Just Take the Leap: Founding and Growing Nanopath with Co-Founders Amogha Tadimety and Alison Burklund

Today I got to chat with Omoga and Alison. They are the founders of Nanopath and it is such an interesting company. We actually have been following this company for a long time because they came out of New Hampshire. They moved down to Cambridge during the pandemic. So we talk a lot about their journey, the challenges and opportunities of founding a company, especially a diagnostic company, during the COVID era, all of the things that go along with that and how they have managed to build this company. Learn about all of the intricacies of taking a foundational technology into the hands of consumers, which of course includes navigating the insurance system and what they're doing to set themselves up for success. I also loved that we touched on how somebody might go about taking that leap to found a company out of their PhD, which is exactly what these two did and how that might be the best time to do it actually. So stay tuned. There were some really, really good insights on this and I think you are going to love learning about their story. Thank you both so much for being here. I'm really excited about this conversation. We've been following the company for quite a while. I'd like to start with a little bit career path chat. Would you both mind maybe Allison first and then we'll move to a Moga. We always ask what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now and how did you get there? Just to give the full picture, I.

Think it was likely some type of marine biologist. I grew up in California, so surrounded by the ocean and those that type of biology, I would say that, but as I mentioned grew up in the Bay Area, East Bay, a little wine town called Livermore, California. And then my undergrad, I hopped over to Johns Hopkins University, did a chemical engineering degree there. I grew up quick going from rural Bay area to Baltimore City. I went back to California, got a master's in bioengineering at UC Berkeley, spent that time rebuilding, rethinking, trying to reorient, decide if I wanted to go to industry or go back to grad school. Ended up finding a really cool program at Dartmouth. It was called the PhD Innovation Program and basically it's the full rigor of an engineering PhD, but it's complemented with courses at the Tuck School of Business. So entrepreneurship, venture capital, a little bit of exposure there and just gave us the vocabulary to talk to investors, talk about entrepreneurship. That was a really cool program and I know Mobile will tell you more about this, but that's what kind of catalyzed the company spin out of Dartmouth. Having the support of that program, I think was essential to the formation of Nanopath Amoga.

How about you?

Yeah. So I grew up outside of Philadelphia. Both my father and my grandfather were tech entrepreneurs. So I had the experience of seeing what it is to grow up around somebody who's building their own business. I probably wanted to be some variant of a teacher when I was that young, but was drawn to chemical and bioengineering in college because I wanted to work in healthcare and I wanted to learn about how drugs and new technologies were made. Did a lot of academic research during undergrad, including at the Wyss Institute here in Boston. Similar to Alison. Wanted to take a year after undergrad to just learn what it is to be out in the world. So I worked in consulting and strategy consulting in Manhattan, helping TD bank decide where to put their bank branches. So totally different from what I'm doing now. And gave me an opportunity to travel to Toronto a few times, which was exciting. But ultimately I decided I needed to get back in the lab, and I really wanted to be working on developing a product that could impact the lives of patients. Joined for the same program that Ellison mentioned. Was really drawn to the idea that I could do all the rigor of a academic PhD, but learn what it is to build a product and build a business. And we became friends and realized that our work was very complimentary and decided to take the leap and start the company together. And Also during my PhD, I did a little bit of life science consulting. So thinking about how large biotechs might prioritize their pipelines, or what happens during an M and A, or how do you identify the right strategy for a product launch?

That's really interesting. So both of you thought a lot about business through your PhD, which is very uncommon. I want to know more about this program a little bit. So you said that it's tied to industry. What opportunities did that present to you specifically?

Yeah, I can dive in a little bit further. So, as Moga mentioned, full rigor of an engineering PhD, but in addition to the coursework that we're allowed to take at Tuck alongside MBAs, we're also given additional funding to prototype whatever we might think could be a potential product. We're on our own fellowship, so we're not wedded to our PI's research grants. We can dabble in other areas, maybe tangential areas to their core focus areas, which gives us a nice opportunity to explore our own interests. And I think there's the softer element of we were constantly interacting with MBA Students. Right. We were constantly bridging that gap, getting a flavor for how they think about things and developing relationships. My roommate was a tech student. I think that kind of softer exposure helped us learn as well.

