The Inventivity Pod

Each year in the U.S., over 164,000 emergency room visits and 300 deaths are caused by falls from a ladder. Inspired by his father, Paul Stentiford has invented a simple device that makes climbing ladders safer. A general contractor, Paul and his son developed six prototypes over two years and are now moving their product to market. Paul remembers helping his father on carpentry jobs when he was four years old, and remembers him always figuring out how to make using tools less dangerous.  

Each year in the U.S., over 164,000 emergency room visits and 300 deaths are caused by falls from a ladder. Inspired by his father, Paul Stentiford has invented a simple device that makes climbing ladders safer. A general contractor, Paul and his son developed six prototypes over two years and are now moving their product to market. Paul remembers helping his father on carpentry jobs when he was four years old, and remembers him always figuring out how to make using tools less dangerous.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:37

Making ladders safer and reducing accidents at home and on the job. Welcome to your Cade . I’m your host, Richard Miles . And today I’ll be talking to Paul Stentiford President and CEO of Stantiford Safety Services and a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize. Welcome to Radio Cade, Paul .

Paul Stentiford: 0:54

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Richard Miles: 0:56

Let’s start right away and talk about your invention because to me, I think it’s fascinating that it’s both extremely useful, but very simple by design and simple to use from what I’ve seen, most people are familiar with ladders. So I’d like listeners to understand from the get go, what is the problem that you’re trying to solve and exactly how your invention works? Why don’t you describe a standard extension ladder, which I think most people have seen, or they’ve used a lot of homeowners, handyman have standard extension ladders. So what is the problem with those ladders? And then tell us how your invention fixes that.

Paul Stentiford: 1:28

Sure. It’s only for extension ladders. Anyone that’s familiar with one, there are two sections that slide together. If you want to traverse up to a roof area, you are going to set the ladder, the appropriate distance from the wall and start with a rope, pulling the second section, the top section up. So as it slides up to the desired height where your leaning it against the house, and then you start climbing it when you climb it, where that second section is, is the traverse area. That’s difficult because you have an overlapping section that you have to step out over that step. More importantly, when you’re coming down, because it’s in about two and a half inches to the next step. That’s where the problem area is. This device is basically all aluminum welded, three steps that gradually take you to the fourth step down below that offset by half inch increments. In other words, you could hook this on the ladder right below the offset. It’s two vertical side rails at rest on the side rails of each ladder on right and left. And then the steps overhang onto the rungs of the ladder below the offset. So that if you took a straight edge, if you can picture this, took a straight edge from where that next rung is on the offset and sticks out and go four rungs down. This device would plane out with the nose of each of those steps. So your foot cannot miss it.

Richard Miles: 2:46

When you entered the Cade Prize and foresaw the application, I have a tendency to read too quickly. And so my first impression was it A, this was like a different type of ladder. And then B, that your device was something relatively that you had to retrofit a ladder with and on both counts for number one, you’re not having to go out and buy a new ladder. And then number two, once I saw a video of your device, it looks extremely simple to put on. You don’t need any tools or any expertise. You can just basically hang it where it needs to go. Is that more or less accurate?

Paul Stentiford: 3:16

Sure. Correct. It’s a safety device for an extension ladder, basically eliminating that dangerous offset. It’s all welded aluminum, very durable. It just hooks on, as you said, gravity holds it in place, the rungs hook on behind the existing rungs of the ladder. So it’s not going to fall off. And it’s just amazing how simple it is and how easy it works to keep you safe on a ladder.

Richard Miles: 3:39

So one of the things that we hear a lot from inventors, particularly ones who come up with these relatively simple solutions, a lot of people say like, wow, I wish I had thought of that. Cause they see right away the value of it, that it’s a relatively simple solution and they’re kind of mad at themselves. They didn’t think of it at first , but of course every idea starts with an insight. So how did you first come up with this idea or who did, and then how did you develop that idea into what it became? Because obviously the final product is probably different than your original concepts in some way. So tell us about what was the original inspiration for this and then how did you figure it out as you developed it.

Paul Stentiford: 4:15

Sure I have to tell you the idea, the light bulb that went off to the person said is my father. He’s the catalyst of this idea. And he’s 93 now, he’s his health is a lot different, unfortunately to what it was before. But back then he was 87. He’s very active man up until a couple of years ago, still is by himself. Does everything himself drives and everything works on projects constantly. And he’s always got the creative mind, he’s from England. So I relate him to the Dyson vacuum guy, cause he’s always got, I got an ideas . So he was going up an extension ladder up and down it when he was 87 and coming down, he almost missed the off set and he didn’t fall. But he said, I never realized how dangerous that off set is. So he said, I have an idea and he described it to me. And then I started listening to his idea and bringing him materials to create these prototypes. We went through six prototypes to end up with what we have today took two years. And then I thought I’m been a general contractor since 1985. And I see the value, this one idea that my dad had. He’s always had good ideas, but this one is hitting on all eight cylinders. And I took it further where I went to a patent attorney in Gainesville and we got two patents on it . It’s a whole nother story. Then time and money, what it takes to do that. But it’s all good. And the attorney that I worked with was wonderful and my dad had the football and it took it down the field because he didn’t have the know how or where it was all to carry it the rest of the way. But he had a great idea, like I said, right.

Richard Miles: 5:40

That is a great story. I just wanted to take a little sidelight. You know, you talked about your father, all of a sudden realizing, wow, this is really dangerous. And I can’t remember what the statistic is, but there are thousands of people every year that are seriously hurt or killed from ladder accidents. I know it’s not all from missing the step, but the ladders are kind of dangerous aren’t they?

Paul Stentiford: 5:59

As a general contractor. I’m very aware of continuing education every year since 1985, ladders are 80% of job site injuries. Okay . The average worker’s comp claim for a ladder injuries is $40,000. Okay? So there’s a percentage of those that we know is navigating that offset where the injury occurs. Fortunately, most falls from ladders are not death. That’s a good thing. However, the falls are likely to be a lifelong injury. And so if someone dies, it’s typically an insurance payout of X amount of dollars and it’s over. And the other part of the person that lives through an injury, if it’s a lifelong injury, there’s compensation of lost time for work there’s medical surgeries, et cetera, that a lot of times will surpass the amount of what the person that passed , had incurred from the insurance company. So it’s unfortunate either way. We don’t want to see anyone lose their life on a ladder fall. We don’t want to see anyone injured or injured for life from a ladder fall. So this could be a remedy for a both again on the monetary side, saving money, not only for people but insurance companies and rates, as long as you keep those injuries from that occurrence, I feel it’s so revolutionary, like an airbag in a car, right in an airbag saves lives. We know thousands and thousands of lives have been saved with airbags . I think this could save thousands and thousands of injuries and deaths on ladders on extension ladders,

Richard Miles: 7:22

Because it’s so simple. You don’t really have to train or teach anyone when how to use this. It’s very intuitive. You just sort of look at it. Oh, okay. I know exactly what to do with this thing. One thing Paul, that you have done, that’s different. And in some ways harder, a lot of inventors, but they’ll do, they’ll come up with the idea. They get their prototypes, they get their patent , which all of you done, but then they will license it to a much larger company or manufacturer, and then they get a proceeds from that. But you’re at this point, manufacturing your product, which is a whole level of complexity, more difficult, right? Because you now have to worry about quality control, right. And making sure that every single one is built the same way and as reliable and so on. That’s a level of sophistication it’s difficult, but you already have a lot of experience, right? As the general contractor, how much manufacturing had you done before to take that step of getting involved on the manufacturing end?

Paul Stentiford: 8:11

Well, like I said, it was years of prototypes . This thing started as five steps long, and then we went to four steps, went to three steps for it to be effective and safe, where it’s so effective, you could blindfold yourself and navigate up and down the ladder and not know where that offset is. That’s how effective it is. So after we formed Stentiford Safety Services and the branding of the names, Sten Step along with our names , Stentiford, then obtaining the patents. The next was to see if there was any interest. I really didn’t find any interest from a lot of manufacturers or anyone in that regards to the point that I thought we need to start producing this ourselves. We’re the manufacturer. And then we threw a lot of time. Vetting folks found a manufacturer that could produce the exact model from the prototype that we, there was a lot of things that were important on it, no sharp edges or corners, all of them, them hand welded joints and everything powder coated with all of the instructions and patent information and website all powder-coated on it as well. So that it’s somewhat indestructible and weatherproof because this thing is going to take a lot of abuse when it’s thrown in the back of a truck or dropped down from a roof or in the weather elements all the time ladders are typically extension ladders , mostly outside. So they take all the effects of the sun and ultraviolet rays and rain, et cetera. So it’s extremely durable and it’ll last the lifetime.

Richard Miles: 9:31

You kind of knew what the problem was. And so on how steep of a learning curve was it for you on the manufacturing and product development side? Did you just have to learn on your own or did you have advice or get help from someone like to figure out that taking a product to market like even from getting the patent, did a lot of people give you advice or did you teach yourself what all the steps were?

Paul Stentiford: 9:52

From my knowledge, and then speaking with a lot of people, because I’m a general contractor, I can build anything from high end homes to large commercial buildings. The manufacturing process is a little different, but I did seek advice from folks that I knew that were in line with that. I had a business consultant that I hired that connected me with an agent that connected me with a manufacturer that’s where it went. And these are folks that are professionals and provide that service. And that’s where I took it. So I still funded it. I never realized how much money can go into something like that. But that’s what it takes between the patents and the manufacturing process. And then it goes on because you have to provide product liability insurance. Once you put it on the market and social media advertising. So all of that is kind of like a diesel engine. You gotta , you start that engine and your diesel fuel for it is money for the project. So you gotta keep it fueled or that shuts down.

Richard Miles: 10:47

Paul, we like to talk a lot about inspiration on this show. Cause all inventors in some way are inspired, not just by the invention itself, but just the way that they do business maybe are usually inspired by ideas or other people. And you’ve mentioned that you had been very inspired by your father. Sounds like he has led really incredible life. You said he was an immigrant to this country from England. He worked as a carpenter in New York, correct?

