Monthly Startups Index - MedCity News“We all know the technology exists today to make universal ... (now Mediva-tors), with participation from Carter and the Iron Yard ... Startups

MEDCITY Reports1September 2013

This report sponsored by

Monthly Startups Index

September 2013


Table of Contents

MAIN CONTACT INFORMATIONMedCity MediaP.O. Box 606246Cleveland, OH 44106Phone: (216) 453-2662General inquiries: [email protected]

From the Editor 312

Most Popular Startups This Month 365

Digital & Health IT 4

Startups In-Depth 5

Startup Activity 13

3 Pharma and BioTech 17

Startups In-Depth 18

Startup Activity 24

4 Medical Devices & Diagnostics 26 Startups In-Depth 27

Startup Activity 33

Readers on digital devices can click on the headings below to get directly to the page.


From the Editor

The morning routine of the not-too-distant future

Every day we write about new technology that will change healthcare. Sometimes it’s easy to see how cancer treatment or diabetes care will be different in 5 or 10 or 15 years. Other times it’s harder to see what the future will look like. The picture is still fuzzy even if you squint.

From the list of startups in this month’s report, I can see a new morning routine shaped by four companies: Predictably Well, Adamant Technology, Bionym and ChartSpan Medical Technology.

We will need advances in a few other areas, but these startups will drive the new way of managing your health.

When you wake up after a good night’s sleep thanks to Beddit, you pick up your phone. Your Nymi wristband unlocks it and downloads the last 12 hours of your heart-rate and blood-pressure data to your phone.

You check your a five-day wellness forecast from Good Days and see that pollen counts are off the charts. You grab extra allergy meds and put them in your laptop bag, just in case.

As you make your first phone call of the day, the Adamant sensor on your phone analyzes the metabolites your breath. This data too goes to your phone.

All of this data goes to the personal health record on your phone that syncs with your tablet, thanks to ChartSpan’s personal health record. You have shared this record with a personal health coach. It’s the first of the month, so you get a monthly report from her: Sleep is better, cholesterol is still a little high, and you are holding steady on the total daily steps. She also reminds you of your upcoming doctor’s appointment and includes a link for sharing your PHR data with the office.

This is only the home and personal side of health. These same ideas will help at hospitals and skilled nursing facilities as well. There will be even more tech advancements to improve care and saftey in those settings as well.

Veronica CombsEditorMedCity News

Veronica Combs, Editor in ChiefMedCity Media

http://medcitynews.com/2013/09/like-a-meteorologist-for-your-health-good-days-forecasts-flare-ups-in-autoimmune-conditions/

http://medcitynews.com/2013/09/physicist-building-nanotech-sensor-to-track-your-health-through-your-breath/

http://medcitynews.com/2013/09/could-your-heartbeat-be-your-password/

http://medcitynews.com/2013/09/a-phr-companys-contrarian-proposal-build-for-the-reality-that-interoperability-may-not-happen/


Digital & Health IT


Startups In-Depth: Digital & Health IT

A PHR company’s contrarian proposal: Build for the reality that interoperability may not happen

By: Deanna PogorelcSept 5, 2013

For all of the personal health record companies out there, one called ChartSpan Medical Technologies caught my eye today. Its claim to fame is that it’s a “fully automated PHR app.” By that, the company means that users can upload email files or photos of their health records to the app, and it con-verts the contents into structured data. The app then organizes and stores a whole family’s data in the form of PHRs.

But wait, you say. That’s not fully automated. A truly automated PHR would pull in data from the EMR systems of a person’s doctors without any efforts by the user herself.

Yes, responds ChartSpan co-founder and CEO Jon-Michial Carter, but it’s time to start getting real about whether that’s actually going to happen, at least any time soon.

“Interoperability has been a goal for years, but it hasn’t been achieved,” Carter explained. “We all know the technology exists today to make universal interoperability happen, but if we have free access to our healthcare records as patients, a lot of people don’t make money. I just get frustrated by the disingenuous conversations about it.”

He added that his team is a big fan of Blue Button, and if it became more pervasive the company would definitely work to accommodate what that technology could do. “But the truth is, 99 percent of the time we’re handed a

Continued on next page

Company:ChartSpan Medical Technologies

CEO:Jon-Michial Carter

Website:http://www.chartspan.com/

Twitter: @Arpeggi_Inc

http://www.chartspan.com


piece of paper when we request our healthcare records. We want to accommodate that process today,” he said.

Carter’s young company today announced it closed a pre-seed funding round totaling just under $250,000. The round was led by Don Byrne, an entrepreneur in GI endoscopy who founded Byrne Medical (now Mediva-tors), with participation from Carter and the Iron Yard Digital Healthcare Accelerator, the company said.

ChartSpan’s PHR is based on proprietary optical char-acter recognition that lifts data from an image or file and converts it to digital data. But the PHR, which can be used on a smartphone, tablet or computer, also attach-es that original picture or record to the data it extracts. Users then can send the original record to a specialist, or send an original copy of an immunization record to a child’s nurse at school, and they can send it by fax or

email from the app.

The ultimate goal is to be part of a paradigm shift that makes the patient the repository of healthcare informa-tion, rather than a provider, Carter stated. “Right now, a provider-based EHR can’t import API data from a fitness band or glucose reader, but a patient can,” he pointed out. “A provider today can’t take your human genome API and import it into their EHR, but a patient can. Patients can push their PHR data to anyone they want, but doctors can’t. We get that providers need to have that information, but who is really in a better position to manage that data?”

The ChartSpan PHR is set to launch in Q4 of this year. Until then, the Houston-based company is wrapping up at the Iron Yard Digital Healthcare Accelerator in South Carolina.


ChartSpan (Continued)



Like a meteorologist for your health, Good Days fore-casts flare-ups in autoimmune conditions


For people with autoimmune disease, the temperature, humidity or baromet-ric pressure on any given day could mean more pain, or less pain, than the day before. Giving those people tools to prepare for what their symptoms might be has so far been a winning idea for mobile health company Predict-ably Well.

