Travera

Travera commercializes a breakthrough measurement technology and biomarker developed in the Manalis Laboratory in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. The core technology, a MEMS device called the Suspended Microchannel Resonator (SMR), is an exquisitely sensitive scale that can measure a small change in the weight of a single cancer cell. When cancer cells respond to cancer drugs, they start their process of dying by changing weight in just a few hours. The SMR can detect this tiny weight change. As most cancer cells die naturally within 1-2 days of being removed from the human body, speed is critical to distinguish between natural cell death and cell death induced by a cancer drug. It is this exquisite sensitivity that enables the SMR to detect a cancer cell’s response to a cancer drug while it is still a viable cell. The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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