Tifffany Ma (00:00:13) - It was definitely a steep learning curve. I think a lot of people have all these great ideas and just keep thinking, Yeah, but I don't know what to do next. I don't know. Do I former team? Do I try to raise money? Do I try to validate my idea? How do I know my ID is good enough? And I think you just have to do something. You just pick something to do on that list and then go do it. So it's like Breaking Bad, but the biology version of it.

Oxentia Producer (00:00:42) - Welcome back to Bringing Your Ideas to Life, the Innovation podcast from Accenture. This time, senior consultant Sarah Allison explores the inspiring startup story of Tiffany Maas, CEO of Gambit Bio, who, along with her three co-founders, is developing a self test kit for early cancer detection. We hope you enjoy the story.

Sarah Allison (00:01:03) - Hi, I'm Sara Allison, a senior consultant at Accenture, and it gives me great pleasure to introduce Tiffany Maas to our virtual studio. Lovely to have you here.

Tifffany Ma (00:01:14) - Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me here. It's great to be here.

Sarah Allison (00:01:17) - So let's begin with please, would you give an introduction to who you are and just tell me the story of what your company does and how it was first created.

Tifffany Ma (00:01:26) - Yeah. I am the CEO and co-founder of Gambit Bio. We are a startup that is making a home self-test kit for early cancer detection based on saliva. And my team consists of myself and my three other co-founders. We are three Oxford University graduates. We did our PhDs in molecular cancer biology together, and our last co-founder is a PhD graduate from UCLA in chemical engineering. And we were very much inspired by how everyone during Covid were able to test themselves. They learned that self testing skills very quickly and they were able to do it consistently. So we were just asking ourselves, why can't people do the same for cancer? Why can't they test themselves for cancer at home, which is definitely going to affect 1 in 2 of us in our lifetimes.

Sarah Allison (00:02:21) - Oh wow, that's really lovely.

Sarah Allison (00:02:22) - So you've got a really very strong team working, working on this, on this innovation. So how did you what is the innovation? How did you come up with the idea? What did you notice?

Tifffany Ma (00:02:36) - So our product in a nutshell, we are making a home self-test kit for early cancer detection and we're using saliva, which makes us stand out. And we are basically making a low flow test strip like the one you use for Covid. That tells you whether or not you have Covid on the spot. But instead we're making one for early cancer detection. And instead of giving you a binary yes, no answer, this test strip will have multiple lines on it and instead it gives you a probability of cancer presence. And to start off with, our first product will be a saliva based test for detecting prostate cancer.

Sarah Allison (00:03:16) - Okay, brilliant. But in the longer term, you're thinking it could actually be one test for multiple different cancers. Is that the idea?

Tifffany Ma (00:03:25) - We're not there yet. We envision we'll do one test strip per cancer type, but depending on where the data and science takes us, that would be ideal.

Tifffany Ma (00:03:36) - But for now that's still quite far fetched. So we're aiming for one strip per cancer type.

Sarah Allison (00:03:42) - So this this company, it's a startup and you've done all of this work and come up with the idea outside of your university research, is that correct?

Tifffany Ma (00:03:55) - That's right. So it's not based on any of our research projects from our patients or our post-docs. It's completely original. It's not linked with any academic professors or supervisors. We just came up with it during Covid. And funnily enough, when we saw people testing themselves for Covid, we were very surprised at how skilled people were and how quickly they were able to pick up this skill of self testing at home. So being cancer biologists, we naturally asked, why can't people use this to test themselves for cancer, which is still going to affect 1 in 2 of us in our lifetimes. And we know that early detection can save lives. Ask any oncologists and they'll tell you that.

Sarah Allison (00:04:42) - So. So. Tiffany So since you don't have a lab or professor to support you, how have you been generating your data and your first prototype?

Tifffany Ma (00:04:53) - Yep, that's a great question because we did something quite unique, which was that we ordered our own reagents and pipettes and lab equipment to our own house because we wouldn't want to perform any of our prototyping on university premises to get entangled with university IP.

Tifffany Ma (00:05:16) - So we made our first prototype at home. It's all safe, so it's like Breaking Bad, but the biology version of it, and we were able to use, you know, saliva samples, non invasive to collect and to prove our proof of concept, scientific concept, using everything at home. It's all legal and safe, which is great.

