Meet the 21-Year-Old College Student Who's Running Biotech Startup Genetesis
December 12, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Cincinnati-based Genetesis is developing and testing what might be called a next-generation electrocardiogram (ECG). Its CardioFlux is analytical software that monitors naturally occurring moving electrical currents in the heart. The company was founded in 2013 and so far has raised $1.46 million in two rounds from five investors, including Mark Cuban, Loud Capital, Danmar Capital, CincyTech and 43North.
And one other thing. The company’s founder, Peeyush Shrivastava turns 21 years old this month.
In an interview with Cincinnati.com, Shrivastava, who is working on a degree in biomedical science at Ohio State University, said, “But I like being an entrepreneur. What attracts me most is working on big ideas to affect change from the standpoint of improving human life. Genetesis is very exciting. It’s platform technology. … It’s not limited to the heart, since it’s mapping electrical currents. Any organ that has an electrical current, our technology is applicable.”
He describes himself as a tinkerer, and notes that when doing early research, he knew that measuring electrical currents directly in the heart had a lot of medical applications. And when he found out that there was no way to measure electric current in the clinical setting, he thought there might be a way. “So the idea grew from this identifying of a major problem,” Shrivastava told Cincinnati.com. “I worked on this with my friends at Mason High. They’re now my co-founders. We were thinking about this problem very, very deeply pretty early on.”
Peeyush Shrivastava is the company’s chief executive officer. His father, Chandan Srivastava, a project manager of Business Solutions for Generic Electric, is the chief financial officer. Genetesis’ advisers include Alisa Niksch, director of Pediatric Electrophysiology and assistant professor of Tufts Medical Center Pediatrics, Neal Scott, a cardiologist with Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists in Mountain View, Calif., Balakrishna Haridas, executive director of Technology Commercialization and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, Tom McElderry, assistant professor of Medicine at The University of Alabama System, Riccardo Fenici, director of the Biomagnetism and Clinical Physiology International Center (BACPIC) in Rome, Italy, and Jim Swick, a consultant in medical device development.
And, of course, Mark Cuban. When asked how Cuban became involved, Shrivastava laughs and told Cincinnati.com, “A cold email. Right to his personal Gmail account. I gave it to him really short and simple, where we’re headed, why he should be interested. Originally, he came on as an adviser because he wanted to see what we could do to generate clinical interest. At that point, he realized this was a great opportunity for him to invest and make a return.”
The Mayo Clinic is involved in data collection using CardioFlux. When asked about hospitals interested in clinical trials, Shrivastava indicates that he can’t say yet, but there has been interest and negotiations are under way.
The company’s software is called the Genetesis CardioFlux Mapping System. The overall system uses the body’s weak magnetic fields to computationally reconstruct areas of high and low electrical conductivity in the heart.
So what does an almost-21-year-old college student and biomedical technology entrepreneur do with his money? Probably not spend it on a car. When asked what he’s driving, he told Cincinnati.com, “I’m still driving the same hunk of junk that I’ve been driving for a while, a 1999 Avalon.”