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EverlyWell rolls out three new DNA-based products for food sensitivity, metabolism and breast milk
There’s a lot going on in commercial DNA testing these days beyond what eye color you have or where your mitochondria comes from, and at-home lab testing startup EverlyWell hopes to cash in. The startup launched three new products today, based on your DNA to help get it there, including a food sensitivity test, DNA factors for your metabolism and breast milk DHA. Read More
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Doggie DNA startup Embark raises $4.5 million in seed to find your puppy’s breed
Ever wanted to know the genetic mix of your mutt? Embark, a doggie DNA startup has raised $4.5 million in seed to expand its offering of genetic kits for your pup’s pedigree. Embark launched in Austin two years ago with its “Embark Dog DNA Test Kit” that tells dog owners their pet’s pedigree, where in the world their dog comes from and if they have a genetic variant for… Read More
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Google’s life sciences unit is releasing 20 million bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno
Verily, the life science’s arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has hatched a plan to release about 20 million lab-made, bacteria-infected mosquitoes upon Fresno, California — and that’s a good thing! Read More
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Researchers 3D print a soft artificial heart that works a lot like a real one
The science of prosthetics has been advancing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and research into soft robotics has been especially complementary. The same techniques that go into making a robot arm that flexes and turns like a real one can go into making more complex, subtle organs — like the heart, as Swiss researchers have demonstrated. Read More
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Gastric bypass surgery in a pill startup Allurion gets $27 million as it pursues FDA approval
Allurion, a Boston-based startup offering a non-invasive gastric balloon by swallowing a pill, has gained $27 million in Series C funding from previous investor Romulus Capital, with new participation from Cogepa Investments and IDO Investments, an innovation firm based in Oman. Read More
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MIT researchers used a $150 Microsoft Kinect to 3D scan a giant T. rex skull
MIT’s Camera Culture group has been able to successfully capture a high-resolution 3D scan of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull using about $150 worth of equipment and some free software. The skull, which belongs to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, was discovered in 1990 and is the largest and most complete T. rex skull yet found. Read More
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Mendel.ai nabs $2 million to match cancer patients with the latest clinical trials
Dr. Karim Galil was tired of losing patients to cancer. He was tired of messy medical records. And he was tired of trying to stay on top of all the clinical trials touting one solution or another. Losing patience and patients, Galil decided to create an organized and artificially intelligent system to match those under his care with the best diagnostic and treatment methods available. Read More
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9 promising at-home lab test startups for everything from fertility to STDs
It’s easier than ever to skip the doctor and go straight for the at-home test these days, thanks to updated regulations and the technology to match — and for many, it’s the answer to invasive and expensive hospital visits. A new army of startups has popped up in the last couple of years to offer you low-cost options for everything from breast cancer inheritance to HIV. Read More
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Nootrobox is now HVMN and will sell biohacking products beyond nootropics
If none of what’s in the above headline makes sense, you probably haven’t been following the biohacking trend for the last couple of years. But Silicon Valley is brimming with tech execs trying to become faster, stronger and smarter by “hacking” their genetic code through various experimental methods called biohacks. Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Watch a tiny virus take a constitutional under a laser-powered 3D microscope
If you’re anything like me, you spend a significant portion of the day wondering about the paths viruses take when they’re cruising around your internals. Luckily for us, a newly developed microscope from Duke researchers can show the exact path taken by the little critters (?), down to the micrometer. Read More
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Future Family wants to give women a more affordable option in fertility treatments
More women are having kids in their 30s than in their 20s. However, those closer to 40 than 30 face higher risks than their younger counterparts. Add to that 1 in every 8 couples in the U.S. have some type of fertility issue. More couples are looking at IVF and other fertility treatments. But those treatments can be costly. A new Bay Area startup, Future Family, hopes to change that. Read More
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This device will automatically enter how much you chew
Eating too much? A Dartmouth researcher thinks he may have a solution for all those who hate manually writing into an app all the foods they eat throughout the day — a wearable system that detects how much you chew and enters it for you. Read More
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China sides with Emmanulle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in CRISPR patent war
Continuing the patent dispute internationally, China has now given the Charpentier/Doudna side a patent to edit genes in the country. CRISPR pioneers Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna lost a patent case to the Broad Insititute earlier this year when the court determined the Broad Insititute had an application markedly different than Charpentier’s and Doudna’s overall patent. Read More
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No, Peter Thiel is not harvesting the blood of the young
Correction below Stories of countesses bathing in virgin blood, or vampiric nobles sucking the juice out of the young, have captured our attention for centuries. But when stories started coming out that tech billionaire Peter Thiel was interested in transfusing teen blood into his own body, it sent Silicon Valley into a fever dream. Peter Thiel, the vampire! Thiel has been alleged to have a… Read More
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Draper’s DragonflEye cyber-bug takes flight
Back in January we heard about Draper’s efforts to outfit a living dragonfly with a sort of solar-powered mind control backpack. This project, known as DragonflEye, is cruising right along, and the R&D firm just released a video of the modified insect taking flight. Read More
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Mary Meeker’s latest trends report highlights Silicon Valley’s role in the future of healthcare
Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends Report, out today, was full of insights on how tech is shaping our future — including now in healthcare. This was the first year Meeker included healthcare in her report and it shows just how much of a role tech is going to play in improving our lives going forward. Here are a few key insights from the report. Read More
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This coffee butter-chugging startup just pulled in $19 million more in funding
Dave Asprey, the man famous for encouraging Silicon Valley execs to put butter in his special blend of coffee, has raised another $19 million to keep on doing just that. His company and lifestyle brand Bulletproof 360 claims to make coffee free of something called mycotoxins, which is, basically, mold and can make you very ill if ingested. Asprey says about 75 percent of other brands are full… Read More
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Synthego’s genetic toolkit aims to make CRISPR more accessible
We hear a lot about the potential and implications of the gene-editing technique CRISPR, but it’s not like just anyone can open up an app, pick a gene they don’t like, and build the molecular machinery needed to snip it out. That’s the goal, though, and Synthego is one of the companies pursuing it by creating a sort of ready-made CRISPR sandbox to start new researchers off. Read More
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Scientists 3D-printed ovaries and made mouse babies
Scientists from Northwestern University have developed a bioprosthetic ovary using 3D-printing technology and produced living, breathing mouse offspring from them. Northwestern’s Feinberg school of medicine and McCormick school of engineering came together for the project using 3D-printing technology and follicles from prior ovarian tissue to form a scaffold that was then placed inside… Read More
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Apple’s Watch can detect an abnormal heart rhythm with 97% accuracy, UCSF study says
According to a study conducted through heartbeat measurement app Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco, the Apple Watch is 97 percent accurate in detecting the most common abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an AI-based algorithm. The study involved 6,158 participants recruited through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. Most of the participants in the UCSF Health… Read More
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