 Through a combination of diet and dialysis, within weeks, we will terminate the cancer, one cent for all. Nine essential amnesty, eleven of them. So if we take away five or six of those away, it will only stop cancer cells to death, but not the normal cells. It killed all the cancer types we have tried. So it seems we are hitting on a universal feature, weakness of all cancer cells. What's up everyone? We are at IndieBio Demo Day, November 6th, 2018, in the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. We are super excited. This batch of companies is just incredible. The first person we are going to be talking to is Qian Li. He is the founder of Filtracine, which is depriving cancerous cells of their nutrients. This is very exciting stuff. Thank you for coming on to the show and talking to us. Thank you. So congratulations. You already even closed your $5 million seed round, which is incredible. Congratulations. So tell us about you first. How did you even decide that you wanted to do this? I always, as a biologist, I always focus on the chemical foundation of biology. If I can understand from the chemical perspective, I think that is something right. So from there, I view cancer as a fundamental chemical problem. So we want to fix it at that level. So on the chemical side of biology, yes, and then how did you latch into cancer as the one that you wanted to approach? So it is very well known. It's almost 100 years out of discovery called the Warburg effect. We all know cancer cells, in order to grow rapidly, they have to give up something. So we know that, but to me it's kind of strange. Not many people are targeting on that perspective with a real effective solution. So we started our company by just taking that perspective and figuring out our unique solution. Hopefully we will terminate the cancer once and for all. And so this is drug-free. Yeah. So how do we deprive the cancer cells of nutrients? Okay. So because the targets are nutrients, from the beginning we figured out we do not need a drug to take them away. There's already existing technology there, right? So first we just want to cut off the nutrients. So basically we do not need them. Then we want to also overcome this internal compensation. So we need a technology that helps to remove the last trace of the targeted nutrients. That is dialysis. So with our own tweak on the dialysis part, we will achieve effective and fast nutrient deprivation within weeks. So the treatment will last only a few weeks if we are successfully approved by the FDA. And that is so incredible. It's just a few-week treatment. What does it look like when the cancer cell is first being depleted of nutrients? Is that through a process like fasting? Or how do we do it drug-free? How do you do a drug-free with those treatments? Okay. So we cannot simply stop the patients. So starvation is a straightforward idea about the run. Because when you stop patients, actually the body will respond to some internal signal, whether it's from the cancer cells or from the other part of the body. But basically the body will break it down itself to nurture for those processes. So that's why often you'll see the cancer patients, they lose a significant part of their body mass. Usually a good part. Not the fats, usually muscle. Yeah. So our approach is different. Because we only take away those nutrients that are known, if you take it away, are known to be essential only for cancer cells. And which nutrients are we talking about? There is a lot, but currently we focus on amino acids. Amino acids? Yeah, that is effective enough. And do we know which amino acids are specific? Yeah, we focus. So the 20 amino acids that make up all the proteins in our body, they are divided in two groups. One group is called the essential amino acids. So essential amino acids are required by both cancer cells and the normal cells. So we do not take them away. Yes. But there's another group called the nine essential amino acids, eleven of them. So if we take away five or six of those away, it will only stop cancer cells to death, but not the normal cells. We have done this experiment, an initial experiment, while we were at Stanford. So it does not hurt the normal cells. Interesting. Okay, so about five or six non-essential amino acids. And do we deprive certain foods that make those amino acids, or how do we stop those non-essential amino acids from? So currently we are doing a formula diet. So basically the protein part of the diet is a mixture of the amino acids. We want to feed the patients, not the cancer. So that which means it does not contain all 20 amino acids, but part of those. By cut off the supply of those, we can largely take away this feeding into the patient. Then what we need is effective and fast technology, which is dialysis, to help us remove that. So the first part is you have a formulation of a diet that stops those five or six non-essential amino acids. Then the second part is the dialysis. What does the dialysis do? Okay, let's see. The first part, if you feed the patients with our formula diet, patients will survive. But the targeted nutrients, we want to take away the targeted nutrients, probably in the blood will drop down maybe let's say 20%. I'll make this up. But that 20% is still able to nurture the cancer cells. Although in a restrictive manner, but still cancer cells can grow on that. If we drop down that level to below 5%, it will kill cancer cells. And dialysis does exactly that part by removing the last trace of that from the body quickly and efficiently. How do I get hooked into dialysis and how would it take that last part out? So commonly dialysis can be performed in two ways. We call it the hemodialysis and the peritoneal dialysis. Hemodialysis is you basically exchange the nutrient composition between your dialysis fluid and the blood. So that's a quick and efficient way. And there's also peritoneal dialysis. So you basically use the body cavity in your tummy. So that is a natural dialysis membrane. So if you inject the dialysis fluid into