While AccuWeather and Weather.com both have tools that highlight environ-mentalfactors that might play into migraine and arthritis pain, Predictably Well co-founder Juliet Oberding wanted to create something more personalized, since each person’s disease takes a different course.

Oberding herself was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis back in 2008 and joined up with software developer Terje Norderhaug in 2011 to see if sensors, mobile technology and predictive analytics could help predict flare-ups.

The app that resulted, called Good Days, is aimed at people living with rheu-matoid arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia and other chronic autoimmune condi-tions.

Each day, an app user selects from a set of icons to let the app know if she’s feeling good, OK or bad that day. If she wants, she can use the app’s journal-ing feature to go into more detail about her fatigue or stress levels, or where any pain is occurring.


Company:Predictably Well

Co-Founders:Juliet Monique Oberding and Terje Norderhaug

Website:http://www.predictablywell.com/

Twitter:@PredictablyWell

Weather.com

http://www.predictablywell.com

http://www.predictablywell.com


Then the app goes to work aggregating environmental data from outside sources and geographical data from the user’s device. Using all of that, it tries to determine what factors contribute to a good day and to a bad day, and generates a five-day wellness forecast for that user. Like a weather forecast, it includes an icon that indicates whether each day is expected to be good, OK or bad, but also allows users to drill down into the data that’s behind the forecast.

Last summer, it won the popular grand choice prize at the AT&T San Diego Apps Challenge, a contest that requires developers to use data made available by the city. It’s currently in beta in San Diego, using ozone, pollution, weather and microclimate zone data supplied by the city. The app also won the health and fitness

category in Qualcomm’s UPLINQ hackathon last week, according to an update on the company’s Facebook page.

Oberding and Norderhaug are collecting early user feed-back to iterate in preparation for a forthcoming national launch.

They’re taking the bottom-up approach to finding users by going straight to patients instead of through doctors or health plans. “One of the real benefits of focusing on patients now is you really learn to satisfy the main users,” Oberding explained. “We’re working with local people with RA and other autoimmune conditions, reaching out to the community, interviewing them and connecting with them.”


Predictably well (Continued)



App uses cognitive behavioral therapy to treat and manage eating disorders

By: Stephanie BaumSept 16, 2013

Eating disorders affect about 24 million people in the U.S. and have the high-est mortality rate of any other psychiatric problem. Only about one in 10 with anorexia nervosa, bulimia and other eating disorders seek treatment. Jenna Tregarthen, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Stanford University, was frus-trated with patients’ incomplete therapy homework and thought there was a better way to engage patients.

She took a break from working towards a PhD in clinical psychology to develop a cognitive therapy app. The goal? To find a way to help people with eating disorders that would be more interactive to improve patient engage-ment. It was also important for that tool to appeal to the 16-25-year old age group — the average age of onset for eating disorders.

In a phone interview with MedCity News she said: “Paper diaries are such a huge obstacle to patients. We are trying to reinvent the therapy homework with data and tools so they can be more efficient in treatment delivery.”

A lot of users see it as an optimal tool to avoid relapses, according to Tre-garthen, based on the feedback it’s received.

Recovery Record’s clinician facing version of the app is just coming out of Beta testing and Tregarthen and her co-founder have learned a lot from pilots with clinicians.


Company:Recovery Record

Founder:Jenna Tregarthen

Website:http://recoveryrecord.com/

Twitter:@RecovRec

http://recoveryrecord.com


“We are already seeing clinicians prescribing this to pa-tients because the need for this technology is so big.”

The clinician facing app is designed to improve pa-tient interactions and better assess the patient’s prog-ress.”We thought about what motivates clinicians to engage in technology…to influence positive treatment outcomes would be great. They can check in and see how engaged their patients are in realtime.” It also can send a message to users that their therapist has viewed their diary entries.

Here’s some of how it works. When patients make diary entries, such as what they had to eat at each meal, they can indicate how they feel. But the clinician also gets a sense of how engaged their patients are by how fre-quently they make diary entries. Custom goals, coping tactics and meal plans are delivered to patients day-to-day, to help keep them on track. Users receive rewards, surprises, pictures of baby animals, affirmations and social support to keep patients engaged in their treat-ment program between visits with a therapist.

An algorithm calculates a baseline norm and when there is a deviation from that it calculates the difference. A traffic light’s three colors indicate the level of attention

the clinician needs to give to the patient. When certain thresholds are reached it triggers a traffic light color to change. The clinician facing app calculates disordered behavior frequency, how frequently the patient is doing their therapy homework - and combines those metrics to calculate the level of attention the clinician needs to give.

We are allowing the provider is allowed to push a treat-ment to the patient’s app. The app is used as a treat-ment tool as well as making the clinician more efficient. Clinicians can also view the data each patient accumu-lates over time to evaluate progress over time.

Two large U.S. payers are setting up three-month pilots to more vigorously measure cost savings and health outcomes and clinician-patient satisfaction.

“Our vision is to give clinics a dashboard of outcomes data so they can become much more evidenced based in doing research.”

Beyond eating disorders, Tregarthen also sees applica-tions for mood disorders such as depression, bipolar and anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders and post traumatic stress disorder.


Recovery Record (Continued)



MediSafe raises $1M to develop laser-focused insights on adherence for pharma, healthcare

By: Stephanie Baum Sept 23, 2013

As part of its partnership with a pharmaceutical company to improve adher-ence for its diabetes drug, mobile health startup MediSafe made an interest-ing discovery, according to its founder Bob Shor. Caucasian men on the East Coast were missing their 7 pm dosage on weeknights. What was the cause? Jeopardy? Dinner? Or did they leave their medication at home?

If you had guessed the latter, you’d be right. Israel-based Medisafe’s app, which 125,000 users have downloaded since November last year, collects patient data from its users through the cloud-synched app. With users’ per-mission it converts that information into big data insights for pharmaceutical and healthcare industry partners. It can provide laser-focused insights on when people are missing their medication and why.

