Hartford Business Journal

29 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | April 11, 2022 TECH 25 Armin Rad is the co-founder of Farmington-based biotech company Encapsulate. Encapsulate grows tumors outside the body to test chemotherapy effectiveness By Norman Bell Hartford Business Journal Contributor L earning you or someone you love has cancer is devastating. Learning your life-saving treatment rests on a process of trial and error is a cruel reality that Armin Rad is working to solve. Rad is CEO and co-founder of Encapsulate and one of the driving forces behind the Farmington biotech's patented approach to growing tumors outside the body. The concept is that if Encapsulate can model the interaction of a patient's tumor and a range of chemotherapy options, the results will better advise the oncologist's decision on treatment and reduce false starts. The facts and figures of the problem roll off Rad's tongue: • 40% of Americans will have cancer in their lifetime; • 80% of initial chemotherapy regimens won't work; • The average cycle of chemotherapy lasts three months; • The average cancer patient goes through 6.5 cycles of chemotherapy. Hundreds of drugs have been approved for treating cancer, Rad explains, and it's common for an oncologist to have a choice of 20 drugs to treat any specific cancer. If Encapsulate can help point to the most effective option, the patient can skip months of toxic treatments and improve their chance of survival. The team projects Encapsulate's technology can cut 10 months off the average treatment time, saving more than $100,000 per patient, and ultimately saving thousands of lives. The idea of testing tumor tissue outside the body isn't new, but tumors behave differently when separated from the patient. Encapsulate's tumor-on-a-chip approach better mimics a tumor's in-body reaction to treatment. It's a concept that won Encapsulate the 2019 Technology in Space prize, which came with $500,000 and a spot for testing aboard the International Space Station. "Testing the process in weightlessness on the International Space Station provides an opportunity to evaluate our work with microtumors in an environment that has proven in previous experiments to duplicate more precisely how cells behave inside the human body," Rad told CTNext at the time. In 2020, Encapsulate did a pilot test in conjunction with Hartford HealthCare to prove the accuracy of its work. It will start phase 2 testing soon and run through mid-2023 on the road to certification as a regional lab service for oncologists. If all goes well, Encapsulate hopes to be certified as a national lab service by 2024. Downstream, Rad envisions winning approval for a medical device — an automated platform — that would let companies like Quest and Labcorp collect samples and forward results to Encapsulate for analysis. But all of that is expensive. Beyond the $500,000 in prize money, Encapsulate has raised just under $1 million from Connecticut Innovations, CTNext and other small investors. It is working on raising a new round of seed funding. The innovation work was done while Rad and his co-founders — Leila Daneshmandi and Reza Amin — were at UConn, so the university owns the patents. As the innovators, the co-founders retain a third of the rights and are working under an exclusive licensing agreement. Flow ID's technology makes password management less of a hassle By Norman Bell Hartford Business Journal Contributor W ith so many passwords we need password managers; with so many cyber threats we need two-step verification. There's got to be a better way, and Richard Hires says his company Flow ID has the answer. The Windsor startup takes a blockchain approach to the problem of verification. There are no passwords and access relies on delegated authority. Your information is stored locally and never leaves your possession. The patent-pending technology is designed to work on mobile devices and, yes, it starts with facial recognition. But once a user establishes a pattern of use and a network of trusted connections, the facial recognition aspect fades in importance and becomes just one point of verification. Flow ID will be able to verify a customer whose face is wrapped in bandages based on other unique behavior indicators, Hires explains. Flow ID will make its debut on an international stage this month when it starts verifying customers for Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify. Hires acknowledges the challenge ahead is more marketing than software. For Shopify, Flow ID will verify age and identity and provide an audit trail, a vital step for retailers selling adult products like cigarettes and alcohol. But Flow ID's mix of biometric and behavioral measures can leverage GPS and intellectual property identification with blockchain security. Those are all characteristics that make Flow ID a competitor for banking and government business, Hires says. And consumers should love the logic of retaining their information, rather than seeing it spread — and sold — across the internet. Within Flow ID, information is only shared with permission of both parties. And there's no cost to the consumer. Hires explains that his background is in logistics while his partner is the cybersecurity software expert. They originally planned to focus on the financial industry first but that proved a bit too ambitious in a business world hampered by the pandemic. They've worked largely via videoconference with one developer to get the product ready for its e-commerce debut with Shopify. But there's more work to be done, Hires says, to build out the capabilities for that step into the financial world. That means hiring seven or eight more developers and raising more funding. They've raised $500,000 in seed funding and are out trying to raise $1.5 million more. In the fall, they expect to go to market seeking $8 million to $10 million in series A funding. For Hires, being able to be sure who you're dealing with is the Holy Grail of cybersecurity. And there are lots of potentially lucrative business applications for the technology. But Hires is eager for the day when Flow ID can show its value in the social media space. Knowing the person you're talking with on a dating site is who they say they are is a potential game changer, he says. More immediately, Hires says Flow ID's technology is more cost- effective, reliable and customer- friendly than anything else in the market. And he's ready to prove it, starting with Shopify. At A Glance Company: Encapsulate | Industry: Biotechnology Top Executive: Armin Rad, Co-Founder | HQ: Farmington Company Website: Encapsulate.bio | Phone Number: 267-290-7779 At A Glance Company: Flow ID | Industry: Cybersecurity Top Executive: Richard Hires, Principal | HQ: Windsor Company Website: FlowID.me | Phone Number: 952-826-9634 PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED IMAGE | PIXABAY/TUMISU Richard Hires

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