Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick for the webinar vet, welcoming you to another episode of that chat. I'm super pleased to have one of my linkedin buddies joining me today. Stephanie Morley, who's based in America, is a veterinary surgeon, obviously gonna introduce herself properly, but very much an innovator within the profession.
Stephanie will give her own CV at the beginning of the meeting, but I think we're gonna have a, a really interesting time talking about innovation, talking about the particular place where you are at the moment and what sounds like a really super product. We usually have this as a podcast but I occasionally do get interest from my chief, Chief Feline Officer, my CFO who's here. I think as, as the meeting develops, he's interested to know if this product might be useful to him.
So we will for those of you who are just listening rather than actually watching it on, on, on podcast. Buddy, the cat who adopted me and my wife during the pod podcast is sorry, the pandemic is sitting on my lap and is in a very comfortable place to listen to the rest of the conversation. But Stephanie, first of all, thank you so much for coming on to this podcast.
And yeah, I love to hear a bit more just so that the, the the listeners know a little bit more about your backstory. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
So my back story trying to keep it short. I am a veterinarian. I graduated from Michigan State University here in the US in 2003.
And then I've done a few things since I graduated, I started off in private practice, small animal medicine and surgery. And then I went into lab animal medicine and ended up getting into management of the largest single site cro in the world. And then I ended up at a human medical school at University of Michigan doing business development where I helped connect physicians who had technologies with commercial potential or in need of additional sponsorship dollars for research.
I helped connect them to industry partners for that. And that's where I really got exposed to just what was being developed in academia for human medicine and kind of got excited about the idea of how many things could be brought to veterinary medicine. So then I would, I had this opportunity to start another veterinary company called Zometa.
And we really focused on diagnostics where I had the opportunity to look at hundreds of companies and try to find products that I felt I would have used when I was in practice. And after leaving Zometa, I've since consulted with many other start ups, but notably ended up with a company called Velin and that's where I am now. And we are a company with a local drug delivery device, that allows for antibiotics to be delivered locally and is can stay in for up to 30 days and then is removed like a surgical drain.
But notably, this product is also being developed for human medicine in parallel. They receive breakthrough device designation from the FDA. And they received significant funding from the Department of Defense for its applicability on the battlefield.
And so I'm really excited that I yet again get to bring a product to veterinarians before our MD friends have the opportunity to use it. No, I think that's really interesting and, and one of the things you said about having veterinary experience and then being involved in development of things, I, I remember talking to a guy and he said, you know, if you test something out and if you've got no traction after, you know, 3 to 6 months is probably not the right product to continue to push. Now, obviously, with development of medical pro products, it might take longer.
But if people aren't excited by the concept and the idea and where there will be areas that you can use it. I similarly, you know, speak to start up sometimes. And I go, I've listened to you for an hour and I still have no idea what your product is or what it will do.
I don't know if you've experienced that as well. You want to have something that's simple, you know, when we started webinar, but it was very much webinar is a, you know, a lecture that's held online. I walked around BS A VA in 2010 and said you should be doing webinars.
And the big company said, what's a webinar? So that was kind of where we were at. But actually, once we explained it and certainly as lots of that started to come on it, they realized the significance of it and almost trained the bigger companies, it, it so that, you know, does this help the person you want to help in the field?
For me, it was first of all myself. But, you know, I was a vet in practice and many other people saw the pain that I had in jumping in my car at the end of an evening surgery and driving 30 miles to a piece of continuing education. So I think having that veterinary experience, having that veterinary trust that other people say, well, Stephanie understands our problems cos she's done the job for, you know, however long I think is, is massive, isn't it?
I think so. I mean, I think it's a, a differentiator, you know, any good product development process includes significant customer research, right? Market research.
And, but sometimes by the time you get to market research, you might have a prototype or an idea of something, but you still have to spend a lot of money and a lot of time trying to explain to a customer what it is that you're trying to make and then try to get valid feedback from them. It, it's still important to do, even though I'm a veterinarian, I still do a lot of market research. But at least an initial glance, I'm able to look at something and say simply would I use it or would I not have used it in practice?
And if I would have used it in practice, what are the hurdles associated with its current state and where it needs to go? And so, I, I do think it helps in being able to say, yeah or nay to products. It also helps kind of when you're trying to figure out competitive, what we call competitive landscape.
So who else has products like this? And why is my product different? I'm able to look at other products and say, understand how they're used and what those limitations would be.
And sometimes those limitations aren't just about how the product works it's literally just using them. Is it easy to order? Is it hard to handle?
Do you need technicians to assist? How do you store it? It, it's amazing how many products require refrigeration while most veterinary clinics don't have large refrigeration for inventory.
