For people who party or go dancing, the risk of ingesting accidentally laced drugs is real. Presenting today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, MabLab has created a test strip that detects five of the most common and dangerous additives in minutes.
Co-founders Vienna Sparks and Skye Lamb met in high school and lost a friend to an overdose while in college. Sadly, this is a story that many people (including myself) can relate to. Thankfully, test strips are now a common sight at venues and health centers, with hundreds of millions shipped each year.
In case you haven't seen it yet, strips work like this: Dissolve a small amount of the substance to be tested in the prepared buffer solution and dip the strip into it. The liquid moves across the paper and changes color when it reaches the treated area. In the presence of undesirable additives. Although they are simple and effective, they are limited in that they only detect one thing, most commonly fentanyl.
“There's an opportunity to replace this with a better version,” Lamb said. This version simultaneously detects five common racing chemicals: fentanyl, methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, xylazine, and methadone.
The company's innovation is “a combination of physical and chemical,” Sparks said. “We have specially designed zones for each drug, and we use new processing and materials in the strips to allow for capillary action without causing cross-reactivity.”
This means that different zones and chemical sensitivities do not irritate each other or interfere with the activation of other zones.
If everything works as described, it will be an all-around improvement over what you already have.
MabLab's plan is to distribute the strips in the same way as other companies and leverage existing manufacturing infrastructure. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Just improve and boost it. But they believe this type of testing is also a growing market, and not just because of the rise in adulterated drugs.
“We're seeing a cultural shift, with people on campus and at music festivals encouraging their friends to get tested,” Sparks said. People realize that there are risks and that there are safer ways than abstinence. Abstinence is an approach to drugs and other behaviors that is rarely taken by teenagers and college students.
“This is very similar to distributing condoms,” Lamb said. A proven way to reduce risk is to give people the opportunity to do things safely and then get out of the way.
“University health systems, harm reduction centers, these places will buy the strips in bulk. They'll walk in, pick up some, and walk out, no questions asked.” he continued. “These are organizations that subsidize costs. New York City is spending $16 million on test strips alone, California is putting money into that. Many of them are spending billions of dollars to fund harm reduction tools. It comes from the 2022 Act that donated the .
This is not just for young people. Rapid, specific drug purity tests could be useful in emergency services such as veteran's centers, homeless shelters, needle exchanges, and EMTs. After all, when responding to overdoses, as many departments do on a daily basis, it helps to be able to say with certainty what the patient is overdosing. Sparks said he is also in talks with Coachella and other music festivals.
MabLab co-founders Vienna Sparks and Skye Lam. Image credit: MabLab
“As we look to the future, the most important thing is to get them.” [letters of intent] Things like universities and clinics that already have distribution channels in place,” Sparks said. As for actually manufacturing the strips, she said the medical testing supply chain has expanded significantly, making it possible to mass-produce the strips.
The startup has already started hiring a team and is focused on delivering its first shipment. Once this powerful new testing method becomes operational, MabLab will be able to corner the market while ensuring the safety of people around the world.