Antony Odell, Echopoint Medical - Optical-Fiber Based Sensors | LSI USA '24

Antony Odell  0:03  
Echopoint Medical is a London based spin out with spun off of unite University College London. And we're about helping interventional cardiologists make better decisions. This is the team that supported the first phase of our growth. The two primary inventors, Malcolm and Adrian, one is professor of biomedical engineering at UCL. The other is a practicing NHS clinician. And these are investors and supporters as we've moved through deploying our seed money. So our seed money, we raised three and a half million half of that was soft money through grants. So we did it on 1.7 cash. And what we've done with that money is essentially take something that looked incredibly primitive on a bench in a lab in UCL and take it to the point where the MHRA said, yeah, it's safe to put that into a human being, which we're very proud of. We've just closed our first close on our series, a a 4.2 million round that closed in February. And we're now at the point where we're beginning to deploy that cash to go through the next phase of development, which is what I'm here to talk to you about. But what are we what problem are we solving, the problem we're solving is lack of oxygen, the heart and something that's really overlooked very, very frequently. I'm sure everyone in the room has heard of stents and major blockages and major coronary arteries is the microcirculation is frequently not thought about in a systematic way. So what we've done is we've taken a standard FDA CE mark approved microcatheter and modified it with our sensor technology in a way that makes it a smart catheter for the heart. That gives you actionable data that you can then follow up and make treatment decisions based on that patient's actual condition. The other important point to note on this slide is women are misdiagnosed frequently, a study at Leeds University showed it's a 50% chance that a woman will be misdiagnosed when she presents with heart pain. And women are four times more likely to have the disease states is associated with my microvascular disease than men when they present. So this is a very important innovation for the industry and for patients. So ICORE is the system we've developed. You can see on the left hand side here is an off the shelf touch display screen, that that's a standard industry. One, we developed a console, which contains the exciting bit, which I won't talk about in any detail, but that's the software and electronics that drives the key bit, which is the sensor, the sensors based on fiber electronic platform, fiber optic sorry, platform that we've developed as a result of the work at UCL. And what it basically enables the clinician to do is they press one button, they've got one device, it's one step, and they get a reading of pressure, temperature and flow. So all that happens in like four seconds, it doesn't mean they're gonna inject say line doesn't mean they've got to do any other operational work. And it fits seamlessly into their clinical workflow in the cath lab. So it goes over any standard guidewire. Clinicians are very fussy about what guidewires they use, we don't want to make that decision for them. So we're agnostic as to which guideway they use, which means that what you actually got is a system that will fit seamlessly into the clinical space. So how do we do that? It's our fiber optic technology. This is essentially, the way it works, we have a fiber optic cable that deploys along the microcatheter, that fires, there's a laser heating elements, there's a light pole smooths down that, that heats a tiny piece of blood very minimally, this thermally tagged blood then passes down the bloodstream at the at the flow rate of the blood supply. And then it's picked up by a sensor at the other end, which measures temperature and pressure as well. So it's an actually standard thermo dilution technique. It's measuring the time of flight of a pulse of energy that we put into the bloodstream. And as I say it goes over a standard guidewire. So we took all this, we built devices, and we got approval to go into a 10 patient clinical proof of concept study. But then Bart's is a major heart center in London. And we were completed recruitment on that in that study in August last year, we recruited 10 patients, and the device worked. We showed it worked in human being which for me, I'm on my fourth or fifth startup now. That's the proof point. You can do great things in benches. You can do great things in preclinical but until you've got some data that's related to an actual person, I think you need that piece. So the device Ice worked. And we observed the visible temperature shift in six of the patients, we confirmed safety. And most importantly of all, we confirmed that ease of use people just picked up and work the device. We were very honored to be bolstered present at the podium and TCT last year in San Francisco, which is amazing for a very small study from a very small company. But the the key takeaway from this is the first in human study did all we wanted it to do. So we're now working on a product for FDA submission, we're taking our learnings from the study, we're applying that to the release one device, as we call it, which we obviously have to design fees for the MHRA. And there are a number of improvements we're going to make around the device that are going to really enhance its usability and performance, the market opportunity substantial, there's an existing 1 billion market, and that's built around pressure wires. So all the big companies in the market all have pressure wise, I was talking to somebody in a meeting yesterday, and she immediately sell their commodity item. And that's been said to me several times now. So what the large codes are really looking for is something to differentiate them from the kind of pressure wire mele that's going on in the market at the moment is growing rapidly around 60% compound annual growth rate, around 1 million of these procedures are done per year in the United States. But we believe there's an opportunity to expand that by adding the flow component together and getting a better coronary diagnosis. And we're going to be part of that. So it's an m&a space. We have seen examples of several companies acquired over the last few years neovascular shockwave opsins, quite by him and Essex back end of last year. So it's a busy space. And more and more people are beginning to recognize the importance of coronary physiology in the diagnosis of the patient. So much so that last year, there was a new CPT, new code in produced Kitsy AAPC 5192, which actually reimburses the cath lab for measuring flow. So that last piece that people always need to know is okay, it's great technology, it does something really amazing who's going to pay for it. And that's the, that's the last piece of the puzzle, as a commercial enterprise you really need to have in there. But now, there's an extra $2,257 for making those measurements. So that piece is in place, and will reimburse the capital that the physician actually also gets a per vessel fee for measuring it up to four of those. So our focus for our Series A, which we began to deploy is the US, we've submitted our q sub to the FDA this month, to confirm the predicates we're going to use for our 510 K, we've already talked to the strategics. So you know, I like to talk to strategics, early on when I start one of these companies, because they need to get to know you, your foibles, what you're talking about and how you're going to approach the opportunity. And they're very helpful a lot of the time in terms of giving advice. The clinical advisory group, we're also recruiting, it's going to be heavily US based, we used a lot of us clinicians, when we were in the diligence phase of our Series A, and we're gonna really start to increase our footprint in the United States by bringing us board members as well. So the plan, after that we've got FDA approval is engaged to US hospitals is post market clinical sites. So it's a very soft launch. But that will then start to increase awareness in the US. So the finance we looked for was 6 million, we've done the first 4.2 that we've submitted our q sub, I'm here to say we've got a second close coming in the next six months. And I'm happy to talk about potentially additional funds coming in to help support us. If we do get that extra money, then we'll use it to just increase that visible us footprint as we move forward. That's the plan just described it. I won't go through it again. But essentially, this is this is the roadmap to market that we're pursuing. Hopefully getting into the market at the end of 25 to the six IP, we've got a full set of IP, it is a platform. There are other elements to this. We haven't talked about tracking and optical ultrasound applications, but they're undergoing development within the university. Thank you very much for your time. And if you want to come talk to me, I'm here to the back end of Thursday. Cheers