RALEIGH – Over 70 life science companies will be presenting at the annual CED Life Science Conference on Tuesday and Wednesday in Raleigh. Here are profiles of some emerging firms making a repeat appearance.
These profiles are presented in partnership with the CED.
Novoclem Therapeutics, Inc.
CEO: Anne Whitaker
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/NovoclemTherapeutics
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Novoclem is an emerging biopharmaceutical company leading a new fight against bacteria for people living with cystic fibrosis. We aim to improve and extend their lives with our therapeutics.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
Our first product is a nitric oxide loaded biopolymer, a natural antimicrobial, conveniently delivered directly to the lungs via a nebulizer. We have accumulated robust preclinical data that indicate we will be significantly more effective than currently available inhaled antibiotic treatments for treatment of chronic pulmonary infections. We are on track to begin a first in human trial in cystic fibrosis patients during 2019.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
We have an industry experienced team of leaders at Novoclem, as well as distinguished collaborators like UNC Chapel Hill. Our technology originated out of UNC Chapel Hill from Dr. Mark Schoenfisch’s laboratory.
SiNON Therapeutics
CEO: Afreen Allam
Video link(s): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2MtrJq1qJE
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/SiNON-therapeutics
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
SiNON is dedicated to improving the lives of those who suffer from debilitating neurological diseases by increasing the ability of drugs to cross the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). Our patented nanoparticle, the Carbon Dot, will enable pharmaceutical companies to encapsulate their drugs in a way which dramatically improves drug-localization to the brain. This allows for a reduction in overall dose administration to the patient, leading to reduced toxicity risk and side-effects while improving therapeutic index and cost-efficacy.
Create a safer target drug delivery platform. Help improve the quality of life for patients.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
We have a non-toxic, water-soluble and Self-fluorescing drug delivery platform technology.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
We have produced a method that can induce release in certain environmental conditions. We are not limited by drug or disease model. We have a platform technology that can be applied for treatments for many different diseases. Our current focus is on neurological diseases due to the high un-met need of crossing the BBB.
Applied LifeSciences & Systems
CEO: Ramin Karimpour
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/ALS-S
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Poultry producers are losing up to $11 billion globally due to controllable diseases such as coccidiosis. Our individual high-throughput chick vaccination and health screen system utilizing a marriage of high-speed Robotics, Imaging, Feature Recognition and Micro-Fluidics can revolutionize large scale poultry production and save producers and public billions of dollars.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
There are no current alternatives to our Individual Vaccination System beyond mass or manual vaccination (lacking scalability, accuracy, and cost efficiency). We have deep relationships with and support from leaders of poultry industry and Merck Animal Health (MAH) as our strategic partner. At only 30% Market Penetration, we will save the industry over $3 billion/year and become a major enabler of its sustainability in Antibiotic-Free/Drug-Free Environment as we generate considerable returns for our investors.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
We have a solid technical and scientific team with combined overall 300 years of Experience in Robotics, Imaging & Feature Recognition, Micro-Fluidics, Vaccines and Animal Health experience. Our Board of Directors is made of some of the most well–known executives of the industry and financial markets and the industry is already using other systems that we had previously launched successfully. In short, we have done IT before!
RFPi, Inc.
CEO: Jeff Basham
Video link(s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szYp62AHbGQ&feature=youtu.be
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/RFPi
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
RFPi may enhance surgical outcomes by providing new adjunctive information to surgeons immediately during surgery utilizing the company’s
MultiSpectralPerfusionVisualization (MSPV) technology. RFPI, a mid-stage startup company, is commercializing an imaging device that demonstrates in real time where and how well blood flows in vascular structures and tissues. RFPi’s patent-protected and copyrighted MSPV technology provides immediate visualization and quantification of blood flow and blood perfusion without requiring injections, dyes, radiation or direct patient contact like other imaging modalities.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
RFPi aspires to become a leader in real-time, non-invasive medical imaging. With three patents to date providing comprehensive intellectual property protection, RFPi is commercializing proprietary blood-flow imaging devices that could:
- Improve clinical outcomes for patients, lessening discomfort and stress.
- Benefit surgeons by integrating views of physiologic circumstances during procedures in real time, without disrupting procedures or requiring patient contact.
- Reduce costs for hospitals by reducing readmission / repeat surgery rates for post-surgical complications.
- Objectively measure outcomes, providing third-party payers with quantifiable performance data.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
We would turn potential investors’ attention to several differentiators that set RFPi apart:
- The company is led by a seasoned and skilled serial entrepreneurial management team with decades of experience heading life-science companies.
- RFPi’s technology was invented in 2010 at East Carolina University by a team of cardiovascular medicine, optical physics and engineering experts. Development has included bench-top and experimental studies, and clinical proof-of-concept and validation studies.
- RFPi has submitted a 510(k) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking approval for its first commercial product.
- RFPi has received grant funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, which allows U.S.-owned and U.S-operated small businesses to engage in federal research and development that has a strong potential for commercialization.
- RFPi has received a $250,000 small business research loan from the N.C. Biotechnology Center to develop a prototype of its proprietary blood-perfusion imaging device for use in outpatient clinics.
