Latest / Zero Friction / Space Medicine: Healthcare Where There Is No Hospital | Savi Glowe, BioAstra

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Space Medicine: Healthcare Where There Is No Hospital | Savi Glowe, BioAstra · Zero Friction

• speaker-0: We always used to say that nobody is ever cured by a PDF. Space speed runs aging, it changes it advances s certain diseases. speaker-1: I have with me today Savvy Glow. She's the CEO and co-founder of a really unique company. It's called BioAstra. And BioAstra really is specializing in providing health care in extreme areas, whether it be ice or desert or even space. speaker-0: I've spent most of my career about two decades in large academic medical centers. speaker-1: What a great guest, the most unique one I've had so far. I didn't move a hospital into space. speaker-0: We can't take a hospital with us when we're thinking about a journey to Mars. NASA realized pretty early on in the shuttle period the shuttle era that if they could get ultrasound technology shrunk down and made small enough, it would be a critical piece of diagnostic technology technology that they could use at stations. We can literally take those discrete technologies and those systems. And move them to every corner of the earth and speaker-1: Revenue doesn't stall because your team stopped trying. It stalls because of friction. I sit down with other commercial leaders who find that friction and fix it. I'm Terry Kucholuchis. Let's get into it. Good day, Terry Kucholuchis here with the Zero Friction Podcast. We have a great guest with us today, probably to date, my most unique opportunity to interview somebody that is creating all sorts of great disruption opportunities in the world of healthcare. I have with me today Savvy Glow. She's the CEO and co-founder of a really unique company. It's called BioAstra. And BioAstra really is specializing in providing health care in extreme areas, whether it be ice or desert or even space. And so glad to have you here, Savvy. Why don't you give us a little background on, you know, what got you here and then kind of tell us a little bit about BioAstra and what you're doing and Yeah, where you think what you're doing today is gonna help us, you know, create a better healthcare system in the future. speaker-0: Well, thank you so much for having me, Terry. This is such an exciting exciting place to be and it's wonderful to be talking with you. yeah, how I got here is a very long story. I'm not gonna go into the whole thing, but the long and short is that I've spent most of my career, about two decades, in large academic medical centers. I most recently was at Mount Sinai in New York working in a in some institutes and departments focused on translational data science. So The concept there is you leveraging the large amounts of data that we're collecting in the electronic rec medical records and through digital health to better understand human health and biology and translate those discoveries into products that can make the way to market. we always used to say that nobody is ever cured by a PDF. So that is by like to this day the a core piece of our research and my philosophy and what I do. So you know, working for so long in the academic medical system and in large health healthcare systems, you know, I began to hit a lot of walls, you know, as one does, you know, over the course of a career. And I I started seeking out blue sky, like where where did I see a need for for health systems, particularly data-driven predictive health systems that That weren't already entrenched by existing infrastructure. And I found myself looking to space, in part because I'm a lifelong trekkie. but but also because space is space is this really untapped emerging market for for biological science, biomedical science, and eventually downstream enterprise technologies. And What I have found about space that's particularly exciting and intriguing is that space is a fit forcing function for both human biology and for the technology itself. As it relates to human biology, space, once we get up there, microgravity and radiation, it literally changes the fundamental processes of our bodies and ourselves. So space speed runs aging, it changes it advances s certain diseases. We can We have countermeasures and things that we do to to make sure that our astronauts stay healthy, but from a purely laboratory perspective, space does things to us that we can't replicate on Earth. And so in a discovery sense, we can learn a lot more and we can ad and we can speed run our discoveries in a very similar fashion. And then as it relates to technology, the forcing function is literally. The environment that we're in, the space, not space as an outer space, but space as in the container that we as biological organisms build build to fly. So all technology has to be it has to be self-powered, it has to be rugged, it has to be somewhat autonomous. And and when we think about building healthcare technologies in that way where we're not building health technologies that fit inside an entire suite on of the floor of a hospital, but we're building something that's about the size of a notebook that that is rugged enough to fly and to fly to the ISS or to the moon or Mars, then when we talk about bringing those technologies home back to Earth, they can go anywhere. We're not limited by the size of the hospital or the budget of the hospital or the location of the hospital. We can literally take those discrete technologies and those systems and move them to every corner of the earth. And that's that's really what motivates me is creating systems that that will help the in the entire planet become healthier and live in more optimized states of well being. speaker-1: That's a great accessibility, healthcare accessibility tool too. When you when you talk about being able to deliver health care in the extreme elements that you and Bioastra does, it it makes thinking about providing care in Albuquerque, New Mexico a little seems like a little simpler exercise, right? And so what a wonderful thing to think about that. So so tell me about some of the how do you plan, from a mission perspective on what technologies to bring into space? Or if you're going to, you know, Antarctica, like how do you sort of plan that whole medical part of your journey too? 