Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Building a Startup in a Collaborative Ecosystem: Interview with Noa Therapeutics CEO Carla Spina

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we had an awesome chat with  Carla Spina, the pioneering force behind Noa Therapeutics. Carla and her team are developing treatments for inflammatory skin diseases with their innovative multimodal small-molecule therapies.Carla began her academic journey at the University of Calgary in the fields of inorganic and analytical chemistry, and continued with a Ph.D. in Bioinorganic Chemistry at McGill University. After going to BASF in Germany to develop pharmaceutical formulations, Carla returned to Canada and led the development and global commercialization of antimicrobial wound care devices. Later, she also pioneered first-in-class pharmaceuticals for inflammatory and infectious skin diseases. Currently, she spearheads Noa Therapeutics, a Canadian biotech firm that is transforming how immune diseases are treated.In this episode, Carla shares her invaluable experiences on the importance of engaging actively with the startup ecosystem and staying connected with those who are shaping the field. We talk about how building a company is a collaborative venture that requires a strong network of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry experts, and the significance of authentic interaction when reaching out to a variety of potential stakeholders. Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device and health technology founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.Second, if you want to peek behind the curtain of the world's most successful startups, you should consider a Medsider premium membership. You’ll learn the strategies and tactics that founders and CEOs use to build and grow companies like Silk Road Medical, AliveCor, Shockwave Medical, and hundreds more!We have also introduced some fantastic additions exclusively for Medsider premium members, including playbooks, which are curated collections of our top Medsider interviews on key topics like capital fundraising and risk mitigation, and a curated investor database to help you discover your next medical device or health technology investor!In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members also get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost, including the latest Medsider Mentors Volume IV. If you’re interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, if you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Carla Spina.

I had this theory in grad school called the Web of Awesome, and it was, you know, that you're a point contact in this web of these incredible people. And if you meet all these amazing people or awesome people along the way, that they will increase this network of awesome people. Welcome to MedSider, where you can learn from the brightest founders and CEOs in medical devices and health technology. Join tens of thousands of ambitious doers as we unpack the insights, tactics, tactics, and secrets behind the most successful life science startups in the world. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. Hey, everyone, it's Scott. In this episode of Medsider, I sat down with Carla Spina, CEO of NOAA therapeutics.

She began her academic journey at the University of Calgary in the fields of inorganic and analytical chemistry and continued on with her PhD at McGill University. After developing pharmaceutical formulations in Germany, Carla eventually transitioned to Exciton Technologies, where she led the development and global commercialization. of antimicrobial wound care treatments. Later at Exiton Pharma, Carla pioneered first-in-class pharmaceuticals for inflammatory and infectious skin diseases, and currently she spearheads noetherapeutics, a Canadian biotech firm that is transforming how immune diseases are treated.

Here are few of the key things that we discussed in this conversation. First, being capital-efficient during the early stages is both about where you spend the money and where you secure it. Engage with your ecosystem to validate your idea and to get as close as possible to those who are already in the field and looking to collaborate, such as startup incubators, academics, and accelerators. Second, building a company is not a solitary endeavor. The key is to actively seek help, share your ideas, and learn from others. This approach not only helps to validate and refine your ideas, but also expands your network, which is crucial for long-term success.

Third, reach out to a wide range of potential investors and stakeholders as you never know where funding opportunities may arise. Build strong relationships and seek advocates in your space by being authentic and genuine in your interactions. At the end of the day, talking to as many people as possible is crucial. Okay, so before we jump into this episode, if you're listening to this show, I'm going to make the assumption that you're a dedicated pro looking to learn from the best in the business. If that's the case, which I think it probably is, I've got some exciting news related to our premium memberships. First, let's talk a little bit about Medsider Playbooks, your ticket to going from zero to 100 with your company or your career. You see our team as

handpicked collections of the most insightful interviews with the brightest founders and CIE.E. those. People like Nadim Yard, CEO of CVRX, and Mike Carousy, serial medtech entrepreneur and general partner at Lightstone Ventures. These proven leaders share their strategies and tactics for running a successful startup. Whether you're looking to master capital fundraising, navigate early stage development, tackle regulatory challenges, understand reimbursement, or maybe even position your venture for a meaningful exit, MedSider Playbooks have got you covered. And the best part, all of them are available to our premium members. Get instant access to these valuable resources at Medsiderradio.com forward slash premium. Again, the

