Matt Curran, Nanoflex Robotics - Remote Robotics Solutions | LSI USA '24

Matt Curran  0:03  
My name is Matt and one of the cofounders and CEO of Nanoflex Robotics. So Nanoflex Robotics, we're on a mission, we're on a mission to use robotic solutions and robotic technology to provide life saving technology at distance to patients in NEET where we're starting the aim of the company initially is to go after ischemic stroke. So ischemic stroke is the largest cause of long term disability globally, and the second largest cause of mortality globally. So as a societal problem, it's huge. What you see with stroke is there is a very effective treatment, which is called a mechanical thrombectomy. The physicians or surgeons go into the patient's anatomy, usually through the vascular system and the leg up into the brain and physically remove the clot. That's the good bit. The difficult bit with that is time. If you can remove the clot, within two hours, the patient's got a 90% chance of functional independence after recovery. If you remove the clot, after six hours, that chance of Functional Independence drops to 30%. So time is a huge factor in the success of being able to treat stroke. In the US, there's over 110 million Americans that live at least an hour away from the first or that the only comprehensive stroke center. And what you find is, is stories like like jazz here, so she presented to a hospital at the weekend. With a with a with a stroke, she was indicated with mechanical thrombectomy. The center that she went to doesn't provide 24/7 coverage, so she had to be transferred to a comprehensive stroke center. By the time she got there, it was more than seven hours from the onset of stroke. And she was deemed eligible for the procedure. And she died two weeks later. So so this happens all the time with stroke patients that don't reach the right place at the right time to be able to be treated. What we're looking at is trying to optimize time to allow these patients to be treated faster. And what we want to do is move the point of care from the comprehensive stroke center to the local center where the patients are diagnosed and treated while still being operated on by the specialists from the Comprehensive Stroke Center. So how it actually works. So this is an example of Dr. Bender who's chair of neuro neurosurgery in Mayo Phoenix, operating on a silicon model in Zurich. So that's 5000 miles away, with under 200 milliseconds delay. And you can see at the top, that's our electromagnetic field generator, which is what moves the devices in three dimensional space. So you have submillimeter accuracy for this procedure where he navigated up to the M one segment, and aspirated a green clot out of the patient. So this is what we've been working on. And as a proof of concept of how that can work. So magnetic navigation system is relatively unique in the market and allows additional functionality from what's currently available. Because it's electromagnetically steered the devices themselves have to be softer, to allow them to be steered. But that softness adds an extra benefit of safety, because the devices are less rigid than what's currently used. And we have a software system that wraps all that together, which is capable of AI and machine learning, which enables future applications for the navigation of the devices. So where we're starting is interventional neuroradiology. But the system is capable of going through any tubular system in the body. So we can equally well look at cardiology, peripheral vascular, or any other applications in the future that that can become available. So on the left, you see a traditional catheter. This is the range of movement of that device, it's appreciate it can only go into those holes, what you see on the right is what we can do. So we changed the geometry of the catheter to match where you want to go as the clinician. So we have a much larger range of movement. And what you see in two dimensions we can do in three dimensions. So anywhere the physician wants to go, you can get the catheter to go there. And you can do that from bedside or from 5000 kilometers. So we this is from one of our early animal studies. And what you can see is the the Swiss doctor who performed this is going around about 120 degree bend. So to do that with a traditional wire and catheter could potentially take hours. And with our technology, it took seconds or minutes. So it adds a level of control and navigability which are just currently not available. We see we've got multiple differentiators within the system because of the core technology. So the first is because of the flexibility and because of the steering, we've got initial study that shows we can get to target locations faster than current wiring, wiring catheters techniques that the surgeons use now. Because the devices are steerable, we have a multifunctional component to this, which means you need less devices. And as you steer through the center of the vessel, you don't bounce off the walls. That means you should cause less damage to the vessels as you pass through. The system easy to use. Anyone who's ever picked up a joystick system and played a computer game knows how to control something with a thumbs at distance. So that's the basis of this and it's gonna get easier as the generations get get further on. And as the clinicians can pick this up simply there's less Risk of operator error because they can figure out what to do. The system is mobile. So it weighs about 350 kilos, it can be moved in and out of the or by one person on a tiled floor, it requires a high voltage connection and a cooling circuit, that's it, it takes it takes a minute to install, it takes a minute to D install, there's no setup, there's no calibration required. Other than that, there's no additional shielding needed in the room above what you would need to fire an x ray. We have a broad range of IP protection. So we've got nine families of IP covering all of the different facets of this either exclusively owned by us or licensed worldwide from from the university that we spin out from. And we have a proprietary software that allows us to control the system altogether. The value propositions for the patient is very straightforward, they get treated faster, they should have a patient a better outcome. For the physicians, they can actually control the tip of the device, which is something that they're not able to do at the moment, they have to transmit force data led to the device, the physician is also removed from the X ray source. So that's a safety benefit to the doctors. And for the hospitals, you're talking about treating more patients. So patients that would normally be be given a TPA and then shipped to the central hospital can be treated remotely. And that's a revenue source for them. The business model, so this is just the US. And this is just neurosurgery. So we're talking about potentially three and a half 1000 hospitals, which are already in Hub and Spoke networks for stroke care in the US. That's potentially the capital sites of multi billions. And you have about 200,000 procedures a year, again, a multi billion dollar ongoing revenue market. That doesn't include cardiology, that doesn't include peripheral vascular that doesn't include interventional radiology. And it doesn't include additional revenue streams like service. So the total addressable market is attractive. In order to go through this change, in order to go through this process, we need to have partnerships. So we've got a number of clinical partners that we're working with. So we had our first installation in the Jacobs Institute in Buffalo earlier this month, we're going to be doing our initial clinical studies in Toronto in Canada. And we've also got a couple of publications that have already come out in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, we have a partnership with a company in the UK called Brain omics, where we look at using the data that they generate to help us build a maps that can help inform navigation and steering other devices in the future. So we're we're up to So up to now we've raised about $17 million. What we're looking for is our first in human as I said it's going to be the end of summer of this year. And that's going to be our value inflection point. And after that, we're going to look to raise a series B, we're looking to raise 35 million, which will fuel those paths, the development from the concept stage to clinical system for the remote control, control, and also to fund the clinical trials that will get us towards the FDA submission. So that's the that's the basis the team. My background, I spent over 20 years within the medical device industry. I was involved in selling the first robotic systems from Medtronic in Europe. Our CTO, Christoph is a former NASA engineer who worked on Mars rover, did his PhD in the lab and developed the technology himself. And he's also worked in a previous medical robotics startup that went to market and see and I'll see you Oh, Grace has a venture capital and venture builder background within biotech and medtech. So we think we've got a great technology, we're looking for investors who want to come on board and help us change healthcare and change how we can treat one of these big societal ills. And to misquote Dr. Spin Otto from from Charlton. We've got really an amazing technology and we have an almost unlimited and unimaginable possibilities of how to treat patients in the future. So with that, thank you