Transcript:
Logan Plaster:
Founder and CEO of Sanguine Biosciences. Brian, why don’t you to come on in? Great to see you.
Brian Neman:
Great to see you. How are you?
Logan Plaster:
Good, good, good. Take a seat. Grab the microphone and happy to have you joining us live in the Startup Health studio. How are you doing today?
Brian Neman:
You’ve been a busy guy.
Logan Plaster:
Yeah.
Brian Neman:
You’ve been busy.
Logan Plaster:
We’ve been talking to lots of people. I’m amped to understand, not just what people are building, but their motivations and-
Brian Neman:
Why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Logan Plaster:
… what gets them up every day. Because that’s really what’s going to sustain it. So you’re the founder and CEO of Sanguine Biosciences. I’ve got a sense of what you do because we’ve done a story in the magazine about you guys, but why don’t you explain exactly what you’re up to for the sake of our audience.
Brian Neman:
Yeah. So what we’re doing is we’re partnering with patients directly to accelerate precision medicine. And what that means is that we’re working with them directly, empowering them by leveraging their medical data in the form of medical records, biospecimen surveys, what have you, valuable data that’s going to be critical for researchers and outcomes in translational research, clinical trials. So patient data is really important. And to access that information really has been tough over the past 20 years because you’ve had to go through physicians and hospitals and different intermediaries to acquire the information. And now over the past few years there’s been a question of, how is my data being used? Who’s making a difference with it? Why is it being used?
Brian Neman:
So we’re doing everything we can at Sanguine to help patients feel much more comfortable through transparency, ease of administration, making it easier for them to participate from home, and collecting data from their physicians and making it available to researchers that are working on their condition. So if I’m a patient diagnosed with lupus, I’m interested in helping further advance precision medicine for lupus. And so working with Sanguine helps me essentially accelerate research for my career by putting that data in the hands of Sanguine, to put it in front of researchers, that they can use to accelerate research for the condition.
Logan Plaster:
Well, I appreciate you, that you put it in a kind of a use case. So if I’m the patient with lupus and I want to be involved in sharing my data, what does that look like? Am I taking part in a clinical trial? Do I go somewhere?
Brian Neman:
Yeah. So the first thing you’ll do is come to our website and sign up, provide minimal information about your diagnosis. And then if there’s an opportunity for you to participate, then we’ll collect medical information in the form of your records. Of course, you’ll sign a medical record authorization form and a consent form, and you do that over the phone and electronic signature. We’ll collect that from your physician and find a study that matches yours. So we’ll call you if there’s a study as opposed to you having to go search for it.
Logan Plaster:
Okay. Okay. And then do I go to a clinic? What do I do to take part?
Brian Neman:
Yeah. So we have over a hundred nurses and phlebotomists across the U.S.-
Logan Plaster:
Oh you do?
Brian Neman:
Yeah. That will come to the comfort of your own home, collect your blood, and then deliver it directly to the researchers. Same day, even, sometimes. So that’s a novelty of the company is that it works for both entities. We’re working with patients to help accelerate research for their condition, but also researchers that want to work towards that progress want the information as succinctly and as quickly as possible, and in terms of data more normalized and as much data about the individual as possible. So we help accelerate that process.
Logan Plaster:
So you’re sort of solving two problems at once. You’re inviting patients to be more involved in clinical trials to offer their data to advance science.
Brian Neman:
Right.
Logan Plaster:
And then you’re also bringing users into the clinical trial. You’re recruiting.
Brian Neman:
Yeah, exactly.
Logan Plaster:
You’re solving both problems.
Brian Neman:
Yeah, so the best way to say it is, it’s transforming more into a platform where both users, the researchers and the patient, can go in and determine which studies fit for them and which type of patients they want to enroll into their studies. So the next part of 2020… Last year we won a grant with the National Science Foundation-
Logan Plaster:
Oh, fantastic.
Brian Neman:
… to develop… Yeah, thank you. With my co founder, Gerald Lee, and our Chief Technology Officer, Eric Lickerman, we won a grant to develop a platform where researchers can come in and select which patients they want to enroll into a study. So this has accelerated the research process on that side.
Logan Plaster:
Nice. What else are you excited about coming into 2020? What other things are coming up?
Brian Neman:
Yeah, we’d launched that in beta form last year to only six or seven clients. We have about another 50 clients who we’re going to roll that out to. Originally, we only kept about 5,000 individuals diagnosed with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis on the platform. We’re going to increase that to the 25,000 plus patients that are on our platform. So if you’re a researcher and you want to do a study, you can come to this, a search tool. You’ll identify individuals you want, create the study there, and that we’ll get a notification that these are the patients you want.
Logan Plaster:
I understand that there are community managers involved, and so if I have lupus and I’m involved in clinical trials, I’m also part of some kind of a community.
Brian Neman:
Oh yeah.
Logan Plaster:
What role is community, does that play in all of this?
Brian Neman:
Yeah, so one thing that we pride ourselves on is that we have a fantastic team of study coordinators that walk each of our individuals throughout the study, the patients. There are specific individuals at our office that are focused on specific conditions. So Viviana on our team is really focused on autoimmune conditions. She’s worked in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Neelam has been working in sickle cell and other rare conditions. So those patients have a one point of contact they can go to, to learn more about the study and how they can participate in accelerated research for their condition. So we really have a high touch presence, even though it’s high tech and scalable.
Logan Plaster:
High tech, high touch. Sounds good. Awesome. Brian, well I’ve loved learning about Sanguine as we’ve done a couple of stories in the magazines, and really feel like you guys are solving the two problems at once, bringing people together for clinical trials and making data more actionable on both ends. So, love it and thanks for coming down to the Startup Health studio.
Brian Neman:
Absolutely.
Logan Plaster:
Hope it’s a great festival for you. All right.
Brian Neman:
I appreciate it.
Logan Plaster:
Thanks Brian. All right. We are here broadcasting live from the Startup Health Festival here in San Francisco. I’m Logan Plaster, the host of Startup Health TV today, and we are going to be taking a short break. We’ll be back with more interviews with health entrepreneurs here in the startup health community. All right. Stay with us.