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Midwest Momentum
Stories from the Midwest Start-Up community.
Midwest Momentum
Redefining Vision: A Pioneer’s Quest to Combat Myopia in Children
Host Michelle Gatchell shared how having Myopia cause major struggles in keeping up with lessons as a child. - a sentiment echoed by Myoptechs' CEO, Paul Grimm our guest on Midwest Momentum. Together, we traverse the exciting landscape of Ohio's biotech innovations, particularly Myoptechs' pioneering soft contact lens technology. Designed to do more than correct vision, these lenses are a promising venture in the fight against the progression of myopia in children, potentially preventing severe eye conditions down the line.
Hear Myoptechs' journey from the germination of a game-changing idea to the intricate dance of securing funding and partnerships. Paul Grimm shares insights into the significant role of The Ohio State University's technology, and the expertise of Dr. Tom Raasch in shaping Myoptechs. This episode discusses initial funding avenues—grants included—to the strategic alliances and brand building essential for navigating the complexities of the medical device industry.
Wrapping up, we spotlight the importance of early detection and intervention in myopia management, especially in the critical developmental window of young children. Tune in and behold the clarity with which Myoptechs is helping children to see not just the world before them, but a future bright with potential.
Time to hustle America. Roll up our sleeves and make dreams happen. Midwest momentum brings you stories of CEOs, startups, product development and founders doing whatever it takes to make their big idea happen. Here's me with momentum hoes Michelle catcher, shell catcher.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of Midwest momentum. We're re-checking out that momentum of the biotech industry in Ohio. Specifically, a Columbus, ohio, based company called my optics that I read about on Rev one ventures website, and Rev one ventures is a company in Ohio that helps other companies and entrepreneurs Accelerate innovation, much like what my optics is doing with their company. So I wish this company was around when I was a kid. It would have helped me with the disease of myopia that I suffered from, and they're working on making sure that children in the future don't also Fall victim to this disease. And joining me to tell you all about the innovation that's going on at my optics is CEO Paul Graham. Paul, thank you so much for joining me, oh.
Speaker 3:Thanks, michelle, really appreciate the invitation.
Speaker 2:Garsh, how I wish that I was younger and could benefit from what you all are doing these days.
Speaker 3:Thank you for saying that. We are incredibly compelled by the mission to help eyes of all ages. But specifically focused on my optics were a pediatric ophthalmic medical device company Developing a novel soft contact lens that can help a slow the progression of myopia. We can talk all about that and why that's important here in a moment, while also providing exceptionally clear vision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is really important because I I don't think it happens as much of these days as it did when I was younger, but you just don't get that. When I was younger you just didn't get diagnosed right away and you know, I suffered in elementary school Just trying to learn stuff because I couldn't, you know, see the board and All different funky things that if I was diagnosed probably sooner would have helped me out a lot, because when I was older I Like was getting like almost perfect scores on SATs and ACTs because I had glasses right.
Speaker 3:No, michelle, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head as far as how myopia has historically been discovered. It's been someone not being able to see the the board from the back of a classroom, which is also remarkable in that, as of right now, just over 25% of the globe is myopic, and the World Health Organization predicts that the prevalence of myopia is going to double in the next two and a half decades, where half of the world will be myopic. Parts of Eastern developed Asia are already over 70%. 70% of the population has Some level of myopia. It's very prevalent and our environment can cause it as well as our genes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I Mean I have never realized or never looked into it. I just knew I always had to wear glasses, right. But it's amazing when I read that statistic on one of your website pages, that you know 25, what was it? 2050? Yes, yeah, 2050 would be like 50% myopia across the world.
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Speaker 2:It's like I didn't realize even what I had with something a lot of people get. That's amazing to me.
