Angel Invest Boston "One Cell in A Billion" - Çağrı Savran, Engineer, Academic & Founder
The way cancer is treated is about to change.
Close monitoring during treatment will become possible, telling us within days with much greater precision if a treatment is working or not. Long-term monitoring of patients in remission will also be revolutionized by making fewer biopsies necessary and detecting relapses much earlier. All these promises come from the technology developed in the lab of Çağrı [Cha-ree] Savran at Purdue University that is being commercialized in Savran Technologies.
The brilliant and charming Professor Savran was my guest in this laugh-filled episode. He told how he went from a childhood in Turkey to studying in some of America’s most prominent universities. He opened my eyes to the startup-friendly climate at Purdue University and he explained how his invention came about. Don’t miss this accessible and fun report from the most consequential frontier of innovation.
Read the full transcript and see the video at:
Here is a list of the topics discussed:
- Çağrı Savran Bio (Çağrı Is Pronounced Cha-ree)
- Accident that Took Çağrı Savran from Turkey to Indiana
- Purdue University’s Remarkable Support for the Commercialization of Faculty Inventions
- Çağrı Savran: “So, when I say "extremely rare," I mean one-in-a-billion rare.”
- Çağrı Savran: “Our technology can find those five or six or ten cells that are, among about a billion.“
- “…from a blood sample, you have a glimpse into the tumor without cutting into the person.”
- The Promise of Monitoring Cancer Treatment with a Blood Draw
- “The advantage is if you can do this with a blood sample, it gives you a chance to do this test frequently, right?”
- Applicable to the Prenatal Monitoring of the Fetus
- Savran’s Tech Is Simple, Fast and Results in High Purity and Yield – 1000 Times Faster than Typical Microfluidic Systems
- Like Alexander with the Gordian Knot, Savran Has Loosened One Constraint to Great Effect
- Bigger Scale and Faster Flow Allows the Fast Separation of Rare Cells
- Device Seems Amenable to Large Scale Usage – Handling Many Patients at the Same Time
- How the Invention Came About
- Why Çağrı Savran Founded a Company
- Purdue’s New Commercialization Policy Played a Big Role in the Decision to Found the Company
- Why Turbocharging Cell Separation Is So Important
- Other Use Cases: People Are Always Suggesting New Ones but Need to Concentrate
- Savran’s Tech Is a Game Changer because of Throughput and Parallelization
- Other Techniques Look at Pieces of DNA – Savran’s Tech Is Capable of Finding the Entire Genome
- Sal Daher Reads the Review by Spizzy Spong on iTunes and Asks for Your Review
- How Savran Landed Bigwig Advisor Ken Morse
- How Savran Found Its CEO – Patrick Rivelli
- "Oh, you have no idea how I wish that somebody would say that about me, that I'm 'quietly competent.'”
- Savran’s Choice of the Right Patent Attorney Was Crucial – Peter Fasse Helped Way Beyond Patents
- Patrick Rivelli, CEO Proposed a New Go to Market Approach
- What Makes the Savran Lab at Purdue so Productive
- Çağrı Savran Urges Fellow Academics to Bring Their Inventions to Market