Episode 19: Startup Biotech Spotlight - Informuta with Key Opinion Leaders Kalen Hall and Leo Williams

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Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. Today's guests are Kaelin Hall and Leo Williams. They're the founders of Informuta, a startup company that utilizes machine learning to improve medical outcomes related to antimicrobial resistance through diagnostic services. Welcome to the show, Kaelin and Leo.

Great to be here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

We're really glad to have you. I'm excited to shine the startup spotlight on your company, one of the newest companies to come out of Tulane with ties to the School of Medicine. Can you tell me a bit more about the science behind Informuta? Specifically how you will diagnose or predict antimicrobial-resistant infections.

Yeah, absolutely. So essentially the basis of Invermuta is we use certain computational algorithms that are driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence to basically just analyze DNA. And what we really do is we analyze overall global patterns and mutations, which are just changes in the DNA code that are found in bacterial DNA causing an infection in a patient. The idea behind it, essentially, when things go wrong in a cell, it can leave— it leaves mutations in the DNA, and it can actually leave what's kind of like a fossil record of specific patterns of mutations, which we can then go in and look for those specific patterns. So those patterns are called mutational signatures. So antibiotics are one of the things that causes those mutational signatures. So when we go and look at the DNA, if we see a mutational signature that's associated with an antibiotic, and essentially tells us that as a biomarker that that bacteria has had that antibiotic before and signals to us that it's resistant to that antibiotic.

That's really interesting. So how did you come up with the idea to create this scientific advancement and found your company?

So my dissertation work has focused on how bacteria genetically acquire resistance to antibiotics during treatment. Specifically, I've been focusing on multidrug-resistant infections in people with cystic fibrosis. And so all of my dissertation work has been the foundation of our novel resistance-prone metric. But my co-mentor, Zach Purcell, he studies and his work focuses on mutational signatures and mutagenesis in the cancer field, which is— who's Leo's mentor. And so kind of during the course of my project, we saw this as a really interesting opportunity to apply this technique that's been used in the cancer field for What, probably a decade?

Yeah, at least.

And so that's never been used in any prokaryote or bacteria before, and it seemed like such an obvious application in the context of my dissertation work.

Yeah, so I, uh, like Kaitlyn said, I'm in Dr. Zach Purcell's lab, and we study cancer mutagenesis. And pretty early on, I had kind of transitioned to a computational bioinformatics role, and that's where I got turned on to learning how to use mutational signature analysis. And for a while, I was trying to find a way how to apply that to cancer diagnostics, actually. But seeing as that's the field that it was developed in, it was already kind of saturated in that sense, and it was going to be a lot of work to break into there. But then, like Kaitlyn said, she came with this completely novel idea of trying to apply it to bacterial species in context of infections and antibiotic resistance. And so that was a completely novel application, and it kind of removed like all the barriers that had been there in the cancer field because we were the first to apply that to this system.

So you guys truly are doing what folks are referring to now as tech bio instead of biotech, where you bring the actual technology to bio. It's amazing.

Yeah, we looked up all the different terms. I think technically we're medtech.

Oh, there you go.

We're not healthtech, we're not biotech, we're technically medtech. Well, at least before our pivot.

I don't know that now.

I don't know. I think you can find a spin in almost any of the sectors for us, but—

It's all about marketing and branding.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. By the But yeah, then I think, I think ever since then, we conceived this back in November of last year, and it seems like ever since then, the stars have kind of really aligned with Tulane kind of putting a lot of initiatives forward of supporting new startups and starting a lot of pitch competitions and new seed funding. And I think also since then, we've just discovered we make a really good team and seem to complement each other really well as co-founders, and it's just been great. kind of full steam ahead since then.

Yeah, I was actually like, I don't want to say give up, but you know, it was, it was getting that time to graduate and like there wasn't a lot, a ton of time left, especially if I was like trying to do what we're doing now, like by myself, um, before me and Katelyn got together as business partners and stuff. And then once she came with that idea, then like she said, so many things just started falling into place, like these funding opportunities, these pitch competitions, the actual idea itself and developing that. It's been a wild ride over the last, what, 9 months or so?

