Talis Awarded NIH RADx Contract to Launch Talis One™ System for Point-of-Care COVID-19 Testing and Further Strengthens Financial Position and Leadership Team
- Company awarded $25 million in NIH RADx contract and secures $100 million new financing
- Industry leaders appointed to executive team, Board of Directors and Scientific Advisory Board
Jul 31, 2020, 14:11 ET
MENLO PARK, Calif., July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Talis Biomedical Corporation, a company dedicated to developing high-performance point-of-care diagnostic tests for infectious diseases, today announced that it has secured a $25 million contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for Phase 2 of its Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative. Additionally, the company has completed an additional financing of $100 million. This new funding will be used to scale manufacturing for the launch of the Talis One™ diagnostic platform, which provides rapid and highly accurate detection of COVID-19 at the point-of-care.
The company also announced that industry veteran Roger Moody has joined the management team as Chief Financial Officer, Kim Popovits has joined the Board of Directors, and Walter Koch, Ph.D., has joined the Scientific Advisory Board.
"This is an exciting milestone," said Bruce Tromberg, Ph.D., Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and leader of RADx Tech, one of four components of the NIH RADx initiative. "It will help increase U.S. testing capacity exponentially. Game-changing technologies emerging from our RADx pipeline will inform public health measures to stop the spread of the virus and leave us better equipped to address future pathogens and other diseases."
"We are extremely proud that the NIH selected Talis, out of a field of 600 applicants, to be among the first teams to move to the final phase of the RADx initiative. This important funding will accelerate the commercialization of our Talis One System for the detection of COVID-19. Additionally, we are pleased to have the continued support of our investors, who share our excitement about the significant impact the Talis One System can deliver as a fast and reliable diagnostic testing platform for life-threatening and life-altering infectious diseases," said Brian Coe, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Talis.
"In response to the significant need for rapid, highly accurate testing solutions to help combat the pandemic, we were able to utilize our Talis One System, which we have been developing for clinical use in women's health, to quickly develop an assay for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. We are particularly focused on serving vulnerable populations, such as those in elder care facilities or patients with impaired immune systems. With the support of the NIH RADx program and proceeds from the new financing, we are confident that we will be able to accelerate our goal of making rapid diagnostic testing widely available," added Coe.
The Talis One COVID-19 assay project is supported by the RADx program and has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. 75N92020C00010.
New Management Team, Board and SAB Members
Roger Moody, Talis' new Chief Financial Officer, is an accomplished finance executive with a wealth of experience in finance operations. Before joining Talis, he was Chief Financial Officer at Clinical Genomics, a colorectal cancer diagnostics company. He also held Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer roles at Glysure Limited, a UK-based company specializing in continuous glucose monitoring, and Chief Financial Officer and other executive positions at Nanosphere, Inc. and Medsn, Inc. He earned a B.S. in finance from Syracuse University and an M.B.A. with a focus in finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Kim Popovits, a new member of Talis' Board of Directors, is the former Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Genomic Health. Under her leadership, Genomic Health became the world's leading provider of genomic-based diagnostic tests that optimized the treatment of cancer, resulting in an acquisition by Exact Sciences in November 2019. Prior to joining Genomic Health, Ms. Popovits held several management roles at Genentech where she led the commercialization of 14 new therapies. In addition to Talis, she serves on the boards of 10X Genomics, Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. and MyoKardia, Inc. She earned a B.A. in business from Michigan State University.
"I was attracted to Talis because of the potential of the Talis One System to make a significant impact on the diagnosis and management of patients with serious infectious diseases, its world-class science and technology, and its experienced management team," said Popovits. "By enabling fast, highly accurate and convenient molecular diagnostic results at the point-of-care, rather than days later from a central lab, Talis is well positioned to help people get the answers they need to make urgent, time-critical decisions during this pandemic and beyond."
Dr. Walter Koch, a new member of Talis' scientific advisory board, spent 22 years at Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., where he held a number of leadership positions of increasing responsibility. From 2005 to 2020, he served as Vice President and Head of Global Research, providing overall leadership and strategic direction for all research activities including technology development and evaluation, biomarker discovery and validation, infectious disease diagnostic assay early development, and oncology companion diagnostics. Prior to Roche, he spent 11 years at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he held several positions, most recently Acting Lab Chief, Laboratory of Immunochemistry, in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
About the Talis One System
The Talis One System is a compact, easy-to-use, highly accurate molecular diagnostic platform developed to enable rapid, point-of-care testing for infectious diseases. 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, urgent care clinics, elder care/assisted living facilities, cancer treatment and dialysis centers, and potentially the workplace.
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 can be managed remotely and sends test results to a cloud database for secure transmission, storage and review. Results are available in 30 minutes or less.
About Talis
Talis is dedicated to providing broad access to fast, highly accurate, actionable diagnostic testing to ensure better treatment and disease management for patients with infectious diseases. The company is developing the Talis One™ System, a compact, molecular diagnostic platform that is Cloud enabled, to provide rapid and reliable point-of-care testing for infectious diseases across a wide range of healthcare settings, from the doctor's office to the hospital bedside to remote care settings. Talis is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. For more information, please visit talis.bio.
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SOURCE Talis Biomedical Corporation
