Did you know cancer cells sound sick?
In this episode of Bite the Orange, Digital Harmonic’s CEO Scott Haiges talks about their innovative developments, focusing on CytoAcoustics, a promising and exciting approach to bioacoustics. At the company, he shares his journey developing signal processing technologies like the Precision Measuring Matrix, Pure Pixel, Keyframe, and CytoAcoustics. He explains in detail how the latter is present in a machine that allows the acoustic analytics of cell signals to discern between cancer and healthy cells. This is a pioneering sonar-like tool that could significantly impact early cancer detection. Even though the tool is still in its early stages, a few years from scaling and being taken to market, Scott discusses some of Digital Harmonic’s plans for the future and the different live cell pathology uses he envisions for CytoAcoustics.
Tune in to learn about bioacoustics and how they might change healthcare’s future.
FULL EPISODE
BTO_Scott Haiges: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
BTO_Scott Haiges: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Welcome to Bite the Orange. Through our conversations, we create a roadmap for the future of health with the most impactful leaders in the space. This is your host, Dr. Manny Fombu. Let's make the future of healthcare a reality together.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Bite the Orange. And today we have a very special guest who is joining us today to talk about a very unique technology ... applied in the healthcare space and also the outside the healthcare space. And I think this is another example of great technologies coming outside from the rest of the country. A lot of times most people think all the innovations in healthcare and other elements of innovation comes out of the Boston and San Francisco area. But today, our guest joins us from Ellicott City, Maryland, and this is no other than Scott Haiges. Welcome to the show, to this, Scott.
Scott Haiges:
Thank you, Manny, great to be here.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thanks, Scott, so tell us about yourself.
Scott Haiges:
About myself, so I am, been an entrepreneur for a good part of my career. After graduating Wake Forest, I was an economics major and started to go into the, a line of business that I ended up getting out of pretty quickly because I saw at the early onset of the Internet this opportunity to do some really interesting things that hadn't been done before, and so I jumped into the deep swimming pool of entrepreneurial endeavors early on. And after we had a successful exit of a company back in 2013 and I joined a venture capital firm for a little while, at which point I met this world-renowned guitar maker named Paul Reed Smith, the namesake of PRS Guitars. And we were looking at PRS as a, I mean, the company that he had created as a potential investment. We didn't make the investment, but I stayed very close to Paul, and once he launched the company called Digital Harmonic, he called me up and said, I need somebody to run it, and I jumped at the opportunity. So much better on that side of the table than the finance, giving money to entrepreneurs side of the table. So I jumped at the opportunity and landed with Digital Harmonic back in 2016.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's quite interesting. So with that being said, I know, with Digital Harmonic, so tell us about the technology and what makes it very unique for you.
Scott Haiges:
So there's three, kind of, underlying technologies that we have developed at Digital Harmonic over the years. We have some really amazing signal processing capabilities which, we have a pretty healthy patent portfolio around all this technology, but the signal processing is a novel approach at evaluating signals, analyzing signals in a way that you can't do in a conventional method. So without getting too nerdy on that, we've basically found a way around limitations of existing signal processing methods that allow us to discriminate signals in very crowded environments or very noisy environments. So that's one, that's a technology we call the Precision Measuring Matrix. And then we have another technology we call Pure Pixel, which is a way for us to take video and imagery and extract sensitive information or important information in those images and videos, specifically in what's called degraded visual environments. So if you're trying to see through clouds or dust or rain or snow as one example, the, those atmospheric interferences create just that, an interference that you can't actually see through, and we have a way to extract information to, in essence, remove those interferences and see clearly what's in those videos or images. So both the Precision Measuring Matrix and the Pure Pixel are mostly used in our government customers. So we work with a lot of DOD and intelligence agencies as well as integrators to apply this technology for mission-specific environments. The third technology, which we call Keyframe, we've actually, we started in the government space, but it's quickly moved into the commercial space. So Keyframe is a way for us to pre-process video so that it can be more efficiently encoded. So what does that mean? That means you have a source video in a current workflow, gets pushed to an encoder so that it can be compressed and distributed. What we've been able to do and what we've demonstrated is we actually process that video before the encoder and we can allow that encoder to go 40 to 80% more efficient in its bitrate reduction without losing any quality of the video. So that has been targeted too and we're working with cable companies, satellite providers, and streaming services.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's quite incredible, actually. Listen, just listen to these things that you've done, and I know, I'm sure everyone knows a lot of advancements, actually, in the civilian space ... interactions between private companies and the government, right, a lot of unique things come out of it. But I'm particularly quite interested in ... to give us an overview of CytoAcoustics technology, right? Tell us about CytoAcoustics.