Paul Stentiford: 11:07

A brief history on my dad. Yeah. He is my mentor and best friend. And I learned a lot from him. His family’s from England. They came in through Ellis Island in the early 19 hundreds. So he was actually born in America with two of his brothers. He’s got three sisters, two brothers. And he’s one of, only two that are surviving so far because of their age. But when he was five, my grandfather, he was a licensed electrician in New York. He sent them all back to England because my grandmother had to have some treatments for breast cancer and he wanted it to be done in England. They all grew up there. They were there. My grandfather had gone back to England until he was 18. And he and his two brothers, they were American citizens. They joined the American Army, volunteered during world war two. And fortunately they all survived. The war ended. They all came back to America and the sisters and their parents, all of them came back here as American citizens. My grandfather, he instilled that in my father and his two brothers. He was a Master Sergeant during World War I. He volunteered for World War II . He volunteered and it was a Master Sergeant for the British Army. So he told my father and his two brothers, a country worth living in his country worth fighting for. And they just had that instilled in . So coming back to that, he learned hands-on Woodcraft in England and wood shops, actually Thomas Edison’s general electric lab in England. He worked in there and in the blueprint wood workshop there, he came back to New York in 1948, joined the carpenter’s union. He was in union foreman. For many years, actually in the 1964, world’s fair in 1962, he worked on the Ford pavilion when the 1964 Mustang was rolled out. And during that time there was a group of men came by, led by one man. And he met that one, man that was Walt Disney. He’s had an interesting life. He’s always had a shop and always building things as well on his own for family and different things like that. So he’s just very creative guy. And like I said, he’s had years and years, and this was probably the best idea I’ve seen where I thought we need to carry this through.

Richard Miles: 13:05

What are some of your earliest memories of your dad? I presume you probably had a shop at home. Did you hang around the shop or did you get a chance to sometimes to go to work with him and start to see him in action? Or what’s the first thing you recall growing up as a little kid?

Paul Stentiford: 13:18

Since I was a kid, when I say a kid four or five years old, I was always with him when he did little projects, I was always on them with him . And if he did anything like special, fine or woodwork, if I wasn’t filling nail holes or doing these simple paths as a kid and then grew into hands on like him, but I took another route instead of the hands on, I got a degree in building construction and then general contractors license when I was 23 and then worked for companies in general contracting as a project manager and superintendent and vice president operations until I started my company 17 years ago.

Richard Miles: 13:52

Wow. Did he give you like a little tool set when you were little or something? Or did you show he’s used real tools? It sounds like you are doing the real stuff from pretty early age.

Paul Stentiford: 14:01

Yeah. The kid’s tool set was short lived until I was working with regular tools that he had. He had a lot of machines in his shop and he was always adamant about safety and always held his hands up and said, look, I have all my fingers because safety is so important. And just working on machines safely under his supervision as a kid, but he was always with me guiding me and making sure safety was so important. And like I said, he has no severe injuries from working on machines constantly and tools because he’s always erred on the edge of safety.

Richard Miles: 14:32

Right. And this is also common. We heard this from a lot of inventors. You know, the idea for a specific invention might come in a flash, but they’ve actually been thinking about the topic for quite a long time. So it sounds like your dad was the sort that always thought, like how can I make whatever tool is easier or safer to use.

Paul Stentiford: 14:49

Funny you should say that I never realized, I know he came up with this idea for the ladder, but as you said it, I never realized how much growing up. He always stress safety on machines, not as simple ladder . Like you said, this device is kind of like, everyone looks at him like, why didn’t I think of that? It’s so simple. And it’s such a problem child on an extension ladder and the higher you go, the more you want to be real guarded and careful with that offset that you don’t miss it because you’ll fall further down. But I never thought about that. How much he stressed safety when I was younger and he’s always been in my mind from him.

Richard Miles: 15:20

Right. I think that’s probably why your product’s going to do well. Right? Because once you see it, you don’t think about like, I wonder if this is used for what or how it use it. You just automatically get it. Oh of course. And that’s when you start thinking like why on Earth wasn’t as developed before? And one of my first reactions, when I first read about Sten Step was like, wow, I was amazed at other equipment manufacturers, or ladder manufacturers h ave not already done something similar. C ause it is really beautiful a nd i t’s simplicity t he design and you don’t have to think about it at all. We’re a very creative country i n the United States. And your dad is certainly one example of that. And a lot of people still every day come up with an idea and they think of getting a patent and selling a product. This has been popularized in the last 15 years with Shark Tank and other shows like that. And then you’ve actually done that. You’ve done w ith a lot of people, really dream of doing a nd they have an idea and they finally get it on the shelves. You mentioned that it took y ou a long couple of years. So at this point having already been through, a nd I know you’re not at the finish line yet, right? You’re still trying to get this product to market, but what advice or pearls of wisdom would you have to someone listening right now? They might be a researcher at the university, lot of inventions o r come up with nurses in hospitals b ecause they figure out how to get machines to work better. And they just f igured out what would you tell them about, okay, you’ve got a solid idea. You want to commercialize it. You want to get i n stores. What sort of advice would you give that person?

Paul Stentiford: 16:40

First I’d give the two Ps that’s patience and perseverance. It’s a long process, no matter what a patent doesn’t happen overnight, you have to do a search. It takes time to develop it and get it right and complete it. And then you constantly have to persevere during that process, as well as the next step. If you’re going to find someone to take it from you and buy it, however it’s segmented with royalties or whatever, or manufacture yourself or find a manufacturer that all takes perseverance. If you’re in the knowledge of that process, that’s all the better. But , um , like I said, general contractors , a little different to a manufacturer, but it’s just navigating your way through those things and asking a lot of questions, seeking advice from people that are willing to share it and sharpen your edge. So you’re better on the next round. And the other part I have to say, I’m blessed to have my dad to have this idea that he came up with to bring it to fruition, to bring it to the finished product that we have manufactured in hand, starting a big rollout to distribute and blessed to have the know how and the financial wherewithal to carry it as a contractor , we survive the great recession. We’re still under the same name and never defaulted, always bonded and have zero litigation. So I’m proud of that and proud that we’ve been blessed to be able to financially carry this thing to the point of that .

Richard Miles: 17:55

Well, it’s all very solid advice. Maybe have a future as a consultant at some point down the road, but I want to congratulate you again. One for making it to finals of the 2020 Cade Prize with Sten Step looks like a fantastic product and idea, and I hope it does well. And I think it will do well. Like I said, because it is so simple to understand and simple to use. I look forward to checking in on your progress and hope to see you in Gainesville at some point at the kid museum. Thanks very much for being on the podcast.

Paul Stentiford: 18:21

Thank you, happy to share.

Outro: 18:24

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinists , Jacob Lawson.

Despite the plethora of language learning tools, learning a new language is still very difficult for many people. What if it was much easier and much more fun? Dr. Sara Smith, a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize, Oxford and Harvard educated Assistant Professor at USF, and CEO of MARVL shares how her patented augmented reality app can change how we learn languages.

Despite the plethora of language learning tools, learning a new language is still very difficult for many people. What if it was much easier and much more fun? Dr. Sara Smith, a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize, Oxford and Harvard educated Assistant Professor at USF, and CEO of MARVL shares how her patented augmented reality app can change how we learn languages.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: 0:38

Welcome to Radio Cade . I’m your host, James Di Virgilio. And today we’re going to tackle a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Why is it so hard to learn a new language? And is there a way that we can improve how we or I, or you learn a new language? Joining me today is Dr. Sara Smith. She is the CEO of MARVL, also an Assistant Professor of English to speakers of other languages and foreign language education at the University of South Florida and Doctorate from Oxford time at Harvard. Very, very smart, Sara, welcome to the show. I can’t wait to figure out how you can help me and our listeners improve in learning languages.

Dr. Sara Smith: 1:15

Well, thank you so much for having me and thank you for the very flattering introduction.

James Di Virgilio: 1:19

You’re most welcome. Now, tell me, let’s just jump right into the question of why is it so hard for a three-year-old or myself to learn a new language?

Dr. Sara Smith: 1:28

It’s a good question. It’s a question, people ask me a lot, you know, learning a new language requires learning thousands and thousands of words, a kindergartner knows about 5,000 words. That’s a lot of words and learning a new word is harder than you think you have to be exposed to that word over and over and over before you remember it. So one of the reasons why learning a new language is hard is because you have to build up that bank of words. You need to get all those vocabulary words, and that takes time and that takes effort.

James Di Virgilio: 1:54

And so when I’m traveling around France and I’m seeing words during my vacation, and I can learn a few of them, the ones I typically will learn the most are the ones I engage with the most. If I see this word 15, 20, 30 times, it sticks in my mind that sortie means an exit or whatever the case may be. But if I don’t get exposed to these other vocabulary words, then I don’t have enough words to draw on to begin to speak the language.

Dr. Sara Smith: 2:17

Yeah. And I love that you use as an example, you traveling around France because that’s actually an even better way to learn. New words is when you’re having experiences. One of the things that makes learning a language when you’re either trying to teach yourself at home with your own materials, or even in a classroom setting, is that you’re not having varied experiences and exposures to those words, right? You’re only encountering them in these sort of flat interactions where it’s just there in front of you in print. Maybe it comes with a definition, but if you’re traveling around France, you’re having experiences, you’re having emotions. You’re encountering that word in an authentic setting, right? You’re encountering the word exit while you’re looking for the exit. So you have a feeling that goes with it and you see that word, you’re seeing it with an exit. So that’s an even better way to learn it. We know that if we can add these sort of visual components, these emotional components, adding something participatory, like you’re participating in the experience, you’re using the language, then you’re actually going to learn it faster. So your example of learning words in France, that’s one of the best way to do it.

James Di Virgilio: 3:19

And so incomes your problem solving solution. There’s a plethora of ways to attempt to learn languages. The large majority of them are doing what you said to try to build vocabulary. But if you’re not actually in the country, you’re not experiencing this. It can be onerous difficult. If not downright impossible to do thus, we have MARVL. Now, MARVL is not the superhero comic book that we know what , what, what is MARVL and what is augmented reality?

