The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Saving Lives: Joseph Nounou’s Revolutionary ResPen for Overdoses

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Saving Lives: Joseph Nounou's Revolutionary ResPen for Overdoses Aurospharma.com About the Guest(s): Joseph Nounou, MD, MBA, is an innovative anesthesiologist passionate about expanding the accessibility of life-saving medical interventions. From a young age, Joseph was inspired to pursue a career in medicine, culminating in his graduation from medical school and residency as an anesthesiologist. In addition to his medical expertise, he pursued an MBA from the Haslam School of Business at the University of Tennessee to understand the business elements of getting medical products to market. With a commitment to empowering individuals, Joseph developed the ResPen, an affordable and accessible way to administer life-saving medication to victims of drug overdoses. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss is joined by visionary anesthesiologist, Joseph Nounou, MD, MBA. As they embark on a thought-provoking conversation, the spotlight is on Joseph's revolutionary creation, the ResPen, designed to rescue individuals from life-threatening situations like drug overdoses. With over 107,000 overdose fatalities a year in the US alone, Joseph's groundbreaking device is poised to change the landscape of emergency medical intervention. The discussion explores the intricate balance of medicine and business behind the invention, Joseph's personal journey, and his unwavering commitment to saving lives. During the episode, Joseph and Chris delve into the growing opioid and fentanyl crisis that underscores the need for the ResPen. By focusing on creating a fast-acting solution that even those without medical training can use, Joseph aims to significantly reduce the death toll from overdoses. The conversation also highlights the ResPen's application for cardiac arrest situations, stressing the critical few minutes during which a life can be saved. Beyond discussing this life-saving device, Joseph offers insights on how partnerships and investments can accelerate their mission, and how listeners can get involved. Key Takeaways: Joseph Nunu, MD, MBA, is behind the development of the ResPen, a life-saving device aimed at reducing fatalities from drug overdoses and cardiac arrests. The ResPen is an innovative solution that allows non-medical personnel to administer crucial medication in emergency situations. Drug overdoses claim over 107,000 lives annually in the US, highlighting the urgent need for accessible emergency interventions like the ResPen. Joseph emphasizes the potential of partnerships and investments to bring the ResPen to market faster, urging listeners to get involved in the mission. The FDA's fast-track designation could expedite the ResPen's journey to the public, aligning with the urgency of the opioid crisis. Notable Quotes: "The worst person in the world is probably someone who's evil, so don't be evil." – Chris Voss "It turns out that 350,000 people die outside of the hospital every year from sudden cardiac arrest." – Joseph Nunu "In that period of time, the brain will die. The brain only lives for about five to eight minutes without oxygen." – Joseph Nunu "It's a whole jumbo jet full of people every single day and nobody really pays that much mind because it's just the baseline." – Joseph Nunu "We have a lifesaving medication that really could use some political backing and really could use a quality partner in the pharmaceutical industry." – Joseph Nunu

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Voss Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think that makes it official. We are going on our 17th year now. And what is it?

We've got over 2,100 episodes you can find on The Chris Voss Show. As always, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all the brilliant journalists, all the great book authors. They come on and share stories, improve your life, get your knowledge base more. Because the worst person in the world is the dumbest? I don't know if that's true, but I just made it up. The worst person in the world is the dumbest i don't know if that's

true but i just made it up the worst person in the world is probably someone who's evil so don't be evil that's the message of the chris wash show go to goodreads.com for chance christmas linkedin.com for chance christmas chris voss won on the tick tockety and all those crazy places in the internet too we have a wonderful young man on the show with us today. At least that's what his mother told me. We have Joseph Nunu, MD, a doctor on the show, and we're going to be talking to him about his insights and his work, et cetera, et cetera. From a young age, Joe, who is a doctor and also has an MBA, possessed in an unstoppable possession. I'm going to make a small pause here.

