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Can Theranos resurrect from its ashes?

  • Miyo K. Chatanaka ORCID logo , Eleftherios P. Diamandis ORCID logo EMAIL logo and Mario Plebani ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: July 18, 2025
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Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM)
From the journal Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) Volume 63 Issue 10

Abstract

Theranos was a biotechnology company which, in the 2010s, promised to revolutionize traditional clinical chemistry testing by using novel technology, microvolumes of blood obtained by finger pricks, and performance of tests outside traditional clinical chemistry laboratories, such as in pharmacies. Theranos did not publish any details of their technology, nor sought to evaluate it independently. Despite this, it attracted millions of dollars of investments, and at a point, its market valuation reached $9 billion. Around 2015 the Theranos business practices and technology were scrutinized and it was revealed that they misled investors, doctors, and patients by falsely claiming of using their own technology, when in fact, they were using traditional clinical chemistry analyzers. The leaders of Theranos are now serving prison time. This year it was announced that a new effort is underway, by people who are related to Theranos, to start a new company, with objectives that partially overlap with those of the old company. Here, we comment on these new developments, with the hope that the lessons learned from the past will guide the new leaders to find success while mentioning that some new developments in the field will likely pose formidable competition.

Keywords: Theranos; wellness companies; population screening; finger pricks; artificial intelligence
Corresponding author: Eleftherios P. Diamandis, MD, PhD, FRCPC (Path), Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON, Canada; and ACDC Lab, Room L6-201, 60 Murray St, Toronto, ON, M5T 3L9, Canada, E-mail:

  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  3. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission. MKC and MP edited the manuscript. EPD drafted and conceptualized the manuscript.

  4. Use of Large Language Models, AI and Machine Learning Tools: None declared.

  5. Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  6. Research funding: None declared.

  7. Data availability: Not applicable.

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Received: 2025-05-28
Accepted: 2025-07-07
Published Online: 2025-07-18
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

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  2. Editorial
  3. Quality indicators: an evolving target for laboratory medicine
  4. Reviews
  5. Regulating the future of laboratory medicine: European regulatory landscape of AI-driven medical device software in laboratory medicine
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  9. Detecting cardiac injury: the next generation of high-sensitivity cardiac troponins improving diagnostic outcomes
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  35. Diabetes
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  37. Letters to the Editor
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  41. A single dose of 20-mg of ostarine is detectable in hair
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  43. Congress Abstracts
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https://doi.org/10.1515/cclm-2025-0651
Keywords for this article
Theranos; wellness companies; population screening; finger pricks; artificial intelligence

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Quality indicators: an evolving target for laboratory medicine
  4. Reviews
  5. Regulating the future of laboratory medicine: European regulatory landscape of AI-driven medical device software in laboratory medicine
  6. The spectrum of nuclear patterns with stained metaphase chromosome plate: morphology nuances, immunological associations, and clinical relevance
  7. Opinion Papers
  8. Comprehensive assessment of medical laboratory performance: a 4D model of quality, economics, velocity, and productivity indicators
  9. Detecting cardiac injury: the next generation of high-sensitivity cardiac troponins improving diagnostic outcomes
  10. Perspectives
  11. Can Theranos resurrect from its ashes?
  12. Guidelines and Recommendations
  13. Australasian guideline for the performance of sweat chloride testing 3rd edition: to support cystic fibrosis screening, diagnosis and monitoring
  14. General Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
  15. Recommendations for the integration of standardized quality indicators for glucose point-of-care testing
  16. A cost-effective assessment for the combination of indirect immunofluorescence and solid-phase assay in ANA-screening
  17. Assessment of measurement uncertainty of immunoassays and LC-MS/MS methods for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D
  18. A novel immunoprecipitation-based targeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis for accurate determination for copeptin in human serum
  19. Histamine metabolite to basal serum tryptase ratios in systemic mastocytosis and hereditary alpha tryptasemia using a validated LC-MS/MS approach
  20. Machine learning algorithms with body fluid parameters: an interpretable framework for malignant cell screening in cerebrospinal fluid
  21. Impact of analytical bias on machine learning models for sepsis prediction using laboratory data
  22. Immunochemical measurement of urinary free light chains and Bence Jones proteinuria
  23. Serum biomarkers as early indicators of outcomes in spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage
  24. High myoglobin plasma samples risk being reported as falsely low due to antigen excess – follow up after a 2-year period of using a mitigating procedure
  25. Candidate Reference Measurement Procedures and Materials
  26. Commutability evaluation of glycated albumin candidate EQA materials
  27. Reference Values and Biological Variations
  28. Health-related reference intervals for heavy metals in non-exposed young adults
  29. Hematology and Coagulation
  30. Practical handling of hemolytic, icteric and lipemic samples for coagulation testing in European laboratories. A collaborative survey from the European Organisation for External Quality Assurance Providers in Laboratory Medicine (EQALM)
  31. Cancer Diagnostics
  32. Assessment of atypical cells in detecting bladder cancer in female patients
  33. Cardiovascular Diseases
  34. False-positive cardiac troponin I values due to macrotroponin in healthy athletes after COVID-19
  35. Diabetes
  36. A comparison of current methods to measure antibodies in type 1 diabetes
  37. Letters to the Editor
  38. The neglected issue of pyridoxal- 5′ phosphate
  39. Error in prostate-specific antigen levels after prostate cancer treatment with radical prostatectomy
  40. Arivale is dead ‒ Hooke is alive
  41. A single dose of 20-mg of ostarine is detectable in hair
  42. Growing importance of vocabularies in medical laboratories
  43. Congress Abstracts
  44. 62nd National Congress of the Hungarian Society of Laboratory Medicine Szeged, Hungary, August 28–30, 2025
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