Dr. Sara Smith: 3:48

Well, I want us to be the superhero of your language learning experience. And that’s what I hope MARVL is. So MARVL is an augmented reality app and we use augmented reality to create these immersive experiences. So we can sort of get you closer to that experience of being in France, needing an exit, asking for an exit, looking and seeing the word for exit next to the exit. We want to create these immersive dynamic experiences to make that language learning experience a little more fun, and then also faster and more effective because you’re processing it and you’re storing it as a different type of memory. So that’s what MARVL seeks to do. And by using augmented reality, we can create these interactive experiences. So a lot of people are familiar with Pokemon Go that’s the AR game that everyone can think of. And remember, and that used augmented reality to create the illusion that these animated monsters co-existed with you in your real world, right? So when you would look through the lens of your device, they would pop up like they lived there with you in the real world. And that’s, I think part of the fun that augmented reality can bring to the table it’s whimsical and it’s magical. And it creates this illusion without taking you out of your real world. Virtual reality takes you completely out of your real world, right? It separates you completely augmented reality. We’re just adding some fun and magic to your real world. So what our app does is it builds on a traditional vocabulary flashcard. And when you look at that flashcard through the lens of your device, using our app, an animated fun, engaging teacher character will pop up on the card and give you that vocabulary instruction using all of the magic of augmented reality. So if it’s a word like swoop, then we have pictures of planes on the card. Those planes will swoop off the page. We have the characters have props and do activities that go with it. And also try to talk to you, ask you to do things with them, have that interactive component, say it with me, present the word in a lot of different forms. So you can have that participatory, interactive experience. It’s going to help you learn that word faster and also have more fun.

James Di Virgilio: 5:50

Now, Sara, if I have never used augmented reality, am I able to do this on my cell phone or iPad? Or do I need a special device?

Dr. Sara Smith: 6:00

That’s a great question. No, any smartphone works AR is ready for even our most medium old smartphones like mine. So it works well for tablets and smartphones. You don’t need a device specifically for it. Most phones nowadays can do it really, really well.

James Di Virgilio: 6:14

So I get the app on my phone. I can then begin to experience augmented reality. And for those of you that have never experienced this, if I am in my room, if you’re aware, you’re listening right now, when I hold up my phone towards a wall or towards the seat of my card or wherever I am, and then I put a flashcard down, I’m going to have this character Ivan pop up and then begin to describe this car to me as if he is sitting right next to me, correct?

Dr. Sara Smith: 6:42

Yeah. So he’s a cute little animated character. He has a best friend. Who’s a sloth who’s kind of his sidekick. So Watson will pop up. He’s going to stand on the card, kind of like a magic little cartoon character in front of you. And he’s going to do exactly what a really good bilingual teacher would do. A really well-trained language teacher is going to provide you that word in a couple of different forms. Watson’s going to say the word slowly for you. So Watson’s kind of there to help, especially for young children, sound it out alert you to features of how it’s written and he’ll define the word help describe the word. And there’s all sorts of sort of additional extensions and supports. He’ll give you a little lesson, just like you had a bilingual teacher there in front of you. And one of the key things that MARVL offers is that because we have the capacity to plug and play for many different languages. We can have Ivan give you a definition in your first language, in addition to giving you all that information in the language you’re trying to learn. And we know that especially children learn a lot faster if they just get that supporting definition in their first language.

James Di Virgilio: 7:42

So if I’m French, I opened this up, I see the first definition of block in French, and then it’s going to wind up describing it to me in English, after the fact.

Dr. Sara Smith: 7:51

Exactly. So Ivan’s there to support you. He’s going to tell you about it. He’s going to show you if there’s anything that he can do to act it out. If there are any props that would help, he’s going to have all that there for you. And he is going to tell you in both the language you’re trying to learn and the language you already speak a really rich description of what this word means. So you have something you already know to anchor it to.

James Di Virgilio: 8:12

Now , how much better is this? We talked about how hard it is to learn a language. Are you able to quantify how much this improves a child or an adult’s ability to learn?

Dr. Sara Smith: 8:21

So we’re in our early efficacy studies and we’re really enjoying using it. We know that kids as young as four can do this on the first try. We know that after an hour we see trackable gains for four year olds and we see fun cascading benefits to their parents. So we see the parents also learn new words when they’re using the app with their children. So that’s where we are right now. We know from a whole body of research that visual and audio are stored and processed separately in memory. And so we know that this is faster than something that’s just flat. So something that’s just going to show you text and a picture. We know that having that video component is going to be a lot faster. And so we’re hoping to move from those 12 exposures, maybe down to something like seven times, right? So just cutting that down and cutting that down. And we’re hoping that we can add enough participatory experiences, that it might be as fast as one exposure, right? So if what Ivan does when he pops up is really fun and really cute, and you’re enjoying it. You may remember it the same way you would. If you were having an experience where you were having a great dinner and someone puts something on the table and said the word for that food. And it clicked the first time. And I think for all of us who studied other languages or lived in contexts where we’re using another language, we know those times where it only takes once that sort of magic moment, right? Where we have enough participation enough authentic languages when it’s like you get it on the first go and you never forget it. And so we’re hoping we can get you there and that we can get kids there sometimes even with just one go.

James Di Virgilio: 9:46

So how novel is this idea? Are there lots of competitors that are doing something very similar? How unique is this ?

Dr. Sara Smith: 9:52

Oh, that’s a great question. So we are the only ones to my knowledge, using augmented reality for dual language instruction like this for providing something fun for kids, especially with cartoon characters and where we’re also providing that first language support. And I think that’s a really key component, especially when we’re thinking about children. Not only do we want to make sure that we’re teaching new words the best way we can and the best way we can is with support in the first language. But we also want to continue development in the first language, right? So if it is a word that maybe the child doesn’t necessarily know super well in their first language, we have the extra benefit of we’re teaching two languages. And I don’t know of any other app that’s doing that. So that’s really exciting. As far as augmented reality goes, we actually have the patent on augmented reality for dual language instruction. So I’m relatively confident. We’re the only ones doing that.

James Di Virgilio: 10:42

Now, do you have a background in tech? I do a lot of work with entrepreneurs. I frequently come across people who have a fixed mindset and others who have a much more open mindset about what they can or cannot tackle. You’ve created what seems to be a very tech, heavy innovation. Do you have a background in tech? We know that you’re a master of language, but where did the tech side come from?

Dr. Sara Smith: 11:04

That’s a really good question, too. If it’s possible to have the opposite of a background in tech, I was a teacher for a long time. I taught English as a foreign language. I taught in a lot of different fun settings and I came to tech, not because I wanted to use tech per se, but because I wanted to solve a challenge and technology gave me a way to solve that challenge. I wanted to solve the challenge of not having enough bilingual teachers in our classrooms to provide our children who are learning English as a new language, the kind of rich bilingual instruction that I wanted them to have. And I know that from my own experiences as a teacher, sometimes I would have kids in the class. I might have 18 kids who spoke 17 different languages. I don’t speak any of those languages. So what can I do to provide that first language support and help those children continue to develop in both of their languages? And so for me, it was much more about seeing tech as a way to solve a challenge I was working on. And when I started, not only did I not think of myself as someone who had an expertise in tech, I probably thought of myself as someone who was unlikely to be able to use tech well or innovate. And I think there are actually a lot of us who are involved in other types of challenges who may have that light bulb moment of thinking, you know what? I think technology can help me solve my challenge, but because we’re outside of the tech world, we feel like, Oh, but I don’t know anything about tech. And I hope that I can at least encourage other people who are coming from that place. Like I was of saying, okay, I know about this challenge. I know we need an innovation here, but I don’t have the expertise in tech to really say well, but maybe nobody in tech is familiar with this challenge. Maybe nobody in tech is considering how technology could innovate and solve some of the challenges I’m facing. And just being able to see that from the other side, you can teach yourself the tech, or you can bring in people who have the tech expertise. What really is missing are people who have the insight to solve a challenge with tech.

James Di Virgilio: 12:54

Yeah, that’s very well said. And that’s something that I find myself talking a lot with people about is innovation comes first from exactly as you described it, there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. And then you find out how do I fix the problem? You don’t have to have all the actual skills to fix the problem. That’s the beauty of a free idea market, where you find someone else who has a skill to assist you. And then you begin to of course, build a team. But oftentimes the most important thing is to have the idea, Hey, could we improve this? Could we solve this by using something that may exist or by talking to someone who has never thought about it, but might be able to help me build a tool. And that’s obviously exactly what you have done. Now tell us Sara, where you are in this stage of this app. Is this something I can download right now into my phone and begin using? Where are we?

Dr. Sara Smith: 13:42

I wish I could say you could download it. Now. My hope is that I will be able to say yes to you. If you follow up and ask me again in November, we’re hoping to have something ready in November, December for people who speak English, but want to learn Spanish and people who speak Spanish, but want to learn English. So that’s where we want to start with our eventual goal would be to have many, many, many different language combinations available for people to play with the use . And in the very long run, our goal is to actually open it up and have it be what will hopefully be a global network of users can create their own materials as well. But for the moment, our goal is by November, December to have some Spanish, English or English, Spanish materials available for people to download and play with and give us feedback on, we want to know, are you liking it while you’re using it? Our website is up. So if you’re interested, you can go to our website and put some information so that we can contact you when the app is up and ready to go. And you can be in our special group of starting out users, that , that we really will value your feedback.

James Di Virgilio: 14:42

What is the website? Don’t leave us hanging.

Dr. Sara Smith: 14:45

Yeah. So the website is Marvllanguage.com. So that’s M A R V L language dot com.

James Di Virgilio: 14:50

Let’s talk a little bit about getting something like this into the hands of me or others for our listeners, right? So it’s , it’s September. Now, November is two months from now. Of course, you started this journey a while back. Where are you with financing it? Did you do it all on your own? Have you sought investors? Have you gotten grants? Have you won business pitch competitions? How have you been able to keep operations going to make this dream a reality?

