Lindus Health launches Medical Device CRO offering.
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Biotech startup Lindus Health just made a big splash by adding MIT professor and Moderna co-founder Robert Langer, Sc.D., to its advisory board. Lindus aims to shake up the world of clinical trials with its “anti-CRO” approach that promises faster and more reliable trials for life sciences companies.
The addition of Langer, described as the most cited engineer in history, lends some major credibility to Lindus’ mission. When asked why he decided to come aboard, Langer cited the company’s “innovative approach to clinical trial execution” and technologies that he believes “should be incredibly helpful” to biotech in bringing new therapies to patients quicker.
Lindus combines software, data analytics, and operational expertise to form an “end-to-end” platform for running trials from start to finish. The startup claims it can tap into 30 million electronic health records to accelerate patient recruitment and uses AI to optimize other trial processes.
Cofounder Michael Young said he is “incredibly humbled” to have an advisor with the “unparalleled expertise and visionary contributions” of Langer. He expects the MIT professor’s insights will be an “invaluable asset” as Lindus continues its quest to deliver “innovative and essential” therapies to patients.
In the following Q&A, Langer and Lindus Health co-founder Meri Beckwith share more insights into how they plan on partnering to accelerate clinical trials, and the most critical limitations they see in how trials are typically executed today.
Langer: Lindus takes a very tech forward approach to clinical trials. What stands out is their vertical integration of the entire clinical trial process. They have built their own in-house tech platform that powers their CRO services in addition to their own site capabilities. This vertical integration allows them to create substantial efficiencies in the recruitment, data collection, and data processing leading to faster studies.
Langer: Their technology that directly impacts recruitment speed is impressive. As part of their vertical integration, Lindus has built unique capabilities to access and query over 30M medical records based on study inclusion criteria. These capabilities can produce predictive models for forecasting recruitment pace and can selectively target outreach. Lindus has also been building AI tools to speed up other parts of the clinical trial process, like study start up.
Langer: The current incentivization structure often doesn’t work well. Many CROs currently are more profitable when studies are delayed or have issues due to being able to bill hourly. The biggest opportunity is really in Lindus’ ability to speed up the overall study by aligning incentives with drug companies, encouraging innovation and efficiencies, and producing better study experiences on the part of sponsors and patients
Langer: The key is understanding the pain points that biotech and drug companies in specific therapeutic areas face. As part of my work with Lindus Health, I intend on sharing the specific challenges these companies face and pairing those challenges with the potential solutions Lindus can offer due to their unique position in being able to build their technology and capabilities to meet certain needs relevant to certain types of therapeutic studies.
Langer: I’ve always embraced looking at new ways of doing things. Breakthrough therapies would not be possible without invention and innovation. The inventive spirit, and perpetually seeking a better way of doing things, will be important to ensure breakthrough therapies get to market faster and safer.
Beckwith: Robert’s involvement will help us better design clinical trials, drawing on his wealth of experience from having been involved with dozens of pioneering life science companies.
This experience will also help us Identify market segments that are best fit for our revolutionary model. As a startup we want to remain focused on those therapeutic areas and clinical trial types where we can have the biggest impact.
Together, Lindus Health and Robert will continue innovating in how clinical trials can be best designed to both meet stringent regulatory requirements, while also focusing on getting new treatments into the hands of patients faster.
Beckwith: Industry players, particularly pharma and CROs are responsible for the biggest challenges. Today clinical trials are often conducted in a manner that doesn’t adhere to the latest regulatory guidance on how technology can be used to deliver higher quality data and a better experience for participants. For example, there is an insistence on 100% source data verification while research shows this does not improve data quality or timelines. Robert Langer’s advice and guidance will be critical in helping us find ways to deliver better outcomes for sponsors and patients while improving overall data quality.
Lindus Health is an anti-CRO running radically faster and more reliable trials for life science pioneers – bringing ground-breaking treatments to patients more quickly. Lindus Health does this thanks to a commercial model that aligns incentives (fixed-priced quotes per study, with milestone-based payments), marrying a world-class clinical operations team with its unique software platform, and access to 30 million Electronic Health Records. Clinical trials are the biggest bottleneck to advances in healthcare and by removing this constraint they aim to improve health for everyone. They handle the end-to-end execution of clinical studies, including design, patient recruitment, clinical data capture, monitoring and project management.
Lindus Health has to date delivered more than 90 trials across the US, UK and Europe to tackle a range of conditions including diabetes, asthma, acne, social anxiety, major depressive disorder, hypertension, chronic fatigue syndrome and insomnia.
The company was named after James Lind, who pioneered the first clinical trial and treatment for scurvy, and co-founded by Michael Young, a former Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister on Life Sciences, and Meri Beckwith, a former life sciences investor.
The company has raised over $24M from investors including Peter Thiel, CREANDUM, Firstminute Capital, Presight Capital, Seedcamp, Hambro Perks, Amino Collective and Calm/Storm.
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