MabLab’s improved drug and drink testing strips could make for safer streets and venues
For anyone who parties or goes out dancing, the risk of accidentally taking adulterated drugs is a real one. MabLab, presenting today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, has created a testing strip that detects the five most common and dangerous additives in minutes.
Co-founders Vienna Sparks and Skye Lam met in high school, and during college the pair lost a friend to overdose. It’s a story that, sadly, many people (including myself) can identify with. Thankfully, testing strips are a common sight now at venues and health centers, with hundreds of millions shipping yearly.
If you haven’t seen them, the strips work like this: You dissolve a bit of the substance to be tested in a provided buffer solution, then dip the strip in. The liquid travels up the paper, reaching a treated area that changes color in the presence of an unwanted additive. They’re simple and effective, but limited in that they only detect one thing, most commonly fentanyl.
“We have an opportunity to replace that with a better version,” said Lam — one that detects five common lacing chemicals simultaneously: fentanyl, methamphetamine, benzodiazepine, xylazine, and methadone.
The company’s innovation is “a mix of physical and chemical,” said Sparks: “There’s a zone specifically designed for each agent, and we’re using novel treatments and materials on the strip to allow capillary action to occur without incurring cross-reactivity.”
That is to say, the different zones and chemical sensitivities won’t set each other off or prevent the others from activating.
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