 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sockian. We are still on site at IndieBio's demo day number eight. We are now speaking with Kevin Honaker. Hello. Hi. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Of course. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Yeah. See you of Biome Sense. Yes. And teach us about what the pitch was about. Yeah, so Biome Sense, what we're doing is we're building an integrated hardware, software, and database platform to massively scale microbiome data. That's a little bit of a confusing sort of way of explanation. It's hard for someone not in the space, but what we've done is we've built a biosensor that actually gets installed in the patient home and like your home, right? In your home bathroom, and it essentially continuously tracks your gut microbiome. And I don't know, are you familiar with the gut microbiome? This is so complicated. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, so basically, you know, the microbiome, so much research has come out in recent years showing like how important it is, how it's linked to XYZ. I mean like, you know, we keep getting surprised about all the ways it matters. But one of the themes is like, we've spent all this time and all this money, but really, like, we still barely understand it. And one of the biggest problems is the microbiome is incredibly complex, but more importantly, it changes very rapidly, right? So you can go to bed and, you know, at night and wake up in the morning, and you have 10% of the microbes that you did when you went to bed because you starved them to death, right, overnight. So they kind of shrink down in size. So that's how quickly these things can change. They change very rapidly when you're sick, right, especially, right? So that's like the problem. And, but in clinical research today, it's basically impossible to track those changes because getting that much data, right? Ideally, I need to be measuring you every single day to make sure I can see those changes. But what if I can only measure you once a month? And that's what it's like today. And so we can't see these changes. We're missing incredibly important data. That's a huge part of the problem for the microbiome. So we solve that by building a hardware component that goes in the patient home and continuously tracks the gut microbiome. Versus submitting monthly samples myself. Right, exactly. And this is on the toilet. Yeah, it attaches to your home toilet and it just passively collects a stool sample every time you use the bathroom. Like you don't have to, you wouldn't even know it's there. Very, very quiet, smoother than me. It's a very small sample, you know. So we have built something that actually processes that right there on site. And then we combine this with a time series analytics platform and then longitudinal reference database. So it's sort of creating an end to end microbiome data solution. So we collect the data, we analyze it right, we link it to these clinical outcomes. And then we, of course, store that for later use and knowledge down the line. So that's what we're doing. Yeah, you've got to get it on like a daily basis. I mean, you gave that example of you literally go to bed and your microbiome is, like you said, it's so shrunk. Absolutely. Okay, because there were something for it to feed on and then not so much. And then usually that's what's the calling is. It's like eat, eat, feed me. Yeah, exactly. How in control are we? Yeah, not really. Way less than you. Thank you. Scary, scarily amount. But yeah, no, it's definitely, and the thing is, especially when clinically, right? So if you get sick, so like your microbiome when you're healthy might be one thing, right? But then you get sick and then your microbiomes might change depending on what it is, right? Or you start taking a drug, right? And then it's going to change, or you change your diet, right? All these things, all these things can do the changes. And like recent evidence papers come out like these changes are critical. Like this is what actually matters, right? But research to date has just ignored them. Not because they're not important, but because it's too difficult to get. Hard to collect. So if I eat a breakfast that has like six eggs or something, or when I, at night, if I maybe eat a couple scoops of ice cream, these are drastically affecting the microbiome. And to be able to analyze it, yeah, it's just even the change in diet in the day. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no salad and all this. Right. It'll definitely change it. And, you know, that's just eating your food. You're exactly right. It's things like when you start talking about clinically, like interventions and stuff that it gets really, really quickly, right? So we've seen cases where the microbiome can dramatically swing over the course of a week, right? Like if you get sick, it changes, then it comes back, right? And it responds to your body in a lot of ways, right? And so sometimes it's the cause of sickness, right? Sometimes that's the reason you're sick. Other times it is because you're sick, right? And so, you know, tracking and understanding these is really, really critical for the research. It's technically required to push microbiome research to the next step. And it's something we've been missing. It's been a glaring gap in the research to date. I think most people know this in the field. It's not really a controversial opinion, you know, and so, yeah, so we're plugging that gap. And now let's get into the hardware and software. Yeah. Okay, so, yeah. So what are we looking at in terms of a unit that goes in the toilet that collects the sample? Yeah. Probably one of the most simple questions is, does