Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is throwing her help behind a brand new medical startup — regardless of at present serving a federal jail time period stemming from her earlier biotech enterprise, based on a report.
Holmes, 41, is locked up at a federal jail in Bryan, Texas after being convicted in 2022 and sentenced to greater than 11 years for defrauding traders in her now-infamous blood-testing startup, Theranos.
Her present companion, Billy Evans, with whom she has two youngsters, has now raised “millions of dollars” for a brand new startup that sounds eerily just like what Theranos was concerned in, and he’s been getting recommendation from her because it gears as much as launch, two nameless sources near the matter instructed NPR.
The corporate — known as Haemanthus, Greek for “blood flower” — focuses on medical testing, using know-how that allows AI sensors to carry out medical exams utilizing beams of sunshine, based on the outlet and a January patent the corporate secured.
Its patent says the tech can be utilized to check “biological material” together with sweat, saliva and urine, and purports to have the ability to carry out diagnostic exams utilizing small quantities of blood.
Haemanthus’ core know-how, often known as Raman spectroscopy, has been proven to be able to diagnosing situations like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s illness) and sure types of most cancers, the outlet writes. It has additionally been used to search out improvised explosive units (IEDs) on warfare battlefields.
Earlier than her conviction, Holmes was hailed as a Silicon Valley wunderkind for her work on Theranos — which she touted as having the ability to carry out a whole bunch of medical exams with only a few drops of blood, a far cry from conventional strategies which require bigger samples.
Her web price soared to round $4.5 billion on the top of her fame, with Theranos forging profitable partnerships with giant corporations together with Safeway and Walgreens.
However the backside dropped out in 2015 when a pair of whistleblowers got here ahead and uncovered fraudulent practices and inaccuracies on the firm, finally touchdown her and her former companion Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani behind bars.
After her fraud conviction, Holmes was additionally barred by the Securities and Change Fee from serving as an officer of any publicly traded firm for 10 years, nonetheless these phrases wouldn’t preclude her from being a part of a privately held startup like Haemanthus.
This week, Holmes suffered a serious authorized setback after the ninth Circuit US Courtroom of Appeals declined her request to have her case reconsidered by the identical trio of judges who beforehand affirmed her conviction.
Haemanthus filed for incorporation final February, and its principal tackle is given as a $2.3 million residence in Austin, Texas, based on its Bizapedia itemizing.
Reached by The Publish, Evans pointed to string posted Sunday on Haemanthus’ official X account by which it sought to distance itself from Theranos and its jailed former CEO.
“Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement in Haemanthus. While her company’s mistakes are lessons that we’ve learned better than anyone else, she has no role, now or in the future,” the social media publish assured.
The thread additionally mentioned they’ve provided NPR and the New York Instances, each of which reported on Holmes’ alleged involvement within the firm, “unrestricted access” to its lab, staff and prototype, claiming the retailers have declined.
