BIOTECH: Blood, Sweat and Tears

Nine years in the making, Truvian's quick tabletop blood test promises to deliver where Theranos famously couldn't

- ALEXIS KAYSER

IN SEPTEMBER 2015, DR. DENA MARRINUCCI set out to perfect a tabletop device that could rapidly test a small amount of blood, returning results in under 30 minutes. If the concept sounds familiar, that's because it is. She wasn't the only one with ambitions to transform the laboratory industry.

The month after Marrinucci co-founded Truvian, The Wall Street Journal published an expose accusing Theranos-Truvian's now infamous, defunct competitor of misrepresenting the accuracy and reliability of its own blood-testing technology, while deceiving doctors, patients and investors. At the time, Theranos was valued at $9 billion.

The Journal's investigation set off a domino effect. Theranos lost its license and last summer its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, began an 11-year prison sentence.

When Truvian launched in 2015, Marrinucci had six months of seed money from venture capiby tal firm Domain Associates and plans to raise a larger round quickly. But after the Theranos debacle, Truvian needed more than proof of concept. It needed proof of candor.

"We recruited some of the naysayers of Theranos, very high-profile opinion leaders in the laboratory medicine space," Marrinucci told Newsweek. "We said, let's bring them onto our team and learn from them and understand their skepticism, and have them help us review data from the very onset of the company." It took two years for Truvian to close its Series A funding round and begin refining its tabletop laboratory device. About six years and eight months later, I was rolling up my sleeve to test it out myself.

My Rapid Blood Test

I first met Marrinucci and Jay Srinivasan, Truvian's CEO, on September 6, 2024. They'd set up shop in a Chicago suite belonging to DNS Capital, one of Truvian's investors.

The FDA hadn't (and still hasn't) approved the company's platform, so I had to enroll in a "pilot study" before using it.