Agile Sciences, Inc
CEO: Malcolm Thomas
Video link(s): https://vimeo.com/203350439
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/agile-sciences
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Our mission is to win the war against drug resistance. By 2050, the cost of antimicrobial resistance will be 300 million premature deaths and $100 trillion dollars lost to the global economy. Every time we figure out a new antibiotic to throw against these superbugs, they figure out what we’re hitting them with, work together to acquire new defenses, and get nastier. So we’re in this perpetual arms race. At Agile Sciences, we’re developing a revolutionary approach to fight these superbugs by taking out their communications system so they can’t protect themselves. We’re developing a novel therapeutic that targets their ability to sense and respond to the environment through inhibition of two component systems. This blocks their ability to get messages out from their central base so when we hit them with a nuke, in our case an antibiotic, they can’t defend themselves.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
What’s really game changing about our approach is that we’re not hitting superbugs with an upgraded, next generation antibiotic that they’re probably going to evolve resistance to in a year. Instead, we’re knocking out their communications system so they’re essentially blind, sitting ducks, making our existing antibiotics effective again. We’ve shown proof of concept that this technology works in animal studies, and we’re targeting this technology towards multidrug resistant infections.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
Agile Sciences has received over $12.5M in small business grants and contracts from National Institute of Health, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, and foundations including Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and Bay Area Lyme Foundation. In addition Agile Sciences currently has 20 patents and 6 pending patent applications with the intellectual property covering both utility and design patents.
UVISION 360
Developers of the Luminelle DTx Hysteroscopy System
https://www.luminelle360.com , www.Uvision360.com
allisonlondonbrown@uvision360.com
CEO: Allison London Brown Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/UVision-360
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Dedicated to the advancement of a fully integrated hysteroscopy and cystoscopy system to fulfill unmet needs for diagnostic & therapeutic procedures for the modern office.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
Our product will save physicians, patients and payers both time and money. We have leveraged the best technologies from a variety of industries, simplifying the set-up and optimizing user experience and visualization, all for ~75% less than standard equipment. And we as a team have been very cost and time efficient. We have developed our product in 19 months and getting ready for commercialization under our stated budget. We have done the work with only 2 employees, several great advisors and consultants and leveraged multiple companies within NC for our supply chain, including our contract manufacturing team at Robling Medical
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
Our biggest asset is our team. I am fortunate to have assembled a group of people who are committed to our mission and able to effectively execute on our plan. Erich Dreyer, our CTO is a problem solving guru and can anticipate challenges. Dr. David Robinson, CMO, knows the market, the doctors and our potential partners. Our board is a great mix of mentors, networkers and financial experts. Our advisors are experts in their respective areas and bring unique insights to our program. All of these have enabled us to be prudent in our approach and have created value for not only our current investors, but also our future partners, patients and physicians.
Lindy Biosciences
CEO: Deborah Bitterfield
Video link(s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpCFJ4w71l8&t=6s
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/lindy-biosciences
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Our goal is to bring simpler drug delivery to patients. Over half of all antibody therapeutics on the market are given through slow intravenous infusions, which has a high health care cost, and is inconvenient and invasive. Ideally, these drugs would be given by a single subcutaneous injection that patients could administer themselves. However, antibodies often require higher doses than are currently possible in a subcutaneous injection due to its limited volume. We are developing a formulation technology that will enable higher dosing in smaller volumes, allowing patients to spend less time taking medication, and more time living.
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
Our proprietary Microglassification™ technology dehydrates protein solutions into tiny, dense, spherical particles. Suspensions of these particles are more easily injectable and more stable than their solution counterparts. By using this approach, we can quadruple the currently achievable dose in a subcutaneous injection, and apply it broadly to antibody therapeutics and other biologics. This will decrease administration costs, increase patient comfort and compliance, and allow a quicker path to the clinic for new molecules that require high dosing.
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
We have gained significant traction in a short amount of time. I’m incredibly proud of what this team has accomplished over the past year—we are testing with 2 of the top 5 global biologics companies and are generating revenue through service contracts. We are addressing formulation challenges in a rapidly growing market. Antibody therapeutics alone represent over 40% of the biotherapeutics market. Subcutaneous delivery (as opposed to intravenous injection) is a rapidly increasing segment of this market due to lower administration costs, higher patient satisfaction, and better compliance. The market for enabling technologies such as Microglassification™ is significant—for subcutaneous delivery systems it is expected to be over $10 billion by 2025.
BioLink Life Sciences, Inc.
CEO: Deanna J. Nelson
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/BioLink-life-sciences
- What is the driving mission of your firm?
Commercializing health care products for ourselves and others
- What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
BioLink has a broad portfolio of drugs and supplements for prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. Our newest, VitalSr(R), can be marketed in as little as 6 months for men and women at risk for bone fractures. VitalSr(R) creates “bone banks.”
- What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
Our benefit:risk ratio cannot be matched.
CED Life Science Conference 2018 – WRAL TechWire Q&A Profile
MVTRAK LLC
www.mvtrak.com
CEO: Noel Heiks
Video link(s):
Link to CED Life Science Company Profile: https://cednc.org/company-profile/mvtrak
What is the driving mission of your firm?
We make an in-ear sensor to detect and alert for concussions in sports, the military, and the elderly–addressing the $76B medical problem of brain injury.
What makes your company unique and therefore of interest to investors?
We outstrip the competition by 15X. We have a world-class team led by a seasoned entrepreneur, an Olympic athlete, and a head injury expert. In addition, our technology is patent-pending and was spun out of Duke University.
What are the most important reasons why investors should be interested in your company beyond your product and/or technology?
- Our ability to leverage our technology in concert with a multi-$B strategic partner in a multi-$B medical monitoring market means a large potential ROI. 2. Revenue streams from government/military research programs offer a foundation of sales and cash for the company. 3. In addition, MVTRAK’s team is seasoned at company management and technology–a team where investors can place their bets.
