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Acorn BioLabs | Drew Taylor, CEO

Speakers

Drew Taylor

Drew Taylor

CEO, Acorn BioLabs
Read Biography
Acorn is developing a non-invasive cryopreservation solution for the preservation of healthy follicle cells for use in cellular treatments.

(Transcription)

Drew Taylor  0:02  

Hi, my name is Dr. Drew Taylor, I am the CEO of Acorn Bio Labs. And at ACORN, we are saving your cells from aging. And we're doing this because we are at the beginning of an anti aging revolution. That revolution is in regenerative medicine, it's powered by our very own cells. For some people, it's actually already here. And they're leveraging their own cells, and returning them to them in regenerative medicine therapies to deliver benefit to their bodies today. But generations unfortunately, are going to miss out. As we age, so to ourselves, and every day that goes by, they're becoming a poor resource to leverage during these strategies. I actually learned this firsthand, when I was working with the Division of orthopedics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, or we had a very exciting project, we were taking some successful animal studies and cartilage regeneration. And my role going into that group was to translate that into human models. So I was going into the OR, I was taking biopsies of patient cells, and bringing them back to the lab to see if in practice, we could actually culture out and grow functional sheets of cartilage that one day you could actually be implanted. And essentially swap out the metals and plastics that we do use and unfortunately, break down over time. And this could be a lifelong resource for that patient. Unfortunately, there were some challenges. When we started working with the human patients, there's a big difference between that and the animal models, all of those animal studies were essentially done in juvenile animals. And now we're going into the O R, and we're dealing with patients that are in a time of need. They're there because they're required, requiring a surgery to replace their joint. And so these are mostly individuals that are later in life, and do often have late stage osteoarthritis. So we're now taking cells at their worst, and asking them to perform at their best. If we want to think about making sure that individuals as we age have access to their better selves, we really need to be thinking about how we can make sure that we save them, save them from this aging save from the DNA mutations saved from all of the degradation. And the obvious answer would be that's freeze them that's intercept that timeline of age and onset of disease, and freeze them today. To stop those effects of aging. This would be a dream offering. We've seen this work in other areas and in our work in skincare and wound healing management, and a number of other applications. But this would be a dream for the very competitive med spa and wellness markets, including plastic surgery centers and dermatologists. But is it possible Are we able to actually take a cell sample in a way that a patient would want without invasive surgery, needles or drills? And can we actually collect more useful cells than is done in the non invasive methods that are used for DNA collection like spitting and swabs? Also, there's another problem since those cells unfortunately, as soon as they leave, our human body will start to perish. How do we solve this problem about getting those cells from the clinic back to a cyrogenic facility and transport them effectively, invariably. I'm here to introduce you today to acorns live cell preservation. I'm very excited to say that this is the first non invasive and accessible way to preserve skin and hair follicle stem cells for future treatments. We focus on the hair follicle. The hair follicle is absolutely the most exciting and ideal source of cells for Regenerative Medicine and especially in regenerative aesthetic medicine. It is a very tight compact unit with a source that is rich in adult stem cells, hair follicle stem cells, and multiple germ layers of cells as well between the keratinocytes and the fibroblasts. They're highly expandable, easily reprogrammable. They're collected non invasively and painlessly. It's a dream for a patient and how these cells would be collected, and they're uniquely your own most importantly, so be being introducing these cells back to a patient you're not worried about immuno suppressants and having to put them on that are immune rejection complications. There's many year terms of the primary cells that are located in the samples as well. But we've also in our lab been able to take from as little as a single human hair follicle, take those cells and reprogram them to create an autologous stem cell line for patients on demand of IPSC. We have a really exciting technology that allows us to move the cells and when a corner is really done to solve that transportation step. We've successfully run trials with over 300 samples in Canada where those those samples were taken over 1000s of miles Vancouver to Toronto over periods of days and had those cells survive that process between our patented media that allows us to preserve the cells during that transport step and a temperature controlled kit that is going through the patent process as well that maintains that