Scott Durbin Presents illumiSonics at LSI USA '24

Scott Durbin  0:03  
Scott, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Scott Durbin. I'm the CEO of illumisonics, and I'm here today to unveil for you a new novel imaging modality based on fundamental new physics. Now it's not very often in medtech that we get to talk about applications of new physics. In fact, I would go so far as to say that not since the advent of MRI or Oct as an imaging modality emerged that's as powerful as the one I'm about to show you. So I'd like to introduce you to parse or photon absorption remote sensing. Luma Sonics is coming out of the prestigious photo medicine lab at the University of Waterloo. Has developed the first ever non contact, non destructive imaging modality that's capable of deep cellular and molecular imaging can take multiple form factors and can image infinite sample types and has applications across life sciences and beyond. So how do we do this? Every molecule interacts with light. This is the basis of all imaging modalities today, Oct, near infrared, Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence. But for the first time ever, because of new fundamental physics, pars captures all light matter interactions, yielding unprecedented deep data in a non contact, non destructive way. This is an example of the uniqueness of pars. By using excitation and detection lasers to capture multiple channels, we produce an unprecedented level of raw data. This is an unstained, undyed FFPE skin sample on a standard slide that has simply been colorized to elicit visible contrast. And by magnifying a small section of this slide, you can see the level of cellular and nuclear specificity that has never been done before, optically in a non contact modality. And while parse has applications beyond human life sciences in agriculture, industrial, veterinary alumasonic's initial goal is to basically transform the way the entire world looks at tissue. To do this, we're currently productizing the technology for two specific applications which have been both proven and validated in early clinical proof of concept studies. Our first application is our advanced imaging device to do whole slide virtual histopathology and molecular imaging for sale. First is a life science research tool at the end of next year and to disrupt the 100 year old pathology lab workflow that exists today, making it more efficient, easier, more costly, or less costly and faster. So as I'm sure everybody is aware, histology is just the microscopic analysis of tissue consisting of tissue prep a microscope and analysis of the image. The problem is we're using 100 year old techniques today to diagnose cancer with destructive stains and dyes that are slow and expensive, brightfield microscopy that isn't digital and a manual review by a pathologist of the image, and despite recent automations in this process, which represents today's digital pathology landscape. These improvements are only incremental. While we now have some level of automation and tissue prep, we're still using destructive stains and dyes, what and while whole slide scanning can now provide digital imaging for remote diagnosis, we still need a new slide for each analysis. Pars, advanced imaging device. The first application is going to transform the entire nature of the pathology lab. We can quickly scan a single unstained slide produce multiplex cellular and molecular analysis in a reliable, fast and consistent way. In fact, pars enables one sample, one look, all the day, all the data, and today, we already have validated virtual primary and secondary staining as well as molecular molecular analysis, and are expanding into immunohistochemistry. This is an example of a traditional chemically stained H and E that a pathologist looks at every single day. This is pars virtual H and E, but more importantly, pars provides rich molecular signatures that are going to significantly expand our capabilities of. In life sciences as a life science research tool. We're in the final stages of the development of our alpha prototype, which we begin, we which we intend to begin selling at the end of next year as a unique tool. And because our optical system architecture is identical, we are are basically developing a surgical imaging device in parallel that we believe will revolutionize surgical oncology, whether that's Mohs surgery for skin cancer or breast head and neck cancer. So because the problem is cancer, diagnosis is stuck in the 1950s today, cancerous tissue resected from surgery is sent to the path lab, where it takes up to two weeks for analysis and diagnosis. A third of that time, a clear margin isn't achieved, resulting in resurgeries and costing the healthcare system billions real time analysis of cancerous tissue in the operating suite in a non contact, non destructive way has been impossible until now, we are going to provide surgeons with real time diagnostic and margin analysis of tissue in the operating suite, which will enhance Quality of care, reduce resurgeries and dramatically transform the patient experience for what currently takes multiple samples and weeks, we're going to do it in minutes, replacing the entire need to go downstream with the histopathology workflow. And no other technology has ever been able to make that claim. To pursue this path. We're in the middle of a $25 million series a financing today to fund the final development of both applications over the next 18 to 24 months. By q4 of next year, we intend to begin commercializing our advanced imaging device as a unique life science research tool and in the pathology lab, we intend to partner with one of the major path lab manufacturers at the same time for our surgical imaging device. By the end of next year, we'll have our alpha unit complete, and expect our beta unit shortly thereafter. Importantly, however, I want everybody to understand this is just the beginning, and pars has applications across multiple areas of life sciences and numerous industrial applications. It can take multiple form factors be combined with other imaging modalities, other surgical modalities, and isn't limited to cellular and molecular imaging. We've proven we can do non contact functional imaging as well through our partnership with the Photomedicine lab at the University of Waterloo, we already have $20 million of infrastructure in place with research being done on pars every single day. Today, we already have early stage collaborations with multiple corporates who are evaluating pars capabilities in cellular molecular functional imaging as well as pharmaceutical response prediction for clinical drug development. And because this is all fundamental new physics, we're fond of saying we own the science. And thank you for your time this afternoon. Applause.