Damae Medical: How 30-year-old Anaïs Barut is revolutionising the detection of skin cancers
MEDTECH | Every year, more than 5 million skin cancers are diagnosed. Yet the 5-year survival rate after treatment is 98% for patients whose melanoma is detected at an early stage. It is therefore urgent to detect these cancers early. This is what Anaïs Barut proposes with Damae Medical. At just 29 years old, the young Forbes 30 Under 30 winner is shaking up the Medtech world.
Damae Medical is developing a medical device that enables microscopy to be performed directly on living organisms. Its deepLive technology brings the microscope directly to the patient, making it easier for dermatologists to detect skin cancers, avoid unnecessary biopsies and monitor the effectiveness of treatment. The Forbes 30 Under 30 winner and her team have been developing this product and bringing it to the medical world for six years. Present in 6 European countries - France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Germany - the startup is aiming to install its first device in the United States in 2021. This is a first step towards internationalisation for the French nugget, which hopes to take another step towards Australia, a country very affected by skin cancers.
An entrepreneurial adventure in the fight against cancer
While studying at the Institut d'Optique Graduate School in Paris, Anaïs Barut tried her hand at creating a company with one of her classmates, David Siret. The two friends met Professor Arnaud Dubois, a research professor at the Charles Fabry Laboratory. He wanted to promote one of his inventions: the famous microscope that can be used on living organisms. "At that time, it was obvious. We were all very motivated by the idea of creating a company and the project fascinated us by its technical nature and above all its medical impact," explains Anaïs Barut. It was 2014 and the adventure was launched.
All that remained for the startup was to validate the team, the market entry and the technology. Although the start-up was founded in a student environment, with close links to French public research, it soon took off. To meet the growing challenges, Anaïs Barut and her fellow entrepreneurs received help from entrepreneurs who had gone through the same stages, and joined an incubator, Agoranov. "We were working with other innovative companies and this sharing of experience helped us a lot. Nothing was too impossible, with the right amount of support," observes the founder of Damae Medical. And this support is both entrepreneurial and clinical. The Saint-Etienne University Hospital was the first clinical partner to allow the company to test its first prototype of microscopic technology. In 2015, Damae Medical won the I-Lab innovation competition, which enabled it to recruit two engineers, finance the proof of concept, carry out pre-clinical tests and launch a clinical study. The same year, the medtech won the Concours Mondial d'Innovation and the EDF Pulse prize, as well as the Altran Foundation's Prix France. The company is technologically innovative, but also in its management style, with project-based management that encourages initiative. This atypical approach was rewarded when, in 2017, Anaïs Barut and her team raised two million euros in an investment round with Kurma Partners, Idinvest Partners, News Invest, Paris-Saclay Seed Fund and several private investors. Six years later, the medtech has grown and has just passed the 20 employee mark.
Creating a new market in medical innovation
When Anaïs Barut, David Siret and Arnaud Dubois launched their project, no patent on the optical element had ever been filed. "We were very far upstream in terms of technological maturity. There were many opportunities because we were going to be the leader in a new market without direct competition. This gave us time to develop extremely efficient things," analyses the young entrepreneur. To do this, the startup would test its new prototype every six months. In 2017, it launched a first clinical study at the Saint-Etienne University Hospital on around 200 patients, and the results were conclusive. In July 2020, Damae Medical obtained its CE mark, which allowed it to market the deepLive device in Europe. So there are six years between the invention of the technology and its launch on the market, but for Anaïs Barut, the technology takes time. A period necessary to go through all the stages and offer an optimal result.
Changing the lives of dermatologists
Damae Medical's ambition is to become the reference tool for dermatologists. Today, the reference for the diagnosis of skin cancer is to image the lesion on the surface, with the dermatologist using a dermatoscope or his eye directly. A large number of surface criteria must be taken into account, such as the edges of the lesion or the pigments on the mole, and the dermatologist's judgment alone decides whether the patient should undergo a biopsy. For Anaïs Barut, it seems necessary for the dermatologist to be able to make a complete diagnosis without having to send everything for biopsy. "We have shown that it is possible to avoid a biopsy in a number of cases. When the tissue is healthy, the device assesses the abnormality of the lesions and in some cases, if the cancer is superficial, it can be treated non-invasively. If it develops into a more aggressive form, the device would allow the extent of the pathology to be known so that the extent of the lesion can be assessed and surgery guided. Anaïs Barut's vision for Damae Medical is therefore to be the reference tool for dermatologists in hospitals and private practice. With this in mind, the startup is embarking on the development of a diagnostic assistance algorithm, which would allow the technology to be democratised as much as possible by providing diagnostic assistance to dermatologists. "The ambition is still very high, we feel that this technology can have a real interest even for dermatologists who are less expert in imaging. We are continuing our research efforts, particularly in the area of artificial intelligence," continues Anaïs Barut. For the past year, the medtech has been extending its innovative technology to include artificial intelligence. Thanks to this, algorithms will be able to segment the structures that can be visualised with deepLive. The aim is to facilitate the use of the optical device by making better and faster diagnoses.
Optical technology to detect other cancers?
The deepLive technology developed by Damae Medical is based on optical biopsy. Instead of taking a physical biopsy, taking a sample and imaging it under a microscope, it is done optically and thus non-invasively, i.e. without surgery or biopsy. The vision of the optical biopsy could therefore be applied to other cancers. In the case of breast cancer, the surgeon removes the area that appears to be cancerous with the naked eye, so the device could be used for precision purposes, according to Anaïs Barut. "These are many applications that interest us and have a very exciting impact," she explains. While the prospect is exciting, the president of Damae Medical prefers for the time being to develop long-term product lines in dermatology. "We have quite large ambitions, so we need to be able to put 100% of our technical resources into dermatology. But from a clinical research point of view, this does not prevent us from imaging other types of cancers.
Original Article from FORBES
