After a tumor is removed, surgical drains clear fluid from the healing area. That fluid usually ends up in the trash—but Pitt’s José Zevallos believes that it could be lifesaving.

A new company called Droplet Biosciences, which is co-led by Zevallos, has been developing kits to test the lymphatic fluid from surgical drains and characterize cancer to direct precise post-surgery treatments for patients.

“It was a simple idea,” says Zevallos, an MD, the Eugene N. Myers Professor of Otolaryngology and chair of that department at Pitt since August 2022. The lymph from these draining surgical sites provides “a window into the body’s physiology that had never been looked through before, and [the lymph] has the tumor’s immunology,” he says­, including what’s “contributing to treatment response and tumor aggressivity.”

These insights launched Zevallos into the entrepreneurial world, where he met Stan Lapidus, founder of Exact Sciences and inventor of Cologuard, a kit that uses DNA in stool to screen for colon cancer. Weekly meetings between Zevallos and Lapidus expanded to include Aadel Chaudhuri of Washington University in St. Louis and business expert Theresa Tribble. The four founded Droplet in 2021.

This year the company received an $8 million investment led by the Engine, an MIT-backed capital incubator, to establish proof of concept for the technology.

Read more from the Summer 2023 issue.