Advances in medical technology impact millions of lives around the world. And for millions more, those numbers can take on a very personal dimension.
That’s the story for Saumik Biswas, PhD ’20.
His younger brother was born with a sporadic genetic condition that affected his left leg and Biswas witnessed first-hand, how advancements in medical innovation helped his brother live a normal life.
I just fell in love with trying to understand disease mechanisms and the general concept of ‘translational science’ because that knowledge drastically improved his quality of life.
Saumik Biswas, PhD’20
As early as age seven, a seed was planted.
However, Biswas also experienced the devastating consequences of technological gaps when his aunt died at a very young age due to cancer mis-staging.
That tragedy is at the heart of Tenomix, a medical device company that Biswas founded with Sherif Abdou, PhD’13, Michael Lavdas, BESc'18, MESc'20, and Eveline Pasman, MD’12, PhD’20; all four completed Western University’s Medical Innovation Fellowship Program in 2021. Together, they are hoping Tenomix can play a part in targeting inefficiencies in pathology workflow, optimizing cancer care, and reducing healthcare costs.
In 2020, almost 27,000 Canadians were diagnosed with colorectal cancer, which translated to 74 being diagnosed every day. While globally, there were almost 2 million people diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and nearly 5100 patients being diagnosed every day. With colorectal cancer causing the 2nd most cancer-related deaths, it is of great importance to develop new innovations that can meaningfully help improve survival outcomes for patients.
Tenomix’s flagship device is a bench-top device that autonomously searches for lymph nodes in surgically removed cancer tissues and marks their locations for efficient extraction by pathology staff. The device is meant to replace the current manual process that is both tedious and unreliable in finding lymph nodes. Not locating a lymph node can severely impact the reliability of the cancer staging process, which for many is an issue of life and death.
In meeting that challenge, Tenomix has seen tremendous movement over the past year.
They have built an alpha prototype, won the 2022 Synapse Life Science Competition, completed 18 animal and 15 human tissue experiments, conducted over 50 interviews with various stakeholders (from colorectal cancer surgeons to pathologists), applied for an international patent, built out an initial AI/machine learning algorithm for their device, and raised over half-a-million dollars in non-dilutive funding. In the summer of 2022, Tenomix was also accepted into the MaRS Discovery District Ecosystem, which is one of Canada’s top commercialization programs for medical technology.
“So yeah, it has just been a crazy ride,” said Biswas.
Translating research into action
Abdou, Biswas, Lavdas, and Pasman came together as a team during their stint at the Medical Innovation Fellowship (MIF) Program, which is designed to bring together physicians, engineers, and clinical scientists to create innovative solutions to real-world clinical problems.
One of their major tasks was to reach out to clinicians and discover pain points that could be addressed through innovative technology. During one such conversation with Dr. Matthew Cecchini, a pathologist at University Hospital in London,Ontario, the discussion focused on the colon cancer staging process, where pathology staff would use their hands to press and search through surgically removed tissue samples for lymph nodes that can be the same size as the tip of a ballpoint pen.
After a deep dive into the issue that involved research into the business landscape, solutions currently available, and more interviews with pathology staff across Canada, the United States and parts of Europe, the team discovered that the search for lymph nodes was indeed a widespread pain point.
“And the scary part with patient care is that if a cancer-positive lymph node is missed, the patient’s cancer can’t be staged properly. So patients are either under-treated or over-treated for their cancer, which poses significant complications,” said Biswas.
Captured by this problem, Abdou, Biswas, Lavdas, and Pasman incorporated Tenomix and began the process of developing and testing their solution. Today, Abdou and Lavdas serve in part-time roles as the engineers behind Tenomix, while Biswas and Pasman manage the full-time responsibilities of CEO and COO, respectively.
For Biswas, it was the maturing or flowering of that early seed.
You realize your calling at certain times of your life. I feel I understood that calling at age seven but realized it even more in the middle of my PhD that I wanted to be involved in this space.
It was in the midst of Biswas’ doctoral program that he travelled to Hong Kong as part of Mitacs’ Globalink Research Internship and met professors working in academia and simultaneously leading biotech companies.
That ability to translate academia and research into something that impacts everyday patients was what eventually led Biswas to join the MIF Program and create Tennomix.
For Pasman it was an unexpected surprise.
Joining the MIF Program, she never expected it could lead to a career in entrepreneurship. Soon, she came across peers talking about fundraising, and building start-ups and wondered what any of that had to do with developing medical devices.
But entrepreneurship grew on her.
“I really found out that it is the place I’m meant to be,” said Pasman. “I think with the sort of skills I’ve accumulated through my medical degree, PhD and the fellowship, I could amalgamate all of that and pour it into the start-up.”
Building on an upward journey
Along the way, Biswas and Pasman were selected to pitch to alumni entrepreneurs and investors at Western Angels’ Demo Day in December 2021. The following month, they joined the Western Accelerator, which provides Western-founded start-ups funding, education, and mentorship to help launch their companies.
“It meshed really well together because we were coming from more of a med-tech focus and the accelerator helped us view this whole process through a business perspective,” said Biswas.
The accelerator also helped connect Tenomix with the larger Western entrepreneurship ecosystem where alumni play key roles as entrepreneurs, mentors, industry experts and investors.
If we had questions about a certain aspect of the business, there was always someone the Accelerator could connect us to.
Eveline Pasman, MD’12, PhD’20
With their recent success at the Synapse Life Science Competition - where they took home the top prize of $50,000 - and their acceptance into the MaRS Discovery District ecosystem, Biswas and Pasman are hoping to continue their extraordinary progress with a number of goals in mind.
Firstly, Tenomix must complete its beta prototype and introduce it into clinical studies. Then there’s the regulatory process where Tenomix will be seeking approval for their bench-top device.
“It’s a lower-risk medical device, since our device works with tissues that have already been removed from the body and we’re also not diagnosing cancer per se - at least not for this version. We’re helping pathology staff be more efficient and more accurate with their lymph node search process…So the regulatory implications may not be as severe as compared to a device that’s used in the operating room or in a live patient,” said Biswas.
While Biswas and Pasman are focused on accomplishing these goals, they are also eager to establish Tenomix as a significant player in the medical innovation space. They envision a host of other problems that could be addressed with the technology they are currently developing.
For Biswas, Pasman and Tenomix, each innovative device or technology (both present and future) is part of a larger mission in battling cancer, one lymph node at a time.