In this Fierce Biotech discussion, Chris Hayden speaks with Arnon Chait, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Cleveland Diagnostics, and Tyler Allchin, managing director of healthcare at JobsOhio.
Arnon Chait, originally trained as a physicist, describes how Cleveland Diagnostics was built around a long-developed technology co-created with the Cleveland Clinic. Their IsoClear platform enables simple, cost-effective blood tests for early cancer detection, allowing physicians to make actionable decisions without relying on expensive or complex genomic methods. Proof of this innovative platform is Cleveland Diagnostic’s flagship IsoPSA prostate cancer test. The blood test is available nationwide, covered by Medicare, and already transforming prostate cancer detection and care. Chait emphasizes that the company’s mission is not to cure cancer directly but to develop technology that drives earlier disease detection so treatments can be better targeted and more effective.
Tyler Allchin explains how JobsOhio, a private nonprofit driving Ohio’s economic development, has supported Cleveland Diagnostics through its Growth Capital fund — a unique corporate venture tool that few states possess. He highlights Ohio’s three innovation hubs — Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati — and their nationally ranked research institutions, noting that Ohio leads the U.S. in pediatric care and research. Allchin stresses the state’s commitment to life sciences, even during the pandemic, investing over $300 million to build the Ohio Discovery Corridor, an ecosystem spanning the full healthcare innovation chain.
Both Chait and Allchin reflect on Ohio’s competitive edge: while states like Massachusetts or California have crowded venture scenes, Ohio offers startups visibility, strong institutional partnerships, and tailored state support. Cleveland Diagnostics, now a commercial-stage company with a 90-person team, has served over 70,000 patients and attracted global investors like Novo Holdings. Looking ahead, the company plans to expand into additional cancers (breast, thyroid, ovarian) using the same IsoClear technology.
Allchin concludes by affirming Ohio’s ambition to become a national leader in pharma manufacturing and diagnostics, capitalizing on its reshoring advantages and deep talent base.
Chris Hayden:
Hi, everyone. I'm Chris Hayden from Fierce Biotech. I'm here today with Arnon Chait, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Cleveland Diagnostics, and Tyler Allchin, Managing Director of Healthcare at JobsOhio. I'd like to take a moment and let you two introduce yourselves. Arnon, we can start with you.
Arnon Chait:
Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. My name is again, as you pronounced properly, it's Arnon Chait. It's an Israeli name in origin actually, although I came here to the US when I worked for NASA for many years. I'm a physicist, actually, by training. Physicists usually are curious type people and they like to dabble in things that they don't understand too much. I dabbled more in biotech and we started, myself and my co-founder, an interesting company, also in Cleveland, that is still running that does contract research on drugs as well. This one was a technology that we slowly and carefully curated over the years. When the time was right, we put it together with Cleveland Clinic, and that's the rest of the story of course.
Chris Hayden:
Great. Tyler, how about you?
Tyler Allchin:
Great to be with you, Chris and Arnon. Tyler Allchin, I'm our managing director of healthcare and life sciences at JobsOhio. We're the state of Ohio's private economic development nonprofit corporation. Working on behalf of the state, we're responsible for growing the life sciences state-wide. We've got three great innovation and research hubs, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. We are really leaning in on what we think is a priority market in an area where Ohio can win alongside our research institutions and our innovators, like Arnon and Cleveland Diagnostics.
Chris Hayden:
That's great. Well, that's perfect. Today we'll be discussing Cleveland Diagnostics, a pioneering commercial-stage oncology company advancing its IsoClear platform and expanding its team within Cleveland's growing life science community. Co-founded by innovators at the world-renown Cleveland Clinic and funded by Novo Holding, Cleveland Diagnostics is commercializing a novel approach to more accurate testing for early detection of cancer. Yeah, this is great. We'll be diving into the future of cancer testing and the benefits of growing in the Ohio Discovery Corridor. I'm looking forward to this conversation, guys. Arnon, I'd love to start with you. Could you tell us the Cleveland Diagnostics story? What's the dream the company is chasing there?
Arnon Chait:
I like the way you ended your question, what's the dream? Recognizing that, let's call it cure, would come from a combination of treatments, like drugs for example, which is really what the readers' probably are more coming from, as well as surgeries, or whatever. All the normal ways that you deal with a complex disease such as cancer. The diagnostics has always been played as a third or fourth child, not only in reimbursement and everything else, but really in the recognition of its role in actually addressing this complex disease. The more we get into the weeds, the more we start realizing that cancer is very heterogeneous, and especially at later stage, it's very complex, and the chance that you will find the right hammer to hit it is very, very weak.
