RESI@JPM Innovation Challenge – Winners Announced

By Nono Hu, Director of Marketing, LSN

Last week, LSN’s Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference brought together approximately 350 early stage investors and 300 biotech, medtech and healthcare IT entrepreneurs, our largest crowd to date. The RESI Innovation Challenge received a record number of applicants last fall. The 30 most innovative applicants were hand selected by Life Science Nation’s internal scientific review board and presented their technologies in an exhibition-style format throughout the full-day conference. Here are the top 3 winners!

First Prize Winner: ClearSight

ClearSight LLC is commercializing a novel intraocular lens (IOL), the ClearSight IOL, designed to prevent clouding of the lens known as posterior capsular opacification (PCO). PCO is the most frequent surgical complications from cataract surgery, occurring in 25% of patients and costing the U.S. healthcare system $350 million/year. Animal data demonstrates that the ClearSight IOL reduces PCO by 100% in a rabbit model, due to the patent-protected ClearSight IOL design and the addition of a novel microscopic surface texture to prevent cell migration that leads to clouding of the lens. IOLs represent a $1.1 billion U.S. market and $3.7 billion global market.

George Ayd, Assistant Vice President, MedMarc; Shravanthi Reddy, COO, ClearSight

Second Prize Winner: Eve Medical

Eve Medical is a Toronto-based medical device company dedicated to improving women’s health. Eve’s core product HerSwab™ makes it easy for women to collect their own samples at home or in clinic to test for common infections that cause cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. This saves time, provides privacy and minimizes invasiveness. By reduce barriers to screening, and improving compliance, Eve Medical and HerSwab™ can empower under-served women, improve the reach of existing programs, increase test volumes, and reduce costs for healthcare systems.

Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical; Dennis Ford, CEO, LSN

Third Prize Winner: Briteseed

The surgeon’s lack of tactile feedback during minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic surgery leads to difficulty in safely visualizing and manipulating blood vessels, ureters, and bile ducts. Briteseed combats this problem by building smart surgical tools using low-cost optical technology to non-invasively visualize both between and near the jaws of a surgical tool in real time. This combination hardware and software solution is flexible enough to be seamlessly integrated into a spectrum of surgical tools. These smart tools will provide imaging and diagnostic capabilities without interrupting surgical workflow, increasing user adoption. By raising the quality and decreasing overall cost of care, Briteseed provides value to surgeons and the hospital administrations that support them.

Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Mayank Vijay, Head of BD and Operations & Co-founder, Briteseed

Tags: announcement, Innovator's Pitch Challenge, JPM, RESI, Winner