Q&A with Qualia
We had a chance to speak with Qualia CEO Connie Manz and learned about how they are helping translate biotechnologies into novel research tools and clinical therapeutic applications through a host of subsidiaries and affiliates.
Connie Manz: We are focused on advancing the neuroscience research community. We provide devices to researchers at universities, research labs, or companies. For several decades, the field of bio-electronics and neural interface has been populated by devices made of silicon, which tend to leave a scar tissue. Our device resolves the issue with minimal scarring and is ideal for long term chronic pain applications and research.
Connie Manz: We sell individual devices. We are still in the research and development phase. So, most of our users are considered alpha or beta users that help us work on improving different aspects of the devices. We have customers who have placed recurring orders. We have a lot of custom orders and hence we work on a case by case basis.
Connie Manz: Our customers are research labs, both academic and corporate. We are also working on distribution agreements. Professors from University of Florida and University of Texas at Dallas are our top customers at this moment.
Connie Manz: NeuroNexus, Coretech and Microprobes are our closest competitors. Our target base is similar, but our offerings differ. The substrates, the material on which the device is built, is different. Our devices are stiff during insertion and soften within a few hours, which is the ideal combination. The current devices in market are either stiff, causing too much scarring or soft, causing deformation of device resulting in improper recording of data.
Connie Manz: We are primarily grant-funded. We received a DARPA phase one SBIR in 2016 and then received the Phase two which is 1.5 million dollars over three years that started in 2017. We were awarded a second concurrent Phase two for $1.5 million dollars this past spring. Additionally, we have NIH phase 1 SBIR for about $180,000 that just started last month in June. Beyond that we’ve raised a small amount of funding from fans and family just to help with the translation of IP and some of the other start-up costs that can’t be covered on grants and then we have our revenues, of course which are small but growing.
Connie Manz: Nothing ever goes exactly as planned. One of the things we knew going in was that packaging the devices, connectors, and cabling was going to be a challenge. That’s what our second phase two is focused on. Our Phase 1 and Phase 2 were focused on commercialization of the device, i.e. frontend. Finding a way to interface our devices with the back end is one of the challenges that we’re continuing to work on as we progress in our research.
Connie Manz: Clinical therapeutic applications. Our near-term focus in on providing effective devices to research community and our long-term goal is to translate these applications to work for humans. Some of them could be spinal cord stimulation (to address chronic pain) and cochlear implants (to address deafness). It’s a long road ahead but we have a lot of different plans for the technologies that we have envisioned.