We're going to edit that. Joe, from a young age, was possessed with an unstoppable passion for helping others and a thirst for knowledge. A fifth grade project on the heart convinced him that a career in medicine was his life's goal, and he went on to graduate from medical school and residency to become an anesthesiologist. It was during this time that he began developing a way for anyone, even those with no medical training, to administer life-saving medication to victims of drug overdoses.

I probably need one right now for the amount of coffee and caffeine I've got. In order to understand the business aspects of getting such a product into the hands of consumers, he attended and graduated with an MBA from the Haslam School of Business at the University of Tennessee. With his medical business training, as well as the belief that the power to help each other should belong to each of us, he developed the ResPen, an affordable, accessible way to save lives. Welcome to the show, Joe. How are you? I'm doing great, Chris. Thank you for having me, and thank you for that fine introduction.

I just read your bio. That or I wholesale made that up. I'll let the audience. So give us the dot coms where we want people to find you on the interwebs. So the easiest place to find me is at the rospharma.com. That's A-U-R-O-S pharma, P-H-A-R-M-A dot com. On there, there are some links that'll introduce you to ways that you can contact me. I'm very accessible. Sometimes I get busy like all of us, but I want to be reachable to those folks who need to talk and perhaps need help or need direction or want to lend a hand on your part of the mission. You've actually given me this cool idea I had with my improv ramble that I did. Maybe what I should do on the show is I should read people's bio

and then it's a game to see if the bio was really the person. So you have to listen to the whole show to find out if the bio is truly that person or it's not. Is this truly the person or not? You got to watch the show to find out. I love it. All right. We got a new agenda for the show. So Joe, tell us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there at Aros Pharma. Basically, we focused our energy and our efforts on bringing a new medication to the people who need it most. And this is a medication that will help folks who are not breathing. A lot of times we think about those folks as being victims of drug overdose, but it could also be drowned victims. It could also be cardiac arrest, folks who've just had a heart attack and dropped dead.

So we've got this new medication, and we've taken it from infancy, and we've now got positive proof of concept studies that we successfully completed this summer. And we're well on our way to bringing this to market, Lord willing, within the next few years. And what is it like? What's a comparative thing in the marketplace that maybe people are familiar with that this product is supposed to improve on? The closest thing would be Narcan, also known as Naloxone, which is the generic Narcan. It's a nasal spray. You can get it over the counter now, which I think is fantastic. And it saved a lot of lives over the years. Narcan works when you squirt it in the victim's nose and it blocks the opiates that are circulating in the victim's system that prevents them from breathing. The problem is a lot of times people have overdosed on a non-opiate, heavy tranquilizer, sometimes veterinary tranquilizers, and sometimes just massive

doses of fentanyl. And the Narcan doesn't work at all for that. And sometimes, yeah, yeah, it doesn't, which is crazy. And we don't talk about it enough, but the reality is we don't have anything better. And that's where RS Pharma comes in with the Rest Pen. And I imagine, you know, I think I've seen like even billboards where these are the pens that people carry around. Are they the ones more for diabetics? Were you jamming in the leg? You know, it could be for diabetes.

I'm not sure which billboards you're referring to. This product that we're talking about today, it's not currently on the market. We've got these proof of concept studies. We still got to go through the FDA process, which we expect will take less than three years. Really? They got it sped up there at the FDA. Yes. Good for you for noticing that. So actually, typically, the FDA requires, it takes about seven years to get it through regulatory processes in clinical trials. However, the FDA does have a fast-track designation that is reserved for medications like ours that have already proven to be safe and are of high need and presents a low risk to the population.