So things like that, that I think it just allows me to be able to look at products and understand where they fit within the veterinary landscape. And I've done that, I can't even hundreds of technologies that I've looked at over the last decade and just because they can go into vet med doesn't mean they should. So, yeah, innovation in itself, you know, somebody like Steve Jobs, there was no competition either.
So do you think that innovators and entrepreneurs I feel on the whole, look forward rather than backward. So they're looking at how they can improve their own product rather than looking at other people, people who kind of copy products. And we've obviously have that, you know, with, within the webinar field will be less imaginative in a sense than the people who are going.
Right. Well, you know, where do we take the next stage? So we've just about launching the ability for our webinars to be translated into about 20 languages by subtitles.
It's how you move things forward, isn't it? Rather than spending a lot of time looking backwards at what the potential competition is doing? Yeah.
I think, I mean, I think any, any good ceo, any good innovator, any good leader is, I mean, they have to, they have to be myopically focused on what they're developing and not get distracted but still have an understanding of the landscape. And that's probably less so because, you know, if I have a product and I'm making it for veterinary medicine and I, I, I've talked to the customers, I know what we have to make and I need to, I need to execute effectively to get it out to market that takes focus. But particularly in, you know, for companies who have taken on investors or, you know, aren't self funded, which most start ups aren't these days, then your investors are going to want to know why you can do this better than anybody else and who's your potential competition?
And that's where I think having the ability to look, maybe not so much behind you except you don't want to re invent a wheel, right? But definitely around you. And sometimes that comes down just to even messaging, you know, it's, you might have a product that, that, you know, is better than somebody else's, but how you portray it, how you market it, how you get the word out there.
That can be as much of a differentiator as the actual product itself. And I think again, going back to understanding veterinary medicine, it's you know, it helps when you know your audience. And I, I, but I'm a huge advocate for bringing the veterinary voice into the conversation.
So, you know, once I got on to the industry side of things, and started realizing how much technologies were being sold to veterinary medicine that either didn't work, had really manipulated data to make it look like it worked or were being told it was cutting edge and gold standard when in actuality had been in human medicine for the last 10 or 15 years. I got really frustrated by that because veterinarians don't have, they don't have the time to dig deep into products. And some are better at digging into the data than others.
And so you wanna just be able to put stuff out there that, you know, that they can trust is gonna work and you can't always do that. And that's really frustrating. And so I think having an understanding of the, the psyche of the veterinarian, I mean, I, you know, I left practice for a lot of the same reasons that people leave practice.
And I it was not a happy time for me, it was very difficult. So I, I understand the burdens of time and student loans and perfectionism and, and clients and client. I mean, gosh, I left practice long before, you know, things like Instagram and Facebook and tiktok and everything else were so big.
Now, I can't even the pressures of just how easily someone can go out and negatively speak about you or your practice. I mean, those pressures are real and, I just don't want to be part of a frustration. I want, I want to be able to say, listen, I've, I've looked at this product.
No pun intended. I've vented this product. We can trust this data and we can trust this product.
Here's how I think you could use it. Here's how it's gonna make your, your clinic run more smoothly or your or your relationship with your clients be, be more solid because it works and you can trust it. That's what I've just kind of ended up building a real passion for is bringing those things to my colleagues.
I think you also have to absolutely get rid of perfection because innovators and inventors are, in fact, failures, aren't they? You know, Edison, I think had several 1000 versions of the filament light bulb before he got the right one. So it's about recognizing you might try something and actually you realize fairly quickly, it's a failure.
It's about failing fast and moving on to the next thing, isn't it as well? It really is, which I can, you know, speak personally. That's a daily challenge for me because I know now through lots of self introspection and therapy, how much of a perfectionist I grew up being.
But I think many veterinarians are that way because it's, it's such a stringent, academic, requirement to get into vet school and then to successfully, graduate from vet school. And so you go from this drive of having to be perfect and get everything right to, then all of a sudden you're thrown into practice, right. It's the practice of medicine and, that's a really hard transition to all of a sudden.
Say now you're going to do your best to instill all the learnings that you've had, but sometimes you're going to mess up and particularly because some of those might just be human to human interactions, not even what you did medically, right? And so I think, I, you know, I've learned that was a big struggle for me in practice. And then as I've grown in my career and done all these other things now that I'm on the entrepreneurial side.
It's definitely outside of my comfort zone on a regular basis to say, like I'm doing my best every day, but sometimes we're gonna try something and it's not gonna work and that's OK. And I think people who are born innovators, people who are born to just create and throw stuff out there and see what works. I think there's a elasticity to their ego or to, I don't know what it would be to where they just can accept that easily.
And those are the people who can try 1000 times and not be dissuaded and they come back and time 1001 works. It's hard if you're running 100 m race and you stop at 95 m. So I think there's always this belief, if you go an extra 5 m, you'll finish the race.
