For diabetes patients, measuring blood sugar is a necessity. However, the current gold standard involves multiple painful finger pricks a day, which excludes real-time data and limits quick and timely intervention. 💉
Enter Biolinq, a needle-free continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) company which raised a $100M Series B last Nov led by RiverVest Venture Partners. They envision a world in which diabetes management is low-cost, highly uniform, and easy to use.
CGM isn’t new — Dexcom, Abbott, and Medtronic have dominated for a decade. Their products feature a sensor that’s self-inserted under the skin, continuously tracks glucose levels, and transmits measurements wirelessly to a touchscreen. These sensors are inserted via a finger held applicator into the subcutaneous tissue, several layers deep into the skin, and the sensor / applicator and transmitter are sold separately.
Here’s how Biolinq managed to carve its own unique niche:
👉2012: Right concept, but wrong indication and market
Co-founders Jared and Joshua met during their PhDs at UC San Diego, where Biolinq (then Electrozyme) spun out of Joshua’s thesis work with wearable bioelectronic sensors.
At first, they built sweat-monitoring biosensors, applied via a temporary electric tattoo, to inform athletes about their hydration/electrolyte levels. This concept received $3.6M in seed funding from Mark Cuban and the NIH, but failed to find PMF.
Although beta products were sent to strategic partners (including a F500 company), subsequent field trials did not yield a scalable revenue model.
👉2015: Choosing to pivot to glucose monitoring and designing a differentiated wearable
They saw untapped opportunity within CGM, since current devices were still invasive and bulky.
Biolinq realized that they could develop a coin-sized skin patch with mini electrochemical biosensors that could be applied like a Bandaid. Thus, a new idea (and name) was born.
Biolinq’s patch would measure glucose found in the interstitial fluid, which surrounds skin cells and is a fraction of 1mm from the skin’s surface. A microchip would also be included to eliminate the need for a separate transmitter, thus presenting a unique all-in-one device.
These novel features allow for Biolinq’s CGM device to be worn on other areas of the body, detect glucose molecules with higher precision, and be manufactured at scale.
👉2020: Further validating clinical feasibility of Biolinq patch
They completed a POC study which indicated a high correlation between glucose collected in the interstitial fluid (Biolinq) vs. glucose collected from a vein (gold standard).
This is promising preliminary data for Biolinq’s methodology, and pushes them further along the pathway towards FDA approval.
🚀Looking ahead: the’re looking to expand beyond glucose in such areas as fitness and physiology, nutrition, and the medical field.
