Faculty Feature: Dr. Matthew Ebben and Dr. Ana Krieger

For this newsletter’s Faculty Feature, Francis He (SVG Interview Leader), and Nick Bartelo (SVG President) had the opportunity to sit down with Ana Krieger and Matthew Ebben. Dr. Krieger received her MD degree from Federal University in Brazil and earned a Masters in Public Health at New York University. She is now a Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Departments of Medicine, Neurology and Genetic Medicine and Chief of the Sleep Neurology Division in the Department of Neurology at Weill Cornell. Dr. Ebben earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at the City University of New York. He is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and is a licensed Psychologist, Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, and holds a certification in Behavioral Sleep Medicine at Weill Cornell. Dr. Krieger and Dr. Ebben are co-founders of Biosleep Technologies, a company focusing on mitigating sleep disturbances through the development of a highly predictive method to diagnose sleep apnea. Dr. Krieger and Dr. Ebben are revolutionizing the sleep-wellness industry by accurately identifying problems to optimize sleep patterns and demonstrating the ability to carefully monitor sleep apnea to ensure optimal health.

SVG: How did you two meet and what led you both to start this venture together? 

Dr. Ebben: We met when Dr. Krieger was hired to join our the Center for Sleep Medicine when it was decided to involve medicine. Dr. Krieger said to me one day "oxygen is the key to diagnosing sleep apnea. I think we can really identify things with just the oxygen." A literature search revealed that predicting an apnea hypopnea index with oxygen had not been done before, and we had a complimentary dataset to test this. 
Dr. Krieger: My training was mainly critical care in the ICU. I noticed that patients' conditions often got worse at night and better during the day, so I wanted more data to investigate what changes during sleep. The start of this venture was not easy since the field was in its infancy. We received internal support from Cornell, but outside investors did not understand what we were pitching. To our advantage, Covid-19 accelerated the general public's understanding of the importance of oxygen monitoring.  
 

SVG: Your research has came a long way since the discovery of using oxygen level to predict sleep apnea. Can you tell us about when you realized you had something to build a startup on and also how did the startup life fit into your daily practice?
 
Dr. Ebben: : It started out as an academic exercise, simply testing a theoretical idea. Most of the time we're not thinking about commercialization, but rather journal papers. However, we realized this should be commercialized to help people.
It is important to develop your own skill set and interests in your field. You may get some ideas for technology, or maybe you'll just have a really great career in neuroscience. It's difficult to make a living solely through a startup and the lifestyle is less stable. From my perspective, it is better as a side job.
Dr. Krieger: We started with the question we published, making sure we published only enough not to "spill the beans" in terms of intellectual property protection. We then met with the technology transfer office and disclosed our invention. At that time, there were no companies in our field that understood our invention, and the technology transfer office at Cornell suggested for us to create our own company. Then an opportunity came to compete in the Weill Cornell Business Challenge, and that was the starting point of BioSleep Technologies, providing the necessary funds and legal guidance to incorporate our company. During this process, we learned that sometimes it is necessary to be patient with very advanced technology because the ecosystem might not be ready for it yet. To our advantage, this timeline allowed us time to experimentally validate and increase the accuracy of our product. Now that the science is solid, we can focus on increasing access to our technology’s simpler and lower cost screening system for sleep apnea.

SVG: What do you think about the future of the company? In the next five years, where do you want to lead your company to?

Dr. Ebben: Regarding the FDA, we have met with them a couple of times and now we are looking for funding so that we can complete our FDA required trials. This is a critical goal for us over the next year because the bar for getting FDA clearance is very high. Generally, our process requires hiring an FDA consultant that has experience in medical devices who will determine whether we will ride on someone else's technology, called A 510(k), or introduce a new technology, called the de novo process. This will determine the regulatory hurdles we will face.
Dr. Krieger: We would like to get FDA approval and scale up our product. FDA regulation would give us more leverage to get the trust that we need from insurance providers and perhaps even lead to getting reimbursement for the product. Scalability is easy once you have an oximeter that can connect to our cloud. We want to make the device inexpensive, then perhaps even insurance reimbursement wouldn't be necessary. An advantage of the BioSleep's system is its potential for multiple nights of usage, for example in cases related to weight loss, alcohol addiction, and pregnancy when repeated testing may be needed over time.

SVG: What advice would you have for graduate students and postdocs who are interested in creating a company?

Dr. Ebben: Spend time with other groups that are at different stages of development and learn from them. For example, it can be shocking to learn about equity dilution and how at the end of the project, the amount of ownership that you have may be quite small. However, it is better to receive some small part of a large profit as opposed to 100% of zero. 
Dr. Krieger: It's important to build a team of people that have the same mission and foster a supportive environment. Cornell has been fostering technology development with their competitions which provide financial support and programs for entrepreneurial ventures which provide incredible guidance. Also, remember it's not about the money, it's about the mission. Keeping this in mind will help you keep pushing to succeed.