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Ikonisys Inc.

 
• By Wendy Diller

Two-year-old Ikonisys has developed a cell-based analysis system for detecting rare cells in blood. Its first application is detection of fetal cells in maternal blood, a longstanding ambition of many companies, none of which has succeeded to date. The test would detect the most common birth defects earlier in a pregnancy and more accurately than existing methods. Ikonisys also sees a big opportunity in cancer for early detection of disease and micrometastasis.

The idea for an automated image analyzer that could quickly scan samples came to Triantafyllos Tafas in the early 1980s as he stood in lakes studying microorganisms in drops of water. A hydrobiologist with a specialty in population dynamics and a PhD from the University of Athens in Greece, he was challenged by the inability of existing technologies to analyze large amounts of information, and foresaw the utility of computer-controlled imaging in biology.

At the same time, across the ocean, his friend Petros Tsipouras, MD, was working as a pediatric clinical geneticist at...

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