Testing the Truth

The staff has a lively, if not entirely intuitive, metaphor hanging from the ceiling in an open area between the sales staff and the office handling incoming cases. A band of lumpy Styrofoam asteroids dangle in an arc around a vivid Styrofoam earth detailed with gaudy green continents, tempera blue water and classic yellow happy faces. Mostly maintaining her poise, the president explains: "Those brown things represent the rocks, the obstacles we have to get past to get to a planet of happy people."

Identigene itself has had plenty to smile about. It has averaged quarterly growth of at least 25 percent since its meager origins as a two-person firm. When the company hit the 25,000-case mark, the whole crew celebrated with a workday at AstroWorld.

The privately held company has expanded to the UK, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Japan, Korea and Turkey. Basically, wherever people have uncomfortable questions and access to overseas shipping, Caskey offers lab services. She's aiming for a planet full of happy people, remember?

Identigene has had to find innovative marketing messages to span the cultural divide. She first tried TV advertising. It won a slew of awards, including a Clio, but generated little business. So she turned to old-fashioned billboards and never looked back. Caskey put her faith in a Japanese firm for advertising in that country. The result is an ad image of two naked boys. Their backs are to the camera, but the children are obviously peeing. Caskey has no idea what it means, but it works.

Beyond marketing, her lab has some technical advantages. Identigene was the first U.S. lab to use the efficient polymerase chain reaction testing. Paternity test results are returned in three to five days for $475, plus collection fees for a legally binding test. For $1,500, Identigene will complete testing in one business day.

In contrast, competitor DNA Diagnostics Center in Ohio charges $475 for its "urgent five working day service" and $1,290 for three-day service. DNA Diagnostics doesn't do home collection, so clients must make an appointment to visit a draw site and pay $45 for that service.

It typically takes three hours to extract the DNA and eight to ten hours for the test, but Caskey's lab has found a way to step up the process. She dreams about a bio-electric computer chip that would cut test time by several orders of magnitude.

Caskey says Identigene does about 250 cases per week but has the capacity to do five times that volume. So she is focusing on business-to-business opportunities. "The sort of clients we have," Caskey says, "are expensive to go after and tend not to be repeat business." Identigene wants more account clients, companies that market and collect test specimens and use Identigene for the lab work. She also seeks more forensics traffic.

"England has one million DNA samples in a database," Caskey reports. "Car theft crimes are solved by DNA evidence in the UK." On the U.S. side of the Atlantic, she says, there is a tremendous backlog of DNA cases, including long-stored rape examination kits with evidence that still can be used to convict -- or to clear those wrongly convicted. "Barry Scheck has exonerated what," she asks, "almost 70 people? That's an area where Identigene might contribute."

Caroline Caskey is not daunted by the challenge of keeping a competitive edge in the genetics industry, the potential for ethical and political controversy, or the stream of heartbreaking cases coming through the lab. She's confident her company can continue to innovate and believes that the truth will set you free -- at least from nagging doubts. Caskey sees herself as selling picks and shovels in the biotech gold rush.