Dr. Sara Smith: 15:15

So I started this and this is a very small amount of money. I started this with, but I’m so, so grateful for it. I started this with a $5,000 it’s called a mini grant. So I had this idea and I got a $5,000 grant from my college. And that was enough to make a very basic prototype of what I wanted to do that worked with just three words. So I just had my special three vocabulary words, and that was enough to get a patent. So I started this with literally $5,000 and I used every penny of that. And with that, I then went forward since I had the patent at that point. And I had a prototype that I could show people and get them excited too , which I think is a big part of when you say, you know, I’m really excited about this. I wanted to just have enough to get other people excited too . And from that, I then was able to get a grant from the USF foundation. And I’m very, very appreciative for that. So that’s where we are at the moment. And that really has been thanks to enormous amounts of support from University of South Florida and their enthusiasm behind the idea, and really encouraging me to keep going with it. And one of the things that I feel so grateful for is every step of the way, anyone that I’ve shown this to, that I can let play with the app. And they’re always excited by how fun and cool it is to have that magic of a character popping up and teaching you another language. So I think I’ve been really fortunate to have those sources of funding. And I’m also taking part in a program called Tech Women Rising, which is an accelerator specifically for women in tech. And that’s been another great source of just learning about how to do this. It’s hard, I’m an academic for before that, I was a teacher. I don’t have a background in tech, as you mentioned. I also don’t have a background in business. So I have none of the backgrounds in anything except language learning. So all of these resources have been really helpful for me. And for helping me learn the ins and outs of this business.

James Di Virgilio: 17:10

Well, it sounds like maybe you need a MARVL for business and for tech that would have sped up your ability to learn those new languages.

Dr. Sara Smith: 17:18

I would love to, you know, I’ve talked about making other decks of cards for things like STEM words, you know, things where it’s not necessarily language learning, but it is to help with that. Adding all of the words that you need to learn to have some sort of extra help with learning.

James Di Virgilio: 17:33

All right . Let’s ask a tough question, but an important one, if MARVL were not to make it, the future goes on, it’s a great idea. It’s working really well right now. Why do you think that might be what’s maybe the biggest obstacle or threat to MARVL success?

Dr. Sara Smith: 17:48

That’s a good question. I think people are pretty resistant to change. I think that may be a big part of it. It’s really different to shift from, for example, just book written materials, right? To add on top of that augmented reality materials, because that’s what they are there. Additional learning materials that just take the form of an animated character talking to you in an augmented reality situation. So I think there’s some resistance to change there. Yeah, I think that’s my number one answer is that it is a little different. It is a little weird as much as I feel totally fine having an animated character, teach me things. Maybe some people want a less whimsical approach. They want something more serious. And I think maybe it can feel not serious if you’re learning a language from an animated character in an animated sloth. So I think that may be a part of it is because it’s different and the resistance to change on that side.

James Di Virgilio: 18:42

Sure. And it sounds like if a lot of this is going to be directed towards children, if the parents themselves are unaware of it or don’t understand how to help them use it or can’t get it set up, that could be a hurdle. How do you get your brand out there? How do people become aware that MARVL exists so that enough of them use it?

Dr. Sara Smith: 19:00

So I’m hoping teachers will be excited about it. That’s really where I think we can be really successful. And part of my goal with MARVL is to create the resources that will help teachers in increasingly diverse classrooms. So my hope is that by working with teachers, communicating with teachers and a big part of why this was created was to respond to what teachers are saying and experiencing, which is I need help. I need resources. Just like I described. My classroom is full of children who speak all these amazing languages. And I want to support that. But at the beginning of each school year, I can’t learn 17 new languages, right. As much as I wish I could. I just can’t. So my hope is that teachers will really be the ones who say, I see this resource, I see how this can help me deliver optimal, differentiated instruction to all the kids in my classroom. And that they will be that bridge also to supporting parents and saying, you know, I’m going to go to my curriculum. I’m going to see what I have coming up this week. I’m going to pull the flashcards that go with that, and I’m going to send those home so that kids and parents can use them together, or I’m going to have them here in the classroom for the kids to use in the classroom. So I really hope that we could create something that is so useful to teachers, that they are excited about it and that they are creating that bridge for us. I think also we need to make sure that we create something that parents are part of. I think there are parents who feel like technology may not be the best thing for their kids, or they want to have experiences that don’t involve technology. And I think that’s amazing and I think that’s great and I love traditional flashcards and reading together and all of that stuff. But we also want to create something where we can also have this technology component and that can be a rich experience for parents and kids to have together.

James Di Virgilio: 20:40

That’s a good point there at the end, this idea that, Hey, maybe we’re too connected to our devices, right? Maybe our posture is completely falling apart because we spend our days leaned over a computer screens or tablet, screens, or cell phone screens. But at the end of the day, if you’re using technology to improve something, then you can begin to say, Hey, it’s worth an hour of time staring at a screen. If I’m in fact learning your language, that’s a life beneficial skill averse. Maybe if I’m browsing social media or something that may not be as applicable. So lots of interesting thoughts and ideas there, Sara, before we let you go, we have to get some words of wisdom from you. You’ve obviously done something outside of the box yet also very intuitive and logical with solving a problem. So give us some words of wisdom for those that are listening that have their own ideas or their own thoughts or want to become entrepreneurs one day, what are some key pieces of advice you would give them ?

Dr. Sara Smith: 21:31

I mean, I know it sounds silly to say, go for it, but just go for it. It doesn’t matter if you were never voted most likely to be an entrepreneur or you were never voted most likely to go into tech. I think probably I would have been voted least likely to be an entrepreneur and least likely to go into tech, but because I was so excited about not just my solution, but excited about solving this challenge, I was able to get other people excited and I was able to slowly and methodically find the support I needed to make this idea a reality. And so I think, especially for those of us who maybe haven’t spent our whole lives hearing that we are going to be tech entrepreneurs and gearing that we’re the ones to do this. If you think you have something really good, if you think you see something that no one else has seen or put into practice yet, I would say don’t be held back by whether or not other people think of you as an entrepreneur or a tech person. You can get all that support. It’s that shooting star moment where you see a way to help a challenge and help resolve a problem. That’s really, I think what the magic is.

James Di Virgilio: 22:31

Well, Sara, thank you so much for joining Radio Cade today. Congratulations on being a Fibonacci finalist for the Cade Prize, which is given out each and every year to the best innovations and ideas and years of courses right in the center of that. It’s been wonderful learning about MARVL. We certainly wish you nothing but success. And I myself hope that I’m able to learn a language much faster so that my travels are that much more enriching.

Dr. Sara Smith: 22:56

I hope you’ll use MARVL. I hope it helps you.

James Di Virgilio: 22:58

On behalf of Radio Cade. I’m your host, James de Virgilio Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida . This podcast episodes host was James Di Virgilio and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts, or recorded hardwood, soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Columns and features violinists Jacob Lawson.

When is a heart attack not a heart attack? Current diagnostic tools are surprisingly inaccurate. 2020 Cade Prize finalist Dr. Russell Medford and his team have developed a “virtual cardiac catheterization” that takes existing CAT scan images and analyzes them using advanced mathematics and computational fluid dynamics. Heart doctors can quickly run this analysis on a desktop and determine whether someone has a blockage and how serious it is. This could eliminate up to 1.5 million unnecessary invasive procedures annually in the United States and Europe.  

When is a heart attack not a heart attack? Current diagnostic tools are surprisingly inaccurate. 2020 Cade Prize finalist Dr. Russell Medford and his team have developed a “virtual cardiac catheterization” that takes existing CAT scan images and analyzes them using advanced mathematics and computational fluid dynamics. Heart doctors can quickly run this analysis on a desktop and determine whether someone has a blockage and how serious it is. This could eliminate up to 1.5 million unnecessary invasive procedures annually in the United States and Europe.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and they’re inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade , who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:37

When is a heart attack, not a heart attack, and how do we know? Welcome to Radio Cade, I’m your host Richard Miles. Today my guest is Dr. Russell Medford, CEO of Covanos, a company that is working on solutions to the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac and vascular disease. Dr. Medford is also a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize for Innovation. Congratulations and welcome to Radio Cade Russell .

Dr. Russell Medford: 1:00

Thank you, Richard. It’s a pleasure being here.

Richard Miles: 1:02

So I should note from the beginning that you are one of our first Cade Prize finalists from outside the state of Florida, specifically from Emory University in Atlanta, and now normally Floridians don’t congratulate Georgians for anything, but today is a new day. So Russell, tell us a little bit about yourself. You’re originally from Brooklyn. How did you end up in Georgia?

Dr. Russell Medford: 1:21

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on your show Richard and we at Covanos are honored to be a Cade Fibonacci finalist . We understand this is the first year that the award is now outside of Florida and I’ll speak for many Georgians, if not all, that we view our Floridian brothers and sisters with a great deal of affection and we’re part of a Southeast region that has a great deal to be proud of in many areas. So we love Florida. I love Florida. My background, I’m a Brooklyn born son of Brooklyn, but was raised in Northern New Jersey, went to Cornell University for my undergraduate training and then to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, in New York City for both my medical degree training and I also have a PhD in molecular and cellular biology. I then traveled as a professional student as one to do, to Harvard and became a resident in medicine and a fellow in cardiology. And my first faculty position at the Harvard hospitals, the Beth Israel and the Brigham and Women’s hospitals. My career has been characterized by basic science research on the basis for heart disease and vascular diseases and was recruited in 1989 from Boston to head up the molecular cardiology group at Emory University School of Medicine in 1989, where we began to apply new fields in our understanding of genes and molecular biology to the treatment and understanding of heart disease and other vascular diseases such as stroke. In the course of that work, I became introduced to the process by which we take ideas in the laboratory, as a basic scientist, and translate those ideas eventually into therapies that we, as doctors can use at the bedside to treat patients with disease. And in my laboratory, we had come up back in the nineties with a hypothesis that heart disease, the disease that leads to blockages and the vessels that feed the heart with blood, the coronary arteries, a process called atherosclerosis was an inflammatory disease. Any irritation, shall we say that the immune system never quite resolves and chronically manifests itself, kind of like a cut the redness and swelling that you see on your skin when you get a cut is an inflammatory response designed to resolve the infection and the irritation. Well in heart disease that irritation never goes away, it is chronic. And instead of protecting the blood vessel, it contributes to damage to the blood vessel. And that’s how we began a journey of looking at heart disease and applying advanced technologies and science to the most common killer in the United States and the rest of the world, which is cardiovascular disease and coronary artery disease. So this is a journey, shall we say of innovation, of using science and technology and medicine together, which I began throughout my training, and this will be a theme as we go through our discussion today of how did we get to Covanos in which we’re using a combination of advanced technologies that haven’t been put together before to really change the way in which we view heart disease, it’s diagnosis and it’s therapy.

