About Cardea and the BPU

Inside your computer, the CPU is the processor that makes the computer work. There is also a GPU that draws the graphics on your screen. Cardea is the first and only company to offer a BPU™ - a Biosignal Processing Unit.

 

The world's first

Biocompatible semiconductor platform provider

The BPU™ is the first mass produced chip that creates a gateway between the live signals in biology and the digital world. In other words, the BPU™ offers direct communication with biology by translating near real-time streams of multiomics signals into digital information.

Not only does the BPU’s direct signal detection expand on current optical and static measurements in life science, it also removes many of their limitations. That opens for an entirely new generation of innovations, applications, devices, and products in and around life science.

Partnership approach

Have you ever bought anything from Intel?

We all know Intel, but we never buy anything directly from them – we buy computers from companies that source Intel’s CPUs. Where Intel Inside is a famous business model for CPUs, Powered by Cardea is Cardea’s BPU™ equivalent. Cardea’s BPU™ platform is allowing partnership companies to build innovative products with competitive advantages, so these partners ultimately can market and sell their Powered by Cardea solutions.

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Use cases

The market opportunities for new products and solutions that are Powered by Cardea are almost infinite, but a few examples could be; A farmer getting real time DNA insight to what fungi that is attacking his crops so he can treat the field while also not over killing it with fungicides and pesticides – and that is just one of many “precision medicine” use case examples that will benefit both crops, animals and humans due to BPUs based products in the hands of farmers, vets, researchers and doctors.

 

 

 

 

 

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Using CRISPR as a genomic search engine

How is that even possible, you might ask? In the farmer example the specific BPU™ is called CRISPR-chip™ and is doing something called “Amplification-free DNA detection” which means DNA testing without the need for a sequencing lab. By adding CRISPR in to a BPU™ to utilize it as a genome search engine, Cardea created a BPU™ version called CRISPR-chip™ that ended up earning Cardea a cover story of the prestigious Nature Biomedical Engineering Journal as the first ever Amplification-free DNA detection solution.

As the CRISPR-chip™ that way is able to live observe CRISPR at work the farmer or doctor can that way get to know in near real-time if e.g. a plant or patient has a specific gene with a specific mutation resulting in a disease or as a solution to the problem, without the need for slow and expensive sequencing.

The newest version of the CRISPR-chip has even achieved a biosignal resolution so precise, that we can now read a single letter change in a human genome – a so called SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism). This will allow for very valuable handheld biosignals and insights, otherwise impossible to measure today.

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Why graphene?

Biological signals happen in pico-seconds - a millionth of a millionth second. A blink of an eye is very slow in this context. To build a BPU™ that can process these signals in near real-time, you need a material that can transmit signals tremendously fast. Silicon, the semiconductor material used for CPUs, is way too slow for this purpose. Instead, we have successfully learned how to master the nanomaterial graphene to a degree where we have 20 patents on it now and Cardea is the only company able to mass produce BPU™ chips.

Graphene is a one-atom thick nanomaterial that is both metal and crystal at the same time, and it moves electricity between 100 and 1000 times faster than silicon, making it a near perfect semiconductor. In addition, graphene is biocompatible, making it a perfect substrate to attach molecular elements to in order to create the selective gateway between the digital networks and the biological networks.

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The BPU™ platform and BPUs
are flexible and adaptable

Cardea’s BPUs can be configured and integrated at scale into thousands of products and applications that will be used in many different markets - in the field, at the bedside, or at the research bench - and that way enabling solutions once only dreamed of.

The core of BPU™ technology consists of multiple Cardean Transistors™ - that are graphene-based biology-gated field-effect transistors – that gets incorporated small particles of functioning multi-omics biological materials on to it like fx. DNA, RNA, and proteins.

At its core the BPU™ measure molecular binding interactions, that are arguably the common denominator for all biosignal types. That way the BPU™ platform allows for everything from simple measurements like antibody/antigen or DNA test all the way up to advanced multi-omics biosignals like (CRISPR) enzymes, active smell-receptor proteins and measurements like RNA-binding proteins that otherwise has been considered practically impossible.

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What parts are in the BPU™ Platform?

Cardea’s BPU™ platform consists of BPUs, hardware, software and wetware. A BPU is configured for a specific application via wetware functionalization such as CRISPR or an antibody/antigen test. The functionalized BPU is then feeding biosignal over to the Gateway Reader, that obtains and distributes the data signal output to the software, the Gateway Analyzer, which in turn is connected to a computer or the cloud where Cardea’s bioinformatics and proprietary software are running. This combined architecture is Cardea’s BPU™ Platform.

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Vision and mission

Cardea’s vision and mission are best manifested through the golden circle, by Simon Sinek, author of “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”.

Everybody knows what they do. Some know how they do it. But very very few know why they do it. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe. What you do is simply the proof, of what you believe.

- Simon Sinek

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Culture eats strategy for breakfast

That’s a quote that we ascribe to Peter Drucker, author of Concept of the Corporation, but it’ likely a paraphrasing of what we do know that he stated.

"If your employees aren't passionate about your company's vision, they won't be enthusiastic about executing the plan, and then your strategy stands no chance" Peter Drucker 


Here at Cardea we really strive and value a positive culture, because we have seen how it works and when it works. And the opposite. We also know that a positive culture doesn't happen by itself, so when we say that we dare to care, we mean it.

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