The World's First Affordable At-home Live Cell Collection Kit Now Available, Readying Everyone for the Future of Cell Therapy & Genetics

In-person collection experience debuts at MaRS Health Innovation Week; pre-order now open for innovative live cell home collection kit in Canada.

TORONTO, April 1, 2019 /CNW/ - Acorn Biolabs, a healthcare technology company focused on giving every human being the best chance to enjoy greater health as they age, has launched the world's first easy and affordable live cell collection, genetic analysis, and cryopreservation service through its non-invasive method of simply plucking a few hairs from your head.

With an introductory one-time collection fee of $299, Acorn will collect and cryopreserve your cells for future medical use. The one-time fee will include collection, a cell viability report, cell images, a report outlining your genetic age, as well as storage of your cells for your first year with Acorn. Annual cell storage fees as low as $99 for children under the age of 19 years old will be billed to clients who sign up for the service starting in their second year.  Acorn is also making available a client referral program.

"Cell therapy is rapidly emerging as the future of healthcare," said Dr. Drew Taylor, Co-founder and CEO at Acorn Biolabs. "Your own cells are the key to leveraging its potential, increasingly unlocking preventative healthcare that can improve your healthspan. Medical advancements have allowed for doctors to use your own cells to predict, treat, and even eradicate disease and degenerative changes. Stem cell therapies, tissue engineering strategies, and regenerative medicine are all powered by using cells."

As cells age, they become increasingly damaged and less effective for use with cell therapy treatments. That's why consumers have already started to collect, preserve and store their cells as soon as possible — locking in their cells at their best.  Unfortunately, existing methods of collecting live cells are highly invasive: from bone marrow extractions to liposuction surgery, and from venous blood draws to tissue harvesting. These procedures are painful and require medical teams, making live cell collection widely out of reach for most people.  

To demonstrate how easy and accessible live cell collection can be, Acorn will debut its in-person live cell collection experience at a series of events across Canada this year including: MaRS Health Innovation Week, Total Health '19, Technology & The Future Of Healthcare 2019, Collision, BigData Toronto and Elevate, among others.  At these events, consumers can personally experience Acorn's easy, non-invasive live cell collection service by having their own cells collected on-site.

Also starting today, Acorn has started taking pre-orders for its at-home live cell collection kit which is due to ship this year. The innovative kit design, supported by Acorn's non-invasive method, will allow consumers to collect their own live cells easily and non-invasively in the comfort of their homes by plucking their own hair follicles. Consumers can hold their place in line for the first run of kits by pre-ordering today at www.acorn.me.

Acorn demonstrated their unique capability today on stage at MaRS Health Innovation Week with a hair follicle collection demo where they plucked hairs of attendees in front of a live audience - safely collecting their cells for future medical use.  

Today's popular saliva-based DNA home-collection kits are low cost cell collection alternatives, but only capture dead human cells, limiting their use. These DNA and ancestry tests currently focus on less than 1% of a full genome making it impossible to leverage those cells for anything other than ancestry and basic health reports. 

Acorn's non-invasive method of plucking hair on your head allows for full genome collection, in addition to banking your live cells - all without traveling to a clinic or needing a physician or surgery, making live cell collection significantly more affordable and accessible for everyone.

Easily accessible, progressively more powerful.  Your own cells are the next currency in healthcare.

About Acorn Biolabs, Inc.
Founded in 2017 by Steven ten Holder, Patrick Pumputis and Dr. Drew Taylor and born out of years of research, Acorn is a healthcare technology company.   Based at Johnson & Johnson INNOVATION -  JLABS in Toronto, in the MaRS Discovery District – the heart of innovation in medicine and biotechnology -  Acorn is focused on giving every human being the best chance to experience more healthy years with its easy, affordable and non-invasive live cell collection, analysis and cryopreservation service. Acorn helps you save your cells today, to live a longer, healthier tomorrow. Visit acorn.me

SOURCE Acorn Biolabs