It’s raised $1 million to add an iPhone app developer and marketer and to scale up partnerships with other pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. In an interview with Shor, he said it expects to have four to five partnerships within six months and another 10-15 one year from now. The app, which has been in beta testing since November last year is expected to hit the market mid-October.

TriVentures and lool Ventures led the financing round. Other investors in-cluded serial entrepreneurs and angel investors Eyal Gura (@eyalg), Yadin Kaufmann, the founding partner of Veritas Venture Partners and Yair Schindel,


Company:MediSafe

Founder:Bob Shor

Website:http://www.medisafeproject.com/

Twitter: @MediSafeProject

http://www.medisafeproject.com

http://www.medisafeproject.com


a healthcare entrepreneur.

For healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, the app’s dashboard shows which demographics have higher non-compliance for a drug in relation to the gen-eral population. It also highlights parts of the U.S. with the lowest prescription rates. It can also indicate rival drugs patients use.

Consumers use the app to monitor when and how much medication they should be taking. When users add medications, they are prompted with questions on amounts, frequency and time of day, and whether or not they should be taken with food. If users forget to take their medications or forget to confirm it on the app, fam-ily members are notified through text message.

MediSafe was part of a group of companies that gradu-ated from the inaugural class of Microsoft’s four-month accelerator program for its cloud platform, Windows Azure.

The Centers for Disease Control puts medication adher-ence in the U.S. at a miserable 50 percent, a pain point that causes complications and drives up healthcare costs. Medication adherence is a pain point that mobile health services are competing to solve. Israeli mobile health startup MediSafe developed a cloud-synched virtual pill box app boasting an adherence rate higher than the national average.

Part of the future of mobile health technology in health-care is its potential to use apps to predict and change behavior. Medication adherence is just one part of that.


MediSafe (Continued)


Could your heartbeat be your password? – Sept, 3 2013

One new biometric security innovation could offer an interesting alternative to the typical password. This wristband grants users access to their devices by identifying the wearer by their heartbeat.

http://bit.ly/1cCKDCY

Startup Activity: Digital & Health IT

App with goal of letting doctors eprescribe directly to consumers raises $1M – Sept, 5 2013

The app reduces the amount of time consumers wait around for prescription medication at their local pharmacy. Now it’s raised seed funding to develop the app into an effective patient engagement tool and time-saving device to make picking up prescriptions more efficient.

http://bit.ly/14og2cm

Intel joins the race for wearable device chips with Quark – Sept 12, 2013

Intel’s Brian Krzanich, chief executive of the world’s biggest chip maker announced Quark, a chip aimed at wearable gadgets. Intel’s chip is a small device that comes from its heritage of making embedded processors, or older chips such as its Pentium that are refashioned for the industrial controls or appliances market.

http://bit.ly/18XGsxy

New social media platform for healthcare wants to connect hospitals with each other – Sept 13, 2013

Healthcare IT company Next Wave Health launched a social media collaborative platform to encourage hospitals to share insights with each other on health IT current events like ICD-10 implementation

http://bit.ly/13DcoJh

How Aunt Bertha could help hospitals reduce readmissions – Sept 17, 2013

Aunt Bertha has a beautiful web site and a helpful database that makes it easy to get help with food, work, medical care and housing, among other things. The team at Aunt Bertha is part of the Capital Factory accelerator in Austin.

http://bit.ly/1f2RpEb


http://bit.ly/14og2cm

http://bit.ly/18XGsxy

http://bit.ly/13DcoJh

http://bit.ly/1f2RpEb


Sproutling’s wearable baby monitor is about insights for parents, not just data – Sept 17, 2013

Sproutling created a wearable baby monitor that not only helps parents keep track of their babies’ vitals, but also uses that collected data to help them make decisions. Via the device, which is joined by a base station and small camera, parents can monitor everything from a baby’s heart rate and breathing to the ambient temperature of the room.

http://bit.ly/1f2Gbja


Lively raises $4.8M so loved ones can help keep seniors safely at home – Sept 18, 2013

The company has built an “activity-sharing platform” that combines hardware and software to keep people tuned in to the activities of their parents/grandparents. The goal is to subtly use technology to give loved ones peace of mind without stressing out seniors.

http://bit.ly/1eRc80d

Can smart cards, biometric scans and the cloud keep dirty data out of health IT systems? – Sept 19, 2013

With LifeMed ID, David Batchelor and his team want to establish the standard for patient identification and make sure it’s adopted at all of the places a patient’s record is viewed and edited, meanwhile creating an audit trail of every place that patient has checked in to.

http://bit.ly/18daobW

Understanding the mind with Shadow’s mobile dream-catcher app – Sept 19, 2013

Shadow launched its modern-day dream catcher — a mobile app that enables people to record, remember, and interpret their dreams.

http://bit.ly/1gDRsEy

Does Myo investor success indicate a new era for hardware startups? – Sept 24, 2013

Change Healthcare markets two platforms. The Transparency Messenger compiles health plan and claims data to devise algorithms that determine the cost of a service. Then it uses health plan holders’ or employees’ demographic information and personal preferences for care to look for savings on their behalf.

http://bit.ly/1cKTEML

http://bit.ly/1f2Gbja

http://bit.ly/1eRc80d

http://bit.ly/18daobW

http://bit.ly/1gDRsEy

http://bit.ly/1cKTEML


With latest $70M, Practice Fusion one of the most well-funded health IT companies – Sept 24, 2013

Practice Fusion is best known for its web-based electronic medical record (EMR) for physicians and other care pro-viders. The product isn’t as sophisticated as some of its competitors, but has spread quickly with physicians as it’s available for free.

http://bit.ly/1ba2kg8


Mobile care coordination tool to improve patient safety raises $27M – Sept 24, 2013

Mobile health device developer PatientSafe Solutions, which developed a tool to improve patient safety and avoid adverse drug events, has closed a Series C round to fund the expansion of the company to the Asia Pacific market.

