Video Transcription
Alexander Boulanger 00:02
Do you know the dispatch that people have on their arm that measures their glucose level? It's called a bio wearable, and this has changed the lives of millions of diabetics in the world. Today, we need that, but for potassium at Metyos, we are transforming kidney care with an innovative bio wearable for home potassium monitoring. Potassium levels are especially important for people with chronic kidney disease. This is a progressive disease that poses a serious global health concern, and 850 million people in the world have that disease today. Out of them, 37% experience hyperkalemia, which is an imbalance in the potassium level where the potassium level is too high, and this kills people for two reasons. The first reason is that it is a life-threatening condition in itself because hyperkalemia can lead to fatal cardiac arrhythmias. The second reason is that in most cases, very important antihypertensive treatments, the RACI treatments, are de-prescribed or down-titrated after an event of hyperkalemia, which leads to two times higher mortality for patients with stage three or four kidney disease.
So today, there is a gigantic new opportunity in a new market for home potassium monitoring. According to certain forecasts, it will grow very rapidly at 44% per year, which is gigantic. This is driven by the aging of the global population and the increase in the prevalence of kidney disease. Of course, this is provided that the technology gets into the market to allow for this potassium monitoring. At Metyos, we are offering continuous potassium monitoring. Our bio wearable sensor uses microneedle technology. This allows for real-time measurements in a totally painless way without any blood sampling. The biosensor consists of a reusable electronic device and a weekly bio recharge. It sticks to the skin like a patch. It's durable, it's waterproof, and it's usable in every daily activity, like in the shower or in the pool.
We worked a lot on the user experience of the device to make it very easy to use, and most importantly, to make it usable by every patient in complete autonomy. The sensor collects biological data from the patient's body and then sends it through Bluetooth to the smartphone, where there's an app that the patient can consult the data. Then the data is stored on a secure server from where the doctor can access it through a dedicated platform. One of our very important use cases is patients on medication that can cause hypokalemia. As I said, in 47% of the cases, antihypertensive treatments are down-titrated or completely de-prescribed after an event of hyperkalemia, which results in a higher risk of cardiac events. Now, with our sensor, patients can keep these life-saving treatments because we know how to treat hyperkalemia when it occurs. Patients can change their diet, and they can also use potassium binders to make the potassium level drop. What we lack today is the source of data to close the loop, and that's what we are providing at Metyos.
Another very important use case is patients with end-stage renal disease who are under dialysis. For these patients, with continuous potassium monitoring in between the dialysis sessions, we prevent hyperkalemia and hospitalizations, and we help the nephrologist adjust their dialysate bath in a personalized way for every patient with the data in real-time, without lag time, with the goal, in the end, to decrease the rate of sudden cardiac death, which is very important in those patients.
We've been working very hard with all our team to develop our sensor for years now, and today, we are very happy to have very promising performance results of the sensor, both in extensive in vitro testing and in early in vivo animal and human data. We are one of the few companies leading the way in the new market of home biology monitoring. Today, the only biomarker that can be measured at home continuously is glucose. We are competing with a few companies to take this new emerging, very big market of home potassium monitoring. We have a unique, proprietary technology that is very difficult to reproduce, and that allows for continuous monitoring, whereas most other companies are doing single-time measurements, which don't allow for detecting unpredictable imbalances and getting the trends to properly manage the situations. Also, our technology allows for multi-analyte measurements; that is a built-in capacity of the sensor.
We created the company in 2021, and we raised 2.6 million euros so far. We started a de novo process with the FDA. We'll be raising a Series A round by the end of this year, and our focus today is to get the products into the American market. The next stages will be MDR to extend to European markets and extend our range of products by adding more analyte measurements on the sensor. We gathered a wonderful team with years of experience in chemistry, electrochemistry, microfabrication, electronics, quality and regulatory affairs, and business development. My co-founder, Olga, is a wonderful human being, and she also has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and an MBA. She's the CTO. I'm the CEO. I'm a sales entrepreneur in med tech. I already co-founded and scaled from scratch an exoskeleton company, which now has 100 employees and has raised 75 million euros, currently in a commercial growth stage in four countries.
We are also supported by very good experts in the US in nephrology, hypertension management, and clinical trials. So feel free to reach out to us if you want to know more about the project and join us to help change the lives of our patients with CKD.
