Joanna Nathan, Prana Thoracic - CT-Guided Cather-Based Nodulectomy | LSI USA '24

Joanna Nathan  0:05  
Hi, everyone. My name is Joanna    Nathan. I'm the CEO and co founder of Prana. Thoracic, and I'm here to tell you a little bit about our plan and technology today. So lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the US, and we simply do not find it early enough. One of the reasons for this is unlike the paradigm of care that exists has existed for other major cancers for decades. Now that involves screening, early detection and early intervention, lung cancer has lagged severely behind now that's beginning to change. There are now 20 million Americans that are eligible for annual screenings that are covered by insurance and by Medicare. However, a small portion of those are getting screened. As screening is adopted, we believe that there will be a tsunami of lung nodules that hits our healthcare systems, and we need to provide physicians with additional ways to intervene in those nodules. To explain the center of care with lung cancer, it's helpful to look at it in the perspective of one of these kinds of more established major cancers. So with breast cancer, we've seen the evolution of surgical oncology going from more invasive to less invasive over time, and that was accelerated when screening was introduced in the 70s, and mammography became mainstream, we saw that then go into less invasive and right sizing of surgical intervention. In early stage patients in lung cancer, the standard of care, the gold standard, and surgery is still the same as it was over 100 years ago, it's lobectomy. And we're hoping and we want to be part of the wave of right sizing that intervention. And we believe screening coming online in the last decade is going to be the impetus for this change. We've built the solution to drive that early intervention with the prana system. Our system can enable minimally invasive image guided excision of these small lung nodules that will be found as screening is taken up, we then can enable maintenance to the tumor bed to then do any subsequent therapy as necessary. We believe that as screening comes online, there will be about two and a half million of these small peripheral peripheral lung nodules that could benefit from the use of our device will price similarly to other electro surgical instruments. And that creates a massive market opportunity just in the US in this one space. Now, that's just where we're getting started. So our excision tool that I put up on the screen earlier, will enable us to prove our technology in the space of definitive diagnosis and molecular testing. But we very quickly want to get into the business of treating cancer and creating the lumpectomy of the lung. So we have some exciting things in our pipeline to combine with our decision tool to actually enable that transition. First going into lung metastases, and then transitioning into treating early stage lung cancer as well as looking at applications and other solid organs such as breast and kidney. We know our device works, we now have over 80 depth data points in acute and chronic animals, primarily pigs. We also have substantial IP coverage of our technology and of all the technologies in our pipeline. We've got 18 patents, the earliest four of which have been issued. We've gotten a lot done today, we have a great full time team of seven that we've brought on we've met with FDA and confirmed our pathway through FDA. We're just a few weeks away from design freeze at this point and we've raised about $6 million in dilutive and non dilutive funding combined. We have some great funding partners ranging from non dilutive funding from the state of Texas to Angel groups to health systems, to strategics like j&j. This next quarter, we're hoping to close on some additional financing and hit our design freeze. By the end of the year, we hope to be submitting to FDA and then reaching our first patients and our first in human study early next year. We have a great team of folks that has all of the ranges of experience that it takes to bring a new medical device to market. My clinical co founders are thoracic surgeons who created this technology out of a frustration with a lack of options for their patients. The rest of our team has experienced across product development, clinical regulatory strategy, and all of the functions it takes to bring a new medical device to market. We're supplemented in addition to my clinical co founders by some great clinical advisors. These folks range and expertise from tertiary centers, like the MD Anderson's of the world, to the community cancer centers where the majority of these patients are seen and treated. So why investor why partner with us? We believe that lung cancer is at a turning point and is an extremely attractive space with significant both investment and activist acquisition activity in our space. We have great partners and funders, like I mentioned, that will support us through not just you know proof Adding funding, but clinical partnerships and so on. We believe that we have a path to exit in the next few years, especially with FDA clearance coming within the next year. And we have some really exciting opportunities to continue to leverage non dilutive funding pathways in the state of Texas, that could create a really exciting ROI for our investors. And finally, this is the right team to bring this device to market. We have the experience to do that. We've raised about 350 million for early stage med tech startups across our team and advisors. And we've brought about six med tech startups to exit as well. So that's all I have for today. I'd be happy to meet up with any of you or anyone that has any questions or would like to learn more about our technology throughout the conference. Thank you