'Cause it's not now you're on an expedition, but now you have a whole there's a there's a healthcare perspective that has to be planned for 'cause you're in an extreme element and you're in the middle of nowhere and There aren't hospitals, right? So you have to create that. How do you go through that process? speaker-0: You know, there are some pretty amazing, there are pretty amazing people who have spent their entire careers building out field medicine processes and protocols for doing exactly this. NASA has their has a really rigorous flight medicine program and payload specialist team that builds out what can fly and what you know what is part of the standard complement and then they train medical officer on board. this is I'm talking ISS right now and even the free flyer missions, ever there's always a medical officer who's trained on how to use what's available and then relying on ground control for for additional medical advice. When we start getting to places that are a little less connected, I would say the ISS is probably one of the most connected places Yes, that's the International Space Station. Yes, forgive me if I drop into if I drop into acronyms, please. Yes. and and in both of our fields, we've got healthcare and aerospace, and everybody relies so heavily on these acronyms. But so I would say the ISS, the International Space Station, is one of the most connected places that humanity is. there be we can be those the astronauts that are up there are in constant communication with your own control and they're they are very, very closely monitored. When we start thinking about extreme environments and extreme expeditions on Earth, that's where it starts to become a little bit different, where you're not gonna have access to a ground control team that's that's based over in Houston and say, Hey, we had this this medical emergency, you know, how like how do we set this leg? You know? So With every expedition, with every mission that we do in extreme environments, there's always a a field trained medical officer, similar to what the the field are the flight surgeons that fly into into space and support astronauts. and you know, in terms of like the medical complements, depending on what you're doing, i it will depend on what you bring with you. So we just completed an expedition to Bikini atoll. and our resident MD on board you know put together a pretty a pretty basic first aid kit and we had the supplies that were available on the boat. We were, you know, most concerned about you know oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide buildup from doing too many dives and you know minor cuts and bruises and you know the s motion sickness from the boat. And so, the medical supplies that we required for that expedition were were for fairly standard. We we didn't really have a very large complement. for us at BioAstra, the work that we spend a lot of time doing, particularly as it relates to field medicine, is more on the research side. So how do you design protocols, scientific protocols that where you can't you don't have a full bench with you. You don't have access to all of your reagents and all of your supplies and you don't always have access to clotchain storage. So how do you design studies so that you can collect the deep molecular samples that you that you will will eventually want to process and keep them stable enough for long enough so that when you can get them to the lab they're viable for discovery. And so that's a lot of the work that we've been doing at BioAstra is building out that expedition science and building out those protocols and catalogs of materials and the sa and the same goes for ISS too, for the for traveling to space, you know. How do you do how do you do genomic science in space when you can't fly certain reagents because those reagents have ethanol in them and ethanol explodes? So you can't fly that in in a in a spacecraft. So That's that's probably more more aligned with the the the novel some of the more novel protocols that we're building at the moment. speaker-1: That's pretty cool. And so as you're developing these extreme nature healthcare technologies, is there anything that you can point back to in our market today that it will sort of develop with this extreme nature in mind and now it's playing a role in our healthcare world today? speaker-0: Yeah. I'm my favorite example, I there's a couple of examples from from NASA and from the International Space Station, but my favorite one, and because this is relevant even even for the astronauts that are up there today, is portable ultrasound technology. So ultrasound technology has been around for you know, since the fifties and sixties and it's usually it back in the in its early days of development, it was these big rolling scanners that would move like slowly move their way across, hospital floors and, if you needed to scan somebody's abdomen and look for look for disease you would or look at a baby or, whatever you were using the the ultrasound for, it was a lot of a lot of equipment to move. Well NASA realized pretty early on in the shuttle period the the shuttle era that if they could get ultrasound technology shrunk down and made small enough, it would be a critical piece of diagnostic technol technology that they could use at stations. So NASA has worked very, very closely with a number of different technology developers to essentially shrink down this technology. And what we have today is the butterfly ultrasound device. And this is This is it's an amazing it's an amazing piece of technology. there are versions of it that I've seen that connect into the iPhone. So there's literally an attachment that goes into the iPhone. And so if you are if you are at you know, are in a humanitarian relief refugee camp, you know, the the Red Cross or whatever doctors that are on hand, if they have access to that device, they have an ultrasound machine that they wouldn't have had otherwise. And the reason why I bring this up most recently is because there was an astronaut who had to be brought home just a few months ago or maybe it's even six months ago at this time point. What's time means nothing anymore. But he he's recently talked about this. This is publicly available information. His name's Mike. He had what was a very weird neurologic episode. He was having dinner with the crew. And he suddenly lost the ability to speak. And and the the they didn't know what was going on and it came back twenty minutes later and they were able to essentially use an ultrasound device, the ultrasound device that's on the station, to basically show that that at least from what they could see, like jugular vein and heart and you know, all of like the throat, vocal cords. That there wasn't a clot that they could see, but the risk of recurring TBI was too great that and they couldn't find it on the on the with the ultrasound. Basically, he needed to come home and have an MRI to see what was going on. they were able to basically manage the medical emergency. So they were able to say, okay, this was a medical emergency, the crew member is not in immediate danger. We can verify that. through the use of this ultrasound device, but we do need to bring them home. And so this is how this device in space is being used today for medical and mission operations. speaker-1: That's pretty cool. How do you move a hospital into space? How do you like I know that you can triage like equipment into space, but but now we're talking about like, you know, infrastructure and you know, surgical rooms and all sorts of things. How does that change in space when you think about how therapy gets delivered? speaker-0: the reality is is we can't take a hospital with us when we're thinking about a journey to Mars. we're gonna be able to bring basically the most, you know, life life preserving materials and and that's kind of it. So when we think about long duration, long distance missions, we need to think about healthcare technology that meets all those requirements that I said before. You know, small, rugged, self-powered. And I'm gonna add into that diagnostic and preventative. So when we talk about long duration missions beyond our beyond our magnetosphere, beyond the belts of Earth that protect that pr keep us insulated from cob cosmic ra radiation, which the ISS is in that low that low Earth orbit bubble. So they're being exposed to some cosmic radiation, more than you get on Earth, but not as much as you get not as much as the Artemis II astronauts got on their way to the moon and certainly not as much as Astronauts would get in a journey to to Mars. And so when we think about exposure to radiation and long long duration microgravity exposure or zero gravity exposure when we're talking about deep space, then we're starting to look, then we need to start looking at preventative and diagnostics that are looking at the cellular. Cellular changes. And this is a lot of the work that we do at BioAstra. And a lot of the reason why we do we spend so much time thinking about genomics in space. Because being able to diagnose a cellular mutation before it becomes a problematic mutation, problematic in the terms of ca what rapidly growing cancer, that's the type of work that we're going to need to quickly figure out as it relates to to medicine and and these long duration missions. I think that there are a number of also, you know, imaging and other other systems that need to be taken into account too. But we spend a lot of time looking at the molecular the emec molecular changes as a result of spaceflight are the result of extreme conditions. And then, you know, obviously developing point of care countermeasures for those for those changes. that's that's what that's that's the dream. That's what we need to be working on. That's what's going to help the first colonists to Mars survive. you know, it's not gonna be a Da Vinci robot who can perform surgery. I mean, maybe, but it's more likely gonna be much smaller and much less impressive, at least on the on the surface, than than kind of the way that we think about hospitals today and the way we think about hospitals today is also backwards in as a as it relates to our ability to travel to become an interplanetary species. Because we really like we go see a doctor when we look at our health only when as an aberration of health, right? Like doctors treat you when something's wrong. But when we're talking about sustaining life over the course of many years to the next planet and landing on that planet, it's so much more than just just disease, it's things like nutrition, it's things like sleep and circadian rhythm. It's muscle and bone loss. It's eyesight deterioration. It's this whole complement of of physiological changes and cellular changes