But of course, sometimes you'll still have a failure as well, but it, it is having the persistence, but also knowing when to give up as well. And I think some of that is timing, isn't it? And obviously I want to talk about the vet lem pouch in development or we're starting to see people using this in practice mainly in America or is it being used in other places mainly in America right now?
But that's primarily just because we've just started a shipping product. So, we've had what I called beta pouches out for some time now where I've had the opportunity for surgeons to try it and provide feedback on it. And then we had a promotion for a while for signing up for a free pouch.
And so we've just started sending out free pouches. And, you know, I think the reason we're doing the free pouches and the reason that I, I just want to get this in the hands of veterinarians is that I know as a veterinarian and this goes for other professions and identities as well. But as a veterinarian, you like to hear about other products from veterinarians.
Right. And we're a very small company. There's three of us in the company and I am your sales force.
So if you go to a veterinary trade show, you're gonna see me. If you call our customer service line, you're going to hear from me. And that is a very hard way to launch a product, particularly when you're up against, you know, very large companies, et cetera.
And so what we wanted to do was get as many pouches out there as we could in the hands of surgeons to try so that they could provide feedback to us and we call it our vouch for the pouch program. So essentially, if they can provide feedback to us, then that allows us to share their case studies with other veterinarians. And it's not us just telling you our product is great, which the whole marketing has changed.
If you think back 2030 years, you know, there was a billboard and it was promoting a Canon camera and we all went, oh, that looks a lovely camera and we went on to buy. Now, of course, the first thing we do is we say, well, we're thinking about buying an SLR camera. Let's put the review up for Canon.
And if the Canon comes out at three, then we're looking for one that's gonna be, you know, four or five stars, aren't we? So were very much review marketing is is just massive, isn't it? So it's absolutely the right way to go.
Just explain to me a little bit about the pouch. So obviously, it just, it does make sense. There are certain areas where trying to get antibiotics into an area like with deep pyoderma, you have to put a really heavy dose in because you're obviously dosing that orally or, you know, by injection, but hopefully orally.
So the pouch is a way of delivering the antibiotic. Can you put different antibiotic in there or are you sending it with antibiotic as well? So perhaps explain, but he's obviously interested.
He is the cocker our street. He tends to fight in fairness. He doesn't get that many abscesses or anything.
But, you know, I think he is getting older. So maybe he's a bit more concerned about getting a big abscess. How would you maybe treat it?
You know, a cat fight abscess as an example. Well, I'll start first with just kind of how the pouch works. So it's actually very simple.
It's a a rate limiting membrane that's kind of folded into a pouch. So that membrane allows for passive diffusion across the membrane that works on a concentration gradient. So when you have a high dose of antibiotics within the pouch, it will move from high concentration to low concentration and over a 24 hour period, it'll, it'll equilibria.
So you'll end up with some interstitial fluid back inside the pouch. You, there's an exteriorized catheter on it. If you go to our website, there's a really good animation, but there's an exteriorized catheter associated with the pouch.
So after you insert the pouch and exteriorize a catheter and close the wound that allows you to dose with fresh antibiotics every day. We've kept it in for up to 30 days. So it allows you to dose with fresh antibiotics every day.
Also would allow you to change the antibiotic. So if you were to culture during a surgery, let's say, and you start dosing with one antibiotic and your culture and sensitivity comes back suggesting a different one, you're able to do that. That's different than something like calcium sulfate antibiotic, impregnated beads.
When those are used, you can't change the antibiotic once they're implanted. And then when you're done with treatment, you just deflate it and pull it out the exteriorization site just like you would a drain. So it's very simple to place, it's simple to dose and it's simple to remove.
So as far as what antibiotics can be used in it, The really the only limitations are it has to be a small molecule. So large molecules right now with the current membrane we have in the pouch will not pass through the the pouch. But most common antibiotics that veterinarians use at this point are small molecules and it needs to be water soluble So it has to be able to go into solution in order to effectively pass through that membrane.
And then obviously, it needs to be safe for IM or sub Q administration because it will pool in the local tissues. So, cephalosporins and amino glycosides are the primary classes that veterinarians have been using. Amicas is probably the biggest one.
And the reason is is because a lot of people are hesitant to give that systemically because of concerns for renal toxicity. But it often pops up as a drug that is susceptible that bacteria is susceptible to. So what this can allow you to do is get the doses higher at the local site of infection and minimize the systemic exposure.
The the studies that were done in animals to actually develop this for human medicine and what ended up getting this company to start a, a veterinary division were in sheep and specifically it was an orthopedic fracture case where they infected the plates, the hardware with M RSA and then repaired the fracture with those M RSA infected plates. And they compared the pouch to systemic antibiotics and they compared it to the antibiotic, impregnated calcium sulfate beads and the pouch was far superior to either of those other modalities. So that's what initially led this to veterinary medicine.
