BOA Biomedical, Inc.: Breakthroughs in Infectious Disease

In the war against infectious diseases like COVID-19, doctors are asking questions that often have no answers. Who is infected? What is the cause? Is the patient getting better? Will drugs work? Can we save their life? Doctors grapple with these questions at a time when antimicrobial resistance, death from infection, pandemics, and bio-threats rise to the top of the world’s biggest challenges. These are the problems that Miraki Innovation’s BOA Biomedical (BOA) has set out to solve.

Diagnosing and treating infections is a serious business. Death from major infections, called sepsis, increases by approximately 8% for every hour undiagnosed. The results are eight million deaths, 30 million patients affected globally every year, and $24 billion in U.S. healthcare expenditure for treatment. The sepsis patient toll exceeds the 1.8 million patients diagnosed and 18 million treated with cancer annually on a global basis.

To address the problem, Cambridge, Mass-based BOA Biomedical is developing a technology suite that holds the promise of reducing healthcare costs and saving lives. The company is the result of a decade of research by DARPA and Harvard University and is at the leading edge of tracking, diagnosing, and treating infections like SARS-CoV-2. The company is the brainchild of leading Harvard University researchers, Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. and Michael Super, Ph.D., and serial entrepreneur, Christopher Velis. Velis co-founded Auris Health, which sold to Johnson & Johnson for a total of $5.75 billion in April of last year.

“In our last venture, we tackled lung cancer.” Velis explained, “This time we are solving the crisis of infectious disease by bringing the world better devices when they are needed most. When it comes to infectious disease, being reactive is unacceptable. BOA is going put doctors ahead of the curve.”