the person at the pharmacy or clinic, then wait while they sent it off to a lab for processing. Yes, the result was highly reliable, but it took days.  

The St. Louis biotech startup Varro Life Sciences has developed a biosensor that’s of comparable sensitivity but takes only 60 seconds to deliver results. And it can detect more than just the next coronavirus: The company estimates that within a few weeks of the emergence of any airborne virus, bacterium, or fungal pathogen—say, the latest flu or strep—the company will be able to make a biosensor that can recognize it. 

Imagine the uses. The ability to intervene, in real time, when a sick person is about to walk into a crowded plane, military base, school, or hospital. The ability for a pharmacist to screen an infected but asymptomatic person, who can then be given medicine before they even start feeling crummy. The ability, in the gravest scenarios, to know when to clear a building. Varro has pondered these uses and come up with two devices in which to deploy its sensor: an air-quality monitor, to be used in open spaces, and a kazoo-like breath test, which anyone could administer with little to no expertise.  But rather than dream up every other possible use, Varro will leave the dreaming to the rest of the world by making its three technologies open-source—a sort of philanthropic business model.