Covid-19 testing startup SummerBio LLC is expanding its Menlo Park operations.
The company has begun constructing its second laboratory facility there, which will effectively double its testing capacity. SummerBio expects the new center will be up and running by April.
"Covid-19 is not going away, and we must remain flexible and vigilant," Dave Scheinman, SummerBio's president, said in a news release. "Our new, automated lab will allow us to quickly scale ... testing during times of surge, monitor new variants, and better meet the public health needs of our communities."
Located at 185 Constitution Dr., the planned 28,589-square-foot facility will be able to process 240,000 polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests per day. Those are the kinds of tests that are collected via a nose or throat swab and sent off to a lab and usually take a few days to process.
SummerBio, which already operated a PCR test facility at 980 O'Brien Dr., processes tests for some 1,000 schools and companies, according to its news release. Among its customers are San Jose Unified School District and Los Angeles Unified School District, according to Sasha Seletsky, SummerBio's chief business officer.
Seletsky founded the company in 2020 with Scheinman and a handful of other colleagues with backgrounds in robotics and automation after realizing early on in the pandemic that there was going to be a need for faster and cheaper coronavirus testing. Earlier this year, the Business Journal recognized SummerBio as one of its Startups to Watch.
Its move to build an additional lab comes as California is putting in place a new plan called SMARTER to manage the state's response to future surges of the coronavirus. Key to that plan is having in place the ability to process at least 500,000 tests a day statewide.
"SummerBio is prepared and ready to support California's SMARTER ... plan through flexible, highly automated PCR testing that can maintain warm capacity with the ability to quickly scale at moment's notice during high testing demands and surges," Seletsky said in the press release.
