Read the First Edition of The Lens, a new magazine by LSI arrow-icon

Gavin Cooper, AltaScience- Studio Interview | LSI USA ‘24

Gavin Cooper joined us in the LSI Studio at LSI USA ‘24 in Dana Point, California.
Speakers
Gavin Cooper
Gavin Cooper
CEO, AltaScience

Gavin Cooper  0:00  
My name is Gavin Cooper. I'm CEO of a company called AltaScience. AltaScience is an Irish company based in Dublin, and we have designed a technology in the women's health arena for permanent contraception. The the device itself is designed to be used in the office instead of the current standard, which is in the operating room in the United States alone is that 800,000 women are undergoing an invasive surgical procedure. They are having general anesthesia. They are having trocars inserted into abdomen, which causes a risk for damage to organs, vessels, etc. And then the clinician will either cut the tubes, tie the tubes, put clips on the tubes, remove the tubes, and then at the end of the procedure, the troca sites are sewn up, the patient recovers. Will probably stay in the facility for at least four hours under a general anesthetic, maybe five, and probably take three to four days full recovery before they go back to any normal, normal activities. And the other interesting part with this procedure. This procedure has been same since 1936 when it was first recorded. Nothing has changed, but the technology actually is a spin out from a cardiology product that my sister company manufacturers called for them, and this is designed for femoral artery closure, and they realized many years ago, if you close ephemeral artery, what else could you close? What else could you block? So we started a small, pivotal study of about 90, 92, 93 patients, and implanted our device in them, really, with the end response to see, did they become pregnant? And we're glad to say, none of them became pregnant. So we had a pretty much 100% success rate with that technology, and that sort of led us now to move this technology towards the FDA, and sitting down and starting a PMA, which we'll be looking to start later on in Bishop. And we decided our regulatory pathway, which is interesting for an Irish company, we're starting in the US. The big market opportunity for us as a company is US based the strategics that we would like to be partnering with that have a women's health kind of portfolio are US based? And the MDR system right now is in complete disarray. It has become highly complex, very difficult to navigate that pathway, whereas the FDA is a very clear pathway. So I'm hoping by the time next year's LSI is here, we can sit down and discuss how our study's going. We've already established our study sites. We have some of the probably world leading key opinion leaders on our advisory board, past presidents of eagl, two of them, future president of eagl, and some of the top key opinion leaders in women's health, but really genuinely believe, like we do, that there's a huge unmet need. Last year, 6 million pregnancies for derived. 45% of those were unintended. That number's going to increase and increase and increase. So we can do something to prevent that. We certainly will try and those key opinion leaders that we have are really keen on trying to help women. And so it's a it's a pain, painless procedure. It really is. The pain scores on the patients in the study that underwent this found literally very low, low pain scores. And it can be done as a walk in, walk out, lunchtime procedure with no, no requirement for anesthesia. We've recently done a small raise of convertible loan note of about 1.2 and that sees us really through to sort of 2025 we've got a bit of a runway I'm currently looking and the reason I've come to LSI is to discuss with investors to look at funding our full study costs. My initial, initial raise I've been looking at was 5 million to get us through, sort of 50 of our patients within the study. But the total investment required, really, to get us to the commercialization stage by 2027 is 25 million. You've got a market opportunity which is worth in excess, just in the US alone, of 2 billion and patients requesting it. And again, one of the things I did forgot to mention, since Roe Wade, there's been a six fold increase in women looking for permanent contraception options in the US. So we know there's a need, our procedure works out 50% cheaper than the current standard, with better results, better outcomes, better recovery time. Women's Health has always had a bad gig. It isn't it has 5% of the investment received at the end of the day. What are we looking to achieve? How can we as a company auto science, involve ourselves in that? But we are a saving women's lives. Because women die on an operating table. We are cutting the cost dramatically the procedure. We're making it safer, more efficient and better outcomes for the American population and European and world populations as well. Let's stop doing something that's been done for 100 years. Women actually deserve better.


 

LSI USA ‘25 is filling fast. Secure your spot today to join Medtech and Healthtech leaders.

March 17-21, 2025 Waldorf Astoria, Monarch Beach | Dana Point, CA Register arrow