Richard Miles: 4:29

So let’s go right into that. And as you said, heart disease and vascular disease remains one of the leading killers of Americans . So it’s one of those studies, actually that your average American has a fair amount about simply because almost everyone has had some sort of experience with it either personally or a family member. So a lot of the terminology and a lot of the treatments are fairly well known to Americans. But if you could just give us a little bit of context in terms of maybe some statistics, how many people for instance, need to go in for some sort of intervention or testing. And then what is the standard of care now, if you present at a hospital and you think you may be undergoing a heart attack or symptoms of that, what happens now today, if I were to go to the emergency room an hour from now, what would happen? And then again, give us that context. How often is this happening across, let’s just take the United States as an example.

Dr. Russell Medford: 5:18

Well, Richard, I’m glad you asked that. Heart disease is the leading cause of death and disability in the United States and throughout the world. Cancer is actually number two and my wife is a molecular oncologist so sometimes we have this argument as to which is the more important disease on the human condition. But for us, for your listeners, a coronary disease is by far the most important issue that we’ll be dealing with. Certainly as we age and in your listeners that are over the age of 55, for example, the statistics in the United States are daunting for heart disease. Over 18 million Americans have blockages in their coronary arteries already, walking around. And these blockages are what to the heart attack that destroys heart muscle and causes cell death, death of the heart muscle and kills people on a regular basis. I think the heart attack rate is enormous. We have over 360,000 deaths from heart attacks every year in the United States, alone, 360,000, which means every 40 seconds during this interview, an American will have a heart attack. So just add up those minutes as we go forward in this conversation. Importantly, along those 18 million Americans, with heart disease , almost half of us, half of all, adult Americans, 120 million of us walk around with risk factors that lead to coronary artery disease. We have some combination of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, all of which are important risk factors that predispose us to heart disease. So, this is a huge problem that is on a daily basis. Your question was, well, what do we do with this? How does it manifest itself? Well, not infrequently. You develop what’s called chest pain. When the blockage in the coronary arteries reaches a certain point, the blood flow to the distal part of the heart muscle, that’s fed by that coronary isn’t sufficient for the activity. You climb a flight of stairs and your heart starts to be quicker. Well, that means the muscle is working harder and it needs more blood and more oxygen to continue beating the faster. If the blockage prevents that increased blood flow from occurring, the heart begins to develop. What’s called aschemia . It sends out pain signals that are saying, I need more blood. I need more blood. And therefore you wind up with what’s called angina. Well, this is a very common diagnosis. This is probably the most common presenting symptom to an emergency room, for example. And if any of your listeners develop that kind of pain, especially on exertion or even at rest, they should go see a doctor. And what does the doctor do at that point? Well, whether it’s an internist, an emergency room physician, or a cardiologist, we would be asking questions first. Have you ever had a heart attack in the past? Are you predisposed to this disease? Has anybody in your family ever had a heart attack? Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you have diabetes? Do you have high blood pressure? Do you have high cholesterol? What we’re trying to do is ascertain now by history, what is your likelihood that the chest pain that you’re presenting with may be due to blockages in your coronary artery? We’re also very concerned under the circumstances, is that chest pain, a heart attack and evolution. Are you actually having a heart attack right now? Or is this just angina in which there’s no permanent damage? Our tools available to us though, as physicians are indirect and not very accurate unfortunately, assuming that you’re coming in with what’s called stable angina, stable angina means, doc, I’m not having any, Hey now, but when I climb a flight of stairs, I develop this heaviness in my chest and it goes away when I sit down and rest. Well, that is exertional angina, which could be chronic, may not represent a medical emergency, but our challenge is, is that due to blockages in your coronary artery? And what do we do about that? Well, what your doctor currently does is they say, you know, I’ll examine you, I’ll take an EKG, do the history and do some blood tests. But what I’m going to do next is what’s called an exercise tolerance test. I’m going to try to repeat the symptoms that you had on the outside, under controlled circumstances. And I’m going to hook up an EKG to you, or I’m going to do a nuclear medicine scan or look at your heart’s ability to pump using an echocardiogram and try to get a sense of whether or not when you develop those symptoms that I can see objectively that the heart muscle is not functioning properly because of a lack of blood flow. Well, we performed 16 million of those tests every year in this country. And our goal is if it’s positive, if it turns out to be some abnormality, the next step is I’m going to take you to a cardiac catheterization laboratory. An operating room like Sweden, which under sterile conditions, a team of doctors and nurses and technicians thread, a catheter into the coronary blood vessels, themselves inject dye, and in an X-ray, we can visualize whether or not you have blockages in your heart. And if those are significant blockages, then we can correct that by putting in a stent, which is a metal lattice that opens up the coronary artery permanently, or if it’s too complex to send you to bypass surgery. The problem with our technology Richard now, and this is where Covanos comes in is this industry of diagnostic exercise tests and nuclear medicine test is old technology. I was trained on this when I was a cardiology fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And we know that the diagnostic accuracy of these tests are about 50%. It’s a coin toss, whether or not you actually have disease that when I take you to the cath lab, which is the gold standard that the interventional cardiologist and the cath lab said, well, we had a positive stress test. Something is wrong based on that test, but I don’t see anything here. Well, over 50% of the time, that’s the answer. I don’t see anything, that I’m going to do anything about, so over half of these invasive very expensive procedures are unnecessary. What we need is a tool that allows us to diagnose rapidly and definitively whether the chest pain that you’re presenting to your doctor is due to blockages in your heart and whether or not those blockages are functionally significant so that you can justify going into an invasive procedure to have a stent put in or to go to bypass surgery. So this is where Covanos comes in. The technology for imaging. The heart has advanced so dramatically that we can take very accurate pictures of blockages in the heart, in your street clothes, get a CAT scan. You’ve heard of cat scans in which you lie down in your street clothes, and you go through a donut-like device. And we take concentric pictures of slices through the heart, and we can reconstruct the entire heart and look at the coronary arteries. It’s a coronary CT angiography. It’s outpatient. It’s done quickly, it’s in your street clothes and you get the results quickly. What we need is one more element on top of that, just seeing blockages in the cath lab or by CAT scan is not enough. If we see the picture and we often say a picture’s worth a thousand words, that’s not the case in cardiology or medical imaging, simply seeing a blockage doesn’t tell us how serious it is. There’s a huge number of patients that I can see some blockage there, but I don’t know if it’s significant or not. This is where Covanos comes in. We take that image on a PC workstation, that’s attached to the CAT scanner and we use advanced mathematics, our technology and our scientific founders are leaders in the world in an area called bioengineering and computational fluid dynamics. And through that single picture, that picture of the coronary artery from the CAT scan, we can compute and reconstruct the blood flow through the coronary artery to determine if that blockage that we see on the picture is impeding or blocking 70% of blood flow or 80% of blood flow. This is what your cardiologist does in the cath lab itself. The gold standard. When they see a blockage they’ll thread, a catheter, pressure catheter, across that blockage physically, and measure the pressure drop across that blockage. And then we’ll get the same answer they’ll saying , well , those pressure drops calculate to be an 80% reduction in blood flow. Why is that important? Because if you just use your eye, you over-diagnosed disease tremendously. It becomes cost prohibited. We get too many false positives by knowing the physiology. We eliminate the false positives and the false negatives for that matter and create a definitive diagnosis, noninvasively that tells your cardiologist or internist in their office whether I have disease, here’s a picture. You can actually put it up on your refrigerator wall if you want next to the ultrasound of your new child. But also I can overlay this mathematical analysis that says, well, in fact, that lesion, which looks pretty bad actually by eye, really isn’t blocking blood flow significantly. And we know through extensive clinical trials, that there is a cutoff on the reduction in blood flow that tells us whether we should take you to the cath lab and do a procedure and put a stent in, or do bypass surgery, or we’ll just increase your medication. We’ll increase your lipid lowering therapies, antihypertensives and control your diabetes better. This is where Covanos comes in. It provides for the first time a definitive tool that within minutes of that CAT scan, we now know not just the structure of the lesion a picture, but the significance of it, functional significance. And it allows the doctor to use an evidence based approach to effectively determine what the next course of action is and tell you what your diagnosis is. So, if it’s significant and I tell you, you have to go to a catheterization ] procedure, Richard, you know that you’re going for a definitive procedure, not for a diagnosis. We have the diagnosis you’re going in, your doctors preparing to put a stent in, and we’re going to fix the problem instead of taking you to a cath lab in invasive procedure, not knowing over 50% of the time, that there was no reason for you to go to the cath lab in the first place.

Richard Miles: 15:03

So I just want to underscore for our listeners , what you all have done is not developing a new piece of hardware or a new machine that gets wheeled into the room. And somebody gets hooked up. You’re really using existing machines, existing scanning technologies, right? Primarily CAT scan. But I imagine other scanners like MRIs, or I don’t know if the other scan technologies would help, but then you’re taking that data that it already exists. Or there are machines already for that. You’re taking that. You’re running that through what some sort of algorithm, right? You can see, we know exactly where it is. So I’m guessing then that the cost factor must be a lot lower than if you’d come up with a brand new machine for instance.

