German startup TimeTeller uses an at-home saliva test to help people understand their circadian rhythm. But knowing that rhythm doesn’t tell a cancer patient when to take a specific medicine. CEO Angela Relógio draws that line between what the test provides today and the company’s research into how treatment timing could be used in practice.
Eventually, the company wants to pinpoint when cancer treatment is most effective and produces fewer side effects, going beyond the broad distinction between morning people and night owls. Scheduling treatment around a patient’s internal clock could improve outcomes. The direct-to-consumer kit, however, doesn’t currently let patients work out that schedule themselves.
“That is something that we need to calculate for every single medicine; we do that in the context of clinical studies,” Relógio cautioned.
Demand from longevity clinics prompted TimeTeller to open up direct ordering, Relógio said. Focused on healthy aging, those clinics use a person’s circadian-rhythm data to tailor advice about sleep, nutrition, light exposure, and physical activity.
Some cancer patients can already obtain the test under a partnership with Techniker Krankenkasse, which ranks among Germany’s largest health insurers. The agreement followed the arrival of cofounder Benjamin Dose, a biochemist and market access specialist. Initially, the arrangement covered reimbursement for the test for a subset of cancer patients. Relógio said the two sides are now prepared to extend coverage to more of the insurer’s 12 million members. So cancer patients do have access, even with the restrictions she outlines for consumer use.
Inflated promises and outright fraud have marked the at-home health testing industry. In the source report, Relógio’s careful approach stands in contrast to that of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder. Relógio trained as a physicist-engineer and molecular biologist and devoted years to research in Germany on oncology, circadian biology, and systems medicine. She then left academia to launch TimeTeller. Although her surname translates as “clock” in her native Portuguese, she distinguishes today’s test capabilities from the company’s ambitions.
While researching cancer, she saw many patients stop or start treatment because of side effects. Those observations drew her attention to the question of timing.
“As a scientist, that was just impossible to watch, particularly when I was convinced that part of the problem might not only be what treatment we give, but when we give it,” Relógio said.
A finding from that research prompted both her departure from academia and the development of TimeTeller’s underlying circadian-rhythm test. To move the work forward, she felt she needed to build a company. “I personally funded our first patent because I strongly believed that this discovery should not remain in scientific publications,” she said.
After spinning out of Charité, Berlin’s university hospital, TimeTeller moved to Medical School Hamburg. There, it received funding and access to patients. The school also provided a fallback for the startup’s 10-person team: employment if the company could no longer afford to pay them.
The potential uses extend to metabolic diseases, including diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, as well as performance and women’s health. Still, cancer is the main focus of the company’s work.
Ahead of her appearance in San Francisco at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield competition, Relógio explained the wider ambition driving the research. Her goal is to put the question of “when” at the heart of precision medicine, because “almost every process in our body is timed.”
