Video Transcription
Laetitia Messner 00:02
Lucy, well, good afternoon. So I'm Laetitia Messner. I'm the Chief Clinical Officer of Quantum Surgical, and I'm happy to share with you the story of our company, which is a medical robotics company focusing on cancer care. So once upon a time, actually, seven years ago, Bertin Nahum, Fernand Badano, Lucian, and Sophie co-founded Quantum Surgical, the company in Montpellier, so in the sunny side of France. Now we are 120 in France, but also in the US where I am currently living. We also have an international board of directors with seasoned industry veterans, but also Ali Bridge Investment Fund that invested in our current company, but also in the previous venture. A couple of words about the track record of our co-founders. So every new adventure starts with a blank page, but actually, they all were in the med tech surgical adventure with the Rosa iRobot. So they started on heart tissue surgical robotics, orthopedics, brain, and spine. And after having sold the company in 2016 to Zimmer Biomet, they decided to go on a new adventure with Quantum Surgical in the soft tissue space, and talking a little more about cancer, which is actually where we focus. Well, we all know that the numbers are huge and so increasing, and if we focus on the different indications that we are targeting, so abdomen, lung, and also bone, it's nearly 30% of cancer deaths worldwide. In 2020, where we focus currently with Quantum Surgical is interventional oncology. So interventional oncology is a pretty new specialty. It's one of the fourth pillars of cancer care, alongside medical, radiation, and surgical oncology. It's pretty new, but still, it has been fastly increasing because it really fits into value-based healthcare. Why? It's minimally invasive procedures. It's limited scarring, it's limited complications, it's limited hospital stay. What we do at Quantum is not invent a new therapy. It really identifies treatments that have already proven benefits. So where the clinical and scientific publications are out there, and they are already incorporated in the scientific guidelines, whether it's European ones or the American ones. But the problem is, currently, physicians still do these freehand, and they face different pain points. The first one is they really have to locate the tumor. I mean, we're here for image-guided intervention. So seeing the tumor is one of the main important facts. Then they have to drive the needles to the tumor and have their hands in the gantry, advancing the needle step by step. And it's not just one needle; sometimes it's multiple needles, and they have to respect a specific pattern and specific spacing, which becomes more and more complicated. Once the needles are in, you burn the tumor, whether by heat, by coal, or by an electric current, and then the physician has to see if the tumor has been completely destroyed with the right margin. What do they do currently? They will look at the image at the top, look at the image at the bottom, and guess if the tumor is rightly covered with the right margin. The problem is guessing, because if it's not complete, well, you might have a risk of recurrence, which is not a good idea for the patient. So what did we do? We invented the EPON robot, which we believe is a breakthrough in percutaneous ablation. And because images are better than words, I'll just show you a quick video of a case that was done in Baptist in one of our centers. We're now
Laetitia Messner 03:47
going to get the robotic arm aligned with our trajectory. We're now going to use a coaxial needle called the Murphy needle for us to create a skin incision. Traditionally, these ablations are done freehand with CT scan guidance, where the operator would make adjustments to the probe from the skin to the target. And with this device, we're now able to plan the trajectory from the skin to the target, and we're able to advance the needle with just one push, rather than having to do multiple adjustments and check scans. So we're done with our treatment, and I just want to show the size of the incision. As you can see, it's about a couple of millimeters, and that's the size of the incision that we make to treat the patient. And now we're just going to use the band-aid. This was a very successful procedure, and we just confirmed the ablation zone with a contrast-enhanced CT after the procedure to make sure that we got the lesion along with a good margin, and also make sure that there were no complications.
Laetitia Messner 04:52
So going back to the clinical adoption of our system, we have already treated 600 patients on our installed base, which is in Europe, but also in the US. And if you ask some of our key opinion leaders, they will give testimony that backs our value proposition, which is whether that robot is more efficient, it standardizes the practice, and therefore young physician residents can actually have the same level of performance with the robot as experts, and experts can do things that they would never have dreamed to do before without the robot. So in a nutshell, if we look at the clinical benefits of the EPON robot, it really accompanies and assists the physician throughout the procedure, from the planning to the targeting to delivering the treatment and to assessing the treatment. And I mean for that, we have also 25 families of patents. So we have a total freedom to operate, talking about a value proposition. So we are here to democratize percutaneous ablation. And what it means is that, thanks to our technology, we really want to streamline the process, standardize the process, so that the physician feels more at ease to do this procedure, and therefore more patients can benefit from these curative treatments. And it's not just a benefit for the patient; it benefits all the stakeholders. So it's the hospital, the patient, the physician, because with EPON, you can treat more, better, and faster. If we move to our regulatory path, we already have the CE mark on the abdomen, but also on the lung. We are FDA approved on the abdomen, and I'm happy to share with you that we've done our first patient on a bone procedure just a couple of hours ago, and it went really well in terms of positioning. We are really in the middle of the environment with imaging companies and also ablation companies. So of course, it also leads the way and opens the door to some strategic partnerships. Talking about our market, the market is huge, and we believe that with robotics, it will be even bigger. And if we wanted to really tackle the whole US market by 2040, we would need 7,000 EPON in the US. In terms of business model now, so we really adapt to the market, so we offer different kinds of product revenue. So we can actually suggest capital sale, pay per case, rental. We also have recurring revenue with our service contract and with consumables. And as I was saying, we're always looking for a strategic partnership to really do an efficient bundle for the hospitals. Our aim is to have 300 EPON by 2028, and that's why we're currently raising $40 million for a B round. Our aim is really to scale up the company, mostly on sales and marketing, but also on the production side, so that more physicians and therefore more patients can benefit from these curative treatments. So in a nutshell, our CTO, Christopher, and myself are here at LSI, so if you want to write a chapter of our story with us, well, feel free to come and reach out. Thank you.
