Daniometrix

The goal of my startup, Daniometrix, is to deploy a proprietary behavioral assay using zebrafish for pre-screening of new drug candidates being rapidly formulated by directly targeting receptors using AI. The fully tested assay dramatically reduces the cost of phenotypic screening before preclinical rodent testing. It combines full automation with machine vision analytics, allowing rapid and high throughput quantitative estimation of drug efficacy and potential side effects. Our platform promises millions of dollars in savings to the pharmaceutical industry and the consumer. Our mission is to go from AI-generated molecules to medicines, faster and at low cost.

AI has dramatically accelerated the process of drug discovery and generation. The large number of drug candidates cannot be realistically tested using the traditional rodent models. This has created a bottleneck in the drug discovery pipeline. Yet, some of these molecules may have the potential to provide miracle cures. Drug validation is lagging due to multiple choke points in early in-vivo testing that demands speed and scalability. As an active member of the Neurophysiology and Behavior lab at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC, I have been engaged in developing and testing effective experimental systems and removing obstacles in the challenging process of collecting data from freely behaving animals. Recent developments in machine learning and markerless tracking of freely behaving animals is revolutizing the process of collecting postural and location data in freely behaving animals. I have created and developed custom software as well as a modular platform for a validated, patent-pending behavioral assay that allows adult zebrafish to learn tasks in about 60 minutes instead of days and weeks, opening the possibility of testing drug effects on learning, attention, locomotion, and other neurobehavioral parameters using automated training and tracking systems. Setups in wide use are fragmented, hard to replicate, and often manually operated. Our automated setup overcomes all of these limitations while remaining cost effective and easily reproducible. The appeal for such a product is multi-layered, with a demand for high-throughput behavioral data platform extending across multiple markets, such as Pharma R&D, academic research labs, and CROs. Drug development is currently a multi-billion dollar industry in which even small gains in efficiency can lead to an extremely large savings in revenue. Within this context, zebrafish usage as model organisms for behavioral data collection is growing in terms of popularity, but current behavioral setups are extremely underequipped to work with adult zebrafish in the high throughput manner we have developed. There remain several barriers to entry, including brand trust within the scientific community, as well as any potential delays or inconveniences accrued during the process of labs transitioning from their long-standing outdated experimental infrastructure. Adopting Daniometrix as a standard platform in zebrafish research, will boost drug testing. Our main competitors are existing zebrafish system providers. There is indirect competition with rodent testing pipelines and in-house custom drug testing facilities. However, our platform surpasses the competition in terms of speed, ease of access, as well as affordability. Our supply chain is therefore extremely clear: We have already created prototype modular service infrastructure at a fraction of the market cost. After securing initial contracts with early labs and other pilot partners, we plan to standardize our production and expand the scope of our experimental platforms within a one-year timeframe. In the short term, we plan to offer contract-based B2B behavioral testing services for pharmaceutical companies, with the possibility of expanding in scope to permanent, long term contracts. A long term goal is licensing and sale of our modular platform to academic labs and industry.