>> From Phoenix, Arizona, The Cube at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. (upbeat techno music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girl's in Tech Catalyst Conference on the fourth year of the conference, about 400 people here, wanted to come down, get a feel for what's going on. Seems to be something about Phoenix and women in tech, because we were here two years ago at the Grace Hopper Conference, the first time we ever covered that event with Telle Whitney and Marie Klawe, et cetera. So, we're excited to be back, and with our next guest, Scarlett Spring, president and chief commercial officer of VisionGate. Welcome, Scarlett. >> Thank you, and welcome back to Phoenix. >> Absolutely, thank you. So for those that aren't familiar with VisionGate, give us a little 411 on the company. >> Absolutely, so VisionGate is a medical device company, launching an in-vitro diagnostic tool for noninvasive, early detection of lung cancer, and, as of this year, January, we now have licensed in a drug which could treat even the pre-cancerous condition before you would get lung cancer, called dysplasia of the lung. >> Okay, so you said a whole lot there. >> Exactly. >> A lot of words. So let's go through that sentence one more time, a little bit slower, so it's-- >> It's a medical-- >> It's noninvasive. >> Yeah, so we're a medical device company, so there's a hardware component to the company. There's a software component to the company, because we're in-vitro diagnostic, meaning we have an assay, and that's a noninvasive test for lung cancer, so it's a sputum test. >> What does that mean, a sputum test? >> If you give us a deep cough, from the cells of your lungs, not saliva which would come from your oral cavity but a deep cough from your lung, our device can look at those cells and make a determination whether there are abnormal cells, thus leading to think that there would be cancer cells. >> And how would that process of trying to determine whether you have cancer or not happen without your technology? >> There isn't a test, today. >> There's no test? >> Right. Sputum has been looked at manually by putting your deep cough on a glass slide since the 1930s, and there's so much variation in data, because it's like finding a needle in the haystack, because when you give a cough, you cough up about four million cells, give or take a million. So for a human to do that, exactly that's it. It's extremely laborious, it's not cost effective, and, once again, you're looking for a handful of cells which would be diagnostic, because most of what's coming out of your lungs is saliva and white cells, because obviously it's trying to kill anything that's in there. >> Right, so in terms of the way the technology works, so is it kind of advanced, kind of pattern recognition? What is trying to do-- >> Perfect. That is a perfect question. It is exactly. Our innovation is we use machine recognition technology, and we look at the morphology of a cell. What does that mean? That means the cellular features, because cell features of a cancer cell look very different from a normal cell, and you can train a computer through a series of algorithms to recognize those differences, very similar to what a human being does. So in essence, we put a pathologist in a box, and we have trained thousands and thousands, like 250,000 cells has gone into training this classifier, and some of the world's best pathologists and cytopathologists have actually trained our machine. >> And the fact that you chose to go after lung cancer, it sounds like this would work, because you're basically looking for anomalies. >> That's exactly right. >> It sounds like that would work for lots-- >> It does. >> Of different things. >> You're exactly right. Once we can train this algorithm to actually look at other cancer types, so we're still in our kind of late stage startup phase, but we already have proof of concept work that is looking in urine for bladder cancer, looking at blood for circulating tumor cells, adenocarcinoma of the esophagus by being able to get some of the cells extracted. What we're trying to do is look at noninvasive ways, because today you want to make sure that you're being cost-effective, so that's the easiest way that you could get a cell, but you could use more invasive techniques to get a cell. For instance, like a pancreatic cancer. That would kind of be a real opportunity. Some conversations that we're having with clinical collaborators, that would inquire at least an upper GI where you would go into the stomach, poke the wall to try to get a specimen. What I tell individuals is if you get us a cell, we can create the classifier to ascertain whether it's normal or abnormal. >> And, the end goal is to just come up with more kind of regular routine with your checkup process that you're testing for these cancers to get out ahead of the curve. >> Jeff, it is all about early detection. Unfortunately, most of our cost today happen toward the end of the disease cycle. If we could invert that and actually have better early detection tools, not only would we save lives, but downstream it would be a tremendous cost saving just to the healthcare system. >> Right, very interesting work. >> Thank you. >> And have you always been involved in-- >> Well, it's interesting, I have 19 years of big pharma experience, so I actually started with Merck which became AstraMerck, AstraZeneca. So I had 19 years of continuous service, and I launched Prilosec in 1989 and then had the pleasure of continuing my pharma career with some terrific products, you know, Nexium, the oncology division there at AstraZeneca. So, oncology did grab me, and I've been very passionate about that since the late 1990s, early 2000s. >> Does it ever just crush you though that it's oncology, that it's cancer? I always think of the saints that are in these wards that are dealing with this everyday. >> You're right, particularly at AstraZeneca, we had breast cancer, prostate cancer and lung cancer products, and one of the things that every October during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I would get out in the field and go and be with our sales representatives, and it never got far from me that at the end there was a patient that was receiving therapy and the tremendous impact that your body goes through. So, we can never forget that at the end of all that we're doing is. there's a patient. We're trying to save a life, and the work matters. >> Yeah, and it's a person, right not only-- >> That's a person. >> A patient, but it's a person. >> It's a person. >> A mom, a sister. >> I don't think any of probably even watching this today has not been somehow impacted by cancer. >> Yeah, crazy, so let's shift gears. Get off the cancer for a minute. You had a presentation here at the-- >> I did. >> Conference. How to fly in the face of adversity. So for the folks unfortunately that couldn't make it to Phoenix today, what's it all about? >> Well, flying in the face of adversity, my workshop is going to talk about three layers. Raising money for a startup that has a big idea, and I think just by the brief introduction I gave you to VisionGate, it's a game changing kind of idea. Secondly, how do you go from startup to scale up? And lastly, how are you as a leader, thinking about your brand and how it aligns with the mission of your company? And there isn't any given week and maybe even any give day that I don't balance those three things, whether I'm trying to raise money, because we're still not revenue generating yet, whether I'm scaling the company, because we've grown just 40% since, call it Thanksgiving of last year, to thinking about what's my responsibility being here today, because the girls that are here are just starting their careers in technology, and by them, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. So, I think it's going to be a great topic. I'm actually going to allow the audience to do some prioritization, which one of these do you want to talk about, and we're going to walk through some exercises of doing that. >> It's interesting, many moons ago, I was involved in a speaker series at Wharton, and we had David Pottruck on. He's the former CEO of Schwab, Schwab's right hand guy, really articulate speaker, phenomenal speaker, and we had dinner with him afterwards. I asked him, I said why are you such a good speaker, and he goes, you know, I practice a lot. As a senior executive of a company, all you do is communicate. You communicate to your investors. You communicate to your employees. You communicate to your customers. That's pretty much what your job is, and so I took it as a serious thing, and I hired coaches, and I practiced. And now I'm pretty good at it, so it's interesting that you tie that back that building your own personal brand and getting that out there and how important that is to really helping the development, and the movement and the success of your company. >> It's true, and if you think about your brand, if you do it from being a self-centered or trying to have it being inward focused, you're going to probably end up in the wrong place, but if you do it thinking about how you would market a brand, what are the traits, the attributes that I have, that I want to be known for, and then that I want to try to nurture. And what it really comes down to is helping someone tap into their authenticity and their reputational power. What do you want to be known for? >> That's interesting I was just thinking as you were talking to get someone the nuggets, but that is a great nugget. What do you want to be known for? And to put the consciously out front. And I do think too that the world has shifted, in kind of the sharing world that we live in. It used to be power was in retention, holding. You had your stack of business cards. You'd never let those things out of your sight. You change companies, you take your Rolodex with you. Now, it's very different. The power comes, actually, from sharing. The more you share, the more you help others, actually the more influence and power that you get. >> And that's actually some of the very things that we'll be talking about is whether you are just starting your career, whether you are looking to get a promotion and move up within your own company, whether you are toward the end of your career and looking to transition to boards or advisory boards or be more connected to something that you're passionate about. In that, what are the things that you're known for that make you valuable? Is it that you're going to take on extra projects at work and kind of get known for someone who brings solutions to the table or is the person who's going to have the uncomfortable conversation, you know, the conversation that needs to be had in the room, but you're able to do it in a way that isn't polarizing, but brings everybody in to go, oh my gosh, you just articulated what needed to be said, and that created some sort of positive change. I want to get at those things today in our workshop, and it should be fun. >> That's just phenomenal, the way you summed that up so succinctly. You know, there's a lot of places that you can add value in the way that you work and the tasks that you chose to add on and to be known for doing some of the dirty work, doing some of the ugly stuff and helping the whole organization get over that hurdle. Scarlett, sounds like it's going to be a great session. Unfortunately, we'll be here doing more interviews, which is not unfortunately. We love being here to do interviews, but sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun. Good luck with it. >> I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time. >> Absolutely and-- >> Come back to Phoenix again! >> Good luck with VisionGate. >> Absolutely. >> So when is your next hurdle with VisionGate? When's your next kind of trial? I know these medical ones take a while. >> It is true, so we've got a couple things that are going on right now. Hopefully, there'll be a screening opportunity coming to you soon, and we're getting our drug into phase three trials. >> All right, Scarlett, again thanks for stopping by. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Absolutely, I'm Jeff Frick. It's Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. You're watching The Cube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)