that need to be addressed to ensure that we can survive. speaker-1: Bill, are there certain things that, you know, that kind of leads me to a more of a pr like you were just speaking to our sort of like proactive type health measure, right? Like so what are things that you're learning in today's in your space today with bioastra? Is that are you studying like how you can prepare your body to withstand these things more effectively and efficiently before they go to these extreme environments so that, you know, you're less prone to certain exposure? speaker-0: There's there are a couple of questions that we have. There are on the human performance side, there are a lot there's a lot of work that's being done by NASA and exercise physiologists to understand like how how we can best build our body before we fly and then while we're in flight to reduce muscle and bone loss. one of the things that we're looking at though is we're looking at, you know, epigenetic changes. Like we're genes that get turned on and off as a result of space flight or stress. And that that is a that is a big part of what we do. So, you know, I could see us, my gosh, I think this is probably in certain astronaut circles, this would be very controversial, but there is a future when where we might discover that one gene over another is actually protective to higher radiation environments. And we would maybe choose those persons to fly to into deep space before we choose the other the other genetic subset. And so I think that for me, like the molecular, the understanding of of you know, the diversity of this of human health at that molecular level is is to me particularly fascinating. I feel like there's I feel like from exercise physiology and cognitive the, process and certainly the psychological, the decision makers that have gone into the ast selection process. NASA has that really, really well tuned and they're working every day is getting better and better. But we still have a lot to answer just even at just at the cellular level. And that's what gets me really excited. speaker-1: That's cool. So how do you wake up one day and say, I'm gonna go do this? Like like what what what is sort of like yeah, 'cause it's a very your role in your company is a very mission oriented, very purpose driven organization. And so is there anything behind that mission and purpose with you? Is there an energy piece that says, you know, this was my calling or this was something that that called me, what what what brought this all on? speaker-0: There's a couple of different ways I could answer it. I think I'll I'll I'll start with the energetic and the the mission driven piece because I think that every founder or most founders, you don't set out and set out on an entrepreneurial journey because you think it's gonna be easy or if you do you're doing it wrong. if you think that this this founder's path is, you know, I'm so hard by the way. Yeah, a couple of years, you know, we'll have this figured out and then I'll move on to the next thing. Yeah, all of the all of the best founders and CEOs and entrepreneurs that I've met are the ones who where something has been gnawing at them on the inside that just had to get out. And for me it was no different. I started talking about when I even when I was at Mount Sinai Sinai, I started talking about building enterprise health health technology systems for space back in back in the mid teens. And and I sat with these ideas and kind of this This percolating thought for about ten years before it became bioastra. And and so speaker-1: One was it wonderment or did you see a vision or how do 'cause it's a really first of all, it's really an abstract thing just to like what you're doing is so far outside of the the normal circle, right? And so your brain must just work in a different wavelength because that's just phenomenal. speaker-0: Well, that would explain that would explain a lot. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: My brain's working at different wavelengths. Yes, this. I mean part of it was part of it was my frustration inside, you know, trying to make change inside a healthcare system. And I don't want to stand on any health any box and talk about the ways in which it's broken. I I know that you've got other episodes where you talk about these, you know, the different elements of of healthcare that aren't working as efficiently as they are. But I can say that working inside these systems is hard. It's really, really hard. And making change from within is is difficult. And I I deeply respect my colleagues that are still are still there, that are still fighting the fight, that are still that are moving forward, amazing technologies and AI adaptation and, new drugs and new new trials and new devices. Like God bless them. That's amazing. For me, I think that I needed the freedom to be able to think about redesigning that infrastructure from scratch. And that was that was a lot of the impetus of where BioAstra started from is if I could redesign health the electronic health record, what would it look like? If I could redesign the way in which we conduct, you know, human subjects research in, you know, in these extreme in in any condition, but let alone in these extreme conditions. and if I could start to build build the kinds of technology that that would not didn't necessarily have to be tied to an expensive to run, hard to reach, you know, massive hospital, that's what that's where all of this started is I saw all of those individual elemental problems and said, where hasn't this been done yet? And Found myself happily surprised that space was it. speaker-1: That's so cool. And so tell me, is there a business behind all of