Samsonize

F18 Cohort Spotlights

Meet Santosh and Bryan — developing a product that helps cancer patients keep a much higher percentage of their hair with far fewer side effects, helping them to lead happier and healthier lives.

“Patients undergoing chemotherapy, particularly female breast cancer patients, are often devastated by the accompanying loss of their hair,” say Santosh and Bryan during our conversation.

According to them, existing technologies (“cold caps”) are painful, not optimally effective (worn painfully only for short periods of time, even though chem drugs continue to circulate even after each chemo session), and expensive (often several thousand dollars per course).

Up to this point in time, they have made tremendous progress on the technical side — actually creating the physical product, and introducing new, important features. Their next phase of development involves more in-depth testing of their product as part of the regulatory pathway. Once this phase of testing is complete, they will work with strategic partners to deliver their product to cancer patients via chemotherapy infusion centers, clinics, and hospitals.

Two founders with big dreams, but with formative experiences as well! Both co-founders loved their work at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (Santosh was mentored by an amazing neuro-oncologist at MGH, and Bryan’s undergraduate honors thesis involved MGH) — although they didn’t discover this commonality until months after we started working together at Stanford!

For the reader

We asked Bryan and Santosh about what they need from the community and what they can give to the community. Here’s their answer:

We’re looking for amazing team members in two core areas: regulatory (particularly with biopharma products), and business (both financial modeling and acquiring funding). If you know someone who’s passionate about helping cancer patients and is exceptionally talented in either of these areas, shoot me an email at smurugan@stanford.edu!