It's medsiderradio.com forward slash premium. Okay, here's the second thing. I completely understand that fundraising can be one of the most daunting tasks for any startup, especially in today's environment. That's why we've created a meticulously curated database of investors right at your fingertips. Explore a wealth of VC funds, private equity firms, angel groups, and more, all eager to invest in medical device and health technology startups. Access to this database is a premium member exclusive, so don't miss out.

But that's definitely not all. When you become a MedSiter premium member, you'll get access to every volume of Medsider mentors, where the brightest founders and CEOs share their invaluable learnings, plus you'll unlock the entire archive of every Medsider interview dating back to 2010. So if you're serious about advancing your career or your startup and want to tap into this treasure trove of knowledge, it's time to consider becoming a Medsider Premium member. Visit medsiderradio.com forward slash premium to learn more. All right, without further ado, let's jump back into the interview. All right, Carla, welcome to Medsider Radio. Appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Scott. Yeah, looking forward to not only learning a bit more about your journey, right, from drug device combos to now running a new orthopedics, it should be a very good conversation. So with that said, I recorded a very brief bio at the outset of this episode, but I always like to start here first, right? If you can kind of give us an elevator pitch for your professional background leaning up to co-founding the company and, you know, serving as NOAA CEO. Absolutely. So I am chemist by training. I did my PhD. under Dr. David Scott Bowley McGill, Bioorganic chemist, studying compounds at the interface of inflammatory and infectious disease. But I always knew I wanted to do industry,

and so I actually fought for an internship and was able to secure formulations, pharmaceutical formulations internship in Germany at BASF during my PhD. And then that enabled me to transition into drug, device development where I actually was pitching an idea of my own at a tech transfer facility in Edmonton. And the CEO of the company that I was in, got called into the room and said, you need to meet this person. And I started as a senior researcher for that company and stuck with them through the development of five drug device combinations, focused on infectious disease for

skincare. Then during the course of post-market surveillance, we were evaluating therapeutic activities, actually the drug compounds and spun out a pharma company in Toronto based upon the active ingredient from the drug device combination for acute bacterial skin and skin structure and indications. And that led the foyer into the therapeutics realm. And then during that course, began discussing with my PhD supervisor and I met my co-founder. we were both presenting at a skin research conference and decided that we really liked each other and we wanted to try something new. From a background perspective, my sister is actually immunocompromised.

So I've always been interested in inflammatory and immune diseases and leveraging her background in combination with mine. One year ago, we founded noetherapeutics to target the development of novel small molecules for inflammatory diseases. Got it. That's super, super helpful background. I think that sets the stage for a lot of what we'll get into,

especially considering you've been around a lot of early stage, early stage, not only kind of device companies, but biotech companies as well. So talk to us a little bit more about what you're working at on NOAA and really sort of the origin of the specific, you know, kind of molecules that you're developing now. You mentioned your sister as immunocompromise,

but clearly there's sort of a personal interest, right, in this area. but you've also got a lot of domain expertise as well. Absolutely. So understanding, my sister has lupus and understanding the complexities of immune diseases is exactly what we're focusing on. I have never shied away from something that was challenging. And immune diseases or inflammatory diseases are inherently heterogeneous and complex

with multiple underlying drivers. And I've seen it personally myself. My sister's been in and out of the hospital on cycles of treatment failures for the last 20 years. And this is fairly common for patients with inflammatory diseases where there are cycles of treatment failure. So the physicians will go through multiple rounds of therapies hoping to hit the target. It always screams for diagnostic pairing tools. But the physicians generally go in blind, not knowing what the underlying drivers are for the disease. And so they'll cycle through treatment options that focus on one target.

specifically, the treatment will go through a course of four to 16 weeks. The patient will have failures. They'll go through another therapy, targeting another action. And so at least about 89% of patients really dissatisfied with current therapeutic options, about 60% failures. And then long-term use of the therapeutics causes complications and health challenges. So what we're working at NOAA is a more holistic approach. So we are developing. small molecules that address the three key drivers for inflammatory diseases involving barrier dysfunction. So barriers being our skin, our gut, eyes, heart, even the neurons in our brain.