http://bit.ly/1fzsE2C

BioDigital snags $4M for quest to understand, explore the human body in 3D – Sept 25, 2013

The company, which creates interactive 3D models of the human body, has raised a $4 million round led by First-Mark Capital and joined by the NYU Venture Fund.

http://bit.ly/18q3KgS

Mental health app startup finds traction on college campuses with eating disorder program – Sept 25, 2013

The program starts with an online evaluation that gauges a person’s behaviors and self-image. Based on those re-sults and ThriveOn’s algorithms, each user is assigned to a custom, 10-week program that meets his or her specific needs. That program includes reading material, journal entries and virtual coaching that can be accessed via web or mobile app.

http://bit.ly/1cHkkz0

Medivo buys diabetes app to boost mhealth chronic condition toolbox

– Sept 26, 2013

OnTrack is a free Android app that helps diabetics manage their disease by tracking blood glucose levels, food intake, medication, blood pressure, pulse, exercise and weight. It produces charts, graphs and reports that can be sent to providers and care takers.

http://bit.ly/14LPjEs

http://bit.ly/1ba2kg8

http://bit.ly/1fzsE2C

http://bit.ly/18q3KgS

http://bit.ly/1cHkkz0

http://bit.ly/14LPjEs


Startup biNu honored for contributions to UN-conducted survey – Sept 26, 2013

biNu, a startup that makes technology for feature phones, has been recognized by the United Nations for its efforts in bringing better quality of life to people around the world.

http://bit.ly/1fKixbr


Wearable device maker Recon gets boost from Intel Capital – Sept 27, 2013

Recon is making the Recon Jet, which will ship in February. The device is for bikers, runners, golfers, or anyone who wants to get access to additional data, like an overlay of information on top of reality, while on the run.

http://bit.ly/1bdkaeM

Healthcare startup Beddit: The latest common sleep disorder treatment? – Sept 28, 2013

Beddit is an ultra-thin sensor that goes under your bedsheets and collects data about your sleep quality, heart rate, breathing rhythm, movement, sleep stages, snoring, and the quality of your sleeping environment.

http://bit.ly/19NyEic

http://bit.ly/1fKixbr

http://bit.ly/1bdkaeM

http://bit.ly/19NyEic


Pharma & Biotech


Startups In-Depth: Pharma & Biotech

Transdermal, spray-on drug developers see $650B mar-ket opportunity

By: Stephanie BaumSept 2, 2013

Kenneth Kirby, the president of TransDermal Delivery Solutions Corp., sees his company’s transdermal drug delivery system as transforming the way we think about medication. By avoiding the oral delivery route, Kirby says it can help drugs retain their potency and begin working faster. He likens transder-mal drug delivery as a modern day poultice.

Its lead indication is for the treatment of low testosterone in men called Testagen TDS. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an IND application for Testagen, paving the way for the company to conduct several clinical trials. It will help evaluate the drug’s ability to sur-mount a couple of the biggest challenges. One is transference, which is the risk of the low testosterone drug that’s applied to the forearms being inad-vertently rubbed off onto a family member. Low testosterone drug treatments pose a special risk to children, and, to a lesser extent, women.

A comparatively minor challenge is the impact it can have on lifestyles since users usually can’t bathe or get wet for eight hours after applying or they face having to reapply the drug. Kirby says it’s surmounted those challenges with ethanol in the spray that dries on the skin’s surface after a few minutes.

The company will do Phase 1 and 2 dosing studies. A Phase 2 study will assess transference, according to a company statement. A Phase 3 compar-ative analysis test will compare the drug’s response to others on the market


Company:Transdermal Delivery Solutions

CEO/Founder:Kenneth Kirby

Website:http://www.tdsc.us/

Twitter:@TDSC_US

http://www.tdsc.us


over a 90-day period.

In addition to Testagen, Kirby said the company’s interested in other applications such as local anesthe-sia, Lidocaine. Using its transdermal solution could be a useful way to steer patients away from the addictive properties of opioids as well as their other side effects like constipation. It also has the potential to make medi-cation safer for children and senior citizens, says Kirby.

Although it’s developing a drug that combines estrogen and progesterone to treat pre-menstrual syndrome, it’s also intrigued by progesterone’s potential to treat traumatic brain injuries, as research from Emory seems to indicate. It’s also developing the drug delivery system

for use with Diazepam, a sedative that’s also an an-ti-convulsive drug.

Kirby said it’s seeking funding of $3 million to $7 mil-lion to complete work on Progesterone, an Estrogen/Progesterone combination and Diclofenac Sodium. He added that a licensing deal for Testagen could give it the capacity to take several drugs through the clinical devel-opment process, including progesterone, Lidocaine and Diclofenac.

Looking at all the drugs that could be repurposed for transdermal delivery, the company estimates the market opportunity in a neighborhood north of $650 billion.


Spray-on drug (Continued)



Neuro drug developer iPierian nets $30M, spins off new company for rare disease R&D program


Rather than leveraging stem cells for therapeutic use, iPierian Inc. has been using them to create disease models with which it can screen and develop new drugs. Now, with $30 million it’s just collected from investors, iPierian Inc. plans to split two distinct R&D programs that have emerged from those techniques into different companies.

Some of the investment money will continue to fund iPierian’s drug devel-opment efforts in neurodegenerative disease. The other portion of it goes toward a Series A for a new spinout called True North Therapeutics. The company declined to specify how the funding was divided.

“Given recent positive developments with promising drug candidates, we believe that creating two companies, iPierian and True North, opens up a wider range of possibilities for partnering discussions, allows each compa-ny to explore new indications and pipeline opportunities, and optimizes the value to shareholders and patients with the assets built through the scientific legacy of iPierian,” said Jim Scopa, managing director at MPM Capital, in a statement.

MPM Capital co-led the round along with GlaxoSmithKline’s venture capital arm, SR One, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Existing investors like Biogen Idec and Google Ventures also participated, iPierian said.