And just like being in a cohort of other PhD students who are interested in this, if we look at the years, like plus or minus hours, six or seven other PhD grads around our time are running their own companies in energy or in medtech. And so it's. We still have that peer group.

It's really cool. I did not realize the impact of that program. You founded Nanopath. First, let's talk about what is Nanopath, what are you doing there?

Nanopath is a diagnostics company focused on improving the health of women through more informative diagnostics at the point of care. We know anecdotally if you think something's wrong or you're going in for your annual gyne checkup, you can describe your symptoms and there's really nothing that the provider can do in office to identify what's causing your infection or your symptoms and what the right treatment would be. There's some non specific, about 50% accurate tools. Sometimes they look under a microscope, sometimes they do something called a whiff test, which is literally taking a whiff of a sample almost all the time. They need to take your sample and send it to a Quest or LabCorp where it'll take a few days and you might get started on something non specific and nonspecific antibiotic therapy in that time. Our vision, and this is all powered by our platform that we develop the core elements of during our PhDs, allows for 10 minute highly informative detection of a lot of different nucleic acid targets. And so the idea is could you look for a whole variety of things that might be causing this set of symptoms and return that while the patient is still in the office such that they and their provider can make a treatment plan together. This has far reaching effects. This could minimize loss to follow up in underserved patients. This could minimize incorrect antibiotic administration, the wait times and the pain times that, that women are facing right now. And so we're super energized to be working on the space and the actual product is going to be application specific cartridges. So a UTI cartridge, an STI cartridge, coupled to a small piece of benchtop instrumentation that'll sit in the provider's office so that that whole workflow, which typically requires a centralized lab, can be performed in an outpatient setting. I think the other thing that I'll say is that we didn't realize how much the field of ob gyns is eager to innovate and needs help. There is a shortage of ob gyns across the country and I think in a lot of specialties they're not as excited about new technology. But this is a situation where the doctors are like we need help. They're facing regulatory stresses. There are just not enough of them to address the needs of all the patients. And so I think that authentic excitement about the technology just gets us really excited about the next phase of this where we'll have a product that we can give to them and let them test out and take their feedback on and start to measure the clinical impact of.

As a company, we're really committed to getting this technology to the most underserved communities in the United States. And I think there are a lot of diagnostics on the market that are mail in services for folks that pay out of pocket and get a test kit. And our goal with this technology, it's to serve the patients that are already being served, but most critically serve the patients that would not get treatment otherwise. So I think we're making a really intentional decision to make sure the product is covered, fully covered for folks seeking care, no out of pocket payment besides whatever their co pay is would be required. So I think that's a really intentional decision for us. And the last thing I'll say is there are so many cool tailwinds in the women's health space right now. And I think that was lucky for us. I think it was great market timing. All of a sudden folks realized that women make up. I think it's actually 51% of the population and they're like oh wait, not only do we need to make some impact here for the benefit of all women, but that we could make money which obviously is a driver in the biotech world. So I think we hit the market at a great time where there's this kind of renewed interest and I think that can only help to propel our growth.

We've interviewed a lot of women founders who have women's health, biotechs and device companies. I think that is something they've echoed is that there is money here for investors. And then on the payer side, how do you learn about. You just mentioned we have to get buy in from insurance companies. How do you learn about that payer side? How has that been?

It's really, really important and we both know that it's very important, but it's really a huge challenge. I think sometimes we fantasize about, oh, could we just find the right person? And this would all be just streamlined because there's a lot of steps of the process of getting coverage reimbursement and how that intertwines with the regulatory aspects and then how that relates to this being purchased. We did a dedicated reimbursement study about a year ago with somebody who had worked on gaining market access and coverage for technology that is analogous to what we're working on for in lab. But the nice thing about it and the area where we are excited to make the stars aligned is that it seems like the technologies that have cloud clinical impact will get reimbursed. It's just a matter of how big the mountain is to generate that evidence. So I think like knowing that we're rooted in an area that we are certain has clinical impact is helping us to map our studies in accordance of getting coverage.