And these novel trimodal therapies are able to address multiple disease drivers simultaneously to increase the probability of success and confer the potential for disease modification a resolution of these chronic inflammatory diseases. Very good. Very complex stuff. And you... High level is not a strong suit. Yeah, no, no, no.

No, that's... And you chose obviously an area from the get-go in your career, right? Or organic chemistry that is not for the faint of heart. So... But I love the area. It's always been sort of a kind of a personal interest of mine, right? Like this autoimmune space. And largely because it's just there's not like there's hardly any very, you know, solid treatment

options, right? Like you just kind of painted the story of like what most patients have to go with. And I think, you know, most of our audience that will likely listen to this does know someone, right, whether it's a friend or family that suffers from some sort of autoimmune, autoimmune disease. So obviously in massive market, solving, you know, looks like you're solving for a very, very real, real need as well. So kudos, kudos to you for not, not being afraid to tackle, you know, large challenges. So yeah. It's definitely fun. You can watch, I always tell my kids to watch Kersa Garrett, if you know the one. It's a immune system. It's a complex thing. And yeah,

we're only addressing really just the surface, but trying to understand and integrate that complexity into a solution. Got it. And one follow-up question before I asked you about like the current stage, no, is that right now. But you mentioned the molecules that you're working with are largely targeting kind of the lining-related kind of issues. And maybe tell me understand that for someone,

although I did actually like organic chemistry in my undergrad. It was one of my favorite courses, but not nearly as an expert in this area's view. So if I'm a freshman in high school, what do you mean by that? where these molecules help to kind of solve these these lining issues. So when our first indication, our first use case is atopic dermatitis. And atopic dermatitis, much like ulcerative colitis, is actually a breach in the skin's barrier or a breach in the barrier of the living,

the lining of the gastrointestinal system, where that breach in the barrier not only disrupts the barrier itself. so leading us prone to infection or external environmental contaminants, but also triggers inflammatory responses. And again, the cycle of which comes first, sort of chicken or the egg is the barrier breached or the inflammation process causes the barrier to be breached. And it's, again, you know, a point of debate for many physicians.

But the inflammatory component is critical because there is inherently, you know, an underlying. systemic inflammatory component. So what we're doing is not only addressing the inflammatory component, which, again, the majority of drugs on the market are focused on, but we are also addressing that breach in the barrier. So we upregulate pathways associated with reformation or advancing terminal differentiation or reformation of that barrier so that we can not only curb the inflammation,

but also restore that barrier function to prevent future occurrences. And again, all while conferring antimicrobial efficacy so that we can prevent those infections that the host is susceptible to because of the breach and the barrier. Got it, got it. Yeah, in my days with Juve, which was really more of a direct-to-consumer health company, got to know a lot of natural health influencers that talked a lot about this idea of a leaky gut, right? And what happens, you know, when the barrier is breached.

reached, right? And the host of problems that leads to and some one natural path that I've heard about is, you know, people going on a certain diet, right, to help sort of heal the lining. But it sounds like these molecules actually, it really will accelerate sort of the healing of that lining to prevent some of these. 100% infections, autoimmune related kind of downstream effect. So very cool. So NOAA therapeutics for everyone listening, NOAA is NOAA. So NOAAtherapeutics.com is the website. You can go learn a little bit more about the science of Carla and her team are developing. But give us a sense. before we kind of go back in time and get your take on various functions of a kind of a

life science startup, give us a sense for kind of where the company currently is. You know, we're recording this in Q4 of 23. Absolutely. Where are you at? So we're very early stages of company. So we are pre-clinical biotech. And we're residents of JJ Innovation, J-Labs and Mars, which is Canada's largest incubator. And we're just closing our oversubscribed pre-seed.