Company:iPierian Inc.

CEO/Founder:Dr. Nancy Stagliano

Website:http://www.ipierian.com/

Twitter:@iPierian

http://www.ipierian.com


Since its inception in 2008, the South San Francis-co company has been working with a drug discovery platform based on a novel cell regeneration technique. Developed by Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, the techniques allow scientists to convert adult stem cells back into ones that behave like embryotic cells in their ability to be coaxed into a variety of different cell types.

“That platform has been used to grow diseases in a dish,” as CEO Nancy Stagliano described in an inter-view last year, to allow researchers to develop a better understanding of how certain drugs would behave in humans. One of the R&D programs it has yielded targets the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases charac-terized by tangles of Tau protein, including Alzheimer’s disease. The other targets the classical complement pathway to treat autoantibody-driven rare diseases.

True North Therapeutics was spun off to continue development of the latter program and its lead can-didate, TNT009, a monoclonal antibody the company says selectively inhibits a target of the classical com-plement pathway. The complement system is a part of

the immune system that helps the body clear pathogens from an organism. True North says it’s developing drugs for rare diseases in the hematological, renal and neuro-logical therapeutic areas, but a company representative declined to be more specific. With the Series A funding, the company hopes to file an IND within the next 12 to 18 months.

Meanwhile, iPierian will continue working on IPN007, its lead drug candidate for the treatment of tauopathies, with plans to file an IND application in 2014. Following the failure of a group of drugs that went after a different protein, beta amyloid, in clinical trials, the next wave of clinical trials for Alzheimer’s seems to include more products focused on the tau hypothesis. TauRx Pharma-ceuticals, for example, is running two late-stage clinical trials for a drug designed to dissolve tangles of tau in the brain. Eli Lilly also recently acquired rights to devel-op a diagnostic agent to detect tau.

Stagliano, former CEO of CytomX Therapeutics, will continue to head iPierian and will also serve as CEO of True North Therapeutics.


iPierian Inc. (Continued)



Tiny traps disguised as human cells snap up viruses in a new take on anti-viral therapy

By: Deanna Pogorelc Sept 26, 2013

Viral infections are pesky, sneaky things. The infectious agents that cause maladies like influenza, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and Ebola hijack living cells and replicate, making it hard to destroy them without also harming an organism’s cells. And, they mutate to find new ways to attack cells.

Erez Livneh and his small team at Vecoy Nanomedicines have come up with a crafty way of tricking viruses to hijack nanotraps instead of human cells, and they think it could change the way viral infections are treated.

In Livneh’s mind, treatment of viral infections is “probably one of the biggest unmet needs in biomedicine to this day.” Vaccines, for their part, have come a long way in preventing the spread of infection — but that’s for the few that scientists have successfully developed and commercialized.

“For most viruses, we don’t have any vaccine or have partial vaccines,” Livneh explained. “Usually when you have a virus, the doctor doesn’t know exactly what you’re suffering from, so the diagnostic is not so great either.”

The reason it’s been so hard to develop effective vaccines and anti-viral drugs is because viruses are so adaptive, evolving and mutating to attack host cells, and they take otherwise healthy human cells hostage. Anti-viral treatments that are in use today, like HIV/AIDS cocktails, do not actually de-stroy viruses. Rather, they penetrate cells that have been infected by viruses to keep them from multiplying. They also tend to come with some pretty


Company:Vecoy Nanomedicines

CEO/Founder:Erez Livneh

Website:http://vecoy.com/

Twitter:@VecoyNanoMed

http://vecoy.com


detrimental side effects.

But that kind of damage control is completely different from what Vecoy is doing. Vecoy’s technology aims to trap viruses before they infiltrate cells, while they’re still floating idly in the bloodstream without any mo-tion or reproductive capabilities. To do that, it uses a new approach of virus-traps, or artificial nanoparticles structured in a way that their exterior resembles that of human cells.

Once these camouflaged nanoparticles are put into the bloodstream of a person with a viral infection, they lure and absorb free-floating viruses. Oncw they’ve captured their prey, the nanoparticles break down the viruses and disarm them.

Or at least that’s what Vecoy thinks will happen based on its lab studies, which right now are done with cells, mice and insects. So far, the technology has demon-strated the ability to eliminate 97 percent of viruses in culture. The goal, according to Livneh, is to push viral eradication beyond 99.9 percent.

Even though that still wouldn’t make it a cure for a viral infection, there’s a lot of value in reducing the number of viruses in the body by that much, he noted. When a person catches a virus, the immune system fights back and actually destroys a lot of viruses. However, because viruses reproduce exponentially, the immune system eventually becomes overwhelmed.

Vecoy’s technology, according to Livneh, would help the immune system destroy as many viruses as possible before those viruses can infect cells. Doctors call that “lowering the viral load.”

“For some (viruses), we speculate that lowering the load beyond a certain threshold would enable the immune system to overcome infection,” Livneh said. “In other cases, the patients will be bettered, not cured.”

He said the Vecoys — short for virus decoys — could be either virus-specific or multipurpose. Further, they could potentially complement existing anti-viral thera-pies that target viruses already inhabiting cells. Similar concepts are also being explored at a company called NanoViricides and a few different universities.

Vecoy’s technology is a byproduct of Livneh’s creative thinking and labwork. The biologist and bioinformatician had been working on it for a while but grew confident enough to start a company after completing the 10-week Graduate Studies Program at Singularity Universi-ty back in 2010.

While the majority of his colleagues remain in the com-pany’s R&D lab in Israel, Livneh and one other team member have taken up residence at the Boston accel-erator MassChallenge to focus on raising a $5 million Series A.


