Galaxy Diagnostics Launching More Tests for Deadly Infections
Nicole Bell has taken the helm of Morrisville-based Galaxy Diagnostics, leading the company to launch groundbreaking tests for Lyme disease and Bartonella, enhancing its innovative diagnostics capabilities.
By Jim Shamp | July 31, 2024
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You’d be hard-pressed to find any corporate leaders as passionate about their companies’ mission and products as Nicole Bell, the former chief business officer of Galaxy Diagnostics who became its CEO in June.
Bell ascended to the helm of the Morrisville bioscience company co-founded by her predecessor, Amanda Elam, Ph.D., with an unambiguous vision born from personal tragedy and a determination to expand on Galaxy’s successes inherited from Elam, who remains a company advisor and board member.
Bell, an entrepreneur and engineer with more than two decades of experience in medical devices and diagnostics, is the mother of two and the widow of Russ Bell, who also was an engineer. He was the victim of a tick bite that ultimately destroyed his brain.
Sadly, the medical community, even in the globally respected Research Triangle of North Carolina and beyond, was not prepared to identify and diagnose the cascade of danger that befell Russ Bell. After his death, Nicole Bell described the bizarre journey she and her family traveled in a memoir, “What Lurks in the Woods, struggle and hope in the midst of chronic illness.”
Two New Tests Launched
Galaxy, a 2008 spinout of North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, has recently launched two tests that give therapists powerful new tools to identify potentially deadly but usually treatable insect-borne bacterial infections in people and animals.
They include the world’s first antigen test for the tick-borne infection known as Lyme disease, which killed Russ Bell, and the other is the most sensitive test yet for the wide-ranging bacterial scourge called Bartonella – not considered a tick-borne infection.
Since the 1990s scientists have discovered some three dozen species of Bartonella. About half of them are known to cause a variety of infectious diseases in humans and animals, collectively known as Bartonellosis. The most well-known disease caused by a Bartonella bacterium is “cat scratch fever.”
People around the world became familiar with the benefits of antigen tests when they became available for home use to quickly and inexpensively detect COVID infection. The other commonly used test applies a technique called a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which “amplifies” small segments of DNA in highly specialized lab equipment to pinpoint an infectious agent in a sample of tissue or body fluid. PCR tests are highly accurate, but more costly than most antigen tests and they also can take more time to provide results.
NC State research scientists Edward Breitschwerdt, D.V.M., and Ricardo Maggi, Ph.D., co-founded Galaxy to commercialize their development of an enhanced growth medium for culturing Bartonella, which was difficult to grow on a lab plate. Their growth medium also proved useful for a variety of other pathogens. They retain their positions at the university, while Breitschwerdt also assumed the role of Galaxy’s chief scientific officer and Maggi its chief technical officer.
At the same time Bell became CEO, Jeff Clark, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist based in Research Triangle Park, succeeded Breitschwerdt as board chair.
NCBiotech Early Support
Early loans from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center totaling $115,000 helped open doors for other funding. In addition to its revenues from product sales, Galaxy is backed by founder and angel investments and relies on state, federal and foundation grants for research and development.
Galaxy sells ePCR panels for detecting pathogens in blood, tissues and body fluids; DNA tests for identifying active infections; and antibody tests for determining prior infections. In addition to Bartonella, the products test for Anaplasma, Babesia/Theileria, Ehrlichia, Rickettsia and Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Galaxy has a strategic partnership with IDEXX Laboratories, a leader in animal health diagnostics. One of Galaxy’s animal tests is on IDEXX’s product menu.
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