HEALIUM
While stress is often a normal part of life, the intensity and frequency of today’s stressors are causing many people to experience frustrating (and even debilitating) levels of anxiety and depression.
As of 2024, the American Psychiatric Association reported that 43% of adults in the United States felt as if their anxiousness was increasing, leading to negative impacts on both their sleep and mental wellness. And while there are over-the-counter and pharmaceutical drugs that can help those seeking relief from the symptoms of high stress, many people are interested in natural, non-drug solutions to help them better deal with stressors.
Enter Healium, an innovative tech company incubated at the Missouri Innovation Center (MIC) and quickly gaining international recognition and success.
A new way of leveraging brainwave data
As noted by Sarah Hill, Healium’s founder and CEO, the company is best described as an immersive mental wellness solution uniquely powered by biometric data delivered to wearables. Through the interpretation of this data, Healium essentially allows users to interpret their real time physiological vectors so they can learn to self-regulate their physical and mental responses to stress and trauma.
Validated in 10 peer-reviewed journals, Healium enables individuals to downshift their nervous systems through immersive relaxation practices. This ingenious approach leverages the latest neuroscience to induce calm. In fact, Healium has garnered so much public attention that it is trusted today by organizations including the Mayo Clinic, NFL teams, and major airlines.
How did Healium get to this point? Hill credits the MIC for providing a launching pad that allowed her vision to come to fruition — and her startup to gain traction.
More than a touchdown space
In 2016, Hill was looking for office space for her emerging company. During her search for the ideal workspace, she was introduced to the MIC. Feeling it would be the right fit, she set up shop and quickly discovered it was more than just a location.
“We got so much more,” Hill recalls. From mentorship, investment opportunities, and networking, she notes that the MIC proved to be a comprehensively supportive incubator in the early days before Healium was an actual product.
Over time, Hill was able to evolve her concept into a product, thanks to several key advantages that her company experienced by being part of the MIC. These crucial advantages highlight the supportive role the MIC played in Healium’s early development.
1. Regular mentoring
One of the biggest benefits of being part of the MIC for Hill was having access to mentors. They were the company’s first informal board of directors before she had a real board. She appreciated that they would take the time to sit down with her, enabling her to better define and refine her goals.
“The mentors at the MIC were incredibly helpful to us,” says Hill. They helped her reimagine her product and unit economics, as well as scale up after the pandemic. After all, Healium was well-suited to meet the societal needs of the stressful pandemic and post-pandemic world. Yet, Hill needed some guidance to determine how to navigate her company toward success.
For example, Healium started as a consumer product. But Hill says it became clear that selling just to consumers was not going to be as lucrative. Accordingly, she had to pivot her thinking to embrace the idea of selling to corporate entities as well.
“The unit economics for consumers are harder to attain than selling it [Healium] to the enterprise market,” notes Hill. “It costs a lot to acquire consumers in mass.” With the assistance of her MIC mentors, she discovered that she could boost her startup’s performance metrics (e.g., customer acquisition rates, customer lifetime value) if she worked on a package that would entice larger companies to purchase enterprise-level subscriptions. It was a helpful learning process for Hill as she crunched the numbers to understand where to best take her sales and marketing for maximum returns.
2. Protection of the product
Being at the MIC wasn’t just valuable from an economic standpoint for Healium. It also offered important protections, particularly concerning intellectual property.
Upon consulting a patent attorney, Hill was originally told by one firm that securing a patent for content that was powered by biometric inputs was “not patentable. ” Surprised but undaunted, Hill decided to get a second opinion with her MIC coaches.
The experts at MIC introduced her to Missouri Entrepreneurship Legal Clinic that worked exclusively with clients who were entrepreneurs in Missouri. It was the ideal match. Hill wound up being able to secure multiple patents for her technology and protect her company’s intellectual property, thanks to what she calls a “great strategic partnership.”
3. Investor introductions and feedback
To scale her product and hire a world-class team, Hill needed to find investors, as well as be able to engage them with her pitch, showcasing the value of her company as a compelling investment opportunity. The MIC gave her constant feedback on her pitch so she could attract potential sales channel partners and firms.
Hill’s investment pitch was effective, leading to the successful acquisition of seed funding that set her company on a strong trajectory. “We’ve generated millions in investment and millions in revenue.” And Healium isn’t finished growing yet.
Advice for fellow entrepreneurs
The collaborative atmosphere and assistance provided at the MIC made the difference for Hill and her company. Today, she is not just a proud founder but an advocate who recommends entrepreneurs seek out resources within their communities, particularly incubators like the MIC. “It’s not just office space they’re offering, but something far more valuable.”With Healium now enjoying a solid reputation and upward trajectory, Hill credits MIC with her company’s growth.. For startups or early-stage ventures in life sciences or biotech industries, the MIC offers the tools, connections, and guidance necessary to move from idea to successful product. Interested parties should contact the MIC to discuss how it can help their company become another success story like Healium.