Sarah Allison (00:05:37) - Yeah, it sounds yeah, it sounds really, really exciting. Just. Just like you picked a startup starting from your home. Brilliant. So in terms of your prototype, what what is the IP behind that?

Tifffany Ma (00:05:50) - So that's one of the challenges and disadvantages of being a startup as opposed to a spin out in biotech. We since we can't use data from a professor to file for IP, we're currently generating data using patient samples. So this one, we're going to hire a CRO, a contract research organization to process our patient samples for us to prove that our panel of biomarkers is very good for diagnosing cancer. So we're going to use that data to file for IP.

Tifffany Ma (00:06:21) - But currently we don't have any. But we have spoken. We've had initial conversations with some IP lawyers and they said that the data we're about to generate will be good enough to file for IP. But until then, we have to keep everything very low key and confidential.

Sarah Allison (00:06:38) - Absolutely. So obviously, doing this outside of the university has a number of challenges. What what do you think your main challenges were at the beginning?

Tifffany Ma (00:06:50) - I think because we basically started off with a very strong idea, but with no data from the lab to back us up, it was very hard to convince people to jump on board. They loved the idea, but they wanted solid data from a lab or from a professor and how we were able to get around that was we are basically taking decades of scientific knowledge, but we are wrapping it up and commercializing it in a way that hasn't been done before. And that's what's special about us. We're not we haven't made a groundbreaking discovery. We've actually just taken what a lot of brilliant scientists have done before us and packaging it up into a way that people can use in their everyday lives.

Sarah Allison (00:07:35) - Brilliant. I mean, it's often the way with innovations. It builds on the previous knowledge which has been gathered. So that's that's really fascinating that you were able to collate all of that information. And from our previous conversation sounds like you still are. You said you're doing quite a lot of bioinformatics sort of analysis of the literature and things like this.

Tifffany Ma (00:07:54) - Yeah, exactly. So from what we know from literature and all the thematic tools that are available to the general public and publicly available data sets, we took those data sets from cancer patients and we did our own informatic analysis looking into things that we cared about for the design of our low flow test strip. And we were able to show that by using a panel of biomarkers as opposed to just looking at one thing, it significantly increases the diagnostic accuracy for detecting cancer.

Sarah Allison (00:08:32) - Wow. And in terms of funding, how how did you go about your gathering enough funds to be able to fund this?

Tifffany Ma (00:08:42) - Yeah. So at the beginning it was, you know, bringing on the very first person who believes in us based on our idea, based on our team's skills and qualifications and our passion for the project.

Tifffany Ma (00:08:55) - And I was pitching to some family friends at home in Hong Kong. And one of them, he got really excited about our project and decided to give us our first angel funding. And we used that money to make our first prototype at home. But on top of that, we were also able to enter multiple competitions, accelerator programs in the UK, both in Oxford and in Edinburgh. And from that we were able to win small pots of money as well.

Sarah Allison (00:09:24) - Wow, that's really impressive. What I also find really interesting is or impressive is, you know, you're you have technical expertise. Your team technically very expert in the science however the business side. Was that a challenge for you to upskill the business side of your knowledge base?

Tifffany Ma (00:09:45) - Gosh, it was definitely a steep learning curve. We have very, very little business experience. We, two of us have had experience being a fellow in a venture capital firm, but that wasn't the same as building a business and operating in it. And we've just been learning on the spot on the fly.

Tifffany Ma (00:10:07) - But all these classes and training from the free accelerator programs and competitions, they've been quite formal in terms of teaching us all the nitty gritty parts of running a business. So it's almost like a crash course MBA for for scientists. And there are lots of free resources at Oxford University as well for students and postdoc researchers who want to pursue a more entrepreneurial path in their career.

Sarah Allison (00:10:37) - That's really interesting. And that leads very onto a very interesting question around how the university, how you've been interacting with the university, have they been supportive of your startup and what support have they provided you? So you've just mentioned some examples there, but are there any other areas of support? Have they been supportive?

Tifffany Ma (00:10:55) - Absolutely. So the university has several organisations and groups that support entrepreneurship. There's an entrepreneurship centre with the slight business school and they have this free program for postdoc researchers in all the Stem subjects to be able to take two weeks from their year into research in the lab, take them out and meet executive MBA students where they can learn about strategy and innovation.

