Rhinostics Announces Cheri Walker as President and Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Walker brings more than two decades of experience working in life science tools and diagnostics with companies ranging from startups to those with multibillions in revenue, and has closed more than 45 transactions ranging from large partnerships, licenses, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. She has held a variety of operating and corporate development roles at bell weather companies including Invitrogen, QIAGEN, Charles River Laboratories, and most recently as senior vice president of corporate development at Abcam. Additionally, Dr. Walker has significant startup experience, holding the position of Chief Financial Officer at Kailos Genetics, currently as a director at Cell IDx, and consulting with many early stage companies. She began her career as a stock analyst at Deutsche Bank, covering life science tools companies. Dr. Walker holds a PhD in Human and Molecular Genetics from Baylor College of Medicine and a BA in Biology from Swarthmore College.

Rhinostics was recently formed to commercialize a nasal swab collection device with features that can increase sample throughput by more than 10-fold while removing labor and errors from the laboratory workflow. The swab is integrated onto a cap that can be automated for removal from the tube while all 96 samples are simultaneously accessioned through scanning a 2D barcode on the bottom of the tubes. The product is registered as Class I exempt medical device with the FDA, is currently being tested in several clinical trials, and the company is beginning an Emergency Use Authorization study comparing the RHINOstic swab with the gold standard for a variety of PCR assays. The product provides an immediate impact for increasing COVID testing efficiencies while being applicable to a broader range of respiratory viral, bacterial, and genetic testing using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and next generation sequencing (NGS).

“Dr. Walker brings wide experience to Rhinostics, critical to driving our initiatives to make an immediate impact on COVID testing bottlenecks that plague the laboratory workflow and impact the amount of testing that can currently run through their high-throughput laboratories,” said Michael Springer, cofounder of Rhinostics and Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Richard Novak, Rhinostics cofounder and Senior Engineer at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University commented, “She provides an energetic focus to help accomplish our mission of radically changing and improving the laboratory workflow. Her coming on board signals the next stage of growth for the company.”

Cheri Walker added, “I am excited to join the Rhinostics team to drive the company forward, bringing new and innovative technologies to sample collection, accessioning and transfer of samples into the workflows of high throughput laboratories. COVID testing has shined a light on the inefficiencies in this segment of the laboratory workflow, where large armies of personnel are required to manually accomplish these processes at a high cost with inefficient processes. The Rhinostics solution takes significant time, labor and errors out of the workflow.”

About Rhinostics

Rhinostics Inc. is an early stage company commercializing a simple and elegant solution to bring efficiencies and cost savings to the laboratory workflow. The RHINOstic nasal swab provides features that increase sample throughput by more than 10-fold while removing labor and errors from the laboratory workflow. The swab is integrated onto a cap that can be automated for removal from the tube while all 96 samples are simultaneously accessioned through scanning a 2D barcode on the bottom of the tubes. Additionally, the device allows dry shipment of respiratory samples without viral transport media, and the nasal collection allows for an easy and comfortable collection. Viral samples can be released directly into a small amount of saline, providing sample concentration of 30x or greater, providing greater standardization and improving downstream assay reliability. The product provides an immediate impact to increasing COVID testing efficiencies while being applicable to broader respiratory viral, bacterial, and genetic testing using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and next generation sequencing (NGS). The RHINOstic product is registered as Class I exempt medical device with the FDA and is available for purchase. To learn more, visit https://www.rhinostics.com.

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