So the pouch itself in human medicine is really being developed to treat biofilm related infections in orthopedic cases. So, biofilms are are colonies of bacteria that create a protective matrix around themselves that infect hardware can infect actually any wound, but hardware particularly susceptible to them. And the only way to really treat those infections when they happen is to have a high dose of antibiotics at the infection.
But anytime you have a traumatic wound such as a fracture, the perfusion of that wound is variable, you know, you might have damaged capillary beds, and inflammation that's preventing high dose of antibiotics to get to that area. And so those biofilms can perpetuate and can avoid the antibiotic treatment and therefore persist. So you get persistent chronic infections and it can help lead to by antibiotic resistance.
So by getting us locally, then you're getting a high dose. Yeah, it sounds like it's for more deep infections because obviously, I think with the worries around antibiotic resistance, we're often looking at can we just flush a wound and clean it and allow drainage? And often I think certainly in the UK, we're, we're trying to use less and less antibiotics.
Are you seeing a sort of similar evolution in America as well? Yeah, I can't really speak to whether it's effectively changed by numbers, but I can say from a promotional perspective and from a an industry perspective, yes, there's a big push for judicious use of antibiotics. You know, I, I think although what we are pro what we're proposing is antibiotic usage, we're proposing a more effective use of antibiotics.
It's getting it at a high enough concentration and right where it's supposed to be, to therefore improve the likelihood of actually eradicating that bug and reducing the systemic exposure. So it, it, you know, it's, it wouldn't be necessary for every wound case by any means. But we had a great case study.
It's on our website. It was a German shepherd at Michigan State University that had a a chronic multidrug resistant wound next to the anus, but it wasn't an anal fistula. And the dog had had this for over a year and it was resistant to amicas.
So they placed the pouch dosed every day with amicas and the wound healed and it hasn't recurred. And that dog had had that for a year. The key is the M IC, isn't it?
And the M IC orally getting the antibiotic into that tissue can be difficult whereas if you're putting it presumably at higher levels, but obviously, you're not getting that systemic effect, you can overwhelm the bacteria by a higher mim I Ami C can't you? Yes. And so the pouch was developed.
It's a spin out from the University of Utah, School of Medicine, the Department of orthopedics. So the inventors of this are Dustin Williams is a microbiologist and and then there's multiple biomedical engineers that have developed it. So he's literally written the book on biofilms.
So this came from it, a solution. He knew you needed to have a high dose of antibiotics in order to really truly beat biofilms. And he's done work for probably every orthopedic company out there trying to prevent these from happening.
But then he also was inspired by by uncle I believe, who had dialysis. And so the membranes being used in dialysis is what kind of inspired him to think about? Well, could that be used to really ensure local concentrations or local delivery of antibiotic?
And that's how it was developed. So it, it truly was developed by people who know how to battle biofilm infections. And along with, you know, M DS, it's come from practical people and it's solving a practical issue, which as you said before and I can certainly think of cases as you can of tests treatments that really are not suitable to be used in practice.
Yes. Yeah. And I think that's where you know, that when you look at products that are being made for human medicine and you say, well, could they be in veterinary medicine?
Well, yeah, they could. But should they be, I mean, and that's usually because, yeah, do, do we need them? How much do they cost?
Can we actually sell them? And is it practical for our inventory systems and for you know, are to send it home with owners, you know, we have had animals go home with the pouch in place owners have treated at home. So, yeah, it, it, it was definitely developed for human medicine.
And like I said, they've received FDA Breakthrough device designation. So they're in a significant amount of funding from the Department of Defense. They've got, there's a lot of utility for this in human medicine.
But the opportunity in veterinary medicine is, I, I think just as great and I'm really excited. They found me. Hm Stephanie, it's been great to speak to you.
I always love speaking to innovators. It's one of our value words at the company as well. We're always wanting to keep on moving.
Cos I think once you kind of say we've arrived, we don't need to innovate anymore. That is a company that is going to die either very quickly or, but it, it, it is definitely gonna die, isn't it? So innovation, I think has to be at the heart of what we do if we want to progress medicine, surgery, et cetera.
But he's definitely been interested as well. He's, he's as you can see, he's, he's showing his approval by raising himself up to to have comments and I think also a stroke as well. But thank you so much for coming on.
I know how busy you are and who knows? Hopefully I might meet you at BMX in January. We'll be there, we'll be in the start up circle.
Fantastic, Stephanie, thanks so much. Thank you everyone for listening and hopefully see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon. Take care.
Bye.