Tifffany Ma (00:11:25) - And that's completely free for the postdoc researchers. And it counts as career development so we don't have to take holiday off to attend these classes. And I think that's been really transformative because it's a completely different way of thinking compared to scientific thinking and also allows you to network with people who, you know, do business for the everyday lives and who've already established entrepreneurial ventures.

Sarah Allison (00:11:51) - Yeah, that sounds really valuable. Yeah. And do you think in the future you would consider approaching the. Do you feel that the fact that you've been part of the university gives you perhaps access to other types of support which may be available in the future?

Tifffany Ma (00:12:11) - I think so, because even though I'm not, you know, our company is always spin out. So we won't have the official support from Oxford University innovation, But the Oxford name carries very far, especially, you know, the further you go away from Oxford, the more prestigious the Oxford name. That's what people say. And it's very true because when I go back to Hong Kong or California and you say you have a team of Oxford graduates, it the name really helps.

Tifffany Ma (00:12:40) - And it is true that Oxford has a high calibre of researchers.

Sarah Allison (00:12:45) - And I guess we haven't we haven't really we mentioned this, but would you do you think they could provide maybe incubation space in the future? Are they open to doing that? Do they have opportunities for that? Where where are you located at the moment?

Tifffany Ma (00:12:59) - Yeah. So I'm located on the old Road campus up in Headington, so it's removed from the rest of the main Oxford campus. And here actually we have a bio escalator building right across from where I work, the building where there are lots of spin outs from the university. They reside there for around three years before they're kicked out to expand, you know, out of the building. But this building also contains Oxford based startups similar to my startup that are not spin outs, but companies that are started by Oxford students, alumni, researchers, staff who have an Oxford link but aren't necessarily basing it off of Oxford research.

Sarah Allison (00:13:41) - Okay, brilliant. And you're at a stage now where you have been on accelerator programmes, you've been mentored, you have a certain level of experience now, but when you first started out, is there anything you wish you'd known that you know now that you'd want to tell your earlier version of yourself? Oh, for.

Tifffany Ma (00:14:01) - Sure. I think the number one thing is I should have started earlier. I think a lot of people have all these great ideas and they just keep thinking, Yeah, but I don't know what to do next. I don't know. Do I former team? Do I try to raise money? Do I try to validate my idea? How do I know my ID is good enough? And I think you just have to do something. You just pick something to do on that list and then go do it. And that that would, you know, push you to make more progress than if you were just to sit in your room and ruminate about all the perfect ways to execute a startup. That's the number one thing I would tell myself. But second thing I would tell myself is to talk to people more, especially people who have been in your shoes as in 2 or 3 years ago, they were just like you. They had an idea. They went out and did it because they had just been in your shoes a few years ago.

Tifffany Ma (00:14:58) - They know they still have fresh in their memory exactly what resources, which programs, which competitions you should enter. I've been lucky enough to have in my social circles, people who have started their own companies and they referred me to these competitions to accelerate a programs. And that just made it easier for me to know which resources to go for and which communities to join.

Sarah Allison (00:15:23) - Brilliant. Thank you. And so in terms of sort of thinking about the future, where do you think and hope things will go?

Tifffany Ma (00:15:32) - Yeah. So I'm finishing my postdoc in a few weeks time and I'm going to dedicate my time professionally to raising money for Gambit Bio. We've spoken to several VCs and we are about to raise for our seed round. We're trying to raise 2 million and this money will allow us to take a complete home self-test kit for prostate cancer to the market, and that should take around two years time once we've had the money and hopefully we can expand to other cancer types and also think about the larger trajectory of our company goal, which is to empower everyday consumers to take control of their health, because this is now becoming a revolutionary era of home self testing.

Sarah Allison (00:16:20) - And so, so if people wanted to find out more or get in contact with you, where how can they do that?

Tifffany Ma (00:16:27) - So if anyone is interested in Gambit bio, you can find us on LinkedIn or you can find us on our website, Gambit Bio Net, or we're also on Instagram for those who are younger.

Sarah Allison (00:16:41) - Thank you.

Tifffany Ma (00:16:42) - It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Oxentia Producer (00:16:45) - Thank you very much for listening to today's episode. If the discussion has sparked any ideas for you or perhaps you have a question, then please do contact us at Ideas Pod at CentCom. That's Ideas Pod. All one word at Ausencia. Please also remember to subscribe to the podcast and feel free to share with anyone who you think may find it of interest. Many thanks once again, and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.