#11 - Turning the lab into a wearable platform - Esmeralda Megally - Xsensio

Impulse - Meeting Healthcare Pioneers

Miniaturizing the lab to allow for the continuous analysis of proteins and hormones circulating in our body through a wearable.

This is the aim of Xsensio - a Swiss startup developing the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform - which will enable in the future to continuously track compounds present in the interstitial fluid, right underneath our skin.

It is in essence a similar concept as the established continuous glucose measurement devices (which are nowadays moving from pure medical applications to consumer-oriented wellness programs), the difference being the type of biomarkers that the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform will enable to monitor - proteins and hormones on-body, continuously and in real-time - opening applications ranging from cardiology to oncology, in the hospital setting or at home.

Esmeralda Megally (CEO of the company) shares with us her vision around personalized medicine and which role the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform will play in this regard. With passion, she explains us the concepts behind the functioning of this surprising technology, what it takes to bring it to the market, and reveals the potential synergies that it may have in the future with the current wearables that are already part of our daily living.

Timeline:

• 02:20 - Esmeralda’s background and how it led to the creation of Xsensio
• 09:14 - The unmet need that Xsensio is addressing with its Lab-on-Skin(c) platform
• 13:51 - The applications where the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform will play a role
• 17:28 - The functioning of the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform and its components
• 22:50 - What lies ahead of Xsensio before making its first product commercialized
• 28:09 - Combining the Lab-on-Skin(c) platform with traditional wearables data
• 29:57 - Defining a medical product development roadmap in an emerging field and how to deal with accompanying uncertainty

What we also talked about with Esmeralda:

• Fitbit
• Apple Watch
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Lab for Youth Mental Health
• NANOLAB
• Veri
• Supersapiens
• C-reactive protein
• Troponin T
• Mayo Clinic
• Rea Diagnostics

We cited with Esmeralda some of the past episodes from the series:

• #4 - Fighting sepsis with nanoengineered beads to filter the blood - Lukas Langenegger - Hemotune

If you want to know more about Xsensio, we invite you to consult their website and follow their activities on LinkedIn or Twitter.

As mentioned by Esmeralda in the episode, have a read at this paper from Nature Biotechnology if you want to know more about the field of biosensing.

You can get in touch with Esmeralda through LinkedIn or by email: [e-mail]

If you want to give me feedback on the episode, ask questions or suggest potential guests, feel free to do so through LinkedIn or by email: [e-mail]

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