Those medications are sometimes given a fast-track designation that can get them through the clinical trials in about two years, so we'll say two to three. That's pretty awesome. I guess it's very different than like a drug development. No. No. This is drug development. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. When they developed, yeah, whenever they develop emergency medications, they put the priority on it. Okay. So if you've got a new medication that makes your eyelashes longer, the FDA will be a little bit slower on that, especially if it's a new molecule. Maybe it'll cause

blindness in the long term and things like that. But with certain medications that meet the criteria that our medication does, they allow the drug development to take place more quickly. I like that. We're developing here at the Chris Voss Show a drug to try and end stupid people and not in the,

not in probably the end most people want, but that's not right, Chris. But so what we do is we pay Mike Tyson to punch people in the face that are just really stupid. And we're going to hire him to go all over the tour, all over the nation. It's a lot of work.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's going to turn out, but if you ever think about that as a side pen where you can just, I don't know, jam it in their leg or they can, you know, start it through their nostrils, it's a good idea, I think. Give us some thought, Chris. And I'll put your name on it. We'll call it the Avoss pen or something.

The Tyson Byte. Call it that. Good stuff. I bring that up because Friday is the big thing and and I'm excited to see him do his work. So tell us about your life, how you grew up, in your words. What got you interested in getting involved in the field you did, becoming a doctor? I mean, not everybody can do that. I can't stand blood, so I just can't ever be a doctor.

It's a really interesting question, Chris. And I have to say that I've always been into science. In fact, I remember being seven years old, my mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I said, what do you call somebody who does science all day? And she said, a scientist. And I'm like, that's it. That's what I want to do. And from there, it blossomed into medicine. You kind of touched on my experience in the fifth grade doing a project on the heart. I thought, wow, this is really cool. And I did have the fortune of having a grandfather who was a general practitioner. He graduated in the 40s before penicillin was even

invented. So he practiced medicine in a very different time than what we are living in today. And it's wild. and some of the stories he told me about how how they treated infection it's it's i'll just i'll just tell you a shot imagine they use a lot of sawing maybe i don't know they gave shots of arsenic and mercury in the in the hiney and that's just you know heavy metal poisoning will will definitely destroy arsenic and mercury. Wild stuff. My wife puts that in my coffee every morning.

It's great. How does it taste? I've never tasted it. I can't taste it anymore. My tongue is mostly melted away. It must be working. I'm not even married. That's the weird part.

But evidently it's working because I think I am. I love it. That's great. Anyways, just continuing on. So I graduated. Oh, sorry. When I graduated college, I went on to medical school with the intention of becoming a cardiologist. Decided I really didn't want to go down the road of cardiology because it requires a three-year stint in internal medicine, which is not something that interested me.

Really love surgery. Plus, you probably hate people's lungs. Do you hate people's lungs? Is that why? No, no, no. I don't hate anything. I'm just kidding. I'm a pretty loving guy.

I'm just kidding. I know you are. You know, we do the cardio jokes here on the show. Yes. No, we hear a lot about that at cardiologists and the pulmonologists, butting heads. There's definitely truth in that. Ended up going into surgery for a couple of years before I realized that those folks

basically lived at the hospital and really didn't know what to do, to be honest. And I was talking to one of the anesthesiologists I was working with as a resident and he's, you know, this is a great field. And we kind of talked about it for a while and decided that I was going to give it a go. And by grace of God, I just, you know, fell in love with it. It's been a fantastic experience. And it was actually in my training that I learned about these mechanisms that some medications have that cause people to breathe directly from the brainstem, goes down to the lungs, and it basically has the ability to revive people. And that's how I got to be here. And I'll save people from death because, I mean, do you have numbers on the deaths of people that your res pen will save?

Yeah, it's a great, it's a really good point, Chris. So when you, just looking at drug overdose victims, you lose about 300 people a day. It's 107,000 people a year. It's wild. It's a whole jumbo jet full of people every single day, and nobody really pays it much mind because it's just the baseline. It's what we have. That's unfortunate. And the reality is that the Narcan nasal sprays isn't able to help at least half those people because of the dose of fentanyl or the fact that they've overdosed on a non-opiate. So those people at the very least will be able to reach. In my mind, we'll be able to save the better portion of those 107,000 people. And really,

it's going to depend on people actually having the medication on hand, which is why it's so important to us to keep it accessible and affordable so that it is where it needs to be. The second area where this medication is really going to prove its worth is in people who have cardiac events, people who drop dead of a heart attack out in public. Believe it or not, probably. Lord willing, not. I hope not. Gosh, Chris. So it turns out that 350,000 people die outside of the hospital every year from sudden cardiac arrest. And the reality is that we don't have a current method to help these people breathe before the rescue squad gets there. We teach doing chest compressions, you know, the CPR. CPR.

