Talis Expands Executive Team and Closes Additional Financing in Preparation for Commercial Launch of Talis One™ System

MENLO PARK, Calif., Nov. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Talis Biomedical Corporation, a company dedicated to developing innovative molecular diagnostic tests for infectious diseases at the point of care, today announced it has strengthened its executive management team with the appointment of Rob Kelley as its first Chief Commercial Officer and Douglas Liu as Senior Vice President, Operations. Additionally, it has closed a new $126 million financing to support expansion of its operations and the commercial scale-up of the Talis One™ System and further expand the test menu. The Talis One System is a sample-to-answer, cloud-enabled, molecular diagnostic platform designed to provide rapid and highly accurate point-of-care tests for the detection of infectious diseases, including COVID-19.

"The diversity of experience and proven leadership that Rob and Douglas bring to Talis will be invaluable as we gear up to potentially commercialize our COVID-19 molecular diagnostic assay for the Talis One platform in the United States," said Brian Coe, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Talis. "I'm proud of the strong leadership team and investor base we're building to support our goal of empowering healthcare professionals to make patient care decisions at the point-of-care by providing them with fast, highly accurate and convenient diagnostic testing."

Mr. Kelley brings to Talis more than two decades of sales and commercial leadership experience. In this newly created role, he will be responsible for commercial operations and will oversee the potential commercial launch of the Talis One System, initially for COVID-19 and subsequently for other infectious diseases. Prior to joining Talis, Mr. Kelley was Vice President of Sales and Commercial Development at Genalyte, where he was responsible for commercialization of the company's diagnostic testing products, systems and services. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Marketing at the diagnostics company Trovagene, where he oversaw marketing activities and was involved in business development and strategic planning. Mr. Kelley joined Trovagene from Illumina, where he was Director, Market Development, NEST (New, Emerging, Strategic and Transformative Markets), and prior to that was the Global Sales Manager for the Translational Genomics business unit where he launched the first clinically oriented, next-generation sequencing products and expanded the global sales team. Earlier in his career, he held positions in the sales organizations at Siemens Healthcare, Biosite and Merck, and was a Global Product Manager for Guidant. Mr. Kelley earned a B.S. in biology from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Mr. Liu brings to Talis in-depth experience in operations, strategic planning and R&D in molecular diagnostics. In this role, he will be responsible for global operations and manufacturing. Prior to joining Talis, Mr. Liu served as Senior Vice President of Global Operations at QIAGEN, where he was responsible for formulating and implementing the company's strategy as a member of the Executive Committee. In that position, he oversaw manufacturing, quality assurance/quality control, supply chain, planning, purchasing, customer care, technical support, engineering, program management and facilities. He successfully integrated 15 companies into QIAGEN and supported the company's growth while improving quality, customer satisfaction and compliance. Prior to QIAGEN, Mr. Liu had positions of increasing responsibility at Bayer Healthcare, Chiron and Abbott Labs. He also was Chair of BioHealth Innovation, a regional innovation intermediary focused on developing the life science industry in Maryland, as well as the co-chair of the Maryland Life Science Advisory Committee. Mr. Liu earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. with honors from Boston University.

Talis intends to use the proceeds of the financing for commercial and operational scale-up, to support the launch of the Talis One System and COVID-19 test, and to continue development of additional tests for respiratory infections, infections impacting women's health, and sexually transmitted infections. J.P. Morgan served as sole placement agent for the financing.

About the Talis One System
The Talis One System is a compact, sample-to-answer, cloud-enabled, molecular diagnostic platform that, if authorized for marketing, could be rapidly deployed to distributed diagnostic settings in the United States and around the world to diagnose infectious diseases at the point-of-care. The Talis One assays are based on a proprietary, highly optimized nucleic acid isothermal amplification chemistry to achieve exceptional test performance much faster than traditional PCR. The system is designed for use in non-laboratory settings, such as physicians' offices, hospital emergency departments, urgent care clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, elder care/assisted living facilities, and cancer treatment and dialysis centers.

COVID-19 is the first infectious disease that the Talis One System will support. Future infectious disease indications may include assays for other respiratory infections, such as influenza, as well as sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and other infections impacting women's health. The Talis One instrument, currently in development, is designed to be managed remotely and to send test results to a cloud database for secure transmission, storage and review. Results are available in approximately 30 minutes.

About Talis
Talis is dedicated to transforming diagnostic testing by developing and commercializing innovative products that are designed to enable accurate, low cost and rapid molecular testing for infectious diseases at the point-of-care. The company is developing the Talis One™ System, a compact, sample-to-answer, cloud-enabled, molecular diagnostic platform. Talis is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more information, please visit talis.bio.  

SOURCE Talis Biomedical Corporation

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