The US healthcare system is a mess and we're doing our best to navigate it. It's going to be a journey again. We're going to surround ourselves by people that have done this a million times. Right now we're just in de risking mode and are gathering as much information as possible. But I think for both Moga and I, we came in obviously naively right. We're first time founders. U.S. healthC system is a mess and it's really disappointing. So any like positive impact we can make or like clarity for other people going through this same journey after we've gone through it? Like we are here for those listening because it's something. Yeah, it's something, but we're navigating it and I think we're, we're a little bit ahead of the curve, especially for the stage of our technology.

That's great to hear. When we talk to folks on the funding side of the VC folks, one of the things they always want to know, and I'm sure you've dealt with this, is yeah, who's, what's the end, what's the end goal here? Who's paying for this? How do we recoup this investment at some point now you have to know the science, you have to know the technology, you have to know the business side. And now you have to be, you know, insurance experts. It's a whole, it's a whole thing. You founded this company in 2020. We all know what happened. Also, I know that you made a big move. You were moving into Cambridge at that point. There was a lot going on. Can you talk about the challenges and opportunities that during that time of growing the company, moving to Cambridge and all of that during the 2020 and beyond era.

We formed the company in November 2019, so a few months right before this all started happening across the globe. We formed the company actually as a sepsis diagnostics company, which was quite naive. Sepsis is a really hard problem that a lot of people are trying to solve and it's a really important problem, but quite ambitious for two PhD students to tackle and attempt to get some investment dollars there. So we were working on sepsis, we were writing mostly federal grants, trying to obtain some non dilutive funding as a starting point. Then Covid happens and we cannot possibly exist as a diagnostics company without generating some proof of concept data that demonstrates our ability to detect SARV's COV2. So we generated some early data. We actually pitched at the Rice University student business plan competition in I think it was April 2020. And we say that was our formal start. We got our first little bit over $100,000 in funding and that was so exciting for us at we were like we're a real company. Should I quit my internship at Flagship? Like we were so pumped. Little did we know it was a very exciting start, but not enough for us to compete against all of the other large companies going after Covid Diagnostics and new approaches to that. We were just not going to win that race. So we made the strategic decision to actually take a step back and really systematically figure out where this technology should be applied first. So very non biased approach. Talk to laboratory directors, clinicians, payers, all types of parties to try to figure out where the greatest need is organically. We found this huge need in outpatient women's health. Super organic. We are women and it is a woman owned company. But that's actually not in fact the reason we decided to pursue women's health. That said, there's nothing more exciting than pursuing women's health. We're so excited to be in this space. We're so excited that we saw the huge market need and now we're applying our technology to this market and looking back on it, I don't think there was a better fit for Amoba and I. We wanted to start a global health company. That was the dream and if it was an economically viable, viable option, that's where we'd be. But second best option is serving the hugely underserved population that is women. So we're really excited, but that was a strategic decision post Covid and I think the COVID era really propelled investment in diagnostics, which Only helped us at that time.

Yeah, I was going to ask about that because obviously we came out of that with some new technologies and diagnostics that. Yeah, it must have helped you. But I didn't really think about the competition there too, especially competition for dollars because there was this huge global need for COVID testing at that moment. Did that affect you during that funding fundraising period?