the body cavity, that membrane will do the trick. So we exchange the nutrients across from the inside and outside. So both ways are doable for our therapy, depending on the convenience and the cost consideration for the patients. So our dialysis fluid will be supplied to support both kinds of dialysis practice. And so then the dialysis is, what is in the dialysis that makes it able to take the last part out? That's a little bit counterintuitive. So first I should explain how dialysis works. So dialysis works is working on a membrane. So that membrane has a pore size. It does not allow the large molecule to pass through. So basically in dialysis you do not expect exchange. You do not expect the loss of like say proteins or cells from the patients. It's only the small molecule stuff. Yes. Usually we call them nutrients from the body fluid. Yes. Yeah. Interesting. So then the body fluid is running out through the dialysis. And then the dialysis machine is preventing the small molecules from going back into the body. Is that right? It's through exchange. So basically say, in chemistry we call it down the gradient. So say if you make a dense sugar solution with water, glass of water, then the outcome will be less sweet. Yes. So the reason is because the sugar is moving from the more concentrated part to the less concentrated. Dialysis works that way. So what is not in our dialysis fluid is going to be drawn out from the body across the down the gradient. Say if we have a nutrient X, we want to take away from the patient. We just do not add X in our fluid. So in dialysis that X, the nutrient X will move down its chemical concentration gradient to our fluid. That causes a net flow out. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So that's clear. Yeah. So then that's how you get the last couple percentages out of the body. Exactly. And then that's only a couple weeks. That only takes a couple three or so weeks to do all of this from the form diet formula to the dialysis. And then probably a revisit to the later to check up in maybe a couple weeks to make sure it's not back. Yeah. So usually our current estimation is it takes probably just two weeks to get to that level through a combination of diet and dialysis. But then the rest time of the treatment is designed to maintain that depletion level for a period of time. So the cancer cells have a chance to die. This is brilliant. I love it. And then I want to know then what about the, you said it was at Stanford that you were running these, right? The first, were you? In vitro acids. Yes. We complete the in vitro acids. Okay. So basically we test it. We take away the nutrients from the medium. So in in vitro acids your culture cancer cells in a medium. Yes. That medium is actually in equivalent to blood. Yes, yes. In terms of like a nutrient composition. Then we just formulate our own medium. So just drop out those nutrients and test. Okay. If cancer cells can grow back. So it's from there. We know what the nutrients are needed. And it's not like a drop out of the nutrients, not only like a kill one or two cancer like I showed just now. It killed all the cancer types that we have tried. So it seems we are hitting on a universal feature weakness of all kinds of cells. And this can work across all cancers and all different organs or tissues or any, you think? I would hope so. Although we have only tested like six major types of cancer including like 18 sub types. Wow. Yeah. Now we have more. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. This is incredible. Excellent, excellent work. And that's why you're so well received on the seed round just completely filled up and now ready to go move forward. So what is the next step for you with the seed round now? Okay. Because we are drug free. We have this unique opportunity to launch at least part of our therapy as a product that we do not need the FDA approval. So make it available to the cancer patients as soon as possible. Yeah. So we estimate that we can launch something next year in nine months. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So that you can get the formulation diet out and then you can get the dial to get them plugged into the dialysis across where they live. Wow. Just like that super fast. It's awesome because the FDA and getting approval is that is a whole long process to thread tape. So the regular path is pretty clear for us now because the dialysis is commonly like practice in clinics already. Yes. So there's no issue over its safety. Yes. Actually there's no scientific reason to believe our product is not safe. I mean our dialysis fluid is not safe. Actually it's safer than the current dialysis fluid. And then the only thing would be then the formula. You'd have to figure out to make sure that the formula is. Yeah. Make it safe. So still nurturing the normal cells but starving the cancer cells. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So then do you end up hiring? Who do you end up hiring in the next nine months to make it happen? Yeah. We are expanding hopefully quickly. Yes. So we need expertise to like people to help us with preclinical studies basically animal studies. We need somebody to develop the food product for us. Make it like a tasty as tasty as possible. Yeah. Also we need like a manager to make the food not only on lab scale but on industry scale. Make it available to as many patients as possible. In industry scale. Yeah. And then finally we need someone to supervise our clinical trials which we will probably start doing next year. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I love it. I love it. You have all the right pieces in it and it sounds like the next steps that you have planned are exactly what you need. I'm very grateful. Thank you for sitting down with us and teaching us about this. Thank you. Hopefully we can live in a to deprive the nutrients that cancer cells need. It's a drug free solution. It's so incredible. Great work. Thank you. Great work. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. Thanks.