Vecoy Nanomedicines (Continued)


Today’s hormone therapy progesterone could be tomorrow’s treatment for traumatic brain injury – Sep 4, 2013

BHR Pharma recently stated that it’s completed enrollment in a Phase III safety and efficacy study of its proges-terone formulation, BHR-100, as a neuroprotective agent for people who experience moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.

http://bit.ly/15CVI0L

Startup Activity: Pharma & Biotech

Biopharma raises $46M to surmount treatment challenges for inner ear disorders – Sept 4, 2013

Otonomy has raised $45.9 million to advance its therapeutics to treat middle and inner ear disorders,such as Me-niere’s disease and to develop treatments for hearing loss symptoms, according to a company statement.

http://bit.ly/17PdmW1

Startup Second Genome examines the body’s microbes to find ways to treat diseases – Sept 6, 2013

Second Genome, has turned to DNA analysis and biochemical studies of mixtures of microbes and human cells in culture to better explain things.

http://bit.ly/14rcohI

Biotech accelerator BioMotiv, NYU unveil a new spinoff for inflammatory disease treat-ments – Sept 9, 2013

Orca Pharmaceuticals is the first company announced by BioMotiv, the for-profit accelerator associated with the Harrington Discovery Project at UH.

http://bit.ly/15ej1CE

Biotech NovelMed marches toward the clinic with a new therapy for rare blood disorder PNH – Sept 12, 2013

NovelMed is working with a humanized antibody that it thinks could block intra- and extra-vascular hemolysis in patients with PNH. The orphan disease causes part of the immune system called the complement system to attack and kill red blood cells, which can result in a slew of symptoms including fatigue, weakness, pale skin, shortness of breath, abnormal blood clotting and red urine.

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Aerie Pharmaceuticals plans to go public– Sept 19, 2013

Aerie Pharmaceuticals, which is based in New Jersey and has a research-and-development facility in the Triangle, filed plans to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

http://bit.ly/1gEvbX2

Startup Activity: Pharma & Biotech

NeuroTrack’s computer test for Alzheimer’s wins over Founders Fund, Social+Capital Part-nership – Sept 30, 2013

NeuroTrack Technologies said that it’s raised $2 million in a Series A round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and joined by Social+Capital Partnership and several angel investors.

http://bit.ly/19PyacX

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Medical Devices

& Diagnostics


Startups In-Depth: Medical Devices & Diagnostics

iPad app creates real-time connection between device reps and nurses in the OR


A duo of former medical device sales reps has turned to mobile technology and the cloud to alleviate some of the access, cost and logistical challenges faced by medical device sales reps of today.

Glenn Mills and Tom Pfleider started SpotOn Surgical in 2010 along with Dr. Michael Sheinberg, a neurosurgeon, after they had noticed several market factors impeding the ability of reps to do their jobs. First, hospitals were making it harder (and more expensive) for medical product sales representa-tives to get access to the operating room by implementing complex vendor credentialing processes. That was understandable as a way to increase secu-rity and decrease foot traffic in the hospital, but frustrating for reps.

Simultaneously, though, robust broadband networks and mobile devices were becoming widely available in hospitals. Medical device companies, meanwhile, were facing decreasing margins and searching for ways to reduce the cost of sales.

Mills and Pfleider, president and CEO of the company, respectively, saw an opportunity for companies to make their reps available for face-to-face customer support via a secure web connection, rather than in person. Thus, SpotOn was born.

It’s a cloud-based portal that links doctors and nurses in the operating room to educational and support materials for a device or piece or equipment, with


Company:SpotOn Surgical

Founder:Tom Pfleider

Website:http://spotonsurgical.com/

Twitter:N/A

http://spotonsurgical.com


the option of on-demand video conferencing if technical support is needed while the product is in use.

For example, if a surgeon was working with an ortho-pedic implant but wasn’t sure which tool in the accom-panying toolkit to use, an OR nurse could use SpotOn to read the latest user manual. If she couldn’t find an answer there, she could tap a button in the app that would send out an alert to the mobile device of any rep assigned by the supplier to take her call. She would use the iPad or iPhone’s cameras to video chat with the rep, and show him any of the equipment she had questions about. At the end of the call, none of the information exchanged would be stored by the app.

As Mills explained how the app worked, one of my first thoughts was that it sounded a lot like Nurep, a mobile-focused company that’s working with medical device makers to provide on-demand, remote customer support through video.

The idea is similar, Mills said, but the model is different.

“It’s a much more shared-expense model,” he ex-plained. “We have a low-cost subscription model where hospitals play a subscription fee per device (SpotOn deploys iPad minis in hospitals), and suppliers pay a fee to join based on their reach. Reps who wish to join pay an annual fee to cover their entire territory.” Every-body pays a little because everyone gets value from the service, he said.

SpotOn is also working on building a comprehensive list of phone numbers for the support desks of every device and equipment supplier out there, whether it’s a SpotOn customer or not. Once that is complete, the company can offer a complete support solution for hos-pital personnel, who often don’t know who their sales reps are for a given device or have to scramble to find the manufacturer’s technical support information when there’s a problem.

Mills said the California company’s first customers are device and equipment makers who want to expand their reach within a territory. Among them is Steris, which has a sales force of more than 500 professionals.

The company was self-funded until about six months ago, when it completed a round of private funding from investors. “We’re well-funded going forward,” Mills said. The next steps now are to continue signing up suppliers and slowly beginning to roll out to hospitals. The team is also putting together a multi-center trial to measure – beyond just customer anecdotes – the advantages to hospitals of having virtual support reps available.

Currently SpotOn is available for iPhones and iPads but should be available for Android within the next sever-al months. Mills said the company should be ready to release the next version of the software by the end of the year.


SpotOn Surgical (Continued)



Physicist building nanotech sensor to track your health through your breath

By: Veronica CombsSept 10, 2013

In addition to reminding you to take your meds and tracking your steps, your smart phone may soon be able to tell you if that scent in your breath is due to the garlic from lunch or something much worse.

Adamant Technologies is working on a sensor that analyzes metabolites in the breath. The idea is to track changes in the body – lung cancer, diabetes – as soon as they start happening. Just as the Atossa breast cancer screening can track cellular changes in breast tissue, Adamant’s sensor could give a similarly detailed history of the body’s health.

