Hope everyone had a great week. I know I start most of my blogs this way. Rest assured, I know that not every week can be a great one. Sometimes just getting to Friday is an accomplishment. Some weeks are more productive than others and some you are barely keeping your head above water. I feel that BioSurfaces has been all about advancing our technology in several areas.
I am going to start this blog at the close of last week. When we release the blog (like today’s blog for example), it is early on Friday morning so I don’t get to truly cover the whole week. We had a full team meeting last Friday, what we affectionately refer to as an “All Hands Meeting.” This pays homage to Tina’s former life working as a civilian for Navy Clothing and Textile Research Facility as a textile chemist. The origin of the term “all hands” comes from the Navy meaning all sailors are needed to gather for a certain act/event. For us, we use this “all hands meeting” to bring everyone together to review what is going on in all areas of the company, from what our plans are for the business to ongoing/planned research to programs advancing through manufacturing. We believe that the more each person understands the full picture of the business, the better the interaction between the team is which allows each person to understand the mission and vision of the company. This clarity is harder to provide the bigger the company gets, but I hope (and will work my hardest) that we never lose sight of the importance for having these types of meetings.
My job is to keep track of all that is going on. I sort of consider myself the band leader, orchestrating all of the individual components into a working symphony. It is these meetings that really make me appreciate all that goes into keeping the individual programs moving forward. Even more so, it really allows me to appreciate the great team that we have assembled. One by one, each person presents what they are working on and what is coming next. During this time, the group learns what each person is working on and discusses where there could be collaboration or when a program is ready to advance to the next step. It is the one time every so often where I get to see the vision in my head come to life. I was so proud of each person presenting, like a proud parent. It was such a pleasure watching the young members of our team! They are growing by leaps and bounds from when they first joined the team, nervous about making mistakes and not knowing much about the technology. Tina and I could not have been any prouder. It put a smile on our faces for the whole weekend.
Fast forward to this week. We continued to really make substantial progress on the NIH program focused on cell culture insert plates. So much so, we sent some initial prototypes for evaluation to the NIH investigators. This required a lot of iterating paired with patience and perseverance. I am continually inspired by the progress being made and the future possibilities. We also continued to make progress on the Takeda program, from working on the patent application for the fistula plugs and plug implantation to revising the design of the cell chamber. It’s hard to believe that over 2.5 years have gone by and how much we’ve accomplished. We still have more to go and more data is on the way. Once we are able to submit the patent, we will be able to share more of the data with you. We also continued to work on the KidneyX program, which is focused on developing a graft that releases drug from one area. Our team continues to evaluate how drug loading affects drug release, what level of the drug is required to block cells from growing without killing them and how strong the drug-loaded device is. Last but certainly not least, we continue to work on our NuSpun™ Vascular Graft, from continued data collection and submission of our early work for publication to preparing to present recent data at the
American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology meeting next week.
We also continue to work on areas that are in the early stages of development, from our electrospun suture and an anti-clotting vascular graft to new ways to improve/expedite our electrospinning process. These new programs (or re-visiting some older programs) will be important as we look to the future for the company.
Hope you have a great Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day weekend!
Matt
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