Startup Case Study: GambitBio

Tiffany Ma, the co-founder and CEO of GambitBio comes from an entrepreneurial family in Hong Kong, instilling a passion for the world of startups at an early age. After completing her undergraduate and Masters studies at UC Berkeley, Tiffany Ma started her PhD in Molecular Cancer Biology at the University of Oxford, but unexpectedly had to leave the labs in 2020 and parts of 2021 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Bored in quarantine and lockdown, Tiffany and her close friends discovered the All-Innovate competition and decided to apply with an idea for a startup. Inspired by lateral flow tests used to identify COVID-19 patients, the team decided to experiment with a similar methodology, but instead, to test for cancer.

“Since one-third of cancers can be cured through early detection combined with existing treatments and therapies, our idea seemed like a low-hanging fruit – but we quickly realised that there was actually a lack of accurate, accessible and affordable early cancer detection tools on the market. So it was a no brainer to execute this idea by leveraging our expertise”

The Founding Team

And so GambitBio was born; a startup creating novel at-home, saliva-based self-test kits for early cancer detection. By utilising state-of-the-art technologies that discover novel protein biomarkers, the kits offer precise cancer detection at a low cost. 

Tiffany's three co-founders include Dr Susan Kilgas, PhD (Trustee Science Committee postdoc researcher at Harvard Medical School) and Dr Cristiano Peron MD PhD (oncologist who executed early phase clinical trials for the NHS) both of whom also obtained their PhDs in Oncology at the University of Oxford, and Dr Shilin Chen, who obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering at UCLA.   

After conducting thorough feasibility research, the team needed to raise some money to validate their idea. Tiffany pitched GambitBio to angel investors which resulted in initial investment, allowing the company to make a prototype product and conduct a pilot clinical study to validate their idea. The results were highly promising and demonstrated the technical feasibility and reliability of their technology, leading to the filing of a provisional patent. 

GambitBio went on to win a myriad of prizes, including first prize at the 2023 EnSpire #StartedinOxford Demo Night, the OX1 Incubator Demo Day grand prize and Techstars Deep Tech Momentum Acceleration Prize. During her PhD, Tiffany also participated in the Ideas to Impact (I2I) programme at the Entrepreneurship Centre at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, which exposed her to the world of business and a community of business executives. Alongside dedicated entrepreneurship programmes, she has also collaborated with student societies such as Oxford Entrepreneurs in order to gain momentum for her startup.

Early-Stage Cancer Detection

Though the goal of GambitBio is to help people pinpoint cancer presence early so that they can act fast, they are not making official diagnostic tests, but providing an early detection screening tool. This means that they differentiate themselves from the actual cancer diagnostics that are conducted at clinics. In the cancer screening test space, a prominent competitor is GRAIL, which uses circulating tumour DNA to identify several types of cancer from the blood. However, their solution is quite expensive and primarily detects late state cancers. The accuracy rate is also very low for some cancers. GambitBio focuses on competing with these attributes, while collecting saliva instead of blood; a unique offer and far less invasive. Future plans involve raising further investment and applying to grants in order to carry out larger validation studies, as well as putting the actual product into commercial settings as soon as possible.

Being in the early stage of their development, collaborations and partnerships are extremely important for GambitBio. They have so far established exclusive partnerships with other deep tech startups, where the combination of novel technologies leads to synergy. They also have professors from Harvard Medical School and the University of Oxford on their Scientific Advisory Board, allowing access to world class cancer biology expertise and higher quality patient samples. In the future, they hope to partner with pharmacies and screening companies, with the aim of distributing their products via such business partners using a B2B2C (Business to Business to Customer) model.

Tiffany believes that founding a company is a constant learning process and that mistakes and failure are the greatest sources of learning. As a scientist who started a business, she realised that modelling how the company will generate revenue and the cost of product development were both crucial for raising investment and turning the idea into a reality. Though sometimes it is hard to translate the science to a commercial layperson language in order to sell it to investors, she believes that practice is the key to mastering these skills. For those interested in entrepreneurship, Tiffany recommends getting hands-on experience, like joining an incubator or helping a founder to experience day-to-day operations. 

“Switching between being a scientist and an entrepreneur was a big change. I wish I had started earlier, because it’s both challenging and rewarding!