So we're in a very exciting time for us where we have, you know, verified preliminary results that are exciting enough to warrant investment. And in closing our round, we're really excited to jump back into the lab and really advance our preclinical program, not just for atopic dermatitis, but advancing into systemic inflammatory diseases like ulcerative colitis. Got it. So preclinical sounds like you very successful with this recent fundraise. I mean, there's not, in this current fundraising environment, right? I know. I mean, that's not an easy task to over subscribe around.

So congrats on that. And I'd like to get you later on in the conversation around kind of what's worked for you and your journey fundraising. But yeah, that's awesome. It would be fun to kind of continue to watch what you and your team do at Noah. So with that said, let's jump into kind of my first question, which is largely around kind of early stage development and how to how to be as efficient as possible, right? And so, you know, what you're doing at,

Noah is probably actually a perfect analog to this to this topic, right? When you're you're dealing with, you know, pretty limited funds in most in most cases, but trying to make, trying to reach sort of the next inflection point in product development. So, you know, thinking back either to your early days, kind of on more the device drug side or even, even now, right, with what you're doing at NOAA? What's your best advice for other entrepreneurs that are trying to, trying to be as efficient as possible, you know, with limited capital? So we always ensure that the work that we're doing is aligned. So not only alignment with it. I think the month that I opened up the company last summer, I went out and spoke with four patient advocacy groups.

Just to verify that I wasn't crazy and that the need that I was perceiving from my experiences was a legitimate need across the board. But not only did we speak with the patient advocacy groups, but we very early on had outreach to later stage sophisticated investors, pharmaceutical partners or industry partners, and verified not only what we were doing the value of what we were doing, but exactly as you mentioned, which of the key inflections would we need to trigger those subsequent rounds of investment and trigger early co-development interest and ensure that all of our work that we were executing had function and value inflection associated with it and identifying again the minimum inflections required to trigger not only this round of financing but subsequent round of financing so that we could have a longitudinal path forward.

We also absolutely like ecosystem support. So, you know, reaching out with the non-deluded funding supporters, reaching out with the ecosystem supporters, finding those champions, that was really critical at a very early stage for us because And if you're down in Boston at Bio and you've got five other people at a party, like tapping on shoulders for investor contacts for you, that, you know, quintuples your workflow. Yeah, that's good stuff. And it reminds me of a conversation. I literally just had this morning. I was talking with one of our consultants at Fastway.

We were talking about, you know, just in general, like startups that are sort of actively sort of in the public domain, talking to, you know, having a lot of conversations, discussions versus those that operate in stealth mode. And I don't want to like totally, I mean, there's maybe some good rationale to be completely stealth. But from my experience, you have to be talking to a lot of people, even early on, right? And that's not just investors. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So even with your like clear domain expertise and track record in the space, you're still at the various early, earliest stages talking to advocacy groups,

just confirming, right, that you're on, yeah, this is the path that we think is best, right? And confirming that there's a real need to solve here. And, you know, and probably that's,

you know, you're sort of killing two birds with one stone in the sense that you're making, you're raising awareness for, for what you're doing at NOAA with these advocacy groups, right? In the event that you want to come circle back around, you know, at a later stage.

It speaks to, it speaks to efficiency, right? Like, not only are you doing one activity, but that one activity has three outputs. Yeah, yeah, such a good point. And one of the things that stood out kind of in just hearing you kind of answer that, answer that question is thinking, like thinking ahead, right, looking around the corner.

And obviously you're you're acutely focused on, you know, closing this seed stage to get to those next inflections points. But also thinking about what are the inflection points after that, right? So you're going to close this. Yeah, yeah. And so that's one of the things that, you know, just talking, talking to other other founders and CEOs that seems like maybe is underappreciated a lot is, is that that more long-term view, right?

You know, there's obviously all of us are, you know, tend to have, you know, tend to highly focus on what's, what's very, very, very close in front of us. But if you're not thinking about that next round and. Yeah, one of the things I tell my kids is when you're playing, when you're playing chess with someone, it's not the move ahead that you think. It's not your opponent's move ahead that you think, but it's the move that you're going to make after your opponent's next move. Yeah, yeah, certainly a lot of stress.

