How the brothers behind a St. Louis startup are pioneering technology to prevent the next pandemic

With its innovative breath-based diagnostic and air bio-detector, Varro Life Sciences aims to protect against future global health crises.

John Cirrito knows that true “eureka” moments are rare. For over 20 years, he’s studied Alzheimer’s disease as a professor of neurology at WashU Medicine in St. Louis, focusing on how proteins in the brain change as a result of the disease. Over a decade ago, he and fellow professor Carla Yuede developed a nanobody-based electrochemical biosensor to detect the protein that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

In August 2020, when the National Institutes of Health put out an emergency call for new ways to detect COVID-19, Cirrito and Yuede heeded it. They realized that they could adapt their work with Alzheimer’s disease to help prevent COVID-19 by changing the antibody on the biosensor to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. After quickly getting an application together and ultimately receiving funding for the project, they 3D-printed a breath-based diagnostic device using their biosensor technology and conducted a clinical study at WashU. Within seconds of their first patient breathing into the device, they got a positive signal. 

“It was like, ‘Oh, s***, this works,’” John remembers. “Within seconds, the first call I made was to (my brother) Tom to say, ‘Hey, we just got a positive result from somebody who’s COVID positive. Being able to make that call to him was incredible. That was one of those eureka moments — this works.”

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Credits:
Authored By Heather Riske
Visuals By Michael Thomas