TimeTeller, a German startup spun out of Berlin's Charité hospital, is commercializing a saliva test that reads a person's internal clock. The company's immediate market is longevity clinics and direct-to-consumer buyers, but its core mission is oncology: CEO Angela Relógio wants to use circadian data to determine when cancer treatments are most effective and least toxic. Relógio, whose surname means "clock" in Portuguese, says she left academia after watching patients stop or start therapy because of side effects, convinced that timing matters as much as the drug itself.
The company is careful not to overpromise. Relógio stresses that the current consumer kit cannot tell patients how to time their own cancer treatments; that requires clinical studies for each medicine. Still, TimeTeller has already secured a reimbursement deal with Techniker Krankenkasse, one of Germany's largest insurers, covering the test for a subset of cancer patients, and both sides are ready to expand it to more of the insurer's 12 million members.
Beyond cancer, TimeTeller sees applications in metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative conditions, performance, and women's health. The company moved to Medical School Hamburg, which provided patient access, funding, and a safety net for its ten-person team. Relógio personally funded the first patent, saying the discovery "should not remain in scientific publications." The company's broader ambition is to make "when" a standard question in precision medicine, since, as Relógio puts it, "almost every process in our body is timed."