Launched by David Tsao, Oguzhan Atay, Sukrit Silas in 2016, BillionToOne has announced that it has developed a new cost-effective COVID-19 test protocol that allows for more than 1 million tests per day only in the USA. Production of the kits will begin after approval by the FDA, and the tests will be available within 2 weeks. BillionToOne CEO Dr. Oguzhan Atay stated that we all see the effect of the epidemic on every aspect of our daily life, and they are sure that the technology they developed will help save lives and stop the spread of the virus. As explained in detail by leading healthcare professionals, ten times more comprehensive testing than the current capacity is required to stop the spread of the corona virus in the U.S. and other countries. Currently, existing quantitative PCR (qPCR) methods do not support the test volume required for a rapid COVID-19 response. In addition, excessive demand growth for the same reagents and devices causes difficulties in the supply chain. Using the proprietary machine learning algorithms, BillionToOne’s COVID-19 test runs 30 times higher efficiency for Sanger sequencing. The BillionToOne COVID-19 test does not use the same tools and chemicals as the existing COVID-19 tests; This allows laboratories to unlock this unused capacity. It ranks the genome of the virus, which makes the tests extremely sensitive and specific, on a par with or better than other existing COVID-19 tests. In addition, the test can be easily performed with minimum training in each laboratory with Sanger Sequencers. Let us remind you that BillionToOne has received $ 15 million in investment last month.