Speaker 3:It is, it is, it is really. I mean the World Health Organization is basically called it one of the next Next great and not great in a positive way health epidemics, because it is so prevalent. And you know you spoke of earlier some of the challenges that a myope first experiences, which is, you know, quality of vision. You know, first and foremost, a Technology like myoptics or any any other sort of technology for myopia wants to fix the, the visual challenge, so you can see better and do better on tests and, you know, see screens better than you could before, etc. The challenge and investigators now know this and and and where the market is going in eye care is actually fixing another part of sort of the myopic, myopic disease is that as that myopia is getting worse, the eye itself is actually getting longer, the eye is elongated and that elongated eye later in life, decades after myopia first presents, causes an increased risk for some pretty scary eye conditions like glaucoma or retinal detachments or macular degeneration, because the back of the eye is disrupted and and as that eye gets longer, you know the myopia worsens. And then you know now technology is focused on addressing really two parts of the disease addressing on fixing the visual challenge, but also Incorporating some really cool optics that help actually and it's, our bodies are amazing slow eye growth, which also slows the progression. It's really, it's really fascinating.
Speaker 3:I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've heard a couple of doctors in my lifetime tell me I have flat eyeballs and that that is a big part of it and I'm wondering if it's because it got so elongated that it kind of flattened itself out.
Speaker 3:Well, no, it's interesting, it's funny how you use the term. You know flat eyeballs we might call that a flat cornea and there are some technologies that actually you know we're getting sort of far into the different modalities and correct. But you know, first and foremost, you know there's this big focus now on all of eye care based on that statistic we talked about that the World Health Organization stated that is focused on, just like I stated before, addressing both parts of myopia fixing the distance vision, but also slowing the eye from growing, and so there's different ways you can do that. There's a soft contact lens, like myoptics is trying to develop a special soft contact lens.
Speaker 3:There are some pharmaceuticals that companies are studying and are currently being utilized. There are glasses that provide this optical signal which can help slow eye growth. And then there is a hard contact lens you can wear overnight, which is called ortho keratology, and those contact lenses are specifically meant to reshape the cornea as one sleeps and you don't really notice it while you're sleeping. But if kiddos wear those every time, they can change the shape of the eye. That ultimately impacts the way light enters the eye, which also makes light focus in the right place in the eye, so it doesn't cause that eye elongation.
Speaker 2:Oh, very cool stuff Now with a biotech kind of business starting up. I mean, biotech in general costs a lot more money and you have a great connection because this is actually discovery right out of the Ohio State University, correct?
Speaker 3:That's right, and I work on a couple of different eye care projects. This is my primary focus now, and we've been fortunate to have a really good relationship with the Ohio State Innovation Foundation. And then, basically, the Ohio State Innovation Foundation holds the rights to technologies that are invented by university professors, and so we identified this technology invented by Tom Roche Dr Tom Roche at the Ohio State University just about a year and a half ago and started talking with them, and then there were some steps we had to take to ultimately finalize the license, and we've now had license to the technology from Ohio State for just under a year. So it's been a very quick year, but very pleased to have one at the top, and I'm not sure the university itself does as well as it could. In bragging about the Ohio State University College of Optometry, it's generally regarded as one of the top, if not tied for number one, optometric schools in the country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so OK, back to you regenerating GSD casebook. I saw on your website you guys have this world license.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's how we worked with Ohio State Innovation Foundation, also called OSIF as an acronym, to finalize our technology license, which is worldwide, all fields of use. So yes, we have worldwide exclusivity to the technology and we have to meet certain milestones and develop the technology. Obviously, we can't just sit on the technology right. We want to have partners that can develop technology and ultimately bring it to market.
Speaker 2:So does Dr Roush utilize still the OSU labs and things to test this within?
Speaker 3:So it's a very good point. So there's definitely a separation between, once the license is finalized, what's done at Ohio State and what's done by myoptics. Okay, dr Roush is a separate from his employment at Ohio State. He's a part-time consultant for myoptics, but we currently don't use any Ohio State facilities or technology that we don't pay for. We have to have that contractual relationship. So I know Dr Roush. When he spends his time working on myoptics, he's doing myoptics things, and when he spends his time working as a professor at Ohio State, he does Ohio State things.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So what does it take in a biotech business? I mean, I kind of hinted that it's usually more money than the norm.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Funding-wise. How hard was it to get started?