Scott Haiges:
Sure, so as you referenced early on how sometimes technologies in healthcare aren't actually born there, we were using the Precision Measuring Matrix to separate signals in very crowded environments, and somebody the, somebody at Johns Hopkins, the head of the Kimmel Cancer Research Center, told us, he said, well, why don't you, if you can pick out signals in such noisy environments almost below the noise floor, why don't you point that in the body? And we thought, well, that's interesting. How would we do that? And he said, I don't know, we'll get to it someday. And the founder, Paul Reed Smith, was like, I have an idea. I think we can actually use, we can develop a way to actually listen to cells. So we spent several years designing, building, reiterating, fixing, changing paths until we finally got this machine that we developed, which is in essence a new type of microscope that allows us to put cells in a petri dish into the microscope, and then we can use the precision measuring matrix to analyze that signal and we can listen to cells. So we've worked closely with some people at Johns Hopkins, not an endorsement from Hopkins, but they just working with them to help provide the samples that we've been analyzing. And we, very clearly, repeatability, repeatable, and consistently can discern the differences acoustically between cancer cells and noncancer cells. So think about that, like how they vibrate. We're picking up the frequency, the vibrational frequency, the harmonic content of these cells, and they sound and look very different as we output them onto the screen that we were able to very quickly build a classifier that within several seconds, so real-time, take a sample, put it into the machine, and in seconds the classifier can say that's cancer or not cancer.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting, and, Scott, this is a new field as well in the digital health space, which is vocal biomarkers, right? And there are several companies that work with in the past, actually, and I've seen and worked in research to try to diagnose Alzheimer's and diagnose things like diabetes, hypertension for voice technologies. And it's all voice that point back to the point of frequency, it cannot be, so it could be vocal biomarkers, it could be cells transmitting these frequencies of vibrations, they could pick up things. And so this is very interesting because I think this innovative process for understanding how cells communicate through acoustic vibrations is a transformation of the medical sciences because they play a key role, not only in diagnosis but also in prognosis and treatment of tons of diseases. So with that being said, is there a particular disease area where you're looking at focusing oncology in the early phases of this?
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, in the early phases we're focusing on oncology, which I think is only is just the one, the entrance to many other things, right? So we're, it's interesting you said about vocal biomarkers because that's exactly what we're discovering, is that the cells are emitting acoustic signatures that define what they are, right? And we actually have, we took these cells, the measurements, and we were able to actually put frequency generators on all the frequencies and boost that into the audible range, so we can now listen to these cells. You can clearly hear the difference of a cancer cell. I mean, the audible sound is unbelievably just, it sounds sick. And then you listen to a healthy cell and it has this cadence and frequency of its sound that is, sounds normal, so it's quite interesting. But to your question, yeah, I mean, oncology is the first step, and I think that's one, because we are a scientific advisory board, one of the lead guys is the head of the Kimmel Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins. And so there's, we've heard from them, we need a new way in. We need a new way into earlier detection to more accurate of, are there other stages between one, two, three, and four? Are there micro stages that could be important to identify and get treatment in earlier? So yeah, oncology is the, it's the start, but I don't think that's the end.
Emmanuel Fombu:
... it is working. So I, let's say I am a potential cancer patient and I show up to doctors. How does it work, how do you envision ...?
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, how we envision it because we are at a, we're, this is early stage, we just created the wholly owned subsidiary of Digital Harmonic called CytoAcoustics. So how does it work right now? The way that we envision it is that the machine, the footprint of the machine is pretty small. We've actually been able to really get it down to a small form factor so that we could actually have it in a pathology lab. It could be potentially in an operating room if margins are being cut out of a tumor, and you need to quickly tell, did you get it all? We anticipate seeing that the biopsy or the extraction of cancer cells or a tumor in that case is inserted into the machine and we do that in live real-time.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So if I envision this, and I think I mean, being aggressive cardiovascular medicine, we've got an EKG can single patterns like the frequency kind of patents, or if you had all radios back in the seventies and you turned the radio on with a frequency marker going up and down as you listen to it. So it's, I envision something like that, where you have a display that tells you the acoustic signals and for each particular type of cancer you have a particular signal which you identify that particular type of saying, hey, this is that tumor and you have some density and the frequency of the sound comes out, so that kind of reflects the kind of tumor they might be might biopsy after that. It does, in some cases, it's, some cancer cells, you can't just go ahead and do a biopsy right away, right? So early diagnosis could actually signal to justify having a biopsy being correct.
