StartX initiates Covid-19 Task Force

StartX, the startup accelerator affiliated to Stanford University, today set up a coronavirus-focused research group to coordinate the efforts of Stanford faculty and its healthcare-facing portfolio companies.
The initiative, dubbed StartX Med Covid-19 Task Force, will connect faculty entrepreneurs and scientists to government agencies, healthcare providers and regulatory bodies to explore applications that could protect public health.
The task force will also consult physicians on the front-line working with Covid-19 patients, as well as startups with relevant products that are being expedited through the US regulatory system.
StartX’s existing portfolio will be leveraged to accelerate antiviral drugs for both Covid-19 and the lung disease it commonly leads to – acute respiratory distress syndrome – toward the clinic.
In addition, the task force will pursue seven objectives believed to be key to containing the pandemic’s fallout.
These include the need for rapid diagnostics to evaluate potential disease carriers, ideally within 10 minutes from locations such as drive-through checkpoints, nursing homes and emergency rooms.
There will be efforts to better understand Covid-19’s respiratory symptoms through new hardware, as well as work to combat dangerous side-effects including sepsis and antibiotic resistance.
StartX Med Covid-19 Task Force will also provide free access to concepts described on artificial intelligence-driven peer-reviewed research portal Bioz, and to remote monitoring technologies from the StartX portfolio already deployed in Wuhan, China.
Michael Niaki, lead for the diagnostics subgroup at StartX Med Covid-19 Task Force, said: “One of our first goals would be for existing StartX genetics companies to be able to ramp-up their current solutions for molecular testing of Covid-19 diagnostics and work with local and state officials and government agencies on deployment.”