It was the Fall of 2015 at the University of Calgary, and I had been invited to speak at a biomedical engineering workshop about the various MedTech start-ups that I had been fortunate enough to lead from product concept through commercialization and exit, including CryoCath, Resonant Medical, CardioInsight and SoundBite.
Afterwards, I met Professor Elena Di Martino, a PhD in biomedical engineering and a vascular research scientist. We discussed her exciting research being conducted on aortic aneurysms (AA) with Dr. Randy Moore, also from the U of C and a highly accomplished vascular surgeon. The concept involved the potential of using AI-powered software to map and predict AA rupture.
Over the many years in the cardiovascular field, I had become aware of the extreme morbidity and mortality challenges of unexpected AA ruptures. Thousands occur each year in North America, with a survival rate of less than 5%.
The only biomarker in clinical use to monitor AA patients and decide on when to intervene are CT imaging data of aorta size. Until the aorta reaches a certain diameter, patients and their attending physicians hope that premature rupture does not occur.
My interest was immediate and positive. The first criteria for a start-up, the Clinical Unmet Need was clearly there. But was there a Compelling Business Case as well? I needed to perform some business due diligence - and to revisit my MedTech start-up model and process.
I told Elena at that first meeting in Calgary that I was interested and would get back to her after I did my own homework. I flew back to Montreal that same day and started reading online info and talking to my cardiovascular KOL (Key Opinion Leader) network across North America.
The outcome was clear: there was a large, growing market with billions of dollars being spent on monitoring and treatment, often unnecessarily and/or with poor clinical outcomes. Add in a North American incidence of over 1 million new AA cases per year and double digit growth due to the ageing population, and we were looking at a clearly compelling business case!
I called Elena back and asked her to go over with me the research that she and Randy had done. I wanted to understand the product concept a little bit more, and most importantly, whether the U of C Research Team had demonstrated compelling proof-of-concept (POC) - defined as a functioning prototype performed on a lab model as close to the human condition as possible.
Elena happily took me through their work and the prototype mapping software results correlated highly with post-surgery test results.
I have relied on a strong sense of finding promising MedTech research and technology over the years, and in this case I found their concept extremely promising.
Next, some critical questions needed to be dealt with: Was the science and mechanism of action (MoA) of the product clearly understood and supportable, and was the background IP and foreground IP potential sufficient to support a true VC-backed start-up? I worked closely with with my long-time IP colleague and specialist, Jean-Nicholas Delage at Fasken Martineau and together we examined in detail the competitive IP landscape.
The answers, in the course of doing further due diligence, were clearly favorable - and ViTAA Medical Solutions then started down the exciting path from a product concept to a commercial start-up a reality!
It’s enjoyable to be able to put my own strategic commercialization model into real-world practice – the first two boxes in the slide above cover much of what I’ve written here today.
In the coming weeks and months I’ll be able to share with you the progression along each step of the way as we move ViTAA towards full commercialization.