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, and you're exactly right. The output visually is, we're looking at a specific frequency range and we're watching the, it's the amplitude modulation of that frequency, which tells us if it's the healthy cell or the cancer cell. And thinking about that in a live environment is quite interesting, we did a live demonstration back in June, we brought, I don't know, was like 50 people in, and in front of this was like the riskiest thing you could do. ... Let's put our money where our mouth is. And we brought all these people in and they sat there in front of the machine, in front of the machine. We had TVs all over the place and we were putting healthy breast cells and cancer, of breast cancer cells in it. And on the screen immediately with healthy cells, you saw this modulation that was pretty smooth. And then when we put the breast cancer cells in, it was like unbelievable change in what that signal looked like. The modulation was pretty significant, and everybody there was just like they could tell the difference visually, like, Oh my gosh, look, it's changing. So it was quite interesting. It was a big risk, but it went off, we pulled it off quite nicely.
Emmanuel Fombu:
This is quite interesting because I didn't think about this, just in a subspace of like bioacoustics, which is a domain in medicine that's been around for some time, right, and it's well studied, and it's the same way how sonars work, like you look at sonars. So if you want to describe this to the average listener today and relate to something that's already been done in the real world, right, it uses frequencies to predict things, what would you use? Is it ultrasound like a good thing or is there like a sonar?
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, so, I mean, give an example of something that we've done and there's a report that's unclassified so we can share it with you, but we were using the same technology in the Precision Measuring Matrix that we use for CytoAcoustics. We were using, in the Navy, to test to see if we could identify targets in the water ahead of legacy sonar systems, because the, our ability to discern signals in these environments and therefore actually see them at range, the report showed that we were identifying these targets in the water on average, 7 to 8 minutes ahead of the legacy sonar systems. So that's a good analog in the sense that if we're, we have this ability to do range extension of identifying signals. So think of that, then if you look at that from a healthcare perspective and specifically with these cancer cells, are we hearing or identifying something in that cell that is a marker for what could become, like it's headed in the wrong direction, if you will?
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's quite incredible. So how far out are you bringing this to the market? I mean, I know you do a lot of research, a lot of work, but the vision is ten years from now, five years from now. I'm curious to hear this. I mean it's novel.
Scott Haiges:
It's novel, and the regulatory pathway is not completely understood yet for us. I don't think there's anything like it, so we can't do what's called a 510 K approval to get it fast-tracked. But ideally, I mean, we have enough data to start a publishing process, and our advisory board, we're meeting this week to talk about what that might look like, but not knowing exactly what that regulatory pathway is, yeah, if let's say, it's not going to be inside five years, hope would be maybe just outside of that.
Emmanuel Fombu:
But I think on the bright side, I would tell you that looking at, if you look at the vocal biomarkers, I think that has been certain approvals around that already. So I think in terms of guidance and what have the, private time stands, I think if you look at the cost-benefit analysis here, we look at the harm we have to human here is very insignificant compared to having cancer not being diagnosed early and the cost of it. Definitely, I think much, much cheaper, so I think it's a good precedence there on that side. But with that being said, how do you view your total addressable market in this particular space?
Scott Haiges:
Also, a good question. We, right now we're looking at, this is a disruption to pathology, right? Because we're able to do live cell pathology. How that translates into, well, I should say, so that's kind of the first step. But I think the bigger opportunity from a market size is, in some of the experiments that we've done, we've taken and we've introduced the drugs that are designed to treat these cells. Now this is getting towards kind of precision medicine, right? So we had some lung cancer cells and there were known, so we knew that the one cell was resistant to the certain type of drug and one was receptive to it. And as we inserted those drugs in petri dishes and put them in the machine, we saw immediate changes in their sonic behavior, if you will. So the notion would be, if you have some sort of cancer and there's five different drugs that could be applied to you or it could be used to treat your condition, instead of guesswork, you just put these drugs in different samples and we should be able to tell you immediately which one is the appropriate one.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That is quite fascinating. So with that being said, what are your plans to grow and scale the business? I mean, I know you have this question, though, that does not only apply to CytoAcoustics and other pieces of business, but to technology together, as you fly, I mean, as you grow with Digital Harmonics and I think kind of ... As well. So what are your plans?