viability and supports it. We run a world class Processing and Analysis and cryogenics facility at Toronto General Hospital, which is part of you hn the samples there are analyzed for viability for every client and patient. We aliquot them to Florida in vials, we actually separate those in multiple tanks, we're really thinking about every possible way to make sure that those patients have access to cells on demand for the rest of their lives. And we think that's very important because there are multiple uses across a patient's life. And we want them to have access to that always, in the very near term. We're already working with physicians right now, to map out some of the very near term applications where we're not actually reintroducing the cells themselves, we're leveraging the contents of those cells, these cells can be cultured to produce exosomes pro collagen growth factors, even pro elastance. And these elements can then be harvested put together and using delivery agents like PRP that is being done today. In the medium term, we actually see us using the live cells themselves reintroducing a younger population of cells across a multitude of areas to provide benefit to the patient. And then long term, obviously, through manipulation reprogramming, the sells could be the inputs for tackling some of the world's toughest diseases. There's a big market, you know, 140 million people between the ages of 30 to 65. In the US alone, the way that we're taking this to market that would be 20 billion and recurring fees alone. So it's pretty exciting. And we're starting to statics, there's very good reasons for that. clients pay out of pocket for these expenses, both in Canada and the US. And they're already demanding and asking for Regenerative Medicine products like PRP. So we're targeting plastic surgery Med Spa dermatology, there's over 10,000 of these clinics across North America alone. Each clinic is worth 40k to us in his first year. And this is a combination of selling tickets to the clinic, the clinic then selling the collection services to the patient. And then the client actually in the patient enters a direct relationship with us to pay maintenance fees and storage fees, yearly or monthly, they've got options. We're perfecting the playbook in Toronto, we've already launched our facility for processing at Toronto General Hospital, we've taken 300 patients through there in the Alpha testing. And just recently, this past month, we launched in clinics in the Toronto area that has represented over 75k in revenue in a very short time. So it's been pretty exciting response right away. And we're going to be coming here, first set of the second location that we're looking to launch and we're making preparations for we'll be right here in Orange County. And we'll be then expanding that across the United States and major markets and really the linchpin for all of the access to these different jurisdictions and areas is setting up a cryogenics facility that we can then work with Kol physicians and partner with clinics in the surrounding areas, just like we have done in Toronto. There's an amazing opportunity here with Acorn because we can we can one go deeper and actually help support some of these applications like we're doing with the secretome products, including exposome and growth factors, we can actually look at international markets. We've already started talking with groups, you know, in Southeast Asia, that obviously is the highest spend per capita and skincare in the entire world. And then also our technology allows us to go to direct so you can actually email us, we can mail a kit to your home, you can have that opened, do that non invasive thing with the rest of your family, take the samples, put it back into the vial and send it back to us very easily. So going direct to consumer is a possibility as well. We're even leveraging ecommerce platforms that a lot of physicians have been starting to leverage and, and create during during the pandemic. We've got a fantastic leadership team. I'm absolutely the weakest link, which is perfect. I do have a background in Biomedical Engineering in Molecular Cell developmental biology from both the University of Toronto University of Michigan and I was the Chief Science Officer at Epic Capital Management which is a VC group and in Canada. My right hand man Will Hall is my perfect accomplice has had an amazing career in both m&a, scaling up early stage companies and taking them all the way to exits like two groups like Morgan Stanley, the rest of the team is rounded out by product and technology people that have startup experience and worked at larger companies like Intel McAfee marketing experience in worldwide brands like Red Bull, and also startup companies like canoe. And then also PhD scientists and postdoctoral fellows that are rounding out the scientific team. We've got a fantastic group of advisors that span aesthetic medicine, sports medicine, basic science research, and executive health. They all are leveraging acorn to give it to their patients. So thank you so much. I really appreciate everybody's attention. We will be starting to to chat with groups about entering the US market and a Series A round later this year. So happy to connect with anybody here. Thank you

 

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