The Bosua Supremacy (Part 1)

CEO and Inventor Phil Bosua and Chairman Ron Erickson of Know Labs ($KNWN) Talk With BioPub Editors KSS, Coulborn and Lee

30 January 2019

KSS

Is it possible to fine tune your methodology so that it could ever perform blood counts in a non-invasive way?

Phil Bosua

Just give me a little bit more understanding of what you typically mean by blood counts?

KSS

Such as white cell count, platelet count, you know, hemoglobin?

Phil Bosua

Yeah, absolutely. We have done some research in that area and we believe that’s possible. We haven’t done any practical tests on it but all early indications suggest we may be able to do that with even the existing prototype. So it’s something we’re going to be looking at in the very near future.

KSS

That’s fabulous. You know in the present time we almost do more of a hemoglobin quantification and the hematocrit calculated from that based on red cell numbers and red cell size, rather than the old-fashioned way of centrifuging blood. But one question I think Allan Lee and I talked about was the business model. Will KNOW come to profitability on the basis of the model of selling software upgrades, software packages, subscriptions to software? Is that part of the business plan?

Phil Bosua

Yeah, definitely. So the calorie counter being our first product release, being a “lifestyle” product, does not require FDA approval. We won’t have a subscription service to that, so it will just be buy the band and then get the calorie counting for free. But once we have our FDA approval, I think like I’ve mentioned previously, it’d be $49 a month and we want to race to a million users, a million subscribers and I think that’s a very healthy start for our revenues. But then as we discover more and more molecules and compounds, and like you just mentioned, blood counts, then we expect to have even more subscription services available to the same people and the new subscription services will in turn attract new people to the overall platform.

KSS

Okay. Sounds great. Beyond calorie counting, suppose a woman has a history of primary biliary cholangitis and was curious monitoring her liver tests periodically, Could she buy a software package to do that for example?

Phil Bosua

Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what we’re going to be doing, things like that. We haven’t necessarily set a hierarchy or a priority on exactly what subscription services we’ll offer because there’s more research to go and then there’s also FDA approvals to consider, but we plan to hit every single compound and molecule. At the end of the day we’re a commercial company, so probably starting with what we feel is the biggest commercial value and then as we achieve that will move into other compounds as well.

KSS

Okay, one of the common medical scenarios I can think of is the patient, the older guy who has known coronary disease risk factors and had an MI stented two years ago and he’s watching the game on Saturday night and he’s eating a meatball sub with jalapeno peppers. He’s having discomfort now and doesn’t know whether it’s pyrosis or whether it’s angina. Can you envision a time when your device can pop up and do real-time quantification of his troponin-I levels, sees that they’re not rising over the next 30 minutes or so, and you know maybe call his physician and run that by him? They agree, no you really don’t need to come into the ER tonight. Is that a possible scenario?

Phil Bosua

Absolutely. The way we’re looking at it, we can identify molecular changes down to about one milligram per deciliter concentration levels. So anything that is happening in your body that can be seen at one milligram per deciliter or more, we can probably see with our current prototype, and I do expect that to improve over time. But we’ve looked into all the conditions, diseases, and blood counts and everything like you mentioned, and a lot of them travel in more than one milligram per deciliter concentration. So we’re super-excited about what the future holds just based on that alone.

Jonathan Coulborn

So my question would be around that one milligram per deciliter with the current prototype. What is the evolution there? Obviously, you probably can’t forecast that consistently, but if the current prototype is one milligram per deciliter, what was it 18 months ago, or whatever your previous iteration was as you’re fine-tuning?Could it ever get down to something say so minute as to be able to detect individual circulating tumor cells? CTCs being able to prognosticate cancer diagnoses. That’s crazy in a way because those are tiny tiny tiny. But is there a threshold for getting there? What’s the limit of where your device can go?

Phil Bosua

I honestly think it will absolutely get there. We are also beginning to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to our current device. So I could make a pure assumption, but you know, let’s say we could get 5x or 10x better resolution just purely from software algorithms, and then there’s no reason the hardware can’t improve that on an iteration or two. We’re very proud of our one milligram per deciliter. But to answer your specific question, I absolutely envisage a day when we might be, say, down at 0.1 milligram or even  0.01. I don’t think there’s a theoretical end to the sensitivity of the device, but I’m really focused on getting this device made with one milligram per deciliter sensitivity into the market as quickly as possible, because the opportunity for even that device is almost hard to fathom.

Ron Erickson

One of the things Phil’s talked about, if we’re doing a broad sweep across different frequencies and gathering a lot of information, a lot of data, is this: with machine learning and artificial intelligence, you can begin to see trends. So it seems to me that over time, we could be able to say, “You need to start paying attention to parameter X, or blood level Y, whatever it may be, because you’re starting to look at some potential deterioration in your health.” In other words, this could be a more broadly focused diagnostic as opposed to a specific diagnostic.

KSS

Ron, one thing I might insert here: I actually I didn’t know this till a couple of days ago, but there’s actually a molecule called HDM2 that has been recently identified by oncologists as a unique, agnostic, “pan-sensitive” if you will diagnostic marker for cancer. Anytime a cell is found expressing this molecule HDM2 on its surface, it is ipso facto malignant. The molecule normally is present in abundant quantities internally inside all mammalian cells and then part of the transformation to malignancy is that it is externalized. If you were to tweak or fine-tune an algorithm that could simply scan for circulating HDM2, you’ve got a bedside cancer test. I mean, like a qualitative yes no thing that would be a gateway potentially to a further look. Jonathan was referring to the phenomenon of circulating tumor cells… the methodology has gotten very good at finding those and actually isolating them and using complex panels monoclonal identifying in blood what the tissue source is and knowing thereby, does this patient needs a colonoscopy, chest CT… that is, we already know where it’s coming from. If a patient does not have HDM2 detectable in blood, they basically don’t have cancer, and if they do, then they have a tentative diagnosis of cancer already.

Phil Bosua:

I mean, yeah, that’d be amazing. I guess that’s exactly where we’re heading, the more information we get, and even the blood counts, our research shows that they’re running hundreds of milligrams per deciliter fluctuating. So that’s why we’re really really confident in that. But I mean, it is a paradigm shift in what will become a new way to diagnose medical ailments, diseases and conditions. And it’s very early but we know where this is going. We sometimes feel like internally, we just discovered the X-ray machine, we’re the first inventors of the X ray machine, and then if you extrapolate that out, you end up with the ultrasound or an MRI off the back of the X ray machine. Now that took maybe 100 years or so to get from the X ray machine to the MRI. These days, technology is accelerating at such a pace that we think once we get this product into the market and get some fast adoption, we’ll then have the resources to potentially do everything we’re talking about in the next five to 10 years, which will radically change the world. It’s hard to think of it in any other terms.

KSS

Phil when I heard you present live in California—I don’t know how this will come across, but I mean it in a praising way—one almost gets this sense that when you began working on this project, you gave off a feeling almost of manifest destiny…… of a certain kind of, I don’t want to say “grandiosity” because that makes you sound crazy and I don’t think that’s the appropriate word. But you seem to be very inspired in this direction. You know, Celtic mist and all of that! You seem to have almost known that it would bear fruit and I wonder what got you to that point? You seem to have known that you’re a guy who is about to change forever how diagnostics are thought about in medicine…the change will be one way, and permanent. At first it will be resisted and scorned even, and then people will protest how overdue it was and ask what took so long. You’re writing in wet concrete. How did you come to be That Guy, the guy with the big vision?

Phil Bosua

Yeah, I mean, you articulated that very well. I think that was a good summary. Yeah, the honest answer is I don’t know. I don’t know how I became That
Guy, but  I feel a compulsion beyond my personal needs to get this technology into people’s hands. Because even caloric intake alone, if people start to understand that in a convenient way, by not having to write it in a book or type it in on an app, it just automatically happens. The potential shift and the practical shift in the general health of populations could be huge, because caloric intake or dietary intake has a huge bearing on everything. It’s hard to quantify that. So even just the calorie counter could have a massive impact. But then you go to blood glucose and I guess what we’re doing is going deeper and deeper into the important medical decisions that, you know, ultimately could be the difference between people living and dying. I keep going every day thinking I need to make this device and make it as accurate as I can. As soon as people get it in their hands, it works and they’re blown away and they tell their friends and then the next thing you know everyone’s wanting UBAND. I mean, from blood counts alone, I was thinking the other day how far do these go from a visionary point of view. Like, if you can tell your antibody levels, like your IgG, IgM and IgA levels, down to one milligram per deciliter every five minutes, I was like where does that end up?! And the only thing I can actually think of is that basically anyone that can afford $99 plus whatever the subscriptions going to be will want to wear that. I mean, I want that now on my myself! I want to know those levels every day now, now that I’ve understood them and what they mean.

KSS

It’s a device such that the following could happen. You could be bitten by a tick in high summer….and instead of terror and worry, really have a leg up on knowing whether you’re going to get Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever just based on IgM levels.

Phil Bosua

Yeah, we want to democratize healthcare and a device, $99, non-invasive, and that has affordable subscription plans on top of that for various conditions of what we’re measuring, I think will be the first step in actually democratizing healthcare.

KSS

In medieval times, priests went to great lengths to keep scriptures out of the hands of churchgoers, arguing that mere parishioners lacked the sophistication to know what to make of Biblical passages if they were to dare venture into them on their own. And in some ways, that’s how it is now with your clinical data, your labs, your studies. Doctors often regard patients as incompetent to mentate about their own data. So I like your concept of democratizing medicine. It’s high time. Bring it on.

To be continued

Disclosures: Dr. KSS is a participant in the $KNWN convertible bridge loan financing via Boustead Securities. BioPub has no pecuniary relationship with $KNWN or its officers and has not been paid to write on $KNWN. Nothing presented here should be construed as advice or solicitation to acquire shares in $KNWN or to participate in financing the company. Conversations were transposed to written form and edited for clarity by Managing Editor Allan Lee and KSS.

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