It reminds me the conversation I had with Kate Rumroll, who's the CEO of Obelative Solutions. And she touched on that very same thing, right? Like that's sort of the, you don't always get it right, of course, right? But the onus is on a founder's CEO to be looking around the corner, right? And not just with one plan to address what you think is around the corner, but multiple plans. But plan, A, B, C, D, and F, 100%. 12 steps ahead in every direction. Right.

And you mentioned you're in, you're leveraging, Mars and then J-Labs, right, to kind of incubators, I guess, for lack of a better description or like part of the kind of startup ecosystem. How important is that, has that been, right, to either previous companies you've been involved with in earlier stages or even, even NOAA for that. Absolutely. So the incubator within the, we are residents of J-Labs, but it's actually very recent as of yesterday. So in terms of the support, the mentorship and the connections has really been incredible. And I mean, I have to absolutely lean.

It's been much even before that. There are a number of ecosystem partners in Ontario, the Ontario Bioc Sciences Organization, Life Sciences, Ontario, Ontario, Centers of Innovation. There's an excellent program, the Canadian Entrepreneurs and Life Sciences. These are all incubator accelerator programs, the Biomedical Zone at not called,

oh, I think it's not Ryerson anymore, but I can't remember the name. But these are all really excellent programs that have been, you know, ideated by founders and operators or, you know, ecosystem partners who have supported us along the way. The knowledge that we've gained has largely been either supported or sort of ideated or enabled by those groups. Our residency at Mars has been.

and, you know, extremely aligned with executing on our goals. But one of the very early programs that I can speak to is the business skills development program, which was a very small grant. It was only $25,000. And it was, you know, within, for the sole purpose of increasing the skills of executive levels or even training of staff. And with that small sum or that small bursary, I could identify all of my, all of the areas in which I identified that I had shortcomings so that I wanted to improve upon from a development,

self-development or career development perspective. And that not only enabled me to identify mentors in this space and connect me with the greater ecosystem, but gave me the skills that I needed to start NOAA. It was, you know, just the support that we've been afforded with these programs. and again, the support of the facilities and the incubator programs has been phenomenal. We would not be here without it. Yeah, one of the things that seems like stands out, just hearing you kind of riff a little bit about your experiences with incubators is it's just your framework around just always be learning, right? It seems like you're very naturally curious.

And that's a common trend that I see with a lot of successful founders and CEOs is they're always interested in learning more. and being open to receptive to feedback. And looking at your background, you know, I could see someone saying, really, really currently? Like, you're getting that much value out of an incubator. I mean, you've kind of been around a lot of startups at this point. But yet you're still, you know,

sounds like talking to a lot of people, right? Constantly kind of leaning into what else you can learn and pick up on. 100%. Right. You get out what you ask for. And never be afraid, never be afraid to ask. Yeah, yeah, that's really good stuff. Let's transition a little bit to your,

experience going from peer play kind of research, if you will, from your PhD to industry. And I know you touched on the fact that you always knew kind of you wanted to land, you know, you wanted to be a company builder. You wanted to land on the industry side. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of academics that listen to this, to this podcast, a lot of clinicians, physicians, et cetera, that have an idea, right? They have this thing that kind of keeps bothering them. It's a scratch that, or an itch, they keep one. They want to scratch, you know, it keeps, it continues to itch.

but they don't know kind of how to make that transition. So when you think about your experience there, you know, after, I think, you know, 10 plus years now, like building, building companies, was there something that either really stood out in that journey, you know, kind of in that transition to industry or just, just other kind of, you know, words of wisdom, right, to other folks that are in that same boat that want to make the move to industry? I actually, I recently was a keynote speaker at McGill. They asked me to come back, the Graduate Student Association.

And the title of the talk was founding and funding a company. And I knew better than to give the talk myself because nobody wants to hear from me. It's not that they don't. I mean, I definitely like talking. But it's the life science ecosystem. Again, I cannot say more. It takes a village. So instead of me being the only speaker talking, what I did for the students,

was bring in three investors and incubators, like a series of stacked, layered system to have the students and have the professors, have an awareness that the growth of a company isn't just creating it. The growth of a company is longitudinal. And you could be here if you're lucky for five years. And it depends on your goals, right?

