Cagri Savran - One Cell in a Billion

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Sponsored by:

• Purdue University entrepreneurship
• Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson

I invested in Savran Tech back in 2017 around the time of the first part of this interview. Recently I sat down with Cagri Savran to review the progress of his remarkable biotech startup in the last four years. Listen to the original interview followed by a recent update.

Here is a list of the topics discussed:

• Çağrı Savran Bio (Çağrı Is Pronounced Cha-re)
• Accident that Took Çağrı Savran from Turkey to Indiana
• Purdue University’s Remarkable Support for the Commercialization of Faculty Inventions
• Çağrı Savran: “So, when I say "extremely rare," I mean one-in-a-billion rare.”
• Çağrı Savran: “Our technology can find those five or six or ten cells that are, among about a billion.“
• “…from a blood sample, you have a glimpse into the tumor without cutting into the person.”
• The Promise of Monitoring Cancer Treatment with a Blood Draw
• “The advantage is if you can do this with a blood sample, it gives you a chance to do this test frequently, right?”
• Applicable to the Prenatal Monitoring of the Fetus
• Savran’s Tech Is Simple, Fast and Results in High Purity and Yield – 1000 Times Faster than Typical Microfluidic Systems
• Like Alexander with the Gordian Knot, Savran Has Loosened One Constraint to Great Effect
• Bigger Scale and Faster Flow Allows the Fast Separation of Rare Cells
• Device Seems Amenable to Large Scale Usage – Handling Many Patients at the Same Time
• How the Invention Came About
• Why Çağrı Savran Founded a Company
• Purdue’s New Commercialization Policy Played a Big Role in the Decision to Found the Company
• Why Turbocharging Cell Separation Is So Important
• Other Use Cases: People Are Always Suggesting New Ones but Need to Concentrate
• Savran’s Tech Is a Game Changer because of Throughput and Parallelization
• Other Techniques Look at Pieces of DNA – Savran’s Tech Is Capable of Finding the Entire Genome
• Sal Daher Reads the Review by Spizzy Spong on iTunes and Asks for Your Review
• How Savran Landed Bigwig Advisor Ken Morse
• How Savran Found Its CEO – Patrick Rivelli
• "Oh, you have no idea how I wish that somebody would say that about me, that I'm 'quietly competent.'”
• Savran’s Choice of the Right Patent Attorney Was Crucial – Peter Fasse Helped Way Beyond Patents
• Patrick Rivelli, CEO Proposed a New Go to Market Approach
• What Makes the Savran Lab at Purdue so Productive
• Çağrı Savran Urges Fellow Academics to Bring Their Inventions to Market
• Update on the Original Interview with Çağrı Savran, Ph.D.
• In December of 2017 Savran Was Operating with Essential Components Handmade in the Lab – In October 2021 the Main Components Are Produced by a Vendor
• Early Technology Was Used in a Major Clinical Trial at Indiana University School of Medicine and Significantly Improved the Ability to Predict Recurrence of a Breast Cancer
• The Existing Technology for Capturing Circulating Tumor Cells Is Not Scalable – Savran’s Tech Is Amenable to Scale
• Strategic Players in Prenatal Diagnostics Are Interested in Sequencing the Cells Captured – Savran Is Uniquely Positioned to Provide That Ability
• The Basic Technology Is Like a Kitchen, the Different Assays Are Like What’s Being Prepared in the Kitchen
• Savran Has Recruited a Capable and Involved Board
• Sal Daher Summarizes Savran’s Progress in the Last Four Years