Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Nine Diagnostics, co-authored “Commercialization of Analytical Technologies: Summary of a Symposium at SciX LI, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, October 2024,” published in Applied Spectroscopy Practica on August 3, 2025.
The paper captures a session at SciX LI, the fifty-first annual conference of the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies, held in Raleigh, North Carolina in October 2024. The session was designed to help scientists navigate the parts of building a company that most technical training does not cover: business fundamentals, intellectual property strategy, personnel decisions, and the commercial judgment required to determine whether a technology can become a viable product.
Dr. Nguyen’s contribution, drawn from his experience at MIT and Nine Diagnostics, laid out a practical framework for translating measurement science into healthcare products. His talk addressed four interconnected challenges: rigorously defining the problem and achieving product-market fit across the full range of healthcare stakeholders (patients, clinicians, insurers, and regulators); leveraging a structured innovation ecosystem like that of Greater Boston; defining the roles of scientific co-founders so their contributions align with both their strengths and the company’s operational needs; and using iterative, human-centered design to keep solutions adaptable as market understanding deepens.
He drew on Nine Diagnostics and Podimetrics as concrete illustrations. Podimetrics, whose early detection platform for diabetic foot ulcers significantly reduced hospitalizations and amputations, reflects the same principle that guides Nine Diagnostics: focused problem definition and ongoing market validation are prerequisites for clinical and commercial adoption of a new diagnostic technology.
The session was organized by Alexander Scheeline (SpectroClick, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and included perspectives from Rina K. Dukor (BioTools, Inc.), Sanna Gaspard (Rubitection), and J. Michael Ramsey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), whose combined commercialization experience spans decades and multiple successful exits. The paper is available open access in Applied Spectroscopy Practica, published by the Society for Applied Spectroscopy in partnership with SAGE.
This framework reflects the commercialization principles guiding Nine Diagnostics, co-founded in 2024 by Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD, Daniel A. Heller, PhD, and Mijin Kim, PhD. Read the paper.
About Nine Diagnostics
Nine Diagnostics is an AI-enabled multi-omic nanosensor company advancing precision medicine. The platform simultaneously captures proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic signals alongside patient clinical context to generate a multi-omic fingerprint, using machine learning to identify disease-relevant patterns without requiring prior knowledge of which biomarkers matter. This enables pre-treatment patient stratification, on-treatment response monitoring, and post-treatment minimal residual disease detection. Founded by Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD (CEO), Daniel A. Heller, PhD (CSO), and Mijin Kim, PhD (Scientific Advisor), Nine Diagnostics is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.