Right? Mm-hmm. And then the ambulances are on their way. And even if they're quick it still takes them a good five minutes to get there and oftentimes it's you're looking at 15 20 30 minutes so in that period of time the brain will die the brain only lives for about five to eight minutes without oxygen really starts dying in about five minutes so really people that's brain died with oxygen it's wild right and but you mostly see them on like twitter and x and stuff and and a lot of them yeah a lot of them on the social media yeah yeah yeah right so the idea is that if the these

devices were available in public areas or in the homes of people who are at high risk right family members at high risk, then if somebody does have a cardiac event, you could treat them with this medication, and that would increase their survival from almost zero to, you know, we don't have numbers, but it would be significantly higher. We would save tens of thousands of lives, and that doesn't even take into account the 15 million people who die every year in hospitals. So we expect that it would actually reduce the mortality. Only, I think it's like one out of eight end up leaving the hospital after a cardiac event. So if we can increase that number to one out of 10, that 15 million cardiac event number, you'd make a pretty good dent in it. So we save a lot of people

yeah so we could save millions of lives yeah and loved ones you know there's people that are going through all sorts of things but yeah i mean that's one thing i was worried about i think i think my mom always worries about and she's 82 is you know you have a uh a sudden event and you either can't you know you're either alone or you or maybe you know people can't the ambulance can't get to you in time you know i've i've seen people that have had car accidents that you know even then they still can't get to the hospital quickly because they have to stabilize them and then they have to wait for a life flight and yeah you know there's a lot of time that's lost it seems like forever And wow, only eight minutes to save the brain.

Yeah, it's scary out there. My dad had a stroke one time in front of me. Would it help for strokes and stuff like that? Because I guess that's more in the brain, right? Yeah, so strokes are in the brain. And the question that I would turf back to you is, did the stroke affect their breathing? Neuroscience is a part of medical school, but it's not my area of specialty. I think usually when folks have a stroke,

they're still able to breathe. So I don't know that that would be as much of a benefit. But if you imagine a scenario where somebody just doesn't have, is not making enough respiratory effort, these are the people that would most benefit from this medication. And the fentanyl crisis is out of control, and there's so much of it. And it's in a lot of stuff, from what I understand. They put it in all the other drugs people do, so you can just be thinking you're going to smoke a joint, and there's some fentanyl in there. Yeah. I think it was 60 Minutes or something.

They had a thing, and they showed how much fentanyl can kill you in a powder form as a little vial and i was just like holy crap that looks like you know that's how much nothing i have in them yeah the way i would encourage people to visualize it is if you take a maximum strength tylenol and you cut it up into a thousand pieces what just one of one of those pieces would be enough to kill a child or an older person. And two of those pieces will kill everybody else. The people who aren't used to opiates, which is most people. But add three or four of those one thousandth of a ton of pieces and you're going to even kill the others.

It's awful. It's just so strong. We've lost so many great people. I mean, every person i mean i'm not i'm not saying some people are better but you know tom petty prince you know there's a lot of amazing artists that have died of of fentanyl abuse yeah it affects the the entirety of the socioeconomic scale the very rich and the very poor and everybody in between it affects the young and the old. It affects men and women, men more than women. But we had a four month old, not too far from where I live here in Tennessee, who died because her parents were using and they had fentanyl on their hands. And when they picked her up, enough of it got absorbed

and she died. So it's these tragedies that are absolutely preventable that really give me the inspiration and the motivation to keep going. Now, on your website, you have several different things. You have pipeline impact and investors. Talk to us about what you're wanting listeners to hear out there us, reach out to perhaps their state representatives or congressmen and say, you know, make them aware of the work that we're doing. We're a relatively small fish, and they have lots of people going to Washington. We've got lobbyists. We've got folks on commercials, on TV, on commercials. The reality is that there really are so-saving medication that really could use some political backing and really could use a quality partner in the pharmaceutical industry. Somebody who says, you know what, we're going to help that guy save these millions of lives.