ENDEVICA BIO
The process of curing cancer involves multiple complex steps, but current research indicates positive progress. In fact, one Missouri Innovation Center (MIC) client, Endevica Bio, has made great advancements in the cancer treatment space. The company’s latest biotech drug addresses cachexia, a potentially life-threatening wasting disease that can make cancer recovery challenging — or even impossible — for patients.
Statistics from the Cleveland Clinic indicate that 40% to 70% of cancer patients experience cachexia, a condition causing rapid weight loss that weakens the body’s ability to fight disease and reduces treatment effectiveness. As a result, patients experience the same longevity they could achieve if they maintained a healthier weight throughout their cancer journeys.
To provide possible relief from cachexia, Endevica Bio is working on a peptide therapeutic drug designed to combat cachexia. Currently called TCMCB07, the drug is entering a Phase 2 clinical trial in 2025. Per a 2024 press release, the trial will test the efficacy of TCMCB07 on 100 individuals with stage 4 colorectal cancer.
In the release discussing the upcoming trial, Russell Potterfield, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chair of Endevica Bio, exhibited great confidence and enthusiasm around the promise of the drug. In expressing his optimism, Potterfield said, “We are excited to offer hope to patients and their families to address a condition for which there are no effective treatments available. We believe that B07 could be the breakthrough solution and are excited to begin enrolling patients in our trial.”
Indeed, Endevica Bio is a rising star in the biopharmaceutical world, as evidenced by a $10 million Series B funding deal in 2023. However, like all emerging companies, Endevica Bio began as an unknown startup looking to make its mark. And the MIC was there to provide a path for it to grow, innovate, and impact the life sciences market.
More Than a Mere Workspace
Looking back on the early years of Endevica Bio, Potterfield agrees that MIC was pivotal to the company’s development. “Endevica Bio would not exist but for MIC,” said Potterfield. “We needed access to lab animals and oversight as well as institutional care and use.” He noted that the original founder required a lab capable of running high-pressure liquid chromatography equipment and individuals with technical expertise, both of which the MIC provided, along with the guidance and support to build a successful company and team.
The original founding team of Endevica Bio benefited from comprehensive support from the outset, encompassing resources within the incubator and expertise from the business school. Potterfield noted that understanding the business aspect of being a startup is particularly critical in the biotech industry. As he explained, there’s a “collision between science and business” that often needs to be ironed out in startup biotechs. “Trying to teach a senior scientist how to think in a business way requires that level of mentorship that MIC’s been able to provide.”
Endevica Bio spent the first six years at the MIC, taking full advantage of the benefits inherent in the incubator’s ecosystem. Potterfield credits MIC for helping the company garner early financial support from Centennial Investor Angel Network, which leveraged additional funding from the Missouri Technology Corporation. The MIC also proved to be a valuable resource for talent acquisition. “I know that we were able to pick up a really fantastic MBA graduate,” recalled Potterfield.
Success at the MIC and Beyond
Eventually, Endevica Bio began to expand beyond the MIC, which Potterfield views as a natural progression for startups that gain momentum. As he points out, entrepreneurs establish a set of outcomes they want to see, and then move toward those outcomes — in the case of Endevica Bio, the advancement was steady.
Endevica Bio’s headquarters eventually moved to the Chicago area, a decision its leadership made after the business had established itself as a late-stage startup. Though the company still maintains a presence within the incubator. “The business evolved to become a full-blown company taking a pharmaceutical to market,” said Potterfield. “We still have a small space [at the MIC], but we no longer do any technical work ourselves. We outsource.”
Regarding the company’s future, Potterfield anticipates bringing its products to pharmacies and hospitals. “I think that we are going to commercialize the molecules that came out of MIC and follow [the same process] from there.”
To be sure, Endevica Bio is capitalizing on its initial innovations and findings. Thanks to the company’s cachexia research, its team has been able to start looking at a new drug that can help patients with obesity. The weight management drug, 710GO, is currently in an experimental phase, undergoing studies on animal populations to assess its potential.
A legacy of startup support
From providing life science startup founders a place to launch their dreams to introducing them to angel investing opportunities, the MIC enables companies like Endevica Bio to make a difference. While not every startup aims to develop solutions for conditions like cancer, the opportunity for startups to test their viability is essential. And the MIC is the right partner for many of them.
Potterfield calls the MIC’s work “just fantastic” and intends to have an ongoing relationship with the incubator. “It’s a great ecosystem to launch businesses in,” he concluded.