Quench Medical

Recent Advances, Significant Unmet Need

Recent advances in the treatment of lung diseases (Immunotherapies, Targeted Therapies) have been quite encouraging, yet despite an evolving therapeutics marketplace, mortality and morbidity remain high.

The lung is designed to keep particles out

Although the lung is accessible via inhalation, it functions to exchange air while keeping foreign bodies out, and very little drug stays in the lungs with commercial aerosols.

Drug delivery remains challenging

Delivering drugs to the lungs remains a challenge as very little drug gets to the lungs with IV and oral therapies, which are limited by blood dilution, hepatic metabolism, and GI absorption, and may have reduced efficacy due to dose limiting toxicity.

Inhalation aerosol therapies are highly complex

Aerosol technology is highly complex and barriers to entry have been high, limiting innovation. SOC technologies are older and less effective at drug delivery (carrier DPI, pMDI, nebulizers) and significant engineering challenges arise given the multiple realms of physics.

The Burden of Lung Cancer

Despite the use of aggressive surgery and combination chemotherapy, lung cancer remains difficult to control and is the biggest killer among cancers at 125,000 annual US deaths and a 5-year survival rate of 9% for later stage patients.

Lung cancer kills more people per year than prostate, pancreas, breast, and colon cancers combined.

Standard of Care

The pharmaceutical standard of care for lung cancer is primarily intravenous chemotherapy drugs, which have limited efficacy because of low drug concentration delivered to the lungs due to blood volume dilution.

Targeted Therapy

Quench Medical’s inhalation technology delivers the drug directly to tumor tissues in the lung thereby enhancing its efficacy due to increased local drug concentration in the lung, and decreased systemic toxicity due to decreased systemic drug levels in the circulation.

Increased Efficacy and Safety with Lower Doses

Our new method delivers the chemotherapeutic drug via dry powder inhalation to reach lung tumors directly, in lower doses, in order to maximize the effectiveness and safety of the cancer treatment.

Meet the Team

Bryce Beverlin II, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO

Bryce Beverlin II founded Quench Medical to solve crucial problems in respiratory drug delivery for treating lung diseases. He is driven by a passion to help patients with lung diseases by developing the next-generation of highly performing treatments. Bryce is a physicist entrepreneur with 15 years of cross-functional R&D experience, postdoctoral commercialization training at the University of Minnesota's Medical Devices Center, biomedical engineering training, and a physics Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. At Quench Medical, Bryce has raised over $5M in seed capital to navigate pre-clinical milestones along side a high value team of business, science, and medical experts to lead the company into the clinic.

Guy Anthony

CFO

Guy serves as consulting CFO to a broad range of start-up ventures, efficiently assisting early-stage growth and providing C-Level advice and analysis to CEOs and their Boards. Prior to his consulting engagements Guy had 14 years full time start-up CFO experience leading to 4 successful exits totaling over $400M. These ventures included Medicalis, Cervel Neurotech, Spectra7 Microsystems, Solaicx, Quellan and Stentor. Guy’s career foundation was laid in Intel Finance spanning 22 years across Intel Capital, M&A and Controllership. Guy actively volunteers in various non-profit organizations and in his local church. Guy received his MBA from Harvard Business School, preceded by a BA with majors in Economics and Computational Mathematics from Albion College.

Peter Crosby

Director

Peter Crosby has been Chief Executive Officer or Chairman of 7 medical device companies in four countries, including Mainstay Medical (IPO 2014), Cardiac Science (sold to Quinton Cardiology in 2006), Ischemia Technologies (sold to Inverness Medical in 2004), First Medical (sold to Sigma Diagnostics in 2000), NeoVision (sold to US Surgical in 1997), and Telectronics Pacing Systems (sold to St. Jude Medical in 1997). Peter is a specialist at bringing new medical devices to the global market, from concept to profitability. He has served as a key consultant in the fields of business strategy, intellectual property, research and development, capital markets, product launch and market development. Mr. Crosby’s specialties include: medical business development, financing & venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, product development, intellectual property, organizational development, marketing and sales. He has also served as expert witness in several lawsuits on IP, product liability, and commercialization.

John Foster

Executive Chairman Director

John Foster has more than 30 years of executive management experience and proven expertise in developing and bringing specialty pharmaceuticals and drug-device combination products to market. Mr. Foster is currently President and COO of Cerebral Therapeutics, a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on treating neurological diseases. He was previously the founder and CEO of CNS Therapeutics, a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing and marketing intrathecal drugs for neurological disorders and pain. CNS was sold to Covidien/Mallinckrodt (October 2012). Mr. Foster has also served in key management positions at Restore Medical (which held an IPO in 2006 and was acquired by Medtronic in 2008), Advanced Respiratory, Medtronic’s Neuromodulation business, and Genentech. Currently, he serves as Chairman of Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare and serves on the Board of Directors for both SpineThera and NTF Therapeutics.

Extended Pipeline in Rare Diseases

IP enabled pipeline projects include de-risked assets and known targets in oncology, pulmonary, and rare diseases. Multiple exit opportunities for product assets and platform technology. This inhaled therapeutic approach promises to improve efficacy and tolerability of known drugs, and enable new forms of targeted lung therapies.

News

July 2024

Regenerative Medicine Minnesota awards Quench Medical a grant to develop an inhaled novel stem-cell derived biologic therapy to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening complication of patients with sepsis, pneumonia, and COVID-19.

May 2024

National Institute on Drug Abuse awards Quench Medical a Phase I SBIR grant to develop an inhaled psychoplastogenic therapeutic to better treat persons with opioid use disorder.

July 2023

Guy Anthony joins Quench Medical management as CFO. Anthony brings decades of financial expertise to the Quench Medical team.

April 2023

National Cancer Institute awards Quench Medical a Phase II SBIR grant for continued development of an inhaled therapy for treating lung cancer.

February 2023

National Heart Lung and Blood Institute awards Quench Medical a Phase I SBIR grant for developing an inhaled treatment for treating pneumothorax in collaboration with Mayo Clinic.

January 2023

Quench Medical publishes "Excipient Enhanced Growth: Expanding Delivery Options for the Treatment of Lung Diseases" article by Maureen Kadleck and Joseph Churchman (Lonza), and Dr. Beverlin in Inhalation magazine.

October 2022

Quench Medical is featured in "Local treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by dry powder" article by Kimberly B. Shepard, PhD and Maureen Kