Leadership, innovation, opportunity creation.
In this newsletter:
?1) New, Notable, Upcoming
?2) Interview with Cohort 4, M2D2 IMPACT winner
?3) Current opportunities
New, notable, upcoming:
After a Covid hiatus,?Agile Search's?signature Boston event,?Learn Engage Grow Medtech?is COMING BACK in 2023. Stay tuned for more.
Life science investment at the University of Virginia??The University of Virginia will build a biotechnology institute funded with a $100 million donation from Charlottesville investor Paul Manning?and his wife, Diane.
U.Va. is contributing $150 million, and the state has allocated $50 million in initial investments for the institute in its 2022-24 budget, according to the announcement.?
Life Science Intelligence?hosts the?Emerging Medtech Summit?from March 20-23 in Dana Point, CA. This industry standout summit founded by Scott Pantel brings innovators and investors together like none other in the space. See you there!
DeviceTalks Boston agenda?is out with Medtech Innovator's Paul Grand kicking things off with a Keynote Panel: Engineers, Entrepreneurs and Exits.?This looks like a great event.?Shout out?to Tom Salemi for recognition as a Top 25 voice in medtech.????
M2D2 IMPACT Accelerator Cycle 5 Pitch-Off?is coming up on April 4th. Hear ten medical device startups selected for the IMPACT Accelerator Program pitch their innovation to a panel of industry experts. Hosted by Innovation Leader Richard Meiklejohn , these are always outstanding events.
Next up, our featured interview with?Wendy Slone, Ph.D, grand prize winner of M2D2 IMPACT Cohort 4.
John Compton:?Thank you Wendy for joining us on?The Disruptors?interview series. For those who aren’t aware,?Wendy Slone?is a Fulbright Scholar, holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration and is working on her second Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry.?
Wendy, can you share more about your company, bTECH and the problem you are solving??
Wendy Slone: Sure, John. We started bTECH to heal wounds in a way that has not been done before, from the inside out. My mom was the inspiration for this company. She broke her ankle and had a pin implanted to stabilize the break. A small incision that should have healed, grew into a large, untreatable wound and eventually her leg had to be amputated. My mission is to prevent this from happening to others.
The problem is current treatments tend to be surface level, take a long time to work and aren’t always effective. We have better materials now, and our aim at bTECH is to combine new materials with technology that significantly improves healing of chronic wounds.
From my research, I found that certain types of laser therapy are successful for wound treatment but that equipment is costly and not readily available to patients. bTECH’s product, the Smart Patch, uses infrared light to kickstart the healing process inside the wound and helps close wounds at the surface and restore strength to compromised skin. Our product increases microcirculation which creates a much-improved healing environment, where nutrients, oxygen, and extracellular matrix are increased inside the wound. We’re working diligently on a solution that will one-day cut the time to close a wound as well as prevent reopening.
Kathy Provost: Can you give us an idea of the overall market and segment your first product will address??
Wendy Slone:?The first big problem we’re tackling is diabetic foot ulcers. There are about 29 million people in the US who have diabetes and of those, up to seven million will have a diabetic foot ulcer.?One very important thing we learned through our patient engagement studies?with NIH I-CORPS was that many diabetics delay an early diagnosis for these types of wounds. The sad irony is the delay is due to the fear of amputation.?
Kathy Provost: What does success mean for you and bTECH??
Wendy Slone:?Success is reducing infections, reducing amputations, and improving the quality of life for people with chronic wounds.?There are 40,000-60,000 amputations per year from diabetic foot ulcers, and our strategy is to reduce that number greatly with prevention and improved wound healing technology.
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John Compton:?Wendy, can you share your current fundraising situation??
Wendy Slone: We are looking to raise $3 Million in a Seed round and that would take us through building out a more final prototype for clinical trials, finalizing our IP, along with efficacy testing. We would use this seed funding over a period of about 12 months which would give us a runway into an?A-raise, largely for supporting clinical trials.
John Compton: You’re on a roll, Wendy. Do you have any advice for other early stage founders and innovators who are getting into the game???
Wendy Slone: My main advice is to not take things personally. Consider that some “no’s” might actually?turn to “yes’s”, but it’s later on. You will make relationships with people that you thought were?going to be investors and it doesn’t work out. All relationships are important, and?they may come back to help you somewhere further in your timeline towards commercialization.??
When I was a kid, my mom was a proponent of what she called?criticism with love, you know, teaching you how to take criticism and turn it into a?positive. I realize now that she really set me up for success. I have learned to step back and look at any critique and say, how can I grow from that? How can we turn this into something that's good for us? That has enabled bTECH to be where we are now.??
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