We've got the know-how, we've got the resources, and we're going to make that happen. And honestly, that would be a beautiful story for them and for the entirety of society. We think about drugs and overdoses and cardiac events, just think in the United States, all these numbers we talked about are just in the US. The reality is this is happening worldwide. I mean, there are tons of people we could save and we could do it together. Yeah. One of my friends had been dating a guy and she didn't know that he had a fentanyl or a drug problem. They were just starting to date, and she died in his home. She found him, of course, sadly, after he quit breathing for a long time, and that was over.

But in that case, if she'd found him in time, and she really struggles with just the guilt of it and the fact that he died in her home. It's kind of really harsh to have to have that memory. But yeah, do you guys have some online communities that you're doing or outreach? I guess people contact you and you'll give them the lowdown. Yeah. The best place to reach us is on our website, arospharma.com. But also we do have a Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn that we recently started. So there's not a whole lot of activity on there yet. We literally just started that this month. We've been focusing on the science part of things because that's got to come first. But now that we've got these

positive proof of concept studies, we would love to have the involvement, awareness, and participation of anybody interested. And on the investors tab, are you looking for a certain type of investor, a certain net worth or investment? Are you looking for accredited investors or just anyone is open to everyone? So it's really open to everyone, but I'll be honest with you. The majority of the folks I encounter, they want to invest, obviously, different degrees depending on their financial position. And the reality is that this sort of investment we would require to make a positive impact really ought to come from a partnering pharmaceutical company. I'm not saying that's the only way forward, but I would love, I really think a partnership would be the

best way to go. If that doesn't come through, I'd say in the next six months, then we will be reaching out for what we call Series A money, where we basically use investor funds to start doing our clinical trials on our own, and we just will do it without a partnership. We just think it would be faster with a partnership. That's why I want to go that route, because time is life. Yeah, and time is money, too. it takes a bit to develop these drugs yeah you know you guys have been doing this for how many years now to develop this three and a half years it's to me i'm glad they do things earlier i guess i i don't know where i got some of my data that it takes a long time to do drugs anymore no you're you're not wrong. So we actually, we used a very carefully contemplated

strategy to reduce the time that it would take to bring this drug to market. So you're absolutely right. From the time that an organization starts on a mission until the time the drug reaches the market, you're easily looking at 10 years, easily. We're going to be able to get that down to about six. And we've done that because of, again, because of our strategy. And honestly, because, you know, call it luck, call it divine intervention. We've, we have hit on everything we've, we've gone for every time we hit a roadblock, we pivot and we're like, this is even better. And it's, it's just been fascinating to go through this experience and watching this product unfold. We've gotten a ton of advice and help from folks in the industry. And the success we've seen in three and a half years is very uncommon. So you're not wrong, Chris. That's great. That's great. I know there's prospectuses and legal financial details and there's some things

you can or can't promise. Is there any sort of promise return on investment that you can discuss? Yeah, I can discuss that. What we've done so far with the investors that we've partnered with is a convertible note, which is basically an agreement to pay back at an interest rate. The interest rate we have currently right now is 6%, which is pretty consistent with the market for this sort of thing. And what that does is it continues to accrue and then becomes payable when the product is licensed or any assets are divested. And with that, they can either take their 6% or they can apply their invested funds plus the 6% and then buy shares at today's value. So let's say, for example, this event takes place three years, and now they're in a position where they can either take 6% of their return or as a return, or they can take that money and buy shares with it.