But you could be here five to 10 years. And so it's understanding the longitudinal path and what is required, not just at the ideation stage, but as you're moving through each stage of development. So in that lecture, I think, again, one of the things that I could give to the students and to the academic supervisors is the connection to the persons who are going to enable them to grow in that ecosystem.

So I brought it in an incubator program, an early stage investor, a later stage investor, and convinced my law firm to volunteer an IPC, strategist so that they could talk with the students about the importance, you know, where's the value coming from within a company? And so, you know, as it's as it's much been in my career, I wanted the students to understand that this isn't something that you do alone. There are many people that are involved and I mean, even this show, right? Like this is this is exactly what is required to build an ecosystem and to build successful companies. It's, it's, it's

awareness of what you don't know. Yeah, that, I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. And it's funny that you even mention this podcast, because I still get people that listen, that, that respond to me or that listen to, that listen to Metzider and they're like, well, Scott, why do you continue to do these, these, these, uh, record these episodes? And, um, because it's, it's, it's totally sort of a, a side project or a side hobby for me, right? Um, and, uh, and I always come back to them and say, well, like, look, that that's, the number of people that I, that I get to connect with and have conversations with is amazing in and of itself, right? But I always, I mean, there's always like a handful of learnings that I, that I, selfishly that I get out of these, out of these discussions,

you know, which is, which is critical, you know, for, for, you know, my own work and, and the companies that I'm working on. So I couldn't agree with you more that like, you know, especially as a founder, CEO, right, kind of operating under this guy, under the guys that you're, you're probably your top two initiatives are one keeping money in the bank, right? But also building out a team, right? Whether that's full-time employees, whether it's a kind of a hybrid of, you know, consultants and employees. But, you know, that's sort of the, that's, you know, those are kind of the top two things. And it sounds like you're, that message that you delivered, right, is like, you know, look, you're not going to be able to do this alone, right? You've got to

build out a network of people to kind of push the boulder up the hill. Yeah, that's good stuff. I love, I love that the fact of how you, how you frame that up, too. I kind of speaks to speaks to how you think as well as that you didn't just give a traditional talk, right? You brought in, you brought in a lot of those value creators along with you. Yeah, I think I can, I can speak. So Noah as a name of a company is, there's actually two different meanings for it. So we have the investor-friendly version, which is, it says that's a Maori term. So my partner lived in New Zealand for seven years. And, you know, we're not, we're not afraid of a challenge. And so in, in Maori culture there's two opposing terms noah and tapu tapu is everything traditional conservative and by the rules and uh noa is

everything defying convention and and breaking free from preconception so that is you know one of the one of the things that we hold very dear but the other possibly more legitimate name that was perhaps uh had dated on a park bench over a bottle of wine by my founder of myself, was when I was in grad school, I had, not everybody has great experience in grad school because you very often have supervisors, you know, you don't necessarily get to pick depending on what your interests are. And you can have a bad experience or you can have a good experience. But my cousin, bless her, she had a bad experience.

And one of the piece of advice that she told me when I was entering into grad school was take the students out and get them drunk and find out the truth. And they'll tell you, you will meet amazing people in your life. And those amazing people will extend their network to you. And when you ask who you should meet and who you should be connected with, who can help you along your way, they'll connect you with other amazing people. Or because they're awesome, they will tell you, this person might be, you know, pain in the ass, but they will be able to help you in this X, Y, and Z.

So I had this theory in grad school called the Web of Awesome, and it was, you know, that you're a point contact in this web of these incredible people. And if you meet all these amazing people or awesome people on the way, that they will increase this network of awesome people. But Serena, my co-founder, said we can't call it WoWAS, so we call it Network of Awesome. Ah, that's such a phenomenal story. I love this little insight.

Hey there, it's Scott, and thanks for listening in so far. The rest of this conversation is only available via our private podcast for MedSider Premium members. If you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. You'll get full access to the entire library of interviews dating back to 2010. This includes conversations with experts like Renee Ryan, CEO of Cala Health, Nadine Miarid, CEO of CVRX, and so many others. As a premium member, you'll get to join live interviews with these incredible medical device

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