it affect if I have to plunge the toilet? No. I'm not going to break it apart. Yeah. How does it go? I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it goes underneath the toilet's seat edge. That's kind of a good way to describe it. Yeah, I'm not going too much into detail right now about exactly how it looks like. But yeah, so we're actually playing around with a couple different designs. So actually, this is, believe it, it's funny because people like to talk about the collection side because I think that's easy to understand, right? But it's actually the least important part of what we do. The hard part is actually what we do after we collect the sample. The software processing of the machines. Well, even on the hardware actually. So you collect the sample, but then what do you do with it, right? Oh, did you have to like flush it back out afterwards? Yeah, you have to do like basically a lab on a chip. Analyze it out. Yeah, exactly. And so that's where like a lot of the hard work, right, and a lot of the hard engineering is done. So we've actually developed this proprietary system that collects the sample. For our current MVP, we just isolate that microbial DNA and we store that and that's actually stable and long solution. We're adding a low cost screening assay, so we're developing that separately. It's not in our MVP, but it'll be in the full system, right? That essentially does a low cost screening assay, so we can actually be looking at the microbiome every single day for a couple bucks a day. And so that's right. And then we also store all the DNA for people who want to do deeper sequencing, right? They want to really know everything that's there. And so we can do that as well, except we have basically all the data they could possibly want. So the thing about it is like we can do both the breadth with the screen, right? And then the depth by having the DNA for later lab sequencing. Okay. So at a cost of just a dollar or a couple of dollars per screening? Yeah. Well, that's our cost. So we charge $300 a patient a month for the full system. Oh, okay. $300 a patient a month. Okay. Okay. And that's probably somewhere around maybe like 200 samples or, sorry, 20 samples. Yeah, give or take. I mean, we actually price is 30, but yeah, it's probably going to be more likely around 20. Okay. And then they also purchased a hardware unit to put in themselves first. No, they don't. So the 300. So what we get for that is like we basically install it. We maintain it. We do consumables. We install it because they can't do software to make sure they do it in the right way. Exactly. So we do everything. We're a full service provider, which damn, yes, you have to have like an installer that knows how to do this stuff. Yeah. It's incredibly simple. It's like potentially a job or something. Yeah. You don't need a plumber, but like it gives, or maybe your own team, like it gives you more jobs of like going out and doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, okay, let's let's break. I know you're working on the designs. So we're literally, like, if this is, you know, stored right underneath that toilet ledge, and then it has to somehow have some sort of like a suction ability to take, like it has to detect when a turd has been made versus when a turd has been made. No, I know. It's funny. It's not literally. It's when the poop comes instead of the pee, you know. Exactly. And so you have to detect that. And then you have to take in a sample. But like if it doesn't break apart, if it's just a really hard chunk of it's not a smooth one, all set of stuff. So then you try and, you know, swoop out a sample, then you bring it in for the processing. And then there's somehow you're able to have it process that and then upload the data from there through the home's like Wi-Fi, like an IOT style Wi-Fi, and then move that sample back out and keep that area somewhat clean for the next time. This is hard. Yeah. So you basically describe the workflow. We don't do it the way you were just talking about like some pieces. So for example, some pieces are disposable. So actually part of like our innovation, it's kind of interesting, right? The way we've built it is some of our innovation, right, is taking things that are not normally disposable and doing them in a way that they're disposable. That's maybe like a bad way. Some of the microfluidics, right? Yeah. Some of the microfluidics that become disposable. Okay. Yeah. And what I should put back, like to recycle it or something like that. Yeah. Well, no, it's just gone. Use, throw it out. Damn. Yeah. So it's like incredibly cheap. So like that's part of what we've done, right, is develop the system with all these questions in mind, right? So our system has answers to all those questions without going into the engineering for all of it, right? The nice thing is, like I like to say, look, like we've spent a lot of time and work thinking on this, but we're not exactly SpaceX here, right? It's, you know, in terms of what you're doing. Not yet. Not yet, exactly. But in terms of like collecting the sample, right? Like you could probably, like you thought of all the major problems right there, right? And trust me, if you sat down for a couple of weeks and really thought about it, you'd come to it really quickly. This is so hard. Yeah. It's the second part. It's the processing that's really, really hard. And so that's where we've had, you know, some amazing expertise working with the University of Chicago very closely. Really helped put together this advanced system. And then, you know, long term we want to add the assay and then the Wi-Fi, believe it or not, that's actually from a development perspective is pretty straightforward. It's just expensive and time consuming. So that's why it's not in the MVP, but it'll be in subsequent iterations of the biosensor. And then what is, is this like a metatranscriptomic analysis or what are you doing? Yeah, no. So we just store, right now we just store the microbial DNA, right? So yeah. No, we're not doing that. We're not going that advanced. So we just do basically, you know, anything you can do with that, just, you know, shock advantage. You know, it makes it probably what most people end up doing with it when they actually sequence it. And then our low cost screening assay essentially mimics 16S. But it's not 16S. Yeah. Because it's much cheaper. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And then you really want to be able to deliver like an insight to them via their like device, the computer or their home or whatever. Well, yeah. I mean, eventually yes, right? We're actually starting on the clinical research side. So the idea is you're an investigator, you're a scientist, right? You're running a trial and you want to know, for example, how does the microbiome, right? How does the microbiome change over time when you, I don't know, get cancer, right? Or start taking a certain drug or something like that, right? So you're going to hire us and you're going to have your patients and we're going to go into those patients and we're going to install this device in their home, right? They're going to use it to get that data. And then we help the investigator then basically get that data, figure out what's going on. And then run the analyses and then say, okay, wait a minute. Like these things, this is, there's like the microbiome is influencing the clinical outcome of that patient, right? And so we're basically going back to the beginning of microbiome science. Yeah. We're supporting basic research to help make these discoveries. Yeah. This really helps the clinical settings that follow with the patients, the follow-up on a day-to-day basis of the patients. Right. Right. You know, the fact of the matter is the microbiome is just not in a position where even if I gave this to you and I put it in your home, right? And you use it faithfully every day, right? That data basically is worthless in that, because I just wouldn't know what to do with it, right? I wouldn't be able to help you with it. You can't tell like it's a healthy gut microbiome or not. No. People's, one of the biggest challenges the microbiome is faced is that people, certain companies, some are good, some are not. But basically people have said microbiome science is really hard, but do you know it's much easier marketing and convincing a consumer that it actually has science behind it when it doesn't. And so that's where like a lot of the microbiome is gone. So like, yeah, like the whole idea of like a healthy gut, no one knows how the gut is. No one knows. I mean, there's, certainly there's hypotheses and like there's some evidence here and there. But then they start, even, you know, you see papers coming out, even like literally the last few months, right? And like beyond like the, yeah, this is this deadly pathogen in your gut, right? Yes, that's bad news. But like in terms of like diversity, yeah, more diversity is typically better, right? But like how much, like sometimes like two people can both be perfectly healthy, one is really diverse, one's not, right? And so outside of these like certain diseases like IBD and Crohn's are where Pete's been really well explored, we barely are beginning to even have a basic understanding of what's healthy and what's not. Much less like for a certain disease, right? We're just talking like generally, not even now, you're talking about specific disease, we're not even close. So what BiomSense is essentially trying to do is take us back to the beginning, do the research, do the science with a level of data that is exponentially greater than anything that's been done before. We provide 30 times the data minimum for the exact same cost. And so we're basically going to go back to the scientists. We're going to arm them with exponentially more data than they've ever had before and start from the beginning, use that. And then that's what's going to be needed to unlock the potential of the microbiome. The treatments will follow. The consumer use will follow. We have to start with the science. Science is hard, but that's where it has to start. Yeah. And then BiomSense is raising a round. Yes. And also, so what is that? And then also, what are you going to be seeking for talent and the first like clinical deployments, this type of stuff? Yeah, so we're raising one and a half million right now. And so in terms of talents, we just hired a microfluidic engineer. We're about to hire a mechanical engineer. And then we're probably going to add a third engineer or someone with wet lab experience and downline hire bioinformatics as well. But I think the biggest need for us right now is that third person, that like wet lab experience, microbiome experience, who can help us with some of the asset development and other work. Okay, awesome. Yeah, this has been awesome. Looking forward to the first deployments of this. Absolutely. And being able to follow up, like you said, just being able to have a greater degree of understanding the microbiome technology. That's the goal. I guess thanks for coming out. For sure, yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate it. Appreciate it, yeah. Huge thank you for everyone tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. Love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Check out the links below to BiomSensals. Check out the links below to IndieBio. 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