Yeah.

That's fantastic. I love how you got there. Coming back to the science a little bit, I understand that as part of your services, you're not only going to diagnose resistant-prone infections, but you're going to be able to do simultaneous tracking about how infections are spreading. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how that works?

Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit more about the resistance-prone infections. So like I kind of mentioned before, that spun out directly from my dissertation work that Leo and I started collaborating on. And kind of the science behind that. So certain mutational signatures can tell us other things besides antibiotic resistance about bacteria as well. And so this specific signature that's been associated with a specific pathway that goes wrong in bacterial cells basically tells us that those bacteria with that signature almost always become multidrug resistant when they're treated very rapidly as well. And so Our data has shown that these infections require a highly personalized form of combination therapy. And right now there's no diagnostic for it on the market, and they're usually just treated as any other infection. And so the problem with that is when you treat them, they become multidrug resistant, and it just becomes that endless cycle of not having the appropriate treatment, and these patients aren't really getting the infection cleared, and that's how it can turn chronic, et cetera, et cetera. And so the really awesome thing is that with what we hope to offer with our diagnostic services is that we can tell clinicians when it is one of those resistance-prone infections and also give them the appropriate information so that they can give that necessary tailored combination therapy that would be effective as well.

Yeah.

And as far as the strain tracking, so we plan to, we're basically providing a service that piggybacks on doctors and companies that already sequence genomes of bacterial infections. But what we plan to do is keep a database of all those sequences and do what's called phylogeny analysis. So phylogeny comes from the Greek word tribe and genesis, the formation of your tribe. In this sense, your little population of substrains of bacteria. And we can keep a database of those and see how closely related they are to each other. And we'll be able to tell— or what we want to offer hospitals is like, hey, you have this specific strain popping up in this wing of your hospital. So something is going on to where these patients keep getting these infections. And so if we can do that, potentially we can help prevent outbreaks, nip them in the bud potentially. And besides that, obviously allowing better infection control protocols to help patients.

Yeah. So as hospital systems are more and more interested in those kinds of things, we'll have to get them in touch with you as you Yeah, if you could do that, that would be great.

It's very relevant, especially post-COVID. And yeah, the whole idea is that we can help prevent any emerging outbreaks when we see them in the forefront.

So I'm aware you already have some extremely strong proof of concept data. What is the status of your product and when do you anticipate submitting for FDA approval?

Yeah, so we've already established our proof of concept pretty extensively, and we've fully prototyped our algorithms that predict the resistance prone infections. So our current status right now is we're working on developing and prototyping the full algorithm that predicts the whole resistance profile that we want to offer. The timeline on that is by next, early next spring, we want to have them completely developed and clinically validated on human patient samples. So off of that, we're planning to file for FDA clearance. next spring. And then we're already working to start planning our first clinical trial that we hope to start next fall.

Oh, great. Well, Leo, we've had Nick Pachos, who also went through the BioInnovation Program at Tulane, on the show before. And by the time this podcast drops, you'll be Dr. Williams. Can you tell us a bit about that program?

Fingers crossed. Yeah, sure. BioInnovation is a specially funded interdisciplinary program From the National Science Foundation. It's called the IGETT program. It stands for Interdisciplinary Graduate Educational Research Traineeship. It is, um, now have been replaced by the NSF Research Traineeship, which is just the new version of it, basically. And it, the real focus is on interdisciplinary programs. So I looked up a couple of the, um, other examples, uh, at University of Pittsburgh. They have one that's involved with research and education, um, in a computational neuroscience context, one at UC Santa Barbara. that deals with economics and the environment. So the real idea is to take kind of different fields and bring them together to get the most out of the interdisciplinary function of that. And so what Bioinnovation is, it's basically a standard PhD in biomedical engineering or cell molecular biology, things like that, but with this added thread of biotech or medtech, whatever you want to call it.

