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For ‘Dr. Spit,’ saving lives starts on the lips

Local entrepreneur aims to put diagnostic devices into widespread use

By Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor
Published: January 12, 2012, 4:00pm
2 Photos
Oasis Diagnostics saliva collection devices test for an array of diseases and collect DNA.
Oasis Diagnostics saliva collection devices test for an array of diseases and collect DNA. Photo Gallery

Click here to learn more about Oasis Diagnostics

Paul Slowey has worked almost a decade on an entrepreneurial dream that could improve the world’s health. But he’s not there yet.

Slowey, a Vancouver designer of tools used for saliva testing to detect diseases, was raised in a coal mining town in England and his career has placed him among Africa’s poor. He knows products being developed by his Oasis Diagnostics could help save lives through early detection of tuberculosis, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and much more.

But even with its seven patents and steady sales growth, Oasis’ $2 million in revenues to date are a drop in the spittoon of potential future worldwide demand. Industry sources project that saliva-based testing, more reliable for some purposes than blood tests, could someday become a major player in the $46 billion in vitro diagnostic testing industry.

The company already has distributors in Europe, the Middle East, South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil. But the industry remains in its embryonic stage, and faces numerous technical, political, cultural and financial challenges before it can take off big time. When that happens, Slowey’s innovative products could put the company in a strong market position as the technology moves from research laboratories to widespread use.

But Slowey, 56, isn’t aiming to be big for big’s sake. He wants his products to be used, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He’s uneasy with investors who are “more interested in their back pocket than in putting the technology to use.

“I’d rather not have that money and struggle longer,” says the man known to professional peers as Dr. Spit. “It’s the only baby I’ll ever have. After this, I’ll move on to something else.”

Variety of possibilities

Oasis Diagnostics designs and develops tools that allow on-site testing of saliva or oral fluids, as well as devices that can be used to transport samples including DNA and RNA to laboratories, with adequate safeguards for

temperature and quality control. On-site testing can detect drug abuse, infectious diseases including HIV and tuberculosis, steroid hormones and other abnormalities. With advances in detecting so-called “markers” in saliva, laboratory testing holds the promise of early detection of many debilitating diseases with accuracy equal to more invasive blood tests.

Oasis is working collaboratively with researchers to develop a point of care test that will use saliva specimens to determine, in 15 minutes or less, a person’s stress level. That project, scheduled for clinical testing in May, is funded with a $325,000 grant from the National Institute of Health.

Slowey’s challenge is typical for start-ups in emerging fields, where timing, talent, and dollars can tip the balance between success and failure. He acknowledges stumbles along the way that have made him cautious about taking on outsiders. And he admits frustration that digital technology startups seem more appealing to investors than his line of products.

He recalls making a funding pitch at the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network. “I was sandwiched between two software companies,” he says. “They both got funding and we didn’t.”

Oasis technology appears to be on the leading edge of an industry still in its infancy. The company has collaborated for years on a National Institute of Health research project to advance the science of saliva collection and testing for medical diagnosis. Dr. David T. Wong, who headed the Human Salivary Proteome Project at the University of California-Los Angeles, says Slowey’s work stands alone in the saliva collection field.

“Paul’s products are without doubt the best in functionality, aesthetics and overall features to meet our needs,” Wong says.

Kurt Rylander, a Vancouver attorney who represents Oasis on patent applications, says he’s not seeing many competitors to Oasis’ products. The company’s patents, he says, are the kind often seen from much larger firms. “He’s really covering the field,” Rylander says of Slowey. “If he keeps going, I’m pretty confident he’s eventually going to dominate the market.”

Besides that, Rylander adds, Slowey wants to help people. “One reason I feel good about him is that he’s not in it to make a big buck,” he says. “He’s out to make a difference.”

Slowey, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry, isn’t lacking in confidence.

“We have four technologies. If I see a market for something else I’ll develop another technology.”

But running the business is another matter. Slowey launched Oasis in 2002 after working for several medical testing tool companies. He could see ways to improve specimen collection tools, but his employer wasn’t interested in product development. He concluded the only way to turn his ideas into reality was to go out on his own.

“I never meant to be an entrepreneur. I sort of fell into it,” he says.

Slowey launched Oasis with a partner, who he bought out in 2006 in a bitter dispute over intellectual property ownership. “I didn’t do due diligence,” he now says. “It cost me two years of my life.”

One of the challenges for Oasis is a shortage of local management expertise in medical technology. While the Puget Sound region and the Bay Area have strong pools of medical researchers, the field is thin in the Portland area, says Richard Biggs, a business consultant who has worked with Slowey. “If he was somewhere else Oasis maybe would be a $10 million company now,” Biggs says.

His advice to Slowey: “Focus, focus, focus,” he says. “And surround himself with people that are well respected in the investment community.” Investors, he says, are looking for a skilled management team as well as a product that solves a problem — often something that people don’t realize they need. “

As for taking on investors, Biggs says: “I advise people that owning 25 percent of something big is better than 100 percent of something small.”

Slowey isn’t so sure. He knows he’ll need to attract people with business expertise, but he wants people who understand both the technical aspects and the social implications of his products and their profound implications for improving health.

“I’m very optimistic I can increase sales,” he says. “If I can last another six months, I won’t need investment money.”

His biggest fear, he says, is not losing money or control: it’s that his products will end up in the hands of a competitor rather than improving people’s health in the wider world. “The most important thing to me,” he says, “is that this not be put on a shelf.”

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Columbian Business Editor