Nutromics hires Kevin Plaxco as CSO

Nutromics’ decision to bring Kevin W. Plaxco into the chief scientific officer role is less a routine executive hire than a signal about where the company thinks its hardest work now sits. The Melbourne startup said September 7 that it is moving toward a first product launch in 2027 while also trying to broaden the reach of its DNA-based sensing platform. That matters because Plaxco is not an outside operator drafted in to professionalize a business function. He is the scientist Nutromics says invented the company’s core sensing technology, which makes the appointment read as a move to tighten the link between platform science and product execution. (prnewswire.com) The underlying technology comes out of a long-running line of work in Plaxco’s lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. UCSB and the Plaxco Lab describe that work as electrochemical aptamer-based sensing: a molecular detection approach built around DNA or related recognition elements that can measure targets in real time and, in the lab’s description, operate in situ in living systems. (prnewswire.com) ### Why does putting the inventor into the CSO seat matter now? Nutromics said directly that the company is preparing for its first product launch in 2027 and, at the same time, extending its wearable platform to additional targets. The company said that expansion effort will be Plaxco’s strategic focus as CSO. (plaxco.chem.ucsb.edu) In practical terms, that suggests the next phase is not just proving one patch works once. It is building a repeatable sensing platform that can be adapted across analytes while holding up on calibration, selectivity, signal quality and manufacturability. Those are the kinds of problems that usually require close control of chemistry, electronics and validation rather than software iteration alone; that inference is supported by Nutromics’ description of its product as an arm-worn microneedle patch using DNA-based sensors for continuous diagnostic monitoring. (prnewswire.com) ### What exactly is Nutromics trying to build? Nutromics’ website describes its product concept as “Lab-on-a-Patch,” an arm-worn system with microneedles and DNA-based sensors designed for continuous diagnostic monitoring. The company says the goal is to provide ongoing measurement rather than isolated point-in-time tests. Plaxco’s published research background helps explain why that is technically ambitious. (prnewswire.com) UCSB says his group works on biomolecular recognition and real-time optical and electronic biosensors, with an emphasis on using folding-driven signal transduction to create generalizable molecular sensors. ### Why bring Rznomics into the same conversation? Rznomics is working in a different part of biotech, but the common thread is process control. (nutromics.com) The South Korean company said September 6 that a study on high-efficiency circular RNA production was published online in *Nucleic Acids Research* on September 4. (chem.ucsb.edu) The paper’s title points to target-site selection and engineering of the production system as the source of the gain. That is not a sensing story, but it is another example of biotech progress being tied to precise manipulation, measurement and reproducibility at the molecular level. (prnewswire.com) ### So what is the thread connecting these two announcements? September 2026’s Nutromics and Rznomics updates both center on chemistry-heavy platforms moving closer to usable products or scalable methods. In one case, the company is pairing a planned 2027 launch with a scientific leadership change around a DNA sensing platform; in the other, a therapeutics company is highlighting a journal-published advance in circular RNA manufacturing. (prnewswire.com) The next concrete milestone is already named. Nutromics has said its first product launch is planned for 2027, while Rznomics’ latest step is the *Nucleic Acids Research* publication dated September 4, 2026, which gives outside researchers a reference point for the method it says it has advanced. (prnewswire.com)