It's a really good question. It's been totally interesting to track the evolution of technologies that sprung up during COVID And I think it worked out really in our favor that we didn't go after Covid because diagnostics is really interesting. Right. Because you really need to understand a lot about the end product and how it's going to get to market to define how you're doing your technology development. And that's something that Alison and I have always put at the forefront is let's really understand the end user and the end use case and make sure that our technical team is building towards the product requirements that are in service of that. And so I think the fact that we didn't go after Covid means that we were focusing more on looking at a lot of targets at once, on having this be low cost, on being able to address a lot of different sample types. And these are all things that I think have served us well now a few years out because it maximizes the applicability of the platform. At the time when we were trying to fundraise, because we were spending so much time trying to identify what the difference was in capability of our platform versus a rapid pcr, it really helped to identify that value proposition and build out the technology accordingly early on. And I think that's how we were able to raise is what I really like putting a microscope on what's different that we're doing compared to the whole swath of molecular tests and development.

So your two roles have evolved very naturally. We've got a CEO and a cto. How did that emerge?

It really could have gone either way. We have our own interests, so we kind of segregate duties based on interest. Like an example is Mo really enjoys the commercial stuff. I like to learn I'm involved in the important decisions, but I prefer to focus a little bit on ip. And those are just two examples. We describe ourselves as a married couple, so sometimes we disagree, sometimes we agree, but there's mutual respect. And I think we're generally making. We are making all the big decisions together as a team and I know that's likely rare. I think there's a very clear hierarchy in a lot of other organizations. But this works for us. And I think the company respects the approach, the internal company, the board. And so I think it's just been a really fun ride to work with Amoga. And I think that there's not a better situation in which we could operate the company than being two friends and two people that respect each other so much and working side by side. We all say all the time, it's tough to be a single co founder. You must be in your head all the time, right? Amoga and I can bounce ideas off each other constantly and we're not in our own little world overanalyzing every decision we've ever made. So it's been a fantastic partnership. I literally can't imagine a better business partner.

I'm just going to echo all of that. And I think especially as first time founders, where we're trying to learn like we are so lucky that we're aligned on mission and on vision. And we were before we started the company. Right, Just the way that we approach the world and that obviously helped us a lot. And I think now having just somebody who you trust, who sees everything that you see to bounce ideas off of, and it's just a huge strategic advantage in meetings too, that if I say something and it doesn't land immediately, Alison can try a different approach. And we are speaking half the time rather than constantly and in pitch meetings. And it really does add up. The value of having two slightly different personalities, but people who are equally knowledgeable about everything that's going on has been such a, I think, such a strategic advantage as well.

You can see it too. When you two interact. Can you highlight some of the key milestones that you have considered? The breakthrough things at Nanapath and how you've measured that and how you've pivoted then to move forward?

Fundamentally, we're a technology company right now, right. So we're working on getting the system up and going. And so a lot of the key milestones lead into proving out that this thing works in a set of clinical patient samples. So I think that's a huge one and there's lots of strategic work that feeds into that. But I think like the major goal for this kind of big push is how do we get the system that we know we can make it scale, that we know meets the needs of the end user. Let's prove that it will work. And diagnostics is interesting because we can de risk that really significantly well in advance of approaching fda. But if we think about an intermediate Kind of like milestone that was really important to me and Allison and that has taken up much of our focus. It was building the team around us. We, the two of us, know the technology in and out. We're passionate about building a business, but we have not seen a product from bench to patient through fda. And so how do we surround ourselves with people who have done this before in the context of assay development, in the context of engineering, how do we bring on people who are aligned in our mission? How do we build a company where people are happy to be here and energized by the opportunity to learn? And I think like, we thought a lot about our recruiting process after we closed our last fundraise and how do we evaluate candidates who are expert in things we don't know. And I think we probably didn't pause enough to enjoy it. But I think we've built a really lovely team that has fueled a lot of the technology development. And I think that's a huge, really important milestone of the last year.