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, so for CytoAcoustics specifically, we have an advisory board, scientific advisory board of ten of the top people around the country in this space, in oncology, and in the genetics. So we built the advisory board first, we just hired CEO who is starting momentarily, but he brings a great wealth of experience in healthcare technology, both running a CEO of a public company, a CEO of a startup, has a great background as a with a law degree as well, where he was doing patent work for a major pharmaceutical company. So that's step one in getting us moving in the right direction. We are also doing major fundraise right now. We just kicked off. We're doing it, it's a pretty large seed round. We're doing a $50 million round and we've started to close some of that money. So things are starting to move and I think we'll see some really big changes come next year as far as how we start to output more data, how we maybe go horizontal in some of the things that we try to do from a testing perspective, look at, are there other things other outside of cancer that we could actually be investigating? So as we do this, the fundraising, I mean, it's all around, we have to develop, we're going to strike a partnership with a cancer center first to be the wet lab that's going to provide us with all of the samples. We need to build out our own dry lab and then analysis lab to do all of the investigation and analysis of the data sets that we get. But what we see, I think from the highest level, we see looking at this almost like how the MRI was generated, right? There was at one point when it was created, there was one MRI machine, I think it was in California. Then it went to several centers to like, it gained the adoption curve, started to kind of go up and to the right, and then it became everywhere. And so we see, we kind of look at ourselves in that same way. Establish a cancer research, one of the NCI-designated cancer research institutes as our first partner, and then expand from there.
Emmanuel Fombu:
I think that's a very reasonable kind of strategy. But I'm still quite amazed that having the background specifically in medicine about wet labs and dry labs. So I'm sure you've done a lot of work behind us, I'm sure ... all the research by this.
Scott Haiges:
I drink from a firehose. Yeah, I'm a technology guy, not necessarily healthcare, that's why we brought in somebody to run the company who knows that space way better than I do.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Now, which is quite fantastic, and I think the whole space of bioacoustics, I think has a major role in the future of healthcare, where we're going, I think, CytoAcoustics, and the idea behind it I think is something that, just visualizing it, I think, has a major, major impact in healthcare. And I'm glad to hear that you guys are working on that and definitely pioneers in this particular space. We're definitely here to support you as well. So if anyone is listening, reach out to Scott. If you have any more questions to find out more about what they're doing, if you're just a Digital Harmonic and learn more about the technology itself, I'm sure Scott and his team will be available to help you. But thanks a lot, Scott, for joining us today. I would love to get you back on the show in the future to see how things are progressing.
Scott Haiges:
Yeah, thank you, Manny. I think that would be fun to go back and listen to this and then a year or two give you an update because we hope and plan for it to be a lot different than where we are today.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Definitely, I think it's the right time. I'll have to check the progress of this. So we'll definitely be in touch. Thanks a lot, Scott.
Scott Haiges:
Thank you, Manny.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you for listening to Bite the Orange. If you want to change healthcare with us, please contact us at info at EmmanuelFombu.com or you can visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com or BiteTheOrange.com. If you liked this episode and want more information about us, you can also visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com.
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About SCOTT HAIGES:
Scott is an executive leader with over twenty years of experience building and selling technology companies, taking them from early-stage development to product-market fit, commercial success, and exit. Most recently, Scott was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at a venture capital firm, Aspire Ventures, which he joined after a successful exit from a marketing technology company that he founded. Scott is responsible for Digital Harmonic’s operations and business development.
Things You’ll Learn:
Cells emit acoustic signatures that define what they are.
CytoAcoustics pick up the vibrational frequencies of cells and output them onto a screen, allowing a classifier to discern between cancerous and healthy cells within seconds.
Understanding cells’ acoustic vibrations can impact the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of many diseases.
Digital Harmonics has put this technology in a machine that is small enough to fit in a pathology lab or an operating room, settings where it could quickly provide results.
CytoAcoustics technology can be used to determine which cancer drugs are appropriate for a patient by exposing tissue samples to them and analyzing them with the machine.