A world where the richest signals of life can be read accurately anywhere - not just in a handful of specialized labs, but at the clinic, the bedside, and places we haven't imagined yet.
A New Era of Biosensing
Quantelix is redefining biosensing with quantum technology - delivering laboratory-grade accuracy in a commercially available device that's smaller, more accessible, and easier to use. "Quantelix" blends "quantum" and "helix," capturing the co-founders' original vision: applying breakthrough quantum technology to biosensing and molecular diagnostics.
What We're Building
We’re building a handheld sensor that reads the molecules of life with laboratory-grade accuracy - powered by a quantum light source small enough to fit on a chip.
Most sensors today - from the pulse oximeter on your finger, to the rapid COVID and pregnancy tests you read by a colored line, to the readers used in research labs - work by shining light on a sample and measuring how bright the light is on return. But that brightness is easily thrown off by temperature, pH, and the sample itself, so readings drift. There’s a better signal hiding in plain sight: not how brightly a molecule glows, but how long it glows. Like a fingerprint, this “fluorescence lifetime” holds true no matter the conditions, making it far more accurate and far more revealing. However, reading it has always required a large tabletop machine built around an expensive laser, an optical table, and a trained technician. Powerful, but out of reach.
Our breakthrough replaces that laser with a tiny quantum light source - a chip that generates pairs of “entangled” photons; think of them as daughter particles of light, created at the same instant. Invented and patented at Caltech, it brings that same lifetime accuracy down to the size and cost of a handheld device. We hold an exclusive Caltech license to two extensive patent families across the U.S., Europe, and China.
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