On the other hand, if you have especially ... And again we target, in our company, technologies that allow us to look at the disease at very early stage with single blood test. When you do that, it may allow pharma to actually not only tailor, but use existing drugs that are targeted to very specific subpopulations. The trick is to find, again, that patient who can benefit from your treatment very early on. That's really been the dream that we have because eventually, if you think about it, it's a holistic approach to the disease. We are not curing it, but with our help, we can cure it better.
One other word about what is the basic tenet of what we have created versus other diagnostics modalities out there, especially everybody knows about DNA sequencing and liquid biopsies, and other tricks like that, which are all fine. But at the end of the day, physicians really want something that is simple to understand, that they can explain to their patients within literally they have the 10 minutes that they have with the patient, that is actionable. What do you need to do? It's not really a big signature that is AI processed that nobody can explain to a patient or to understand themselves. Finally, it cannot be very expensive, otherwise you're really not addressing market needs. That's all together, bringing you back to what is the format of the technology that you're trying to develop and that's what we did.
Chris Hayden:
That's excellent. Tyler, I'd be curious to hear from you. How has JobsOhio supported Cleveland Diagnostics?
Tyler Allchin:
Just hearing Arnon end on that accessibility piece is really big and it's exciting. That piece of the story I think grows in importance and prominence as the market evolves on this early screening front. JobsOhio has had the privilege of investing in Cleveland Diagnostics via our growth capital fund, which is led by my great colleagues Tatyana Hower and Steph Ison. JobsOhio Growth Capital is our corporate venture arm. It's a bit unique. Most state economic development organizations do not have a corporate venture vehicle that they're able to make exciting equity investments, long-term equity investments into. This is a unique structure that allows us to be supportive of our early stage innovators, alongside the research institutions, the world-renown research institutions that they're coming out of, like the Cleveland Clinic. This was founded with researchers there. We believe that the IP and the talent coming out of places like Cleveland Clinic, it can compete globally. You're seeing that with the funding and the talent that Arnon and team have attracted.
We're repeating that model throughout the state and feel really strongly about our competitive advantage in being able to propel early-stage innovators via this fund. Ohio historically has lagged behind peer states in total venture capital funding. This is an opportunity for us to partner and drive those numbers in what we believe are our best and brightest companies that can compete not only coast-to-coast, but globally. Especially in important areas, like cancer detection.
Chris Hayden:
To tie into that a little bit, Arnon, Ohio and especially Cleveland is lucky to have the Clinic there as part of the city infrastructure. I'm sure many entrepreneurs dream of working with the best of the research institutions like the Cleveland Clinic. I'd be curious to hear, I am very curious to hear about how you went from NASA physics to this, but we'll skip that for now. I would just be curious to hear about the process of working with the Cleveland Clinic and how that partnership has evolved?
Arnon Chait:
I'll start off actually by even adding a couple of sentences to what Tyler just said. I think that we are actually ... Well, how should I say that? As a dispassionate observer, I would definitely like, if I have to do it again, to start a company here and not on the coast. If I would be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I would be one of several hundred companies vying to go and meet another VC. The approach that JobsOhio is putting together is rather unique and effective, because they can fulfill exactly that needed piece for companies that are not many, they don't have to choose between hundreds, it's true. But they can definitely ask the important question. Is it working? If Cleveland Clinic is saying that it's working and you've done all these studies, that is really the combination that makes I think Ohio unique in its approach to this industry.
Cleveland Clinic, again, you're talking about an organization with 70,000 people, maybe 75,000 people work there. It's clearly not only a great place that medicine has been advanced, but we really like the fact that not only research is an important piece, but clinical research, which for us was a critical part in validation. But everybody told me as a small company ... At the time I think we had what, 12 to 15 people or something when we co-founded this company, which was our technology. They saw how IsoClear could benefit many aspects of not only cancer even, we're getting to neurodegenerative diseases and other pieces. This technology is very wide. But everybody said, "Well, be careful when you get in bed with a 900-pound gorilla, because usually the gorilla wins."
I have to say it's been nothing but a great experience. Again, you find the right people. In a large organization, you need champions. Altogether, it's been a great experience. Then when we finally found, or JobsOhio finally looked at it and they said, "Yeah, we can fulfill the job that Ohio can do uniquely, because we don't live in Massachusetts or in California." Altogether, it's just been nothing but a great mix and still going.
Chris Hayden:
Great. That's actually a great jumping off point because, Tyler, so many states have launched life science innovation districts. I know Arnon mentioned Massachusetts, I live in Maine so I hear about the life science in Massachusetts all the time. What makes the Ohio Discovery Corridor special? Why is the effort such a priority for JobsOhio?
Tyler Allchin:
Great question, Chris, because I do think the innovation district term at this point has gotten a little bit tired. If you've seen one, you've seen one. You’ve got to live through the models to understand what they're doing. I'll just tell a little bit of the context story to our effort. At the depths of the pandemic in 2020, I think to the great credit of our governor, lieutenant governor, CEO and our JobsOhio board, when a lot of states were pulling back on innovation funding and life sciences funding, JobsOhio and the State of Ohio led with our largest one-time investment into life sciences talent and research in the state's history. Over $300 million was put to work through this innovation district initiative, which we've now branded the Ohio Discovery Corridor. We've gone to market with our best and brightest research institutions, again Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Headlined by Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals, and Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, the Ohio State University and Nationwide Children's Hospital, the number six pediatric center in Columbus. And down in Cincinnati, the University of Cincinnati and the number one ranked pediatric center in the country at Cincinnati Children's.
A lot of folks in the market don't know that Ohio leads the nation, both pediatric care and research. That was a big thread that we pulled on when we were setting up this effort. Our approach, Chris, a little bit unique. Most states would maybe undertake one single innovation district in a city at a time. We've got three cities that have a right to win in healthcare and life sciences and we wanted to do it together as a state and go to market as a state. What we're building out slowly but surely, over the last five years now, we're getting into more of a launch period, is a value chain and an ecosystem that we can leverage across those institutions for early stage innovators like Cleveland Diagnostics, but also for more mature corporate companies that want to engage in the ecosystem.
If you look out across our research institutions, talent, CROs, CDMOs, we believe we've got a pipeline where you can innovate, commercialize, and build all in a call it four hour drive up and down 71 Interstate.
Chris Hayden:
That's brilliant. Now, I'd be curious, Arnon, just to get into the life science a little bit. The last couple years, and maybe for the next couple of years, have been turbulent in the life sciences market. There's been a lot of change. How have you been able to navigate the commercialization and the fundraising processes so well? I'd also be curious to add onto that, what comes next? I'd love to hear your future steps.
Arnon Chait:
Did you see the market yesterday or today? Yeah, I think that the turbulent times, we all got used to almost just swim in any waters that it give us. But there is one saying, which I know it's overused but it's so true. If you have the goods, good companies are always going to get funded. I think that that's, for me at least, that's been proven to me again and again. I cannot tell you how many companies now come to us, and now wanting to collaborate, or wanting to take their technology and plug it in, because we've done everything. We have a great commercial unit. We have 90 people today that make a lot of money, which is good for the state and good for everybody.
It hasn't been that hard. Again, going back to what you said, Chris, having a co-founder like Cleveland Clinic, it's a stamp with the red wax and the ribbon, and everything else that you want to put on it. That's been really good. That gets you into the door. After that, they ask you, "All right, how do you scale up?" My board is asking my chief commercial officer all the time and he has been able to show that. Then you get, on the other side, "Well, who else has been interested?" Well, we can say JobsOhio. That's how you make success stories.
Chris Hayden:
I love that. Excuse me. Final word, Tyler, I'd be curious. I think the Fierce readers would be curious to hear, what can they expect from the Ohio life science community in the coming years?
Tyler Allchin:
The timing's good, Chris. Ohio's product that we're taking to market right now in life sciences is a great fit with the market that we have. I think to Arnon's point, you can't pick and choose the market, you play where it's at. We believe that we've got the talent and the ecosystem to win right now. Just to give you an example, a lot of the pharma manufacturing and pharma supply chain, value chain needs to be re-shored. We believe that made in America should also be made in Ohio. The same can be said for diagnostics, and Cleveland Diagnostics is a great example of a story that was not only innovated in Ohio and we had the ecosystem to support that. Thankfully, again, with my colleagues in our growth capital fund stepping into a round with Arnon and team. But now that they're in scale mode, we're going to be looking for ways that we can lean in and support.
Our executive team and leadership is fond of saying that not every state in the country is set up to work at the speed of business and help companies work faster and grow as quickly as they need, but we are. We feel like we're a partner that companies can come to us right now and get sped up in their process to market and their process to reaching patients. For innovators and entrepreneurs like Arnon and his team, that's really the most important part. The job creation is great, the wealth creation is really positive for the state, but we feel the most pride in getting that innovation to patients.
Chris Hayden:
Yeah, I think that's great. That's great. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure meeting you.
Arnon Chait:
Thank you.