For a PhD biochemist who has likely spent a lot of time with his forehead scrunched up over a microscope, Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette gets a lot of compliments on his skin. It makes sense; he’s the founder and CEO of BioThera Solutions, a bootstrapped Ottawa startup developing a skincare product based on the very scientific-sounding extracellular vesicles (EVs for short).
“All the girls are telling me I have this glow,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said in a May interview. “Okay, sure [but] I’m not a skin guy, I’m a tech guy with this tech.”
Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette believes the cosmetics industry is generally a lot of “marketing noise with very little science, if any.”
St-Denis-Bissonnette might have co-authored the most cited academic paper on EVs, and he might have the glowing skin you’d expect from an expert in the field, but he doesn’t exude passion for skincare. He’s a man of science, an expert on how every living cell naturally produces microscopic EVs to carry molecular components like proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids (such as mRNA) to act as a biosignal for other cells. Essentially, EVs are a cell’s natural way to communicate with one another.
By taking advantage of this natural cell communication method, the EV’s molecular components can be used to modify gene expression, influence inflammatory signals, and support cell repair. On a practical level, St-Denis-Bissonnette says EVs can potentially be used to track the progression of treatments, as a biomarker to detect cancer, or even potentially to teach cells how to kill cancer.
With all of these potential applications in the cards, skincare is just a means to an end for St-Denis-Bissonnette.
“This is really the technology of the future for medicine,” he said.
St-Denis-Bissonnette claims BioThera’s EV-derived topical serum, which he’s been using himself for over a year, reduces wrinkles and hydrates the skin. The serum is derived from aloe vera, a plant widely known to help soothe sunburns that also happens to be full of “potent” EVs. BioThera has refined those EVs into its patented solution. But that is just the beginning.
The company is exploring some therapeutic applications, but it can’t get there without solving some structural and scientific problems that come with EV production; problems that can be addressed with the cash and resources that come with going to market, fast.
He picked dermatology as a strategic entry point to take advantage of the lighter regulatory burden that comes with creating cosmetics; it’s also an industry he believes is “marketing noise with very little science, if any.”
As a company approved for cosmetic use by Health Canada, BioThera has been able to file provisional patents, regulatory notifications, and run a clinical trial within a year and a half, all while St-Denis-Bissonnette was finishing his PhD. He claimed that a comparable company took eight years to do the same by taking the therapeutic regulatory route.
“If you can find a way to get to market and prove your concept in a way that is still aligned with what you want to do, in a way that’s more de-risked, why wouldn’t you do that?” St-Denis-Bissonnette said.
“We’re using this wedge as a faster ramp to go to market, so the timeline is shorter, and the costs are less as well,” he added.
Trojan skincare
All of this groundwork is in service of what St-Denis-Bissonnette sees as BioThera’s most valuable asset: its scalable EV isolation method. The most common EV isolation method can reliably extract a “juice box” full of EVs, he said. But that method simply does not work at an industrial scale. He claims BioThera has developed a method that can handle 1,000 times the volume input, without degrading the final EV product. At the end of the day, the skincare product is a Trojan horse for St-Denis-Bissonnette’s long-term goal of turning BioThera into the contract EV manufacturer of choice.
“Over the past year, my overall goal was to de-risk this idea as much as possible, because I don’t want to bring in [an investor] and either waste their time or money,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “It’s very important for me.”
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With a patent and clinical testing in hand, BioThera is raising a $1.5-million USD ($2.1-million CAD) seed round to help with production and international expansion. The raised capital will be matched by non-dilutive funding, St-Denis-Bissonnette said, including from the NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program. Once the money is in the bank, BioThera plans to file patents in new jurisdictions and continue the company’s direct go-to-market strategy, bringing the EV-based serum directly to dermatologists to teach them its strengths.
“We are really taking a science-first approach to it,” he said. “We want to make sure that dermatologists and the end users really understand what this product is right now.”
BioThera is also preparing for its second clinical trial later this year, which will test the efficacy of its EVs in treating irritation caused by dermatological procedures like lasers and microneedling.
What more do investors want?
Despite all of his initiative, St-Denis-Bissonnette said he’s having a hard time finding investors who are willing to fund a biotech company. It’s particularly frustrating to him as he says he sees those same investors willing to throw money at AI startups with “barely an idea.” He thinks BioThera could have been much more productive over the past year if this weren’t the case.
“What’s crazy to me is that you would think that with an actual product, professional patent, regulatory approval, [and] a clinical trial, it would be relatively easy to show investors that we have a lot of traction,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “But I’m still being [told] that I’m too early for a lot of these things, which I still don’t really understand.”
“We’re using this wedge as a faster ramp to go to market, so the timeline is shorter, and the costs are less as well.”
The hesitancy is particularly pronounced in Canadian investors, a phenomenon he called “really sad” as he thinks BioThera has an opportunity to “do something unbelievable in Canada.” St-Denis-Bissonnette fully intends to build and commercialize the company in Ottawa, but the fundraising efforts have put him on multiple flights to Boston and San Francisco.
BioThera’s investor struggles are reflected broadly across Canada. Last year, the Canadian life sciences sector saw its lowest level of investment since 2018, according to the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association’s annual report. The sector recorded a 47-percent year-over-year decline in dollars invested and an 11-percent decline in deal volume.
“Canadian investors, compared to some of the US [investors], they want a sure thing,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “They want Series A validation at the pre-seed stage.”
Despite that heartache, St-Denis-Bissonnette’s confidence in his product and company hasn’t wavered. Earlier this year, he was selected for a Fulbright short-term entrepreneurship grant that sent him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, he connected with esteemed professors and accomplished entrepreneurs who taught him an important lesson about building in biotech: “It doesn’t matter what others are saying, if you actually see that your thing is working or doing something, then screw everybody else.”
“I know the goddamn thing works,” he said. “So you just pursue that forward.”
Feature image courtesy Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette.