Video Transcription
Elizabeth Hoff 00:02
So I'm Elizabeth Hoff. I'd like to start with a little audience participation. How many of you know someone close to you who has had breast cancer? It's shocking, isn't it? We are really working on something that no other company has. We're not transforming the diagnostics, we're not transforming the therapeutics, and we're not transforming the surgical approach. What we are transforming is the post-surgical recovery that takes weeks and sometimes delays treatment. And that experience, if you ask women, is just one of about the worst experiences they've ever been through, and I'm going to show you how we're going to change that if I can find the clicker. So our mission at Somavac is to really focus first step on the post-surgical recovery. This is my good friend, Edie. We all have it. She married into a family where her daughter married Harriet and John's son; she has breast cancer as well. They are both dear friends. This is my friend from when I was 26 years old. Breast reconstruction, tremendous complications, infections, etc. I have that picture there because that's a neighbor of mine who now has stage four cancer. I mean, I could keep this page going. Thankfully, my family is blessed with no breast cancer. But this space is very real and very personal to all of us with breast reconstruction, which is really growing; the complications are shocking. One in three have massive complications; if you go to the right, one in ten get infections, and infections are catastrophic. So why does this happen? Why are these complications happening? In part because surgery creates dead space, and dead space produces fluid. It's a surgically induced dead space that's not good. What happens in that dead space is fluid builds up. It's called seroma. It looks relatively benign, but seromas are absolutely not what surgeons and patients want. It creates many, many complications, one of which is that the tissue cannot adhere quickly, and so the tissue actually will never have a very good adherence if it doesn't go as fast as possible. And the fluid and the opening into that space is a nice place for infection. What's happening in the breast reconstruction space is quite interesting. Breast reconstruction is growing at 7% CAGR. There are new surgical techniques. It's a really cool space with lots of innovation. And what's happening is they're moving the surgical procedure out from underneath the muscle by adding ATMs and meshes. The surgeons love the ADMs and meshes. The problem is the ADMs and meshes cause seroma build-up. And so what they're looking for is a way to get that fluid out as fast as possible. We take care of that seroma. Let me back up the fluid drainage. Back in 400 BC, with Hippocrates, it was known to be a problem. There have been rudimentary techniques to try to get rid of that fluid, none of which has really worked very well. In 1971, the Jackson-Pratt bulbs. You guys have heard of the JP bulbs, right? Some of you have changed those bulbs. I have changed those bulbs. It requires women to undo an open tube into their breast, which is not good. They squeeze it, they measure it. It leaks. It is a horrible experience for three to five weeks for women; it's humiliating. It leaks over their shirt. Their husband tends to change the bulbs. If you all didn't, you're not bad husbands, but that's what I've heard. So it's just for 50 years there's been nothing to help, either the complications or the patient experience, and we change that. Patients don't know how to use the JP bulbs. They go home with these. They're hated. They loathe them. This is what it looks like: safety pins on large shirts. They don't leave the house, they don't take their kids to school, they don't go out to dinner. They're housebound, and worse, they're not active, which is not the right thing to do when you're recovering from surgery. We take care of that by introducing a belt system, but most importantly, it's got continuous suction. And that sounds minuscule, but getting that fluid out through a constant suction like a straw is really interesting technology that completely transforms this experience. Our early clinical results indicate that we can take these drains out 30% faster by having that constant suction, which means getting treatment on time, which means having the tissue adhere and no really bad complications long term. This is the belt system. So I've been talking for a couple of minutes. Guess what? I have it on. You all never noticed? Did you? Yeah. I mean, this is transformational. If I had JP, now don't look at it. If I had JP bulbs on, I would not be up here, particularly if it were leaking everywhere. So women put this on, they go to work, they go to school, they take their kids out. It's transformational. This is just a cartoon about the bulbs, how they lose pressure over time. Ours is consistent; 100 milligrams of mercury continuously sucks it out, which is why the good clinical data and early results. There's nothing like Somavac. Now, many of you have heard of Praveena, which has really transformed negative pressure wound therapy, but it's incisional only. It doesn't go deep tissue. Ours goes deep tissue. So what Praveena is doing, which is a very well-known product incisional, particularly for orthopedics, we go deep tissue. And Praveena has really paved the way for us as a business in this negative pressure wound therapy. What's our traction? We're FDA cleared. I'll say it again. We're FDA cleared. No risk with that. We're the only one in the market with this, and we've already performed 1200 cases in and around the Memphis area because this was pioneered by surgeons there. We are looking to scale nationally and are very close to getting a large sales force. We have three issued patents and one in the making. This is a representation of our current territory; again, tiny market, Memphis, northern Mississippi. And if you annualize our sales in just two hospitals, we're looking at about 8 million next year with 35 sales reps. The TAM is big. So while we love breast cancer, the general surgery market for this is equally as big. And so it's a big TAM because for abdominal wall hernias, trauma, vascular, it adds much more opportunity. This was started by general surgeons. We've added breast reconstruction surgeons who are pounding the table and passionate about this. We have a board. I'm an ex-Medtronic VP GM. My partner is an Olympus VP of ops. Together, we're a powerhouse, incredible board with breast space knowledge, with financial knowledge, a GC. The cool thing about the company is we have so many opportunities to exit. We have at least 15 strategics who might buy us: breast, general, and wound therapy. We're in talks with many, if not most of them. And I'll end with two quotes. This is one of our breast surgeons, and he pounds the table in his hospital. Well, he pounded about three years ago, and he said, I want to use this product because these seromas are fixable if I have Somavac. And the hospital got it for him. He's done about 200 cases. He said, I started routinely using Somavac as soon as I could get my hands on it. I've not taken one patient back to the OR for seroma since 2019. That is powerful. I ran this slide by him, and he agreed to have it up. So it's really incredible, not one patient. And this is from a patient I know, one woman who's had 12 procedures. She comes to our office, pays for the Somavac for her next procedure. She is that passionate about getting these drains out sooner and reducing infection risk, and she said Somavac was clean, easy to use, and took away all the frustration of those bulbs. I even got my drains removed after only seven days. Game changer. As our last speaker said, it's such an honor to be part of something that both transforms the clinical outcomes as well as transforms patients' lives. We've raised an extensive amount of money, about 6 million, from people who are just passionate about breast cancer and improving the experience. We are raising the rest of our convertible note, and we are going to Series A next year, so please join us, and thank you very much for your time. Applause.