Or tech bio. We're gonna make it a thing.

Entrepreneurship. So we take business classes as well during the first year. I like to think of it as like a mini MBA. We also do an externship at the FDA after our first year. And apart from that, we just have tons of connections and focus on non-academic routes to apply research. So we have a seminar series that focuses on non-academic career paths for biological PhDs and stuff like that. So as part of our dissertation and The several documents that we go through in graduate school, we have to produce some kind of like commercialization assessment plan. It's not required. Some people think it's like required to found a company in this program. It's not. But like being able to look at your research and figuring out how, what possibilities are available to apply this to the real world, that's a real, real translational focus of the program.

So obviously it's drawing people who have a penchant to probably be entrepreneurs because that's why they're coming into that space.

Yeah, actually, funny anecdote. I was— it was actually the perfect program I was looking for, and I had no idea that it existed. I'm from Baton Rouge originally. I'd just come back from— I wanted to do a PhD instead of an MD, and I was looking for this program, and it just happened to be the next city over, an hour away, out of the entire country. And it was the only program at the time that did this. And so I was kind of looking for reasons not to join because I was like, this is kind of too good to be true. There's something wonky about it. But it turned out to be the perfect option.

One of many reasons why New Orleans is the best city in America. Well, Kaitlyn, you're in the BMS, or Biomedical Sciences program at the School of Medicine. Can you tell us a bit about that experience and what that program is like?

Yeah, definitely. So, the BMS, or Biomedical Sciences program, it's an interdisciplinary, kind of what they call an umbrella program for PhD students. So, essentially, its focus is on biomedical sciences or ways to devise new research that would help medical sciences. But I think what is really kind of special and what draws students into it is the interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to it. So I think like when we come in as students, you don't apply to a specific department or a specific faculty member. We have the opportunity to rotate and try out different departments and kind of see where you fit in the best and what research interests best suit you. And I think in terms of my experience, especially relating it to founding our company, I think really the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature is the main reason why I chose coming to Tulane besides New Orleans as a city. My dissertation work ended up being co-mentored by Dr. Lisa Marisi, who's in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and then Dr. Zach Purcell, who's in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. And it was kind of a very quirky pairing at first and was pretty unexpected. And I was very grateful that the collaborative nature of the program allowed for that. And I think really, if that wasn't the way it is, we would have never came up with this idea and founded the company because it really took that kind of interdisciplinary approach to think to apply this technique that's been so well developed in the cancer field to a completely new field. And I think that's kind of a testament to the way we should start thinking about things.

It's like the perfect storm of science.

Yeah.

Well, it definitely describes the last 9 months in ways I can't even elaborate on further.

Well, we always ask this of our startup guests. Are you in any sort of fundraising round right now that people can get in on? And knowing that this will drop in September and October at Bio on the Bayou and at the Bio Investor Forum. Will you be in a fund round at those points?

Yeah, we're opening our seed round October 1st of this year, plan to raise that through the end of the year. So if you are interested in what we're doing, please reach out and contact us.

We're going to have your contact information in the show notes so people can do that.

Man, that makes it really easy.

And also, if you're at Bio on the Bayou or at Bio Investor Forum, both Cailin and Leah will be there.

We will.

You can meet with them in person.

Looking forward to it.

Well, thanks so much, Kailyn and Leo. We look forward to following Informuta's growth in the future. And as always, as we mentioned, we'll have your contact info and informational links posted in our show notes, including a link to the company website. So everyone make sure you check them out to learn more. Thanks once again.

Thanks so much for having us.

Thanks for having us. It was a pleasure.

Thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening to Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again.

If you'd like to learn more about the emerging biotech scene in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, visit us at biofromthebayou.com, where we have more info on who we are, how to get involved and connected in biotech in New Orleans, and the industry events we'll be hosting where you can meet with us in person.

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We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.