this or is this all grant? Is this is there a commercial infrastructure? Tell me about that from a company perspective. speaker-0: Yes. So Bioastra, this is such a great question, and this this will take me back four years because bioastra at its inception, myself and my co founder Chris Mason, we we sat and we had probably about two months of conversations in the very early days where we went back and forth. We're like, Do we do we form as a C corp? Do we form as, you know, a you know, B Corp? Do we like Do we do a nonprofit? Do we do just like how do we want to create this? And we ultimately formed BioAstra as a 501c3. And the the basically the business model and our bylaws are to our purpose is to close the gap in understanding human health and biology in space, translate those findings into data that can be accessed by the global. By the global scientific community. This is a big part of our mission that we don't believe in siloed information and siloed data. We work to make this as available and accessible to to the global community as possible. and then, like I said at the beginning, my my ethos is that nobody was ever cured by a PDF. so we used to we said this at Mount Sinai and we say this at Bioastra. So the research that we do, we always wanted to be pointing towards ra opportunities to rapidly spin out technology or what or compounds or products. So BioAstra's business model is designed as a traditional 501c3. We submit grants, we we seek donations, we we do kind of those traditional paths. but we also spin out technology and for each spin out that the nonprofit does, the nonprofit acts as a as a founder in the in the new entity so it retains non-dilutive equity in that in that new entity and over time there will be tens of hundreds of hopefully you know opportunities equity opportunities for the nonprofit so that over time the this this entity isn't just forever seeking out grants and seeking out donations we we've created something that is self-sustaining over over time hundreds of years because ultimately that's what I'm trying to do. I don't want to I don't want to operate in the traditional V C timeline of, you know, ROI in seven to ten years or thirteen if we're talking biotech. I want to be thinking about how we build something that is that is that my daughter will be able to, you know, leverage and take part in and that her children's children will be able to have and My co-founder actually wrote a book called The Next Five Hundred Years. how to how like the g it's a geneticist's take on how we become an interplanetary species, but this is the long view, right? We're looking at we're looking at human health and well being, both on planet Earth and, you know, out to the stars over the next few hundred years. speaker-1: And that's pretty cool. What does that look like? do you do you have relationships with other some of these companies? I'm sure you do, but and if you can and can't talk about it, that's fine. speaker-0: No, no, I can I can absolutely talk about some speaker-1: wondering when you think about space tech I just I just wonder about all these little many microeconomies that are beginning to build around space travel have to start building themselves up on their an ecosystem or a structure around these things that have to happen, right? speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Well, I will say so, the biggest ambition that we have for Bioastra is not just that we will exist for the next five hundred years, but it's that we is that in the next 10 years we will have created a independent human space flight research program. So what I mean by that is right now most most human subject or most human spaceflight is happening as a result of sovereign nations. So NASA, ESA, JAXA, but then within individual comp countries there are smaller space agencies. Basically in this new commercial t the space 2.0 economy, we are talking about two, possibly three destinations that will be available for use in Leo. And the the basically the commercial market is still Envisioning that it's going to be the primary buyers of that access are just going to be sovereign nations. And what Bioastra is saying is no, if you really believe that there is a biotech, bio med economy for space, then the commercial market deserves and should have an independent stake in in human space flight. And so we are rather ambitiously putting together a research, an independent human space flight program built around biomedical research. And we are seeking to purchase our own flights. We're seeking to purchase s space at stations. And we actually have an astronaut reservation agreement. I can't talk about it yet, but we have a reservation agreement for one of the new stations. we are seeking access to some of the ISS missions that are going to be flying, commercial missions that are flying. Those are called PAM missions. they stand for private astronaut missions. To if if any of your listeners are familiar with human spaceflight and recognize a company called Axiom, Axiom has been sending humans up to the International Space Station for the last four years. And all of those expedition, all of those missions are. Pam missions, private astronaut missions. And the the astronauts that Axiom has, Peggy Whitson, led by Peggy Wet P Peggy Whitson, who's just an absolute phenomen phenomenon, like what an amazing person. you know, they they go up for about two weeks. And so there are a couple of new Pam missions that are on the table for the commercial space industry. Bioastra's trying to get a seat, and we're trying to get a seat, and seats. For the future, for future stations. And then we're also trying to go to a bit larger and larger distances. This