August 4, 2023 by investor
On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Dr. Chris Apfel, Founder, CEO, & Chairman of the Board at SageMedic Corp.
Located in Palo Alto, CA, USA, SageMedic Corp. (SAGE) is a cancer diagnostic company that brings precision medicine to the next level by overcoming the limitations of genomic testing. Specifically, because only 1 out of 4 patients have genomic mutations, in most cases oncologists don’t have the tools to predict which therapy, if any, is likely to work for an individual patient. Hence, SAGE has developed the SAGE Oncotest™, a proprietary patent-protected ex-vivo, high-throughput 3D assay that predicts a patient’s tumor response to traditional chemotherapies and targeted therapies, independently of any potential genetic mutations, and that within just 1 week.
With only $4.0M of funding SAGE has been able to develop this assay and is now a registered California lab that has very recently become fully accredited according to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) by the Commission on Office Laboratory Accreditation (COLA) and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), hence at the verge of starting commercialization to generate early revenue and clinical case studies.
Dr. Chris Apfel is an impact investor, and the Chair of the Life Sciences at the Northern California chapters of the Keiretsu Forum. He has led numerous due diligence efforts and has since made over 20+ investments in life science companies including Mission Bio, CorInnova, Pathware, Raydiant Oximetry, etc.
Before that, Dr. Apfel was an Executive Director of Cadence, where his health economic research on a non-reimbursable drug showed a $500 per patient cost savings after which Cadence was acquired for $1.3 billion by Mallinckrodt. Before he moved into the industry, he was a practicing clinician and professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) with over 100 publications that have been cited over 20,000 times in the literature. Dr. Apfel received his MD/PhD from the University of Giessen, Germany, and his MBA from The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, PA.
Dr. Chris shares the need for a strong and experienced team and game-changing technology, while also acknowledging the regulatory challenges in the life science space. He shares his belief that successful FDA approval can lead to high rewards and discusses the significance of reproducibility in academic research and the importance of forming independent opinions when evaluating startup opportunities.
Visit SageMedic Corp at www.sagemedic.com, and on www.linkedin.com/company/sagemedic.
Reach out to Dr. Chris at capfel@sagemedic.com , and on www.linkedin.com/in/chrisapfel.
For a full transcript, click here.
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Hall T Martin is the director of Investor Connect, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to the education of investors for early-stage funding. All opinions expressed by Hall and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Investor Connect. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for the basis of investment decisions.