Speaker 3:Well, because of our existing relationships with Ohio State and some local partners, specifically Rev One that you mentioned, but also the state of Ohio, we were fortunate to get some initial grant funding to achieve design and prototype development and actually start our clinical plan. So the state of Ohio Department of Development has a technology validation and startup fund known as TVSF. That has various levels of funding. But for startups like ours we applied for and received about $150,000 in grant funding that can go towards specific milestones that we lay out and get buy-in from that team to develop the technology. Additionally, we applied for a grant that Rev1 manages called the Ohio State Concept Contract. It's specifically for technologies that come out of Ohio State Also identify the specific milestones that those funds could go to. So that was also $150,000 that we received early on to create value. So we had a call to walking around money a little bit of walking around money $300,000 to initially get the technology off the ground, do basic company formation things, but primarily start the design process of the contact lens, find the right partners that could help us manufacture development lenses and then do things like form a medical advisory board, get some regulatory feedback.
Speaker 3:You mentioned my website a couple of times. I appreciate that wwwmyoptexcom. We worked with a great local agency named Orogo Branding downtown that I worked with when I had much bigger budgets back in the day working for other companies that set up a nice website for us and also did really good branding work. But just basic stuff you need to do as a company to get things off the ground. We've made a really good use of that money to get those things accomplished.
Speaker 2:All right, let's take a break here and get some news from the rest of the Midwest. We'll be right back with Paul Grimm and my Optex right here on Midwest Momentum Time for a news update highlighting headlines from around the world. So Forbes magazine came out with the best states to start a business in 2024. You know, right now, millions of Americans are ditching their day jobs in pursuit of starting a business that will bring more happiness, fulfillment and, hopefully, more income. And a big part of doing that is having a successful business entry, and that all depends on the state that you're in, and Forbes magazine analyzed 18 key metrics across five categories to determine which states are the best and worst to start a business in. So I wanted to take a look at that. You know one of the key takeaways, if you will. They rated the overall best state to start a business with North Dakota, and it ranks the top choice for launching a business in 2024 because of its strong business climate, low cost of entry and funding opportunities that make it an optimal location for new ventures.
Speaker 2:Now, rounding out, the bottom is Vermont. It's at the bottom for because of factors such as startup costs, business climate, potential obstacles for startups, that mark it as less favorable option. The best and worst states by business survival rates. California leads the high business survival rate with 81.5%, reflecting a thriving business environment. Washington unfortunately struggles with the lowest survival rate of 59.2%. Now our number one state of North Dakota. They have a 77% survival rate. So that's still pretty darn high. No wonder they are the number one in the area as far as Costco for starting up a business.
Speaker 2:Kentucky is the lowest with $40. And Massachusetts is the highest with 500. Hello, massachusetts, what? But Massachusetts also has one of the most promising workforce, notable for its educated workforce, with 46% holding a degree. Colorado and Vermont also excel in this area. So, all of that being said, you know. Let me tell you what the top 10 are, because, for the top 10 are in the Midwest, which I love. So number one is North Dakota for best state to start a small business than Indiana, and then Arkansas is number three, number four is South Dakota, number five is North Dakota, six is Ohio, seven is Pennsylvania, eight is Alabama, nine is Utah and 10 is South Carolina. So all right, go Midwest for our top 10.
Speaker 4:We'll be back with more on Midwest, momentum Do you know what you want for your organization but encounter roadblocks getting there or are frustrated when things don't go as you hoped. You're not alone. Many organizations fail to execute their strategies successfully. Executive management partners can help. We provide unsurpassed results to help you manage your challenges, whether it's leadership training program, facilitation assessments, strategic planning, revenue generation or team effectiveness, emp delivers excellence through personalized, solution-based services. Contact us at wwwempartnersconsultingcom. That's empartnersconsultingcom.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Midwest momentum, where you hear the new ideas, innovations and investments happening in the Midwest. We even spot unicorns from time to time, all proving the Midwest is a great place to live and join the momentum of our startup community. And now our host, michelle Gatchel.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. The momentum continues. We are talking to CEO Paul Grimm from Myoptex in Columbus Ohio about their contact lens that they are developing to help children with myopia, and so I wanted to ask you, paul, are there children out there right now testing this? Are you in the testing phase already?
Speaker 3:No, the other thing that you think about when you think about biotech, and certainly it's less than pharmaceutical development, but the average time to market for a medical device and this is a large range the average range is three to seven years. So, even though I will say we just started our first clinical trial last week, testing, first and foremost, the visual acuity, that the vision of these lenses, because we've got a very unique design to Ultimately, as I mentioned before, slow the progression of the disease, which is a very unique design that you can see on our website. But first and foremost, we want to make sure that we can fix the distance vision and that's what's being tested right now. We started at the very beginning of 2024 to see some patients in the clinical setting and that'll finish up here within the next week.