Ish. You talked about building the people around you that really understand. What I've seen you two do really well is network and build your network and leverage really amazing people in this space. I've seen you're connected to through your board and through just informal advisors, you're connected to really impressive people in this space. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

I think Dartmouth really helped us. I think the Dartmouth network is quite expansive and it's really interesting, especially being at Hopkins and Berkeley. Great institutions. No knock there. But you reach out to any Dartmouth alumni, 90% of them will respond and take a meeting. And it's pretty shocking to. To learn how many Dartmouth folks are doing things that are relevant to us, whether that's payer, whether that's urgent care, CMOs, whether that's investors. So I think that's really helped propelled us. And then the other thing I would say was we started off at lab central, which is right next door. We're at the engine by MIT now, and they're just like a fantastic organization. They make a concerted effort to connect us to folks in the Cambridge, Massachusetts ecosystem. And I think that was the best possible place we could have landed after Dartmouth. And I give them 90% of the credit for how well networked we are in this ecosystem. And I think a softer element is, I feel like a Moga and I are really proactive about really relatively small amounts of money. If there's a grant for $10,000, even though we've raised $10 million, like, let's go do it. And I think that enables us to even expand our networks a little bit greater. Whoever the funders are will connect with or other folks in. In an awarded cohort. So I think that's been to our advantage as well.

I think we're both really excited to learn and really excited to teach. And I think that comes through is that, like, we're constantly seeking people who have done this before who can teach us different elements of this, and it's our job to filter then all the feedback we get and decide how to implement it. But I think another point about diagnostics is that it's so multifaceted, right? There's so many different types of science and commercial that are involved. And so one of the things we talk about all the time is how do we build the right set of advisors across sectors to help us with this task.

That makes a lot of sense. Lab Central is amazing, too, and we have interviewed several people. Mike Lorette was on the show talking about Lab Central and Lynn Walder. So I can't echo that enough. And then amoga. I want to hear about your networking superpowers. So you were put on the spot. Alison said you're amazing at it. So I want to hear what are your secrets?

I think I authentically really like small talk, which is not normal. And then I think that's all. That's it. I like social activities, and I need a friend to go with me. So I make Allison go, and it's worked out.

I think she has a photographic memory, which is really helpful. Maybe that's an overstep, but she sees or meets someone once and forever. She knows name, face, what organization they're part of, which I think is really impressive, given the amount of folks we meet.

That would be very useful. I would like that superpower. Let's talk about advice for folks coming behind you, because I think you have so much to offer there. Founding a company right out of school, your growth curve has been quite steep, which is great for the two of you. I can see you've embraced it. What did you do to set yourself up for success?

We did this as a learning opportunity. We really just wanted to learn as much as possible. We also really like teaching. We'll go back to Dartmouth and we'll lecture, and I think we can reconnect with where we were and see how much we've learned. And I think that's super inspiring for us both.

I think one thing that's really helped us is having not just mentors but like, friends who are, like, half a step ahead of us, like, one step ahead of us, who've done this for their whole careers. Like, people at different stages, too, help us through specific questions. Like when we got our series a term sheet because of Lab Central, we had another founder who we could run that by and walk through and understand what to push on and what was standard. And I think, like, having that network of people you trust is really helpful because I think for many of these things, somebody will have done it before and can just shortcut you to an answer. As Allison said, I think the fact that we authentically enter almost every conversation, being excited to learn from who we're talking to has helped us. I think it's a journey. I think that you have to embrace the learning to survive the roller coaster.

Margaret and I always say that the hardest part of starting a company is deciding to do it. Always. It's like a lot of people are like, maybe I should start a company. The hardest part is actually starting the company. And there are other hard parts along the way. But I think once you've committed to doing it, you've committed and you cross that barrier from, wow, that might be nice to, oh, crap, formed a company, and now I'm committed to running this company. And especially in our context, we were PhD students, so we were quite privileged in the fact that we were already doing the research and we really limited risk. Right. If we failed, we would just go get the jobs we had intended to get anyway. So it wasn't really like a risk calculation of, I need to leave my job in order to start this business, which was a hugely privileged position to come from. It was just, let's try, doesn't work out, we'll go get our other, like, jobs that wouldn't, in our mind, wouldn't be as exciting, but let's give it a go. So I think it was, I would say to any PhD student that's interested, it's the lowest risk possible situation in which you could start.

