Meet the 25-Year-Old CEO Helming Boston Cancer Startup ConquerX
January 23, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
For entrepreneurs from outside the U.S. to gain a cap-exempt H-1B visa and work at the Venture Development Center at the University of Massachusetts, it costs $20,000. Keep that figure in mind.
Deborah Zanforlin is a 25-year-old from Recife, Brazil. During her PhD program, she discovered a nanoparticle that selectively amplifies the electrochemical signal produced by microRNA. The technology has implications for early cancer testing. She decided she wanted to commercialize the idea and start a company. However, her research supervisor gave her an ultimatum: finish her doctorate or start the company. Not both.
She chose the company, now called ConquerX.
As MedCityNews describes, “The ConquerX approach removes the need for partitioning, amplification and sequencing. Instead, the platform uses a proprietary nanoparticle that selectively amplifies the electrochemical signal produced by the microRNA. Zanforlin said the company hopes to deliver the test at one-eighth of the cost of standard PCR assays. Clinical studies for lung cancer are planned for 2017.”
The steps from Brazil to ConquerX aren’t straight forward, and neither are ConquerX to clinical studies.
Shortly after leaving her PhD program, she applied to the MIT Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. She was one of 70 out of 800 who were accepted into the program. And she was one of only four that received scholarships.
She and three other entrepreneurs formed ConquerX. After that, they returned to their respective countries and worked via Skype for a year. In June 2016, ConquerX was chosen as a finalist for the four-month MassChallenge program.
This is where the story takes a heartbreaking turn. Zanforlin, with only $998 in the bank, flew to Boston with a one-way ticket to participate in the program. Three weeks later, her father died. She didn’t have money for round-trip tickets home and stayed in Boston.
Zanforlin and her team believe ConquerX should be in the Boston area. Boston and San Francisco are the two biggest hubs for biotech startups in the U.S. However, it’s difficult to get a work visa in the U.S., particularly without a completed PhD.
Zanforlin managed to gain a Global Entrepreneur-In-Residence (GEIR) at the University of Massachusetts, which comes with an H1-B visa. The trick? The attorney fees, VISA fees, and the funds for the GEIR program cost $20,000.
To that end, Zanforlin has launched a Generosity kickstarter-type funding program with Indiegogo to raise the $20,000.
ConquerX, Zanforlin writes in the Indiegogo page, “develops on a blood test that can detect up to 18 different types of cancer in early stages.”
ConquerX’s leadership team includes Zanforlin as co-founder and chief executive officer.
Jorge Sanchez Lopez is co-founder and chief strategist officer. Lopez is the former CEO of Simarks Software in Spain, Build-Your Business Consulting Group (U.S.), Best-Coffee (Dubai UAE and KSA), and former business development manager for Symantec (Gulf, Levant and KSA).
Jakub Chudick is co-founder and chief technology officer. A gold medalist at the International Young Physicists’ Tournament, he is a Bachelor of Science candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
To Nhu Huyhn is co-founder and chief operating officer. She is a cancer education specialist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Isaac Stoner is the company’s advisor. He is the Healthcare Practice Leader at MIT Martin Trust Center.
The technology ConquerX is working on is similar to that of GRAIL, an Illumina spin-out that launched last year with $100 million in funding. And just last week, Bio-Rad Laboratories acquired RainDance Technologies for its droplet-based technology for digital PCR.
“The company’s droplet-based solutions will extend our reach into next generation sequencing applications and strengthen our position in the area of Droplet Digital PCR,” said Norman Schwarz, Bio-Rad’s president and chief executive officer in a statement. “We look forward to expanding our offering to provide life science and clinical diagnostics customers with solutions for a wide range of nucleic acid detection applications.”
And if Zanforlin can raise money for the visa program—as well as separate seed funding for the company—ConquerX could be another player in this new technology market.