More on Evidence-Based Translational Medicine

By Steve Blank

We have learned a remarkable process that allow us to be highly focused, and we have learned a tool of trade we can now repeat. This has been of tremendous value to us.

Andrew Norris

Principal Investigator BCN Biosciences

Over the last three years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught over 700 teams of scientists how to commercialize their technology and how to fail less, increasing their odds for commercial success.

To see if this same curriculum would work for therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices and digital health, we taught 26 teams at UCSF a life science version of the NSF curriculum. 110 researchers and clinicians, and Principal Investigators got out of the lab and hospital, and talked to 2,355 customers. (Details here)

For the last 10 weeks 19 teams in therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices from the National Institutes of Health (from four of the largest institutes; NCI, NHBLI, NINDS, and NCATS) have gone through the I-Corps at NIH.

87 researchers and clinicians spoke to 2,120 customers, tested 695 hypotheses and pivoted 215 times. Every team spoke to over 100 customers.

Three Big Questions
The NIH teams weren’t just teams with ideas, they were fully formed companies with CEO’s and Principal Investigators who already had received a $150,000 grant from the NIH. With that SBIR-Phase 1 funding the teams were trying to establish the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential of their technology. Many will apply for a Phase II grant of up to $1 million to continue their R&D efforts.

Going into the class we had three questions:

1. Could companies who were already pursuing a business model be convinced to revisit their key commercialization hypotheses – and iterate and pivot if needed?
2. Was getting the Principal Investigators and CEO out of the building more effective than the traditional NIH model of bringing in outside consultants to do commercialization planning?
3. Would our style of being relentlessly direct with senior scientists, who hadn’t had their work questioned in this fashion since their PhD orals, work with the NIH teams?

I-Corps at the NIH: Evidence-based Translational Medicine 

Evidence-based Translational Medicine
We’ve learned that information from 100 customers is just at the edge of having sufficient data to validate/invalidate a company’s business model hypotheses. As for whether you can/should push scientists past their comfort zone, the evidence is clear – there is no other program that gets teams anywhere close to talking to 100 customers. The reason? For entrepreneurs to get out of the building at this speed and scale is an unnatural act. It’s hard, there are lots of other demands on their time, etc. But we push and cajole hard, (our phrase is we’re relentlessly direct,) knowing that while they might find it uncomfortable the first three days of the class, they come out thanking us.

The experience is demanding but time and again we have seen I-Corps teams transform their business assumptions. This direct interaction with potential users and customers is essential to commercialize science (whether to license the technology or launch a startup.) This process can’t be outsourced. These teams saved years and millions of dollars for themselves, the NIH and the U.S. taxpayer. Evidence is now in-hand that with I-Corps@NIH the NIH has the most effective program for commercializing science.

Lessons Learned Day
Every week of this 10 week class, teams present a summary of what they learned from their customers interviews. For the final presentation each team created a two minute video about their 10-week journey and a 8-minute PowerPoint presentation to tell us where they started, what they learned, how they learned it, and where they’re going. This “Lessons Learned” presentation is much different than a traditional demo day. It gives us a sense of the learning, velocity and trajectory of the teams, rather than a demo day showing us how smart they are at a single point in time.

BCN Biosciences
This video from team BCN Biosciences describes what the intensity, urgency, velocity and trajectory of an I-Corps team felt like. Like a startup it’s relentless.

BCN is developing a drug that increases anti-cancer effect of radiation in lung cancer (and/or reduces normal tissue damage by at least 40%). They were certain their customers were Radiation Oncologists, that MOA data was needed, that they needed to have Phase 1 trial data to license their product, and needed >$5 million and 6 years. After 10 weeks and 100 interviews, they learned that these hypotheses were wrong.

If you can’t see the BCN Biosciences video click here

The I-Corps experience helped the BCN Bioscience team develop an entirely new set set of business model hypotheses – this time validated by customers and partners. The “money slides” for BCN Biosciences are slides 22 and 23.

I-Corps at the NIH: Evidence-based Translational Medicine 

Conclusion

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