A Pittsburgh-based biotech startup developing a device that aims to prevent opioid overdoses has reached a critical milestone as its first series of in-human testing begins.
Resilient Lifescience Inc., one of Pittsburgh Inno's Startups to Watch in 2023 and the winner of the 2023 Richard King Mellon Foundation Social-Impact Pitch Competition, has finalized a prototype device that can measure various health and breathing metrics in humans. This capability for the Resilient Monitor is now being tested on human volunteers at Carnegie Mellon University's Project Olympus location on Henry Street in Oakland.
According to Resilient Co-Founder and CEO Brad Holden, this serves as a necessary step before the Resilient Monitor can help prevent opioid overdoses in the future as it looks to monitor breathing patterns and other bodily actions that a person might experience before an overdose occurs. And should someone reach that point, Holden said the Resilient Monitor will eventually be able to self-administer a dosage of naloxone to keep the person alive.
"This is the first big step in building the clinical evidence we need to show that our device is going to be effective as an opioid-induced respiratory depression monitor," Holden said. "The significance here is that we are conducting this research through an institutional review board and recruiting healthy volunteers who are not involved with the company at all to, in an unbiased manner, be able to put our device on against FDA-approved reference devices and show that it is in fact the measuring the same things."
Holden said this testing, expected to last through 2024, will serve as the foundation for the rest of the startup's algorithm development and the technology it builds on top of this device's future capabilities. That includes embedding a cellular chip into the device that could automatically alert family members, friends and even emergency responders via a phone call or text message that an individual is experiencing the symptoms of an overdose.
In the years ahead, Holden said he envisions Resilient partnering with addiction treatment centers to have these wearable devices offered as part of a health recovery plan for patients fighting addiction. Resilient will also offer these devices directly to consumers, likely friends or family members of those battling opioid addiction, who can then offer it to those in need.
Holden said Resilient currently employs five people and will be adding more to its engineering workforce "in the near future."
The startup has raised over $800,000 in preseed funding thus far. Holden said he envisions the start of a seed-stage round in Q1 2024.
"We're really excited to be able to show progress from the investment from the RK Mellon Foundation under a year ago to now us taking that money, investing it and having a in-human study to show the value of where that investment has gone in the progress that we've made as a company," Holden said.
