The last few months have witnessed the unraveling of the remarkable life sciences company Theranos, culminating in the news that federal regulators may ban Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes from the blood-testing industry for at least two years. The company is also facing a federal criminal investigation into whether its investors were misled about its technology and company operations.

How has this widely acclaimed biomedical innovator fallen so far, so fast?

Theranos’ revolutionary claim that won over investors was that it could accurately run tests using a small amount of blood taken from a poke in the patient’s finger, instead of a syringe full from a needle stuck in a vein. The idea was that dozens of tests, such as cholesterol and thyroid hormone levels, could be run on a single, tiny blood sample.

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