Zecken Laboratories Working On Easy And Accurate Diagnosis Method For Lyme Disease
October 26th, 2017
Kami Harris is currently working on transforming her PhD work at Mount A in Sackville, NB into a company to provide the public, government and eventually medical practitioners with reliable diagnostic tools for Lyme Disease. Ms Harris is the Founder and CEO of Zecken Laboratories and is known as the “tick girl”.
With the growing awareness of the spread of Lyme Disease in Atlantic Canada and the need for more accurate and affordable diagnostic tools, Ms Harris has received about 1,000 ticks annually to develop Zeckens products and she hopes that she will continue to receive them. She says that there are actually 21 types of Lyme disease but current diagnostic tests only identify one type, meaning that about 90 per cent of the instances of Lyme disease go undetected. Zecken’s products can identify markers in the other types of Lyme disease to improve diagnosis and therefore generate more treatment.
At BioPort 2017, Zecken Laboratories was one of the three finalists in the BioInnovation Challenge and earlier in the year, Zecken Laboratories was a semifinalist in Breakthru. Soon it will be ready to start bringing in revenue. Up until now, the company’s research has been financed through Harris’ research funding, but Zecken recognizes that a structured finance model is needed and they will probably aim for a $250,000 funding round in their first year.
To read the full article in Entrevestor, click here.