Persperion Diagnostics Brings a Fresh Update to Glucose Measurement

In the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 38.4 million adults have diabetes , and a key part of maintaining health as a diabetic person is measuring the levels of glucose present in your bloodstream.?

Founded by UC San Diego alumni Xinyu(Alan) Liu ‘19 and Lu Yin ‘23, the company hopes to leverage cutting-edge technology to measure glucose levels from sweat. Compared to historical methods where patients have to prick their fingers to measure their glucose levels from a drop of blood, this will offer a non-invasive alternative to diabetics everywhere. The company uses technology invented at Dr. Joseph Wang’s nanoengineering lab , and their main product right now is a non-invasive glucose monitor.?

“We found that the finger sticks are a huge pain point with people with diabetes,” Liu stated. “They have to measure their glucose frequently, and those finger sticks are just painful, cumbersome, and a lot of times a time join a lot of tension”

Starting out at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering , this startup raised $4 million last year in venture capital seed funding, and the co-founders have been listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for 2024. Now, Persperion is gearing towards its pilot trial to validate the technology. Once piloting wraps up, they will move on to their main clinical trials while reaching funding milestones.?

Persperion has now paid it forward with their old university by joining the Innovation for X program as a partner company, and has partnered with a team of UC San Diego students to develop marketing for their startup.?

The Innovation of Persperion’s Tech

“Non-invasive, glucose monitoring has always been the holy grail of the self-diagnostics industry for decades, but it’s very difficult,” Liu stated. “Nobody has ever done it.”

Other companies, like 苹果 and 三星电子 , have tried to use other methods like light-based or other sweat-based monitors to measure biomarkers, such as glucose. However, these methods have faced a lot of issues including low selectivity and low practicality.?

“When we think about sweat, we think about exercising or heat, but they’re not always available,” explained Liu. “We can’t really ask people to run a mile to check their glucose level – that’s not practical.”

Tackling this issue with innovation, Persperion’s test strips use omnipresent sweat on fingertips to measure glucose levels as a new alternative to standardized finger pricks. The noninvasive glucose monitor is made of a test strip and a small handheld device. The sensor includes a proprietary enzyme interaction that detects biomarkers in the user’s blood and trace markers in sweat.?

How Two Lab Mates Found Inspiration

Liu got his first exciting experience with entrepreneurship while working at Dr. Joe Wang ’s nanoengineering lab, as he worked with a startup to develop flexible batteries. But that wasn’t Liu’s only taste of entrepreneurship; at the lab, he met his future cofounder Yin.?

The two formed a strong bond, a bond that was revitalized even after they went separate ways – Liu went to 美国杜克大学富卡商学院 while Yin earned his PhD in nanoengineering at UC San Diego. When the two reunited around 2022, Yin told Liu about his doctoral work.

“He was telling me that he developed this really cool, non-invasive glucose monitoring technology during his PhD,” Liu explained. “He thought this would be a great opportunity to commercialize this technology to help millions of people with diabetes.”

Persperion at UC San Diego: Then and Now

Other than being alumni of the school, Liu and Yin have been deeply involved in and connected with UC San Diego. Persperion utilized multiple UC San Diego resources and went through multiple accelerators, including the Triton Startup Incubator . By the end of 2022, Persperion received an office at the Design and Innovation Building at the Entrepreneurship Center on the fourth floor. They housed their work and interns in this office, but now have since relocated to a new working space in Convoy, successfully exiting the student entrepreneurial ecosystem.?

Persperion still has a presence at UC San Diego through its collaboration with the Basement and its i4X program. Through this course series, The Basement connects multidisciplinary teams of undergraduate and graduate students to collaborate on innovative solutions to existing problems across different sectors in San Diego.?

The i4x Persperion team has been tasked to gauge customer interest. Even though Persperion has run surveys before, and they know there’s a need for non-invasive glucose measurements, they now want to see if people are interested enough to share their personal information on a landing page to learn more.?

Liu says that he was inspired to join the program as a company partner because of his own experience as a UC San Diego student. When he was still an undergraduate, Liu says that he would have benefited greatly from real-world experience, and he encourages students to explore their chances to engage with real-world problems and companies.?

“If students can spare some time to explore and participate with accelerators or startup companies, that really gives them great exposure to entrepreneurship,” Liu said. “At this stage, as a student, you’re not risking your career or academic performance to do something. Those are great opportunities to learn, to get involved in entrepreneurship. Getting that experience without risking anything, it’s a great thing to do and explore early.”??

Learn more about Persperion.

Read about Persperion in Startup Developing Noninvasive Glucose Test.

Reach out to Alan Liu.?