A Universal Biomarker

for cancer

Travera is using a breakthrough technology to measure which cancer drugs work against each individual’s unique cancer cells. We are developing a universal biomarker for enabling oncologists to quickly determine which drugs to prescribe based on the actual responses of their patients’ tumor cells to candidate drugs.

Learn More About Our Technology

About Us

Travera was founded in 2017 to commercialize a breakthrough measurement technology and biomarker developed in the Manalis Laboratory in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Travera Awarded Competitive Grant from the National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently awarded Travera a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant in the amount of $1 million to conduct research and development (R&D) of the company’s suspended microchannel resonator (SMR) platform for personalized medicine in cancer. This grant is intended to help the company further develop methods and techniques that will be used to offer new tests for guiding the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM) patients.

Click here to learn more about the above.

Read our new white paper

The purpose of this white paper is to provide an overview of how therapies are selected for cancer patients and explain the current challenges of precision medicine and points to a promising future for personalizing cancer therapies.

Travera’s solution is to try drugs on the OUTSIDE of the patient rather than INSIDE. That is, remove some of the cancer cells from the patient and apply the drugs to these removed (“ex vivo”) cancer cells. We can then try many different cancer drugs (in very small quantities) against these cancer cells. This approach completely eliminates toxicity, dramatically reduces the cost (because we only need enough drug to treat a few cells, not a whole person), and only takes a couple of days.

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Click here to download the white paper

Patient Testimonial

“While the introduction of several novel agents and regimens for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma and relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma has improved outcomes, it has also increased the complexity of treatment selection since not all patients respond. Having a test that can prospectively assess an individual’s personalized response is a much needed breakthrough for patients with multiple myeloma.”

Jack Aiello

Patient advocate and multiple myeloma survivor

Rob Kimmerling, Ph.D. Director of Research and Development Rob Kimmerling is the Director of Research of Development and a co-founder of Travera. He received his B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University, where he first started working on microfluidic device development for single-cell analysis applications. Rob continued in this field at MIT where he earned his Ph.D. in Biological Engineering. His graduate work focused on developing novel microfluidic platforms for collecting linked measurements of single-cell biophysical and transcriptional properties. After graduating, he continued developing these projects as a Research Scientist at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, where he led a team utilizing these approaches to characterize transcriptional signatures associated with single-cell drug susceptibility in various malignancies.