Dr. Russell Medford: 15:39

Exactly. We’re adding a dramatic extension of the capability of already a , uh , installed base of CAT scanning machines that are all over this country, whether it’s Atlanta, Georgia, Macon, Georgia, a rural hospital, anywhere in the country. In Florida, for example, all of these hospitals have CAT scanners. It is a basic tool now of American medicine. What we’ve done is taken that install base, and now magnified its capability, extended its capability, using very sophisticated advances in mathematics and engineering principles to draw new information from those images to help make definitive diagnosis and the treatment of heart disease. So what we’re doing is adding on a cost. That is true. There is a bit of a cost to add that on that’s the business model, but it has such a dramatic impact on patient outcomes. You do better when you make a decision. Based on that data, we have extensive what are called outcome and pharmaco economic studies that look at patients who underwent traditional methodologies for intervention versus this new approach. They do better. They have less events, it is less expensive, and we can cost justify this extremely well. So our job is to improve clinical outcomes for patients. That’s what Covanos is in the business for . We want to make the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac disease, much more efficient and effective. And we reduce costs to the patient and to the medical system by billions of dollars by eliminating unnecessary invasive, cardiac catheterizations. So, in an era we’re facing now, in which we have to re-evaluate our priorities in terms of medical expenses and expenses in the healthcare , each of us as consumers and as patients and our doctors want the most efficient, effective way of advancing of diagnosing and treating the most common cause of death and disability in the United States, heart disease.

Richard Miles: 17:31

So just to clarify, Russell , it sounds like the two major benefits or outcomes for the health care system is one, you’re identifying people who really don’t need invasive procedures to determine whether they have a serious problem or not. And you can confidently look at those people who look you’re okay, you know, we can send you home. And it sounds you can take people who are at high risk and take some of the guests where it can maybe speed them into treatment that they might’ve not had before. Is that an accurate way of looking at it?

Dr. Russell Medford: 17:58

It works both ways. Exactly. We’re giving a powerful new tool to the noninvasive cardiologist , to the internist, potentially even the family practitioner. So in the community they have now we call it a virtual cardiac catheterization lab . So they don’t have to send their patients to a specialized center. One of our scientific founders is Dr. Habib Samady. He’s the head of interventional cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine at Emory Hospital. He’s thrilled by this saying, if we can diffuse decentralize the decision making, patients will only come to me as the head of the cath lab when they need a procedure done, and we can make these sophisticated diagnoses in the community, locally. We don’t have to send patients into Atlanta or central facilities in New York City for example, all this becomes all the more important Richard in a post Covid environment, in which we only want essential travel to medical centers, sophisticated medical centers for definitive procedures. If we can make those diagnoses out in the community, then the costs go down. The clinical outcomes go up for the individual and the risk of centralizing diagnosis in very crowded and stress hospital facilities goes down dramatically.

Richard Miles: 19:11

So we are going to switch now and talk on the business end of this now Russell , an entrepreneurial side of it and great ideas don’t sell themselves. They have to make it to market. And sometimes particularly in the health field, that includes a lot of different obstacles and capital regulation, et cetera, et cetera. So, two part question here. One is what are the origin stories of the idea itself? Did somebody come up with this and a flash of insight, or was this something that got iterated to a solution where people sort of tinkered and then tell us a little bit about the road that Covanos faces in terms of getting, not just regulatory approval, but convincing, I presume doctors and hospitals that they should use this because a lot of people in this field report that it’s not enough to say it works. You’ve got to prove that it works by a factor of two or three in order for hospitals and doctors say, okay, fine, I’ll go ahead and add this to my arsenal of tests. And so on that I use, it’s not good enough to be just 5% better, 10% better in most cases. So tell us a little bit first origin story of the idea and then path to market. What has it been like so far and what do you face ?

Dr. Russell Medford: 20:12

Well, I think Richard, you put your finger on it. You made several good points. Let’s take them one at a time. Outstanding science and outstanding technology is absolutely necessary, but absolutely not sufficient to translate new discoveries into products and services that will have an impact on people’s lives. I’ve been in the biotech industry for 25 years. I’ve had the privilege of bringing two major clinical trials, drugs that are new ways of treating heart disease and infectious disease. It is not sufficient to be able to have a new approach or outstanding science, the steps that we to take from a financing regulatory clinical standpoint, and to address a true need that’s in the marketplace all have to be addressed on top of outstanding science that’s extremely exciting. So there are four founders of Covanos. I have the privilege of being one of those four, but the three core scientific founders, Dr. Habib Samady at Emory University, Dr. Don Giddens, who was the former Dean of the School of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr. Alessandro Veneziani is a professor of mathematics at Emory University, have worked together for the last 15 years in this interface of mathematics and engineering and coranary physiology and medicine, to understand the details of how blood flows through obstructed coranaries, the physiology of it, doing careful measurements with advanced technologies and with an eye towards taking images that are easily derived and creating this type of computational solution that creates the virtual cardiac cath lab. So this is something 10 years in the making of collaborative research and $6 million in research funding even before they came to me and said, this sounds like a pretty good idea. What do you think? And this was only three years ago, they’ve been working on this and , and put this idea together. So it didn’t come over a weekend or a cup of coffee. This is years of work together in publications. What I brought to the table was as a cardiologist and as a molecular biologist, but more importantly, with 25 years experience in the biotech industry, as a CEOs of public and private biotech companies, what is the business model? The regulatory pathway are we addressing the proper clinical marketplace here? How do we align multiple interest groups together to move this forward from a legal and regulatory and financial standpoint? And do we have a technology with a series of clear milestone accomplishments that reduce the risks that we all know are inherent in any new science or technology as you advance it towards the marketplace, there are new requirements on that science and technology at each step, a significant fraction of ideas fail. They can’t be advanced. So how do we plan that out, bringing all these interest groups together and skill sets to create basically a product that we are now within one year of launching for Covanos the C-HEART program. That’s what got me excited about the science and technology that had been developed as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary effort with people who I had known by reputation for many years, I was on the faculty at Emory as well, but an opportunity to work with people that have broken down barriers, broken down silos that I think are critical for us to advance science in general, but medicine in particular, to bring engineers and mathematicians and clinicians together in one room is something that we do on a routine basis in industry. But in academia, that’s not so common necessarily. So it was my privilege to say, well, I’ve been there, done that. I understand what the problem is. I think you have a major solution. Let’s put our work together and see, what are we going to try to address? It’s not enough Richard to solve a technical problem in medicine. It has to be a solution that will be used by physicians, be used by hospitals so that patients can have access to them. And it has to be in such a way that we have universal access. There has to be broad access. It can’t be something specific for a unique group. How can we make sure that everyone who needs a C-HEART gets a C-HEART analysis and so pricing and access to care. And these are the issues that we had to bring on, not just outstanding scientists and mathematicians and engineers, but business people, our head of commercial development and Brian Walsh , somebody who may be well known to some of your listeners is a Senior Medical Technology Industry Executive with vast experience in major and large and small companies and bringing medical technologies into the workplace, through the regulatory pathways. And by putting that package together, you then have to engage with the financial communities which we’re doing now to say, well, you know, this costs a fair amount of money to get into the marketplace. What is in your best interest as investors? How do we reconcile the return on investment requirements for different groups, financial returns, the societal returns technology returns. And when you create that mix and solve that you’re able to pull it all together and you can see that the science is a big part, but it’s only the first part of the journey. Then we’ve got many other steps that we have to succeed and to get here. And it’s exciting for me to relate to that through this journey, we are very close to launching this product and making a difference. Now, the last point that I’d like to say is this has to be used by doctors. If we have a technological solution, as great as it may be, if it’s never used by doctors, it means you’ve got patients that won’t benefit from it. So we’ve been very careful that we’ve advanced our technology in a way that enables us to be used easily and readily in the workflow and decision making process for cardiologists and radiologists and hospitals so that they can order this, get the result quickly and in their workflow, be able to make decisions and then move on to the next patient. All of this requires in depth analysis and integration, but it’s more than just the science. And I think that’s what the Cade Prize is all about, actually. It’s how do you bring these elements together? What type of people with backgrounds, diverse backgrounds can come together in some sort of effective collaboration to create a company and a company being probably a group of people with very different backgrounds and skillsets that somehow now share a common vision, even though their backgrounds are different and their skill sets are different. Well, that’s what Covanos says. And every company that I’ve been involved with and helped start in advance has had that same mix of diversity and a common purpose among people with very different backgrounds, but essential skill sets to make a difference in people’s lives.

Richard Miles: 26:55

Hey Russell, one more question you, usually we ask almost every interview, a version of what do you wish you knew then that you know now, or ask people to think of your 25 or 30 year old self? What advice would you give now? And a lot of times people say something like, well, you know, work hard, don’t give up. And I want to know, are there things that aren’t as obvious? Are there insights that you gained say 10, 20 years into your career as a doctor and the medical industry that you didn’t really figure out until later and go like, wow, that would’ve been really useful to know 20 years ago, but I had to figure out, is there anything that falls in that category, nuggative wisdom? If you think of somebody wanting to emulate something that you’ve done, start companies, take ideas to market, lot of pitfalls in there. What are some of the do’s and don’ts that you would give to somebody wanting to do that?

Dr. Russell Medford: 27:40

So, Richard, thank you for asking that question. That’s a good question. And there are some takeaways that putting myself as a 30 year old, you have to build trusted relationships with people of diverse backgrounds. You cannot accomplish any of these things on your own. You build it through teams. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t leaders. It doesn’t mean that there are inspirational components to this, that people bring unique skills and capabilities, but unless you can build a team around you, of people who are experts beyond your expertise, a multidisciplinary approach like changing the face of cardiology is impossible for the individual. So I think one thing I learned that I guess I evolved that over time was you need to recognize that you are building a group to share a common vision and you need multiple skill sets to move forward on that. So I think that’s the first thing nothing is done in isolation, no matter how talented you are. And the last point is you have to have the confidence in your own abilities to work with people who are much smarter than you, hopefully in the areas, in which you lack expertise. And if you’re prepared to do that, then I think your chances of advancing are dramatic. If you, as most of us are concerned and perhaps intimidated by very smart people, especially in different fields, we tend to shy away from that and try to protect ourselves. I think that’s the advice I would give. You have to have confidence in your own capabilities to work with and potentially lead a group of people who are much smarter than you. And if you can do that, the sky’s the limit. I think.

