In Theranos’s backyard, a health tech leader takes another crack at better blood tests

March 7, 2023

Michael Snyder, a professor and geneticist, in his lab at Stanford University. He and colleagues have developed technology to collect and test "micro samples" of blood. Constanza Hevia for STAT

PALO ALTO — Step outside the quiet Stanford Medicine building where geneticist and prominent big data expert Mike Snyder has spent years poring over tiny samples of blood, and you can just see the outline of 1701 Page Mill Road, one of the original offices of Theranos.

It’s impossible not to notice similarities between Snyder’s mission and the vision proffered by Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout convicted of defrauding investors backing the blood testing company Theranos. Both aimed to give people deeper insights into their own health so they could seek preventive care faster. But while Holmes sought to build a small, printer-sized instrument that could analyze a single drop of blood, Snyder and his team are patenting a process of collecting and testing “micro samples,” which are then shipped to a lab and analyzed using standard methods. He and colleagues have launched two companies that plan to license that microsampling process as they raise venture capital to commercialize the tests, which they’re already preparing to sell to consumers.

Snyder’s wry, oft-repeated response to the inevitable comparisons, which he says mostly come from lay people who aren’t familiar with his academic research: “It’s like Theranos, but it works.”

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