That's really good advice. Yeah, it is a leap. It is a leap. But we have seen a few people come through our recruiting pipeline who have taken the leap. It didn't work out for whatever reason, and it's not the end of the world. So just to echo that, it's not the end of the world. I love that advice. I want to talk about your move to Cambridge, because when you. Obviously when you were doing that move, it was mid pandemic. But has that move paid off? Were you glad you made it I think the answer is yes, based on your glowing review of Lab Central. But it was a big move, right, Coming from the Dartmouth ecosystem, which actually did have some support networks. Talk about to me about that a.

Little bit, Dartmouth was a truly lovely ecosystem. I don't know if we could have done the PhDs we did elsewhere because there's a business school, there's the hospital. We knew that we needed to hire a lot of people to make our vision real. And there's no match for the density of really amazing people here in Cambridge. When did we. So we moved right after. I don't even think Allison had a weekend after defending her PhD before we moved down here. So we came right down to Lab Central. We thought before we moved down here that it would be like, oh, we just will find a place and pay them rent and move in. That is not the case. It was a pretty significant application process to any of these spaces, but totally pays off in the resources that you have here. Even our first few interviews with people we're trying to bring on, they were like, oh, I walk by this building every day like you're not going to match that density of smart people in our field anywhere else in the world. And then the opportunity is available through the state of Massachusetts too, from like the Mass Next gen program and all the grant programming and everything associated with Lab Central that Allison mentioned. I can't imagine having built this somewhere else.

It really helps you stretch the dollar, huh?

It's a great state. I love New Hampshire. Live for your Die but Massachusetts is a great state. I think the government has really set up a lot of incentives for biotech med tech companies to stay here and grow here, which we hope to. So I think it worked out well.

What is next? How do you expand this technology and what do you go after in the future?

Our vision is to create one integrated cartridge like a well woman panel that a patient gives one sample and is simultaneously tested for every possible viral or bacterial infection that a woman could have. So that's like the immediate vision. But obviously technology is broadly applicable to anywhere one would want genetic information. So anywhere there's a PCR today our technology could replace. So that's the vision we sell is can we replace pcr? Right. Nucleic acid amplification, making many copies of DNA with what we're doing, which is much faster and much more highly multiplexed. So that's the vision.

The only other thing I'll say is one of the things we're already proactively working on is a smaller version of the instrument. The vision right now is for outpatient. But because of the simplicity and beauty of the technology, we think that the readout instrument could be small, it could potentially be handheld. Can you imagine this in a global health scenario where there's some sort of brigade style test and treat? Could you imagine this at home where have this at your house and you can test for anything that would normally require a PCR. Could we look for other biomarkers that are not DNAs? So there's a whole world of possibilities there. We're trying to be focused on product and patient impact.

Our primary goal right now is put out a good product. Put out a good product or we have failed. And so that's like the goalpost we're reaching toward at this moment. So we have the big vision, but like really on a day to day we're like, let's put out a good product.

Those are great goals and I would love a world where I could take one test and just know what the issue was. A well woman test or a well person test or whatever you would call it in the future. I love it. We love talking to smart people because you read great things. So what are your reading recommendations?

For me, I just read Remarkably Bright Creatures, which is a fiction book about an octopus and a human building a friendship. And I highly recommend it. And it's because my friends just set up a book club and really we want an excuse to travel and see one another now that we've all left New Hampshire. But that was the book club book of the last month.

MOG and I are also different on this. I only read nonfiction, which I know would bore quite a few people. But right now I'm reading a book called the Fourth Turning is Here. It's a nonfiction book and it talks about the cycles of history and the different phenotypes of different generations and looks out at what might be to come in the next 10 years given historical patterns of the past.

For those who want to learn more about both of you, we'll put both your LinkedIns and the website in the show notes. People can click through, but this is so great. I really appreciate your time and I think this will be really valuable. We have a lot of people who want to follow in your footsteps and jump into being a founder. And it's scary. So hopefully this gives them a little bit of. A little bit of a pep talk.

Totally. Yeah. Really appreciate you having us.