Richard Miles: 29:12

One of the best things I ever heard early on is, you know, you never ever want to be the smartest guy in the room. And fortunately, that was never a problem for me. Thank you for being on the show. I want to congratulate you again and you and your team for making the finals of the Cade Prize wish you the best of luck. And I hope at some point when your book comes out, Russell, we’ll have you back on the show.

Dr. Russell Medford: 29:30

Richard, it was a pleasure call on me anytime.

Richard Miles: 29:33

Thank you.

Outro: 29:35

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida . Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates, inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood, Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

Dr. Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD is a medical oncologist, tumor biologist, former Deputy National Vice President for Research at the American Cancer Society, and CEO of OncoSpherix, an early-stage cancer drug development company that is trying to significantly improve the lives of cancer patients. Join us to get to the inside scoop on how cancer treatments get discovered and tested, the challenges that are faced along the way, and why Dr. Offermann, a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize, is so excited about her potential breakthrough.

Dr. Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD is a medical oncologist, tumor biologist, former Deputy National Vice President for Research at the American Cancer Society, and CEO of OncoSpherix, an early-stage cancer drug development company that is trying to significantly improve the lives of cancer patients. Join us to get to the inside scoop on how cancer treatments get discovered and tested, the challenges that are faced along the way, and why Dr. Offermann, a finalist for the 2020 Cade Prize, is so excited about her potential breakthrough.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions, welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida.The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: 0:39

Welcome to Radio Cade . I’m your host James Di Virgilio. Today we’re visiting with one of our Cade prize finalists, the Cade prize rewards, inventors and entrepreneurs who demonstrate a creative approach to addressing problems in their field of expertise resulting in an innovative invention. Today, we have a special guest, both an MD and a PhD an oncologist, a tumor biologist, and an educator. Yet she is most excited about a new cancer treatment approach. So excited in fact that she is developing a company to launch this product. My guest today is Dr. Margaret Offermann. We’re going to call her Kenny because she told me pre-show that that’s what she likes to be addressed as. Kenny, it’s a wonderful nickname. Welcome to the program. We’re so excited to have you.

Dr. Offermann: 1:22

Thanks. It’s a real pleasure to be here.

James Di Virgilio: 1:24

Now. Let’s talk about you being the CEO of OncoSpherix and what you’re developing. It’s obviously a cancer drug. So many companies are working on these things. What is yours and why is it special?

Dr. Offermann: 1:35

Well, our drug development program is really focused on a common feature of nearly all solid tumors. And one of the problems with cancer is that it grows very rapidly and spreads to new places. And it’s that spread that ends up being the problem with so many different patients who die of cancer. We now know that cancer cells grow faster than their blood supply. And then that creates low oxygen when they get far enough away from the blood vessels, it doesn’t take very far. It’s typically 10 to 15 cells away from a blood vessel. And rather than them being crippled by that low oxygen, they’re actually very clever in how they fight back. What they do is respond with a master regulatory switch that allows them to bring in new blood vessels, allows them to move into those blood vessels and move to other places to set up shop in other tissues. And we have drugs that block that whole process by targeting the master regulatory proteins that not only allow but actively drive the process that allows these cancer cells to survive and spread.

James Di Virgilio: 2:59

Now, how many people per year have a type of cancer or a type of tumor that leads to the situation you just described?

Dr. Offermann: 3:05

Well if you’re talking in the United States, it’s roughly 600,000 people in the United States who die of cancer every year. And the vast majority of those are people who have solid tumors and the vast majority of those end up having tumors that outgrow their blood supply and express these proteins, which are called HIF 1 and HIF 2 which stands for hypoxia inducible factors one and two. And so this is where we have a lot of pre-clinical evidence, meaning in animal models, showing that we can end up preventing the growth of a variety of different types of tumors, including brain cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, a rare eye melanoma, pancreatic cancer. So it’s a wide variety that we already have data from some mouse studies. And we show not only that our drugs disrupt the growth of the primary tumor, but also prevent metastasis, which is the spread to new sites and also prolonged survival in the mice. And so we formed the company to be able to take these really encouraging results that were done by the scientific founders, from Emory and Georgia state Universities, and develop the compounds into drugs that can be used for treating human disease.

James Di Virgilio: 4:38

So let’s look at this from a broad scope and I’m going to take my day to day investment manager, finance brain, and try to learn about this rather complicated, but what you are making to be accessible, medical issue, we have an aggressive growing tumor that tumor runs into a situation where it encounters low oxygen or it’s hypoxic. This would normally kill regular cells I presume, or at least it would cause them problems. But in the case of this aggressive growing tumor, it’s actually emboldening it. Is that a way to look at it? It’s growing faster. It’s basically not caring that it’s in a low oxygen environment. Is that a somewhat accurate description?

Dr. Offermann: 5:12

I like your description of embolding cause that is exactly what happens. The cells in the hypoxic environment express this HIF 1 and HIF 2, it alters their energy source so that they can thrive in a hypoxic environment. Also brings in the new blood vessels and allows the cells to move into those blood vessels. And some of the genes that are induced in the scenario also contribute to the tumors, moving to new sites and thriving in new sites. So yes, it’s very much is that it emboldens.

James Di Virgilio: 5:50

Do we have any treatment right now that attempts to stop this process?

Dr. Offermann: 5:55

There are some that try and deal with pieces of the process. For example, the blood vessels growing into a tumor or agents that can block that blood vessel formation. It’s a process called Neoangiogenesis. So a big word that just basically means bringing new vessels into feed the growing tumor. And there are some antibodies, something called bevacizumab is one of the antibodies. And then there’s, tyrosene kinase inhibitors that block the signaling that allows the blood vessels to grow. So there are treatments that address that piece of it. The problem is that there are many other pieces that aren’t affected by those treatments. And not only that, but we now know that like with bevacizumab, when you block the blood vessels coming in the new ones, then you end up creating more hypoxia and you end up stimulating the hips . And so then while you may block that one small piece of the response, then the other ones are allowed to go unchecked . And so it’s now known that HIF’s are important in resistance to some of these treatments that specifically block the new blood vessel formation.

James Di Virgilio: 7:23

Yeah. It’s a complicated system, right? I’m a big fan of chaos theory of the three body problem, which is really important and things like physics. And I think nowadays it’s become something that anyone must be aware of. You can know factor A and factor B, which you’re mentioning. And then you can say, okay, well, if I do this thing, if I do factor C, then this will solve the problem. Right? But in a complicated chaotic system, which the human body certainly is, that’s not the way that it is. And you just kind of eloquently described what happens if you stop one thing. Well then here’s these other things that happen . But so far in your pre-clinical trials, it seems that your solution is quite effective at actually stopping these variety of survival strategies.

Dr. Offermann: 8:04

It stops the variety of the survival strategies, but our treatment doesn’t specifically kill all of the tumor cells. And so with you talking about blocking, one thing can end up triggering another. This is where we plan to layer our treatment on to other treatments. So that we’re talking about preventing the compensatory response that occurs in these low oxygen areas, but you need to treat other parts of the tumor as well. And so we’ve been able to safely combine our treatment with chemotherapies that are designed to kill tumor cells and show that it’s not only safely tolerated when you combine them. But also you get called synergy where you see the response with respect to tumor control. When you put agents together is superior to using them individually. And so we’re quite excited about that. Once we could show that our drugs could be safely combined with other treatments, that we decided to form a company, to be able to take this forward for clinical testing and beyond in humans

James Di Virgilio: 9:25

And the year you formed the company was 2013, correct?

Dr. Offermann: 9:28

No, it was 2018.

James Di Virgilio: 9:30

You’re brand new and the idea for this then came from what time period is this a two year old idea? Was this before this?

Dr. Offermann: 9:37

No, so I have the advantage of working with some outstanding academic scientists who have been working on this for more than 10 years, where they did drug screens to identify small molecules that end up inhibiting, not just HIF 1, cause there have been attempts to target HIF 1 before two major HIF’s, HIF 1 and HIF 2, and some companies have tried to target either one or the other, our drug targets both. And so the scientific founders have worked on this for more than 10 years. That’s where all of the animal studies with tumors has been done in their laboratories. And not only that, but they’ve really delved into mechanism of action so that we have a pretty good understanding on where the drugs are specifically blocking the ability of the HIF’s to function.

James Di Virgilio: 10:37

So we’re 10 years into this idea essentially, and we’re still in a pre-clinical stage. What are the next steps look like for bringing us into not only a clinical stage, but then eventually actually bringing this to human use?

Dr. Offermann: 10:49

Well, so much of what’s needed in transitioning from the academic research into clinical use is dealing with some bread and butter issues. Like how are you going to make the drug effectively? How is it going to be given? Is it going to be given orally? Is it going to be given intravenously? How often is it going to be given? If it’s given orally, you have to deal with the taste and the frequency and the other issues and so we’re working on that from a drug substance perspective, and then we’re also working on what are the best tumors to begin with on testing it clinically and what are we going to combine it with for specific tumors? And so one of the things that we’re particularly interested in testing clinically is glioblastoma multiforme, which is the most calm and aggressive brain tumor in adults. The last treatment that was approved for relapsed glioblastoma and nearly all people with glioblastoma end up relapsing, and then they become refractory to treatment. But bevacizumab the drug that inhibits new blood vessel formation through blocking something called VEGF, Dodd was approved many years ago for glioblastoma. It improves quality of life, but doesn’t prolong survival. Our drug does everything that bevacizumab does plus a lot more. And we want to combine it with some other agents as an early clinical indication. So we have a lot of hoops. We have to jump through in taking our compound and making that deliverable to humans and making sure that we’re safely combining it with other treatments and then testing it in a very structured way through clinical trials for treatment of humans. So, we’re anticipating one of the things is that when you end up having people with relapsed cancer that have a very short survival after they relapsed , then it actually shortens the amount of time needed to show that your drug is having an impact on it. So we are anticipating that we’ll be able to get into the clinic in two to three years and then have some answers pretty quickly thereafter. So Kenny, you’re developing this drug, there’s a long lead time. How do you fund the downtime? You’re not making any revenue off this drug. You’re just spending money researching and seeing if it works. So how do you survive and how do you fund it?