Founder and CEO Sam Khamis started the company in 2011 and boot-strapped his way through the first year. In 2012, he got his first (and only so far) round of outside investment from Khosla Vetures of $2.5 million.

Khamis said that he is starting with measuring the metabolic rate and wants to do a usability study with this focus.

“What we can do is measure from your exhale or how efficiently you’re burn-ing calories and give feedback in real time,” he said. “You would be able to set a goal for your metabolic range and then you would know if you worked out too hard and were in fat storage mode.”

Khamis said that his sensor is the new core technology that can take mobile health where everyone says it’s supposed to go.


Company:Adamant Technologies

CEO/Founder:Sam Khamis

Website:http://www.adamanttech.com/

Twitter:N/A

http://www.adamanttech.com


“The only devices that are out there today are acceler-ometer devices based on 30 – 40-year-old technology,” he said.

The current prototype is a very thin case that fits around a cell phone. There is a small sensor at the bottom and a port for a USB cable. Khamis said that a handheld option is also in the works. Nanotechnology drives the tiny sensor.

The sensor would be a detection device first, but Khamis is working toward building a full diagnostic de-vice in the long run. The challenges and cost of an FDA approval are delaying that goal, at least for now.

Khamis sees opportunities with asthma, tuberculosis and melanoma. The sensor could predict asthma at-tacks about 20 minutes before they happen by monitor-ing inflammation of the upper respiratory system.

“Parents are constantly checking their child’s pulse oxygen and giving them steroids when they don’t need them,” he said. “The idea would be to minimize hospital visits and medication.”

Khamis said he also has considered doing a clinical R&D and then a trial in Australia to test the sensor’s ability to detect early stage melanoma. Australia has the world’s highest rate of skin cancer, and melanoma is one of the most common cancers affecting young people in that country. If a melanoma is caught early, the five-year survival rate is 95%. By the time the cancer progresses to Stage IIC, the five-year survival rate drops to 53%.

Another possible application for this life science innova-tion is detecting biomarkers for TB.

Khamis has spent the last year getting the technolo-gy ready to manufacture at scale. Now he is ready to gather data from people with asthma and skin cancer and build a database of smells. The next step will be to identify the chemicals in a particular smell and then associate those chemicals with metabolic changes. Khamis compared the process to the human nose.

“If you’re in a room with both pizza and coffee, you know both of those things are there because of the way your nose works,” he said. “We’ve designed our sensor to work the same way.”

The end goal is to build an algorithm on the sensor that is smart enough to learn to smell new things.

Before starting Adamant, Khamis ran a consulting company focused on measurement and automation, test socket development, MEMS and nanomaterials synthesis. He also cofounded Nanosense, INC where he led research and development efforts on bio-inspired carbon nanotube devices. Under his technical direction, the team won $4 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Real Nose program.

Khamis has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. While at UPenn, he invented a technique allowing carbon nanotubes and graphene to be inte-grated into standard semiconductor fabrication process lines.


Adamant Technologies (Continued)



Could this device lead to shorter labor and delivery + become childbirth standard of care?

By: Lindsey AlexanderSept 18, 2013

Materna Medical is at work on a device to help protect the more than 80 per-cent of women who suffer damage or tearing during childbirth.

“The clinical need we’re trying to address is that there’s a tremendous amount of damage that women suffer during childbirth,” Mark Juravic, found-er and CEO of the California-based startup, said. That damage can lead to incontinence, pain, sexual dysfunction and vaginal prolapse, and much of the damage done is to the pelvic muscle because the baby stretches too much too quickly. First-time mothers are particularly susceptible to tearing.

If the device is brought to market, Juravic said there are many value propo-sitions: it could prevent vaginal tearing for the mother, prevent pelvic muscle damage to the mother, and, perhaps most interestingly, could potentially also offer shorter delivery times using fewer instruments. Juravic said some evidence points to predilated tissues leading to shorter delivery times. With shorter, easier deliveries, for instance, it’s likely forceps would be less neces-sary, further reducing the chance of tearing and damage to the mother and stress on the baby.

“This can be, if it works and provides all these benefits, it could become the standard of care for childbirth,” Juravic said. In theory, it would make the job of childbirth easier on the mother and the physician or midwife.

The device itself is surprisingly simple: a mechanical dilator that would pene-


Company:Materna Medical

CEO/Founder:Mark Juravic

Website:http://www.maternamedical.com

Twitter:N/A

http://www.maternamedical.com

http://www.maternamedical.com


trate the first third of the vaginal canal and basically pre-stretch it to full dilation. It would be used for an hour or two during the first stage of labor, and is equipped with sensitive load and location sensors, plus a semi-auto-matic force-controlled actuation system, so the device can be removed quickly.

The idea translates from sports medicine: slower stretching is more effective and less stressful to the body than a quick stretch. Materna is banking on this kind of slow stretch to prepare the pelvic floor for deliv-ery.

So far, Materna has completed its first in-woman trial for the device in Sydney, Australia. Why Australia? To work with Dr. Hans Peter Dietz, a thought leader in the effects of childbirth on the pelvic floor. With his expertise, the device was used on eight women.

Earlier this year, Materna moved into the Fogarty Insti-tute for Innovation, a non-profit that works as an incu-bator for the medtech startups it selects. In the com-pany’s time there, Juravic said he will focus on gaining more clinical data. Because Fogarty is based on the El Camino Hospital campus, Juravic gets regular direct feedback from physicians on the device. Mike Stewart, the product designer and former product development engineer on projects for Boston Scientific (BSX), takes that into account for device design and testing. It’s this feedback that leads him to believe the dilator could be a platform technology for Materna.

“A number of obstetricians and gynecologists have taken a look at our device and said, ‘If you could just change this one little thing on it, I would really like to use it on X patient population or Y patient population. . . . ‘ There are a number of devices we could launch close to our core tech.”

