Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how we work in every industry, including medical providers across healthcare specialties, from diagnosis to treatment. The technology is helping doctors provide higher quality, efficient care for patients while empowering those patients with more insights and tools to help manage their health between appointments. And Olivia Chu, the CEO and co-founder of CytoBay, is one of the medical technology pioneers making it possible.
Her team is pioneering a new way to screen for bladder cancer using a technology called liquid immunocytochemistry (LICC). The technique allows pathologists to quickly identify and diagnose cancer cells in liquid samples, which are almost impossible to pinpoint using current technology. “Our technology makes tumor markers visible in clinical practice, but we can also easily enumerate them with an AI algorithm,” explains Chu.
From College Assignment to Family-Driven Entrepreneurship
According to Chu, the first iteration of CytoBay began in the college dorm room. Chu studied computer science in her undergraduate program at Columbia University. “I think all machine learning students have at least one assignment using a cancer imaging dataset. ,” she recalls. “So many industry leaders have tried to use AI on digital pathology slides, but it is so difficult with the data available today, which is only morphological data .”
That assignment became the topic of conversation at a family dinner with Chu’s parents. And later, it would become a family business. Chu’s father refined Cytobay’s innovative staining technique, while her mother crafted the automation process. Still a college student at the time,
Chu recognized the opportunity to apply her own education in machine learning to the clinical process. “I instantly saw this as a perfect opportunity for machine learning—the enumeration techniques and recognition techniques. I got my first working model up in my dorm room on limited resources. It took 50 hours to train it,” she recalls.
Chu’s initial results surpassed expectations and became the foundational application for CytoBay. Her father, Dr. Wenjiang Chu, would later become a co-founder of the company, serving as its chief scientific officer. With more than 20 years in the pathology industry, Dr. Chu pioneered laboratory sciences at leading consumer medical testing companies.
Building a Technology That Saves Lives
Daughter and father might have bonded over the technology, but it’s the vision and importance of CytoBay’s work that steers them as a team. “Both of us have a vision of this as a screening technology that is going to shift how we look at cancer diagnosis and treat it as a disease,” explains Chu.
Following a successful initial clinical study with a leading Chinese university in 2023, Chu and her father partnered with a manufacturer to begin production on CytoBay’s first prototype. The company received patents for its technology in 2021 and is set to launch in late 2023.
While CytoBay is focused on business-to-business partnerships initially, the brand plans to introduce a direct-to-consumer, AI-driven testing option in the future. The niche healthcare AI sector is expected to be valued at more than $187 billion in less than ten years.
For Chu, the family-owned start-up holds incredible potential. “The vision that keeps us going is turning cancer into a chronic disease rather than something that can kill you,” she affirms. “We can catch it as early as possible, and patients never have to reach the late stage of treatment.” Headquartered in Los Angeles, CytoBay is currently in its seed round of funding. Discover how CytoBay is changing how we diagnose and treat bladder cancer at cytobay.com.