James Di Virgilio: 13:42

For us to get through a clinical trial for the first clinical indication, which is the glioblastoma multiforme to brain tumors, we’ve estimated it’s going to take about $12 million and that’s actually just to get through the first phase of it. And then once we end up getting through that phase, then we would expect a big valuation point and then needing many millions more to complete the clinical testing. So we’re working on getting that funding and developing a strategy to be able to get it in bits and pieces. Since with us being early stage, we’re concerned, we may not be able to get all 12 million in one fundraising. Now, what is it like for you Kenny, to be the CEO? You’ve been the Deputy National Vice President for research at the American Cancer Society. You did residency and your fellowship at U Chicago and Harvard. So you’ve certainly been at the top on the academic side. You’ve practiced as an oncologist for years, and now you’re dealing with this situation. You’re a CEO, you’re raising funds. You’re having to generate investor interest. What has that been like for you?

Dr. Offermann: 14:55

Well, one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that the best way to do a good job is to surround yourself with really first rate people, because I can’t know and do everything. And if I can end up having people who are at the top of their game, who can help guide me, then it’s a win, win situation. And so we’re working on building our team. We are in the early stages of the company we’ve brought on board, some fabulous people. We started with outstanding scientist who made the basic discoveries. I have the advantage of being both a tumor biologist, where I can look at the science and know that it’s first rate. And I can also look at the clinical need as an oncologist and recognize where there are unmet needs, but it’s the pieces in between that I really need to build the team to get us where we need to go. And that’s what we’re in the process of doing right now.

James Di Virgilio: 16:04

And this is going to be one of the easiest questions I’ve ever asked anyone on this podcast, because yours is health-related and it’s cancer related, and everybody wants to fight cancer and beat cancer. But your motivations for doing this, I imagine, are not the money, not the prestige, not taking a company, potentially private to public or staying private and being fabulously wealthy, but attempting to advance the defense or the offense, if you will, against cancer, correct? That’s the motivation, that’s the seed idea. And now you’ve got something that you think may help humans.

Dr. Offermann: 16:38

That’s exactly right. I’ve seen the pain and suffering up close and personal for all too many people who have had uncurable cancer. And the number of tools that we have to offer are growing dramatically because of the investment in research that has been made, we’ve learned so much about what goes wrong when cancer develops and some of the Achilles heels that can be attacked. And some of the things involve very specific tumors and very specific pathways. There’s a lot of work going on with targeted therapies that are specific to specific pathways. And there’s a lot going on in immunotherapy where one can harness the power of the immune system to be able to attack cancer. But despite those advances, there’s still over 600,000 people per year in the United States alone who are dying of advanced cancer. And so those things aren’t enough. And so this is where I’m excited about the drugs that we are developing that inhibit HIF’s because they should benefit a lot of different people, improve quality of life, improve survival, and take advantage of some of the other discoveries that have been made by combining our drugs with their drugs, where it’s a win, win situation. So yes, my motivation is really to help the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and then the millions of people around the world who unfortunately have to find out that they’re battling cancer.

James Di Virgilio: 18:23

Now, Kenny, let’s talk about what happens here with this drug. And we’ll talk about maybe the better end of variance statistically with how well it treats patients. Are we talking about adding years to their life? Are we talking about adding months to their life? What does this look like? If I have advanced cancer and it had a tumor that’s growing quickly and this drug actually works as we hope it to work, how much extra time are we potentially adding?

Dr. Offermann: 18:45

Well, it really depends on the tumor and what you’re combining it with. And so that’s where until we end up getting into the clinical trials, I really can’t answer that question. I know that’s an unsatisfactory answer. I can tell you that with some of our mouse models with lung cancer and breast cancer where just using our lead clinical candidate as a single agent, without combining it with anything else in these mouse models of human cancer, we were a hundred percent blocking metastasis, and that was with several different tumor models. Now, whether that is going to occur in humans or not time will tell, but the pre-clinical data is quite exciting.

James Di Virgilio: 19:33

And if you a hundred percent block that in those mice, does that give them duration of life? That is just back to normal? What are we looking at and the animal trials?

Dr. Offermann: 19:42

So in the animal trials, it’s not eliminating the primary tumor. And so that’s where, when we end up combining with some other drugs, then the data, it again, depends on which particular tumor model we’re looking at. And we’ve only recently started doing our studies with combination therapy and we have only done the combinations when testing against lung cancer. So it’s really premature for me to answer exactly how long things are being prolonged. So stay tuned cause we’re working on it and hope to have more detailed answers in the not too distant future.

James Di Virgilio: 20:25

Fair enough. Those are tough things to evaluate. It also illustrates why so many drug companies, it’s so difficult to develop a treatment that actually works. Now, let’s talk about something. That’s been a narrative here recently in the public, this idea that drug companies make so much money and that drugs cost so much money once they come out. And why can’t we make more affordable treatments for a variety of things. Can you speak a little bit about given all of your experience what’s going on, why it’s maybe difficult to create cancer or expensive R and D drug therapies for a cheap price or a treatment price?

Dr. Offermann: 21:02

Well , it really depends on the specific disease that you’re going after and the specific clinical approach that you’re taking. There are some treatments that are outrageously expensive to develop an example, being the cart T treatments, where you’re harvesting an individual’s T cells, which are an important part of the immune system, genetically engineering them, and then giving them back to the patient. So those treatments are outrageously expensive to make because you have to make it from each patient’s individual cells. And the steps involved are quite labor intensive. And right now the number of patients who are benefiting from that is relatively small, so that when you factor in how one can recoup the cost of the clinical development, it gets kind of buried into the cost of treatment as well. There are a number of treatments that are kind of like still expensive to make, but not quite so expensive, like monoclonal antibodies. And then there are some treatments that are inexpensive to make some small molecules, chemical compounds like ours. So making the compounds themselves are relatively inexpensive, which is an advantage when you’re looking at what contributes to cost . But the other thing that contributes to cost is how many patients you can give it to and for how long so that you can actually recover some of the cost of the clinical trials, because somebody has to ultimately pay for the treatments that are out there. And so I, as an oncologist, certainly would love to see the cost of treatments come down and access go up. And one of the things I’m excited about this particular treatment is that by having a wide spectrum of cancer types that could be treated with it. And then the fact that the underlying chemistry is relatively inexpensive. I’m certainly hoping that this is going to be something that is more affordable.

James Di Virgilio: 23:19

Well, I certainly hope so as well. And you did a great job laying out what it looks like to develop a drug. And of course the question is too reductive to say, well, everyone faces this hurdle, but oftentimes it’s society to be one thing is to be cheap in an idea marketplace where everyone is able to freely work on improving things. You can rest assured that you’ll get to the most efficient price. But as you mentioned, oftentimes, things are just very expensive to develop, and if you want to be able to have a treatment accessible to you, sometimes the only way to have it is for it to be very expensive in the beginning. And then eventually more people needed It becomes affordable for everyone, but that is in fact how the process works. Of course, you’re on the early end of this process. Now with OncoSpherix, we like to spark wonder at the Cade or much more than a museum. In fact, really the museum is a conduit for delivering innovation and creativity. You of course are an innovator and you are creative. Do you view yourself that way?

Dr. Offermann: 24:16

I think so. Yes I do.

James Di Virgilio: 24:18

And that’s fun because I like to ask that question because on paper, right, you’re a scientist, you’re a researcher, you’re a doctor, everything about it says this person is a scientist, but in reality, you’re a problem solver and creativity is problem solving. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing on display with what you’re doing. What advice or wisdom would you give to aspiring problem solvers? No matter what field they’re in to engage with the ideas they have to make the world around them better.

Dr. Offermann: 24:44

Well, part of it is having a vision and in my particular case, being an oncologist, and I’ve been a tumor biologist for many years where I’ve been trying to answer some fundamental questions initially, not really looking at how they’re going to be applied, but to get a basic understanding of how things work. That is the beginning of innovation. So not answering, what’s already known, but trying to delve into the unknown, then being able to apply some of that new knowledge to problems. Part of it is being part of a team and looking at the world around you and being aware of what’s going on in different fields. And so how can you tap into things that are happening in other fields? And then bring them back to the questions that you’re trying to address and surrounding yourself with really smart, innovative thinkers, being curious and not doing the same thing every day, being willing to take risks . So I know that’s kind of meandering, so I don’t see any one thing that ends up being like the magic bullet by being willing to take risks, having a vision, being curious, going into the unknown and surrounding yourself with really smart people who also are explorers .

James Di Virgilio: 26:21

Yeah, there’s a lot of good wisdom in there . Cast off the fear of failure. Anyone who invents anything, does anything worth, anything will fail. That’s part of the journey to progress, but failure brings learning. And as you mentioned, the more people you have around you that are smart, that are willing to fail the higher heights you can reach. And that really is how humans achieve things. It’s been great to have you on the program, Dr. Offerman, better known as Kenny. I like, again, that nickname, middle name Kennedy, in case you’re wondering you can find her on LinkedIn. You can also find OncoSpherix on the web, or they’ll tell you a little more about what they’re doing and how they’re trying to solve these advanced cancer tumors with quite the innovative solution. Thank you so much for being on the program today Kenny

Dr. Offermann: 27:04

Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Outro: 27:06

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. This podcast episode’s host was James Di Virgilio and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Hardwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Columns and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

Millions of people each year face natural coastal disasters, leaving them without water, and electric power.  A Wave Energy Converter named Platypus, using only oceanic wave motion can continuously generate enough electrical charge to operate a seawater desalinator that turns saltwater into clean drinking water, or it can provide sufficient power for heating, lighting, or other electrical items needed in emergency situations.