A biotech startup founded by two Canadian brothers is hoping to dramatically limit the spread of disease within hospitals.
“Instead of noticing when infections are popping up in your hospital after the fact, it’s actually identifying them upstream.”
Kurt Hackenberger
New York City-based Claryx, founded by Ontarians Kurt and Dirk Hackenberger, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $3.5 million USD ($4.9 million CAD) in pre-seed funding for its CloneLink platform that it says can detect problematic pathogens before they lead to hospital outbreaks. The equity round was led by New York VC firm Outlander, which has backed startups including Lyft and Klarna. Other backers included Company Ventures, Boost VC, Neon, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford, and Precursor Ventures.
Infectious diseases commonly acquired in healthcare settings, such as illnesses caused by the bacteria Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), affect roughly one in 38 hospital patients on any given day, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. These diseases also cost the US healthcare system billions of dollars annually.
Kurt and his brother encountered this reality firsthand, he told BetaKit, when their grandmother nearly passed away after contracting C. diff and sepsis during a routine check-up.
“That was the kind of the genesis behind us taking the swing in creating Claryx, of actually building a proactive solution,” Kurt said in an interview. “Instead of noticing when infections are popping up in your hospital after the fact, it’s actually identifying them upstream.”
Claryx’s team collects samples across an entire hospital and sequences its “metagenome,” or all of the genetic material found in every area—like building-level wastewater, air samples from different wards, and sink swabs—to create a de facto map of the premises.
When a patient contracts a potentially transmissible infection, Claryx compares the genetic sequence of that pathogen to that of the whole hospital, and can notify the hospital of where exactly the bad bacteria is lurking.
Currently, hospital epidemiology teams may only realize there’s an outbreak once case counts climb above a certain threshold. But “it’s really easy for us to raise a flag to disinfect and remove that reservoir before it causes more problems for more people,” Kurt said.
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The startup’s tech also builds upon Dirk’s doctoral studies at McMaster University, where he studied under Dr. Gerard Wright, an antimicrobial resistance researcher. Instead of accepting a post-doctoral offer from Oxford University, Dirk said, he decided to go all in on building Claryx with his brother. Dirk developed a proprietary method to significantly cut the costs of metagenomic sequencing, allowing Claryx’s monitoring platform to run continuous tests without cost as a bottleneck.
Despite its Canadian origins, Kurt said Claryx is starting to pilot with hospitals in New York state because it’s much simpler to sell into a privately funded healthcare system. Medtech industry leaders have called for simpler procurement pathways across Canada’s provincial healthcare systems, as many startups see the US as their first customer.
“There’s a far higher burden if you’re vending into the Canadian government,” Kurt said, adding that the nearly 100 hospitals near Claryx’s headquarters in New York City provide a high density of potential customers.
“What that enables us to do is find the people that are willing to go a little bit more risk-on, and be able to push the frontier of what is possible to redefine the standard of care for infection prevention.” Kurt claimed that Claryx is already working with two hospitals, and has signed a third on to prove out its platform.
Feature image courtesy Claryx.