MedCity News Founders of molecular diagnostics company ChromaCode share ambitions for their business ChromaCode deploys inexpensive reagent kits and software using traditional PCR detection systems so physicians can initiate testing using the most informative diagnostics without having to worry about access or cost. Shares0
ChromaCodeCo-Founders Alex Dickinson, Executive Chairman, Aditya Rajagopal, CTO, and CEO Greg Gosch talk about the formation of their molecular testing startup. Why did you start this company? Alex: I had started several companies with Professor Axel Scherer of Caltech, and Illumina acquired our company, Helixis. While I was at Illumina, they were nice enough to let me continue to work on startups independently. One of the things I learned at Illumina was that there was a lot of power in the reagent business. This was new to me as Helixis was an instrument company. I was always interested in what was going on at Caltech, and Axel introduced me to Aditya, who was a student there. When Aditya and I got together to talk about his work, what jumped out to me was the additional levels of multiplexing that he could do with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reagents. I really liked the idea of putting together a company with Aditya and one focused on reagents. It seemed like an excellent path to build a reagent stream that could work on any PCR instrument.