we're looking at lunar, we're looking at Mars. And you might ask, like, well, what makes what we do different than say, like what NASA's doing or what somebody else is doing? And this really comes down to the design of our of our missions. We are starting with twin missions. So there was a mission, there was a NASA. astronaut mission that flew in 2016 with Scott Kelly. He at the time went up for the longest duration NASA flight up to ISS. And about six months before he flew, NASA realized wait a second, this guy's Scott, he's got an identical twin. And his identical twin is a NASA astronaut too. And so Mark and Scott Kelly both consented to participate in a year-long twin study. UNTRA TRIANP US Understand what happens to the human body in space and the and identical twins are like the best natural experiment because it basically it sh it it powers our studies, particularly for genetics, it powers our studies by ten. And and so our statistical findings speaker-1: Geeking out over this as scientist, right? speaker-0: Well, yes, and actually my co-founder is the PI of that study. Right. So Chris Mason ran that study with Mark and Scott and you know, so the basis of the data that we have inside Bioastra is all from Mark and Scott. And the work we we have more astronaut data that's come through the commercial missions over the past few years. but but we really want to get back to enhancing the power of our studies, particularly in the early days, so that we can hopefully accelerate the pace at which we are able to make these molecular discoveries and understand what's happening. So so in the next coming coming months, like we month, year maybe, but we'll be looking for identical twins from around the world. We are looking for for qualified pairs of twins who might consider space flight, might consider space flight training and you know, it's it's pretty speaker-1: I don't th I think there'll be a long line. I don't think you'll be, you know, searching for candidates. But that'll be a lot of fun. speaker-0: We hope I mean it's tricky because it's a two body problem, right? I think for every tw for every twin study you need both twins to consent and to participate and for these studies in particular you have one twin that, you know, depending on your perspective, will have all the fun of going to space and the other twin has to stay home and they still have to do like the icky stuff like eating astronaut food for the next, you know, two weeks. So so it's it's it's a it'll be a it'll be a fun it'll be a fun growth period. And I I I can see over time as our access to these environments changes that we might not always be looking for identical twins to fly and the the work will grow and expand as science always does, but but that's the work that we have in front of us for the next five years. speaker-1: I love that. That's that's a good story. Well, I have one more question for you. And it's it's sort of a curveball out of out of the the sky somewhere. It's it's something that I always ask every guest, by the way. And so one day we'll have an entire episode of the answer of this question. And I'll ask it really slowly so I'll let you process it a little bit, but it's gonna kind of revolve around going back to your earlier self and providing some advice to yourself. So, you know, you've had a great career. you're a founder, you're a CEO, you're you're breaking barriers in so many different ways. female founder, female CEO, you're breaking the boundary of taking healthcare into space. And those are just wonderful transformational opportunities. And so if you could go back and from all your learnings and if you go back to 22-year-old self, and you could just give one piece of advice, not two, not three, but just one piece of advice that what you've learned and experienced. What would current day savvy go back and provide as one piece of advice to twenty two year old savvy? speaker-0: Well speaker-1: it's a it's an interesting question. But I I I know that you've got it in there somewhere. speaker-0: Man, it's so tricky 'cause so much twenty two year old savvy, like Everything that she that she did is why I am here today. So I my god, I give her a giant hug and tell her to just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Little Dory from from, you know, finding Nemo. Just keep swimming. I think that's that's the best advice and that I could give her. Like she there's I think there's been a few the times in my life when I've looked back and thought Well, if I had only done this or if I had only done that. Well, when you put that in perspective, we that you make one change and then you don't you don't get to be here and you know, just fun bit. Like twenty two year old Savi was living in an ashram in Colorado. You know, like just just keep going. Like you're like you know. speaker-1: You'll find it. speaker-0: You'll find you're yeah, yeah. And I'm like I I still have a meditation practice. I still have those those lessons and like the foundations of you know, of that work are what you know, what made everything what made everything possible. So, you know, even the you know the wonderful partners that I've had in life and the not so great partners that came along later and you know, the everything you know, everything is where it where it is now. Maybe I would tell her since I have to give her some some advice is call your grandmas more. That's what I would do. I would tell her to call her grandmas. speaker-1: Love that. Well good. Well Savvy Glow, thank you so much. What a great guest. The most unique one I've had so far. And we wish you and Bioastra the very best and keep the exploration moving. speaker-0: Thank you, Terry, at Astra.