And the shares, we sold it at a rate of just a dollar a share. And we'll say, it's very conceivable that this could turn to $50 to $100 a share without know, just drawing a straight line so that at that same time period, somebody who's invested, you know, $100, they'll have whatever that $10,000 at that point. So they can say, all right, so they'll take the $100 after a year, it's $106. And now they can buy 106 shares and then turn around and sell them for, you know, $10,000 basically. So that's how we've done it. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. So did they ever fully own an interest in the company that, I mean, like a stock market could just keep going up then? Yeah. So yeah, they're certainly welcome to. So at that event where they say, okay, we've now

licensed this property and they now have the option of buying those shares and keeping them. I mean, you don't have to buy them and sell them. A lot of people will keep the shares and let it grow as the company grows. So that's entirely up to the investor. Ride the tiger, ride the tide. And you're saving people's lives. So it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And you can do different stuff there. I think this is excellent. I mean, I hope I never have to be in a situation where I've got to revive somebody. But, you know, new life-saving innovations. It's just crazy.

2020 accidental drug overdoses killed more than 90,000 people, including adults and children. And usually with legally obtained medication. That's kind of interesting legally obtained medications yeah prince heath ledger i think britney murphy i know she had pneumonia but i don't know if drugs were involved with her too uh it's a lot of people don't think about it but you take the wrong combination of drugs and maybe you chase it down with a swig of you know jack and you just don't wake up you just don't wake up crazy man so one of the aspects of it is it doesn't have exposed needles and no medical training required that reminds me

of the scene in in pulp fiction you have to jam it into her heart with all your might and you're just like what so i imagine this this eases that sort of anxiety and concern and application, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And basically it would be in the shoulder, like an adultoid. You just kind of go up to them, and then you just hit the button, and it goes chunk, chunk. And then they have a dose, and it starts working in between about a minute, minute and a half. Wow. Save a life, save a brain.

Can we get this distributed across social media? I know some people. That's what we should do. We should have a sponsorship. I'm sponsoring you to just dose yourself. Save your brain. I'll just hand them out at events. I'll be like, you need this. I can tell. Anything more we haven't touched on or covered that you'd like people to know about you guys and how to get involved? I think the main thing I'd like for folks to know is that we really, you'll hear all the time, pharmaceutical companies, yada, yada. They've got kind of a bad reputation that they've earned along the way. I'm not saying they're all bad, certainly.

But the reality is that we have a lot of folks who don't trust the pharmaceutical industry and then they have a poor perception of them. I would encourage them to, instead of looking at this as a pharmaceutical company, look at this as a mission. We are here to deliver a medication. We have to give the company a name. And I would applaud anyone who has the ability to partner with us and pick this up and help us cross the finish line with it. You'll have a place and you'll have a place in history. There you go. You can make a difference in the world because that's what's important. And, you know, saving lives.

I mean, lives are, you know, I've seen a lot of people that have come back from drug overdoses and addiction, and they lead great lives. They're sober. And, you know, they struggle every day. I think, who's the Iron Man gentleman? I forget the actor who, you know, he struggles with addiction. And, you know, it's a daily fight for these folks, you know, every day. Yeah, it really is. They have to battle the addiction.

And I've seen addiction at work. It can be an ugly thing. And it can make people lose everything, lose their life, lose their money. And, of course, these are people that are loved ones. So final pitch out as we go out for people to get involved. Tell them how they can reach out to you, how they can handshake and get involved in the program and the dot com. Sounds good. So it's Aurospharma.com, A-U-R-O-S-P-H-A-R-M-A. On the website,

you can find out a little bit more about our mission and what we're working on. You can also find ways to contact us and reach us. And I encourage you to check us out on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and hopefully be able to work with folks to be able to save lives. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Joe. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Chris. You're a great guy. And I'm going to wait to have my first heart attack until you get this pen developed so

you can save me. Wait as long as you can. I think that's good advice for anybody. I'm definitely going to wait. Thank you. You hear that, buddy? You better wait. Anyway, thanks for tuning in to my audience.

Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschristmas, chrismas1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time and keep breathing.