Will a Test for Brain Trauma Protect NFL Players—or End the NFL?

In November, Kevin Hrusovsky paid a visit to the NFL’s headquarters on Park Avenue in New York. Hrusovsky (pronounced ruh-sov-skee) is chairman and chief executive officer of Quanterix, a life sciences startup that makes machines for measuring proteins and other biomarkers in the blood. He had the NFL’s attention because researchers have been using his company’s machines to hunt for markers of concussions and neurodegenerative disease. In an open letter NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell published in September about the league’s commitment to player safety, he wrote that Quanterix was developing “a blood test to reveal a concussion diagnosis.” It would be, Goodell said, “a major breakthrough.” The league, through a partnership with General Electric, has awarded Quanterix $800,000 in grants in the past three years. Hrusovsky was hoping to persuade the NFL to invest directly.

A few minutes after his sitdown with the league, Hrusovsky preaches to me over coffee at a hotel restaurant in Midtown. “My goal is transforming health care,” he says. At 55, with a broad mouth, smiling eyes, and graying hair, he resembles first-term George W. Bush. His homespun, slightly jumbled way of talking adds to the impression. Hrusovksy’s pitch to me is roughly the same as the one he just gave Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety—skittering from drones, to driverless cars, to Tesla, to heart attacks and diabetes. “I’m still addicted to pastries at night,” Hrusovsky says before circling back to his thesis: Quanterix’s machines are on the brink of delivering a revolution in medicine, as scientists use them to detect diseases earlier, target them more precisely, and create breakthrough treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, to name a few.