Juravic spent his pre-startup life at Guidant, and took the Stanford BioDesign course while working there. The BioDesign course presented a number of issues to the participants, and Juravic was drawn to tears incurred during childbirth because it seemed to him there was a vast clinical need. It was biomechanical, so he thought from his previous work he could offer a unique perspec-tive. Since the course, he began to work part-time on nights and weekends on Materna, eventually quitting his day job in 2010 when the startup secured its first round of funding for the device, $1 million from angel inves-tors.

Now, the company has a $1.2 million target in its sights for this round, which will include some costs associated with regulatory filing. Juravic said more than half of that amount will come from existing investors.

As Materna continues onward and upward, Juravic looks forward to innovation in the obstetrics field. He said because women’s health has been “ignored” for so long, innovators “are recognizing that there are lots of unmet needs.”


Materna Medical (Continued)


A DIY body sensor kit for app developers and tinkerers – Sept 6, 2013

A hardware and software kit called BITalino includes a microcontroller unit, a battery block and a few different differ-ent physiological sensor modules that can be broken off and used individually or purchased in the form of an all-in-one board for prototyping.

http://bit.ly/17Vvrlf

Startup Activity: Medical Devices & Diagnostics

FDA approved device for noninvasive measure of cardiovascular stability raises $4M – Sept 9, 2013

A Pittsburgh company has developed a noninvasive FDA approved device that can measure oxygen saturation of arterial hemoglobin and pulse rate in adult and pediatric patients in realtime.

http://bit.ly/1aYUzZA

A rapid cooling device to help paramedics treat cardiac arrest patients finds Series A fund-ing – Sept 10, 2013

Novocor Medical Systems Inc. is developing HypoCore, a device that’s designed to quickly cool saline as it’s admin-istered to patients to induce therapeutic hypothermia.

http://bit.ly/1eeqc3n

Nurses hope hospitals say yes to NoNo Sleeve to cut medical errors – Sept 11, 2013

NoNo Sleeve can help nurses and prevent fatal mistakes. Call it a textile equivalent of a big stop sign warning nurses and other healthcare professionals to use the other arm.

http://bit.ly/1aDG9i8

Investors pump $19.8M into a medical device that seals varicose veins with glue- Sept 9, 2013

A new, minimally invasive treatment uses ultrasound and medical glue to seal up potentially problematic varicose veins in the leg. Investors have just injected $19.8 million into Morrisville, North Carolina-based medical device com-pany Sapheon Inc., the company said.


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http://bit.ly/1eeqc3n




Adhesion barrier company raises $525K to prevent internal scarring after surger – Sept 18, 2013

Alafair is developing a new material to keep tissues and organs separate while they heal. The product is a film creat-ed from naturally occurring sugar molecules that are well-established in wound healing and adhesion, the company says.

http://bit.ly/1a6uW5p


Zamzee brings QS data to doctors to help them motivate and monitor overweight/inactive kids – Sept 23, 2013

Third Eye Diagnostics has received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to advance its novel approach to getting an accurate measure for intracranial pressure through the eye.

http://bit.ly/14tBc6t

Entrepreneur’s arthritic grandmother inspires a medtech fork + $9,500 IndieGogo campaign – Sept 16, 2013

When Rise Assistive Devices CEO Vadim Gordin tried to buy his grandmother a fork she could use more easily, what he found were forks jammed into bicycle handles. He used his biomedical engineering back-ground to construct and 3-D print what would become the Easy Fork for her.

http://bit.ly/181qPZ1

Wearable ReWalk device finds an investor and strategic partner in Japanese robotics firm – Sept 25, 2013

A couple of medical school professors at the University of Pennsylvania are using bioenergetics to address the ener-gy consumption problems associated with advanced chronic heart failure.

http://bit.ly/16Ispwd

Safety syringe maker SafeShot re-emerges with $6M in funding, new business strategy – Sept 23, 2013

After nearly three years out of the public eye, SafeShot Technologies announced today that it secured $6 million in financing from undisclosed investors, following up a $3 million angel round last fall.

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Foundation Medicine rare example of IPO success for diagnostics company – Sept 26, 2013

An at-home, hand-held breast imaging device could help women see abnormalities between mammograms–if Eclipse Breast Health Technologies meets its $650,000 Indiegogo goal.

http://bit.ly/1664rbY

Testing kit designed to more accurately ID thyroid disorders debuts on Indiegogo – Sept 25, 2013

As predicted, the next incremental advances in the growing A-fib heart space may very well be in contact force cath-eter technology. St. Jude’s Medical is banking on it. The company just acquired Endosense, a Switzerland company that creates contact force ablation catheter technology, for $170 million.

http://bit.ly/16ZYC4l

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Most Popular Startups This Month

2) Recovery Record

The clinician facing app is designed to improve patient interactions and better assess the patient’s progress.”We thought about what motivates clinicians to engage in technology…to influence positive treatment outcomes would be great. They can check in and see how engaged their patients are in realtime.” It also can send a message to users that their therapist has viewed their diary entries.

Read more: http://bit.ly/1bmx5xF

1) Materna Medical

Materna Medical is at work on a device to help protect the more than 80 percent of women who suffer damage or tearing during childbirth.

If the device is brought to market, Mark Juravic said there are many value propositions: it could prevent vaginal tear-ing for the mother, prevent pelvic muscle damage to the mother, and, perhaps most interestingly, could potentially also offer shorter delivery times using less instruments.

Read more: http://bit.ly/14k2352

3) NoNo Sleeve Warning sleeve helps nurses and prevents fatal mistakes... Read more: http://bit.ly/1aDG9i8

4) Bionym Heartbeat password could help protect patient data or restrict... Read more: http://bit.ly/1cCKDCY

5) SpotOn Surgical a cloud-based portal that links doctors and nurses in... Read more: http://bit.ly/17vurOu

A list of the five startups that got the most attention from readers on MedCityNews.com.

http://bit.ly/1bmx5xF

http://bit.ly/14k2352



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