Pierre-Francois Migeotte, HeartKinetics - Studio Interview | LSI Europe ‘22

Transcription

Nick Talamantes  0:00  

Pierre-Francois, thank you so much for joining me at LSI Europe.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  0:03  

Thank you, Nick

Nick Talamantes  0:04  

Tell me a little bit about HeartKinetics.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  0:06  

HeartKinetics is built and based company, we incorporated in 2019, as a spin off of University of Brussels, and I'm co founder and CEO of the company. So I'm also the inventor of the technology that's at the basis of the company. And this was done, actually, thanks to my PhD in space physiology. We received grants from space agencies, and with these grants, invented technology to accurately and extremely easily monitor the cardiac function of astronauts.

Nick Talamantes  0:47  

So tell me a little bit about the technology.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  0:50  

Yeah, technology is, is quite simple. It's based on the use of motion sensors that everyone has today in the pocket, actually, the motion sensors that are used by smartphones, to count your steps. And these motion sensors, when you place a smartphone, on your chest during one minute, they can capture mechanical activity of the heart. And this is very important. It's completely different also, from what a smartwatch can offer, we offer measurements of mechanical function, which is important in in the diagnostics and screening of heart failure. And then once you do a one minute recording, after that recording, the data is sent to the cloud. Where or proprietary and let's see highly skilled, artificial intelligence operates on your records, and can deliver a score of you being at risk of heart failure.

Nick Talamantes  2:01  

So is this proof of concept? Or do you guys actually have a working product,

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  2:06  

we already have a working product that's ready to scale that's now in clinical trials. And if you allow me then I just show you a little bit how it works, it's extremely easy. So you just tap to do a record, the patient has to lay down. I won't do it for one minute.

Nick Talamantes  2:37  

That is amazing.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  2:38  

But at the end of that one minute, there's a report there is computing on signals in the cloud. And magically then you receive a pop up the results of the analysis and that would be used by the patient patients themselves or by healthcare professionals like a nurse, or primary care professional, extremely easy to use.

Nick Talamantes  3:05  

So is the product commercially available now as it has it received regulatory approval? Tell me a bit about it.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  3:11  

Unfortunately, not yet. We are in this process right now. So our aim is to finalize the clinical trials that are ongoing. We have a proof of concept on already a good number of patients, over 60 patients, which shows the capacity of the system, to triage patients arriving at the emergency department and having signs of heart failure, which is difficult to diagnose to screen for and we are ready to scale the study to over 1000 of patients that we need to do that in Europe, but as well in the US. So we are in contact with the FDA, and we validate to talk clinical trial validation plan. We've really top notch international key opinion leaders.

Nick Talamantes  4:06  

Tell me a little bit about the unmet needs today in heart failure screening and diagnostics.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  4:12  

Heart failure is the endpoint of several cardiovascular disease. It's very difficult to diagnose it takes time and money. There are several steps you start with a blood draw and blood analysis and chest X ray electrocardiogram, and then eventually you get to an echocardiography appointment with a cardiologist. We aim to speed up that process. If you do our digital test with within two minutes, you do the three first steps. We compare to the to the blood test, which is a standard of care and we have higher accuracy than just this these type of tests

Nick Talamantes  5:00  

So in this process, your test would come before a patient even receives a blood test, correct?

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  5:05  

Yeah, even even before the blood test. So there are several places in the world where you may not get access to fast blood draw test, chest X ray, there are places also where it's too expensive for for some of the patients, but simply, we may just speed up the emergency department process. So that's one key aspect of our technology. But then the second really important part is when a patient gets discharged from the hospital, it's very often and it's up to 50% of the patients that are coming back to the hospital. And we try to prevent these early rehospitalization. And for this day, need an effective remote patient monitoring solution. And today, the standard of care are you you do a blood pressure measurements, you do a weighing scale, or you may use your smartwatch. But all of this is really purely specific to heart failure. While all technology with these chest vibration measurements, gives measurements that are very close to echocardiography, the standard that the cardiologist used to to use

Nick Talamantes  6:27  

so what's the market opportunity look like for a technology like yours?

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  6:32  

It's big. All over the world, you have 60 million patients suffering from heart failure. In the US, it's 6 million patient and 1 million new patients every year. On top of that, you have also people suffering from cancer, we're treating chemotherapy. And these patients are also at risk of developing heart failure. That's a lot of patients that may receive such a nice tool for screening of heart failure. And if we compare to the pricing in the field, then it's a 2.5 billion market opportunity.

Nick Talamantes  7:09  

Wow. So what does the future look like for your technology? You're on heart failure right now, where can you take it? 

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  7:16  

Yeah, as I said, we we focus on heart failure. But there are a bunch of patients, they're at risk like chemotherapy, patients on chemotherapy for the treatment of, of cancer, you have also hypertension patients, they are at risk of developing heart failure, diabetes patients, chronic kidney disease patients, that's a huge amount of patients at risk. In the US, it's over hundreds of millions of patients. And it's growing problem.

Nick Talamantes  7:50  

So tell me a little bit about the sort of target market for this technology. Where are you looking to launch first, of course, the

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  7:57  

Technology is very well suited for large countries where access to health care center is is difficult, or is far away from from the people in need of it. Of course, the US is really the place to go because it's a huge and uniform market, at least from European point of view. This is how we see it. Because in Europe, once you get CE, then you need to apply in each and every one country. And we received also this summer. Very good traction when we made the commercial roadshow in the US and received extremely positive feedback from cardiologists in high hospitals. They say this is the future. This is what we need. And we need it now. And we don't need to wait. So this is why we are just going to do US

Nick Talamantes  8:54  

what brings you to LSI Europe. 

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  8:57  

We are here in LSI. It's a it's a first of all, it's a pleasure to meet top international Life Science innovators. But also we are here for fundraising. Because we have now a very ambitious clinical trial plan that needs investors money. And this is this is why we are here.

Nick Talamantes  9:24  

How much are you trying to raise right now? Now

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  9:27  

raising between 10 and 15 million that will be on equity but also a component of non dilutive. Based on grants fundings support from European Union or original fundings in intelligence.

Nick Talamantes  9:45  

Space technology, tell me a little bit more about that. 

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  9:49  

Yeah, actually, the project was born with the support of European Space Agency and collaborator NASA to revive a technology that was known as ballistocardiography, so the measurements of the recall of the body due to injection of blood into the arteries. And so it started in 2019 as an international project, where I was the principal investigator, and in contact and still in contact with astronauts, and at the European level with the head of the astral scope fund doing a built on astronaut. But we aim to provide this technology for the support of astronauts going into space. As a patient on Earth, these astronauts, they need also a very thorough scrutiny of their cardiac function, they are at risk of cardiac deconditioning they need to have cardiac rehabilitation program, which is really on operations are very time consuming, but having a small sensor, so we are developing also, the connected sensor to the application that may be used to capture view to max, which is the cardiopulmonary performance parameter. And all technol technology as it is so small, is also a good candidate to go around the moon, or even maybe on the moon, which would be lifetime achievement for me.

Nick Talamantes  11:26  

You may be the first innovator I've spoken to at this conference who has technology that's going beyond or that is incredible.

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  11:34  

Yeah, that's fascinating. And I think it was also my duty to give back to this space industry. The support I received for research, scientific research, pure research, and then eventually coming to a product and then give back a solution for them and for the patients on earth before it's really my ambition.

Nick Talamantes  12:00  

That's fantastic. Thank you so much Pierre-Francois. 

Pierre-Francois Migeotte  12:04  

Well, thank you very much.