Speaker 2:Wow cool.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:When we say stop the growth, I mean what ages are we growing?
Speaker 3:in that regard, that's interesting when you say stop the growth. Someone gave me feedback that maybe we should find a different way to speak. That but because stopping growth has never looked at as a good thing, specifically as you're talking about kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Definitely, an eyeball that is elongating and growing more than it should is not a good thing, as we've talked about. So ultimately, we're slowing the growth, slowing the progression of the disease by creating this optical signal, which has been clinically proven across the category, to help slow the progression, slow the growth of the eye, which in turn slows the myopia progression. So that's what we're trying to do and trying to prove that out early on through a series of clinical experiments.
Speaker 2:Can you identify this as a baby, as a five-year-old?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so great question. So myopia generally develops. I should ask you when do you remember first having trouble seeing the back of the room?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for me it was like five years old. Yeah, I mean, I could tell something was wrong up there.
Speaker 3:So myopia most certainly develops before someone's 10 years of age. You often hear folks between five kids, kiddos from five to seven years of age, beginning to experience those symptoms that you mentioned before. Then, really interestingly enough and there's curves that show this graphically. But I'll do my best to explain it it progresses, if it does progress. Myopia progresses very early on in a child's journey. Typically, the eye is done growing by our late teens or early 20s. So these technologies that are participating in what I call myopia control, optical correction, or some pharmaceuticals that are being identified to slow progression, actually are being studied and indicated in kiddos between seven, eight years of age, up through 12 to 13 years of age. So as the myopia is progressing early and often fastest, these unique technologies are utilized early on in the journey to slow progression, as it's happening.
Speaker 2:So when you are doing research of this type, how do you get the word out there?
Speaker 3:Well, I suppose at this stage of my journey, I'm most interested in making sure that a term that we use is strategic, that the eye care industry so big eye care companies know what we're developing because there are partners there. In some way they perform. Also, even though we've been fortunate to receive that $300,000 in grant funding that I referenced, that doesn't support a company for very long and everything we need to do. So my primary audience right now are eye care strategics, big companies and potential investors that invest in early stage companies like a Rev1 Ventures who, besides the grant funding, invests in startups like ours? So, getting awareness, that's what my campaign is around right now. My campaign the website is targeted at some of the materials that I mail out. The PowerPoints that I do or the emails that I send, are all aimed at a strategic audience of eye care companies and potential investors. So I'm not incredibly worried about getting the word out to consumers at this point, even though everyone is a consumer.
Speaker 2:Right Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know I was excited. I thought, oh man, can I still change it? But, like you said, I'm done developing at 20 and I'm over 20. So not much I can do. Well, lasik, I could go LASIK, right.
Speaker 3:You could to fix the distance vision right. Unfortunately, the length of the eye it's already grown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So when you're starting up and you worked in the Lens business before here- that's correct. So you kind of had connections already. But what kind of things did you know you had to do right away?
Speaker 3:Oh, that is an excellent question. So, wow, what kind of things. And I think back to what kinds of things we know we had to do right away. So certainly there were sort of five key areas that we're trying to create value in. The first is surround ourselves with the most qualified medical advisors in the space. So we had identified, along with Dr Rosh and chances of him listening to this even I'm going to send it to him, or who knows if he'll make it this far but this is how Dr Rosh is. We're identifying a short story because I love it. He hates it. But we're potentially going to work with a consultant I have another university to help us and the consultant ultimately had to say I can't work with you guys, it's a little out of my scope and I just don't have the time. But what he said to me in that reply was I'm jealous, you get to work with Dr Tom Rosh. He's on my Mount Rushmore of vision scientists. So yeah, to everybody that I can tell about Dr Rosh, just about how much of a gem he is, and I think that is a compliment that we should all aspire to being in the Mount Rushmore of our field.
Speaker 3:So, first and foremost, along with Dr Rosh, we formed an incredibly esteemed medical advisory board experts worldwide in myopia. That consists of an individual in the UK, dr Ian Flitcroft, an individual in Canada, dr Vashaka Thakrar, who's a clinician who has day-to-day experience seeing myopia and running a myopia management program. Dr Jeff Walene, who is the associate director for clinical research at the Ohio State University College of Optometry and also happens to be the interim dean at the OSU College of Optometry. And then Dr Mark Bulamore, last but not least, a worldwide renowned expert in myopia. And so we formed a group who could help lead our thinking on the right steps to help develop the technology. So that was sort of item number one connect with the connectors and the advisors.
Speaker 3:Second would be get to a prototype as fast as possible, and that's why, when we had the resource of being able to work with Dr Rosh in a part-time consultancy type of role his expertise in optical design and there are some fantastic visual simulations that you can do just using a computer that he could test different designs in the computer, which helped him then program a design that we could go find a manufacturer for and, to the next stage, find a manufacturer that could help us make it, and so that's a connection that we already had. We've got a great contact lens manufacturing group that helps make development lenses and they can actually mold these contact lenses and not to go into too much about contact lens manufacturing, but basically 95% of what consumers are wearing are molded contact lenses. There are other ways to make contact lenses, called machine-laving, but most of the market, like daily disposable contact lenses, are all molded contact lenses. And the last step really was to start our clinical work. So advisors help us lay the path for development.
Speaker 3:Dr Rosh designed an elegant design, his innovation right, and then we found the right manufacturing partner to make it. We went through a series of iterations to get the right sort of first prototype and then we found a clinical group to help with the first clinical trial, which, as I mentioned before, is underway. So those are really our tips of the last 10 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so 10 months in, Wow. And so you said three to seven years for this kind of a product. But Are you constantly looking for money, I mean for this kind of a research development? You're doing your first clinical. How many clinicals in a year do you do?
Speaker 3:Right. Our current plan is we'll have three clinical studies done in 2024. In the purpose of this, I'm calling it our early clinical development plan 2024, that is our objective Finish these early clinical studies which ultimately will help us identify, and we're going to make a lot of prototypes. Michelle, we're going to test a lot of prototypes on I in this year and that ultimately, at the end of the year, we'll hopefully identify two prototypes that we will take into longer extended on-eye testing, which then actually will hopefully write. The goal of those studies will be to show that the contact lens does slow the progression of myopia, which is usually detectable within 12 weeks to six months of actually wearing one of these methods of optical correction to manage myopia.
Speaker 3:So, 2024, to your point about raising money. It is a constant cycle. Right now, it is a tough market to raise institutional capital. I mean, I went to a healthcare conference pretty soon after taking on the reins of this organization and they were showing 2022 versus 2021. Basically, it was like the head healthcare banker from JPMorgan. 2022's biotech funding from private equity or eventual capital was half of what it was in 2021.
Speaker 2:Whoa, that's not a good sign.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so things. As soon as interest rates started ticking up and the Fed was making moves and people became a little less risk, people became risk averse. So did the funding. That being said, when you present a thoughtful plan and you can use things like this grant money, as we have, very efficiently to create value for the technology, it's really all about for potential investor.
Speaker 3:It's about creating value and de-risking the technology as much as possible. So we lay out a number of financial raises. We're not trying to raise all the money at once for three to seven years but, to your point, three to seven years of activity. Pardon me, but it is about an investor relations strategy which constantly keeps current and potential investors involved in your company's progress. So I think the answer is yes to your question. It just took me two to three minutes to get there.
Speaker 2:How can investors or anyone that wants to find out more about you find you?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, we're at wwwmyoptexcom. Myoptex is also on LinkedIn. As we start our early awareness building campaign, we'd love to talk to anyone hear anybody's personal experiences about their journey with Biopia. The more conversations, the better.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, gosh. Paul, thank you so much for joining me and telling me about your new venture and how exciting it is, because, I mean, I think you're going to help a lot of kids and I think that's awesome in the future.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, michelle, for the opportunity, and thanks also for sharing your personal experiences with Myopia.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Midwest Momentum on your favorite podcast site and great radio stations across Ohio like WWCD 92.9 in Franklin, licking in Delaware counties and WDLR Hurt in Delaware, union and Marion counties.