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Company History

As two leading entrepreneurs and investors in health technology companies, Dr. Maurice Ferre (Co-founder and Chairman) and Christopher Dewey (Co-founder) came to believe that skin cancer is primarily a public health issue that could be addressed by improving access to quality skin cancer care. Due to the limited number of dermatologists, their goal was to use cutting-edge spectroscopy and machine learning technologies to improve frontline providers ability to detect skin cancer early.

They founded DermaSensor in 2009 following discussions with Dr. Irving Bigio, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and one of the top spectroscopy researchers in the world. Dr. Bigio is the original inventor and patent holder for Elastic Scattering Spectroscopy (ESS), a key technology employed by the DermaSensor device.

Since Professor Bigio's invention of ESS in 1994, there have been several hundreds of publications on ESS and over 30 publications on the use of ESS in clinical studies. DermaSensor began its own skin-specific studies using this technology in 2011 and began its first study on the current commercial device in 2018.

DermaSensor Device History
The DermaSensor technology has significantly improved over the last twelve years, from the ten kilogram, second-generation system pictured at left to the current one kilogram, fourth-generation commercial product pictured at right

DermaSensor Development History

1994
Invention of ESS by Professor Irving Bigio
2011
Company begins a clinical study for melanoma using 30-pound desktop prototype devices
2015
Company begins a clinical study for all skin cancers using same prototype devices
2016
Cody Simmons joins as CEO, subsequently raises seed financing to start commercial device development and initiates a R&D and licensing collaboration with Professor Bigio's group at Boston University
Raised cumulative $5.5M
2018
Start of DERM-ASSESS II Multi-Center, Prospective Clinical Study to assess miniaturized, commercial DermaSensor device safety and efficacy
Raised cumulative $17M
1H 2020
Positive readout from the DERM-ASSESS II Study; company announces an $11.5M financing to support completion of regulatory requirements and commercial activities
2H 2020
Company receives necessary regulatory listings for Europe (CE Mark), Australia's TGA and New Zealand's WAND. The beginning of commercial efforts in Australia and New Zealand are announced in mid November.
DermaSensor Device

DermaSensor Reader Study And Clinical Model Suggest That Physicians’ Use Of DermaSensor Improves Positive Predictive Value

12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%

7.70%

11.44%

PPV w/out DS
PPV w/ DS

49% Increase In True Positives

  • 11.44% of lesions (~1 out of 9) that a physician refers/biopsies will be malignant with use of DermaSensor versus 7.70% of lesions (~1 out of 13) currently
  • Accordingly, the relative likelihood that a physician’s referral/biopsy of a lesion is positive for cancer increases by 49%

Notes: Unpublished statistical model developed with and validated by a third-party biostatistician. Positive Predictive Value (PPV) is the probability that subjects with a positive screening test truly have the disease. PPV model uses US prevalence rates from biopsies in published literature and these prevalence rates were modeled with reader study results to estimate physician PPV with and without use of DermaSensor.

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