Brainstorm Health 2024: Reimaging Lab Testing

Fortune

Vasu Nadella, Co-founder and CEO, Vital Biosciences Moderator: Andrew Nusca, FORTUNE

Transcript

00:00 Hi, I'm Vasu and this is my co-founder Munir. We are incredibly excited to be

00:06 speaking to all of you today. Everyone in this room is doing something to make

00:10 health care better, whether that's moving care closer to the patient, making care

00:14 more proactive, or bringing clinics and pharmacies and care

00:20 into communities. One thing we realized is that as people are trying to move

00:27 care closer to patients, they are fundamentally constrained by the limits

00:31 of lab testing and the physical infrastructure necessary to deliver care.

00:35 In particular, we realized that the fundamental constraints around care

00:39 model innovation, around lab testing, are fundamentally limiting the things you

00:44 can do, whether it's moving care into the home, into pharmacies, or even things

00:49 like telehealth. We decided to do something about that. So over five years

00:56 ago, over a hundred biochemists and engineers brought together the best of

01:02 the latest advancements in microfluidics, biochemistry, computer vision, and optics

01:07 to build something that people said was impossible. We built the first platform

01:12 that enables comprehensive routine lab tests in minutes, everywhere patients are,

01:18 all from a small sample of blood. We call it the Vital One and we're really

01:24 excited to show it to you today. So the Vital One only uses 600 microliters of

01:30 blood. That's less than 3% of what's typically used for a comprehensive panel

01:34 like this. What that means is you can use either vacutainers or microtainers from

01:40 a finger stick sample. So Manir is going to drop the microtainers today into the

01:44 Vital One, and then he's going to slide in our two consumable components, a disc

01:52 pack and a support pack. And from there, he's going to hit go. In less than 15

02:01 seconds of hands-on time, we're going to return within 15 to 20 minutes a

02:06 comprehensive panel of tests, including a complete blood count, comprehensive

02:11 metabolic panel, lipid panel, HbA1c for diabetes, and immunoassays like thyroid

02:17 simulating hormone or vitamin D, covering common and guideline recommended tests.

02:21 Let's contrast this with what happens today. We draw tubes and tubes of blood

02:26 from patients. Then it takes over an hour to let that blood clot, centrifuge it, and

02:31 process it to get sent across the country to be run and have lab results

02:36 returned days later. Instead, with the Vital One, we're going to enable patients

02:42 to get their blood drawn while they're getting roomed, and by the time the

02:45 physician is ready to see them, they're going to have access to a comprehensive

02:49 panel of tests to enable what we call real-time medicine. So you're all

02:54 probably wondering, how does this work? And we've got a few slides to go through

02:58 today to show you. So inside that disc pack are three microfluidic discs. Each

03:06 disc does a different modality of test, and within that support pack are

03:10 reagents and tips. Within each disc are these small lyophilized beads. Those

03:18 beads contain all the reagents that are necessary to run these tests, and they're

03:22 freeze-dried to eliminate the need for refrigeration or cold chain shipping,

03:26 seamlessly fitting into your workflow. Now I'm going to show you a video of the

03:30 inside of the system. So the left-hand side is the front of the Vital One. You're

03:34 going to see the drawer come in, and you're going to see that we actually mix those

03:39 samples within the system, removing a big source of pre-analytical error from

03:42 poorly mixed samples. Users are never exposed to any blood, so the tubes are

03:47 decapped automatically. We automatically also move each disc into each of the

03:51 respective subsystems, taking a small volume of blood and buffer and dropping

03:56 it into the center of each of those discs. And what you're going to see is that

04:00 those discs start spinning. So unless you can blink 6,000 times a minute, it's

04:04 really hard to see what's going on on those discs. Luckily, I've got a

04:09 stroboscopic video for you here. So what this is doing is taking a picture of

04:12 every rotation of the disc to let you see what's going on. And what we

04:17 want to tell you is that all we're doing is accelerating and decelerating this

04:21 disc to run all the fluidic functions that are necessary to process these

04:25 results. We're using high-precision injection molding to deliver high

04:29 quality lab results with high precision, accuracy, and most importantly,

04:33 repeatability. We have tested this extensively. We've run this on nearly 6,000

04:41 patient samples with partners like LabCorp and academics from leading

04:45 institutions. We're incredibly confident with the data we're seeing. We're also

04:49 really transparent. We put it all on our website for anyone to go and see,

04:52 vitalbio.com/data. Our team is working really hard to follow the rules and do

04:59 this right, work with regulators like the FDA, and we're well on our way. I want to

05:05 leave you with two things. One, the future is coming. We're going to expand the

05:10 design space that all of you have to deliver care more proactively and closer

05:15 to patients. And the second is we need to work with everyone in this room. We need

05:20 partners like all of you to actually take great technology like this and

05:23 bring it to patients and change how care is delivered. We're going to be hosting a

05:28 handful of demos in the Bay Area and LA in early June. If anyone is here and

05:33 interested, we'd love to show you. We're also right outside the door, happy to

05:37 take questions, and you can feel free to play with the vital one yourself. Thank

05:40 you all for the amazing work you're doing to advance health care, and thank

05:44 you for having us.

05:46 That sounds pretty cool. Good to see you, by the way. Thanks, Andrew. Got a couple

06:01 questions for you. So look, we have been talking a great deal about hype versus

06:05 reality at this event, and I want to know, every test has its limitations, so what

06:10 are the limitations of this device? How do we make sure that we don't, you know,

06:13 imbue this with every hope and dream that we have? Totally. Look, central labs

06:16 aren't going anywhere. We're not going to bring every liquid biopsy test to detect,

06:20 you know, every kind of cancer to the point of care. What we think we can do is

06:24 bring all of your routine tests to enable primary care and urgent care to

06:28 be a lot more productive. And if we can do that, we can improve outcomes, close

06:33 gaps in care, and take what is today a very disjoint experience and make it a

06:36 lot more cohesive and better for patients. Got it. All right. So the one

06:41 company that's on my mind that is probably on the minds of a lot of folks

06:44 in here when we're talking about rapid blood tests rhymes with baroness. Yeah. I

06:52 have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, me neither. Me neither. No, I wanted to

06:56 ask you, look, that came before. Sure, yeah. Here you are, pitching a rapid blood test

07:06 reception might be a little bit cooler than if that hadn't happened. So tell me

07:11 a little bit about that. What are your challenges in this regard? Where are

07:14 people's heads at when you start talking to them about this? Yeah, look, I think

07:18 it's a shame that people look at what happened there and completely stopped

07:22 working or innovating in blood testing. We almost look at it as like this

07:27 amazing, you know, billion-dollar consumer research survey, right? It captured our

07:32 attention, it captured our imagination because we all saw the impact

07:35 innovations like that could have. And I think from the very beginning we were

07:39 really thoughtful to try to get the most skeptical people aligned with us, right?

07:43 Working with folks like LabCorp, we even have like former directors of the FDA

07:47 and diagnostics on our board, and we tried to bring in all these folks to

07:51 tell us how to do this the right way, how to have the highest bar, and how to

07:55 compare ourselves to the gold standard properly. So all we can say here, right, is

08:00 we're just incredibly focused on doing this the right way, doing it with the FDA

08:04 and not, you know, cutting any corners. And we're just gonna be relentless in

08:08 doing that. The mission is too important to give up just because, you know, we get

08:12 compared to a company once in a while. Sure, sure. Again, never heard of them.

08:17 You know, before you stepped into this role, you were an entrepreneur in residence at

08:21 Inovia Capital. So you worked with a number of different health companies, and

08:24 I'd love to know some lessons, some observations from that time before you

08:28 were so hyper-focused on this. You know, I think like a lot of the roundtables

08:33 here and conversations in general are, you know, talk about things like you

08:38 got to really focus on aligning incentives and fitting into workflow,

08:41 and all of those things are incredibly true, and you have to do all those things.

08:45 But I think something I've come to appreciate, having spent time with

08:48 founders and now working on Vital for five years, is that it all comes down to

08:53 that founders' relentlessness and ability to push through those barriers. Like

08:58 that's the thing that you're underwriting to in these situations. And

09:00 so I think what's amazing about healthcare is we all see the impact we

09:04 can have, and all these great companies have come out of the last 10 years in

09:08 digital health and in therapeutics and diagnostics. They've all come from a

09:12 place of real mission, and I think that's what's been really important for us too,

09:15 and bringing in really great talent. My last question for you, my session

09:19 yesterday talked all about the great reckoning in the market for health tech

09:23 startups. I wonder, are you feeling like it was good for the category? What's

09:29 your mindset about it as a founder? You know, for us it's like a

09:34 rising tide, you know, lifts all boats. It's always been great when markets are

09:38 great for us to go raise capital, but on the other side I think being a company

09:43 that's focused on the data and pushing forward, kind of doing what we're doing,

09:47 what we say we're gonna do, has meant that we get kind of our pick of investor.

09:50 I think the best companies get to pick their shareholders, and we've been really

09:55 lucky that way. So look, I think it always sucks when you see a bunch of

09:59 things turn over and companies die, but out of that comes all of these other

10:03 really great things. People can work together, they can bring teams together

10:06 that weren't possible before, and that's been true for us, and it's been awesome.

10:09 Right on. Well thank you for joining us at Brainstorm Health. Thank you, Andrew.

10:12 For sure.

10:14 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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