WORDS BY DANI KUEPFER; PHOTOS BY CHRIS TIESSEN 

Whole worlds can shift when someone is in the right place at the right time: the discovery of life-saving penicillin made possible by a serendipitous development during Fleming’s vacation from the lab; the love of your life delivered to you by the universe via an unfortunate fender-bender meet-cute; a decades-long dream of proactive healthcare access catalyzed by a global emergency. Of course, ‘right place, right time’ doesn’t always look like a gift in the moment – but in retrospect we see that it might very well have lit the fuse of an incredible vision already underway. 

Kitchener-Waterloo native Jamie Yantzi’s ‘right place, right time’ happened to be his Kitchener home, in March 2020, when Jamie’s career in medical diagnostics encountered the incoming virus we now refer to simply as COVID. By mid-March, he tells me, he had used the AI technology of his company, Seegene Canada (a subsidiary of Seegene Inc, a global pioneer in molecular diagnostics), to make available a test for the COVID-19 virus – what we now know as a PCR test. But despite this opportune readiness of a working COVID test, there was no infrastructure in our region to process the tests – outside of Jamie’s own equipment. Before long (while the rest of us were just beginning to clue into the gravity of the emerging pandemic) Jamie and his friend Dave Erb (who met decades ago as campers at Silver Lake Mennonite Camp – a meet-cute story for another day) conducted kitchen table conversations with friends and family in the healthcare field, and came to the realization that Jamie’s twenty-year dream of opening a genetics lab had arrived at a ‘now or never’ moment. The decision was made, and on March 21st, 2020 Jamie launched that dream, and gave his new enterprise a richly evocative name: EpiTOme. 

‘COVID sort of forced the issue,’ Jamie says. Did it ever. By May 2020 EpiTOme Genetics had opened its lab in the heart of Kitchener’s Belmont Village. Operating as a private lab outside of Ontario’s Public Health system, it began offering testing directly to industries identified as ‘most essential’: long-term care facilities, construction, universities, as well as overnight testing (via the Region of Waterloo International Airport) for Public Health units in other provinces like Newfoundland. When industries began shifting away from the higher quality PCR tests to rapid testing, EpiTOme (whose PCR tests were, relative to other labs, very affordable) pivoted and built partnerships with airlines and pharmacies nationwide in anticipation of reopened international travel. 

Before long, EpiTOme Partner and VP Operations Teri-Lynn Steeves assembled a small group of experienced medical lab technologists, along with a team of biology and biochem undergrads from the local universities, to take on the various tasks demanded by the new operation – including the handling of up to seventeen hundred samples a day. Led by Steeves, previously the Lab Supervisor / Director Designate of the Histocompatibility & Immunogenetics Lab at the Hamilton Regional Lab Program, this cohesive team was poised to contribute essential tasks and services required of the start-up. And then things began to shift, and COVID testing slowed down. 

But Jamie’s vision prevailed. With COVID PCR tests being used less frequently, EpiTOme shifted its focus to preventative healthcare via DNA analysis. Its aim, fully consistent with Jamie’s long-range vision, was to use state-of- the-art technology and innovative strategies to provide high quality analytical laboratory services to patients, healthcare providers, and businesses. ‘Canada’s healthcare system already offers fantastic treatment for diseases like cancer,’ Jamie tells me, ‘but what we’re interested in is early detection. In fact,’ he adds, ‘we envision a future where – through innovative personal diagnostic screening – individuals can take far greater control of their health and medical information.’ 

Canadians are well aware of how tightly squeezed our healthcare system is, and most folks would agree it’s ripe for innovation. Jamie’s vision for EpiTOme is to enable Canadians to take more of their health into their own hands by expanded access to earlier diagnoses. We all know that months can go by between wait times to see a doctor, getting booked for tests, scheduling follow-up appointments and referrals to specialists, and, finally, accessing treatment. EpiTOme’s goal is to make an immediate difference in the lives of Canadians who have a health concern by overcoming some of these time barriers. The solution? Direct to consumer medical diagnostics. 

When I ask Jamie what he and EpiTOme are up to next, he tells me that he’s interested in leveraging the anonymized medical data made available by the programs already underway. He hopes that, over time, this data will reveal ‘new genetic signatures for cancer that will allow for even earlier detection.’ It’s sobering to think that fifty percent of Canadians develop cancer during their lifetimes. Jamie believes that he and EpiTOme have the technology and the tests to confront a range of present and future medical challenges, including the most urgent and serious. With the emerging data sciences scene in Kitchener-Waterloo, there’s no better place for brave and pioneering start-ups like EpiTOme to proceed to address innovative possibilities in healthcare and medical diagnostics. 

EPITOME GENETICS 
693 BELMONT AVE W, KITCHENER 
epitomegenetics.com