From shattered Olympic dreams to becoming an entrepreneur
How Sinead Miller, CEO and co-founder of biomedical device company, PATH EX is helping diagnose and treat sepsis.
As the daughter of a former superbike racer, it isn’t surprising that Miller grew up interested in racing, focusing her attention on road cycling during her teenage years. On a full cycling scholarship Miller attended Marian University, Indiana, whilst joining the U.S. national team and representing her country in races all around the world. Every race was a step towards a spot for Miller in the 2012 Olympic Games.
However, on 1st September 2010 Miller’s dreams were shattered. When competing during the three-day Ladies Tour of Holland (now known as the Boels Rental Ladies Tour) Miller careened into a parked car at around 30 miles an hour.
Due to the speed of the collision all of the impact went towards Miller’s face resulting in shattered front teeth, nose and jaw, a fractured C3 and C5 vertebrae, as well as brain injury.
Miller was motivated by her trauma and decided to pursue a career in neuroengineering. After achieving both a B.S. in chemistry from Marian University, and then a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Purdue University, Miller went on to graduate school at Vanderbilt University. It was here, whilst working on her doctorate that Miller began focusing on research around the use of iron core nanoparticles to magnetically extract bacteria from blood.
This research led Miller to focus on sepsis, a life threating condition. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 1.7 million American adults are affected each year by a sepsis, and this infection goes on to result in nearly 270,000 deaths.
Commenting on her research Miller said: “It’s the biggest killer in our hospitals right now.” She added: “I had this idea for a device that doesn’t use nanoparticles but uses kind of a similar technique to bind bacteria and pull them out of blood. I used the knowledge that I had to fabricate this device that was for cleaning blood, pulling bacteria out. And it worked.”
In 2017, Miller partnered with Alex Wieseler to start a biomedical device company named PATH EX, which is part of TMC Innovation Institute’s accelerator program. The device Miller developed is able to fit in the palm of a hand and diagnose bacterial infections within the blood by capturing and removing pathogens and their associated toxins. The device is able to take a five-milliliter blood sample from a patient suspected of having sepsis or a bacterial infection, separate the bacteria from the clean blood and provide doctors with the opportunity to test the bacteria straight away.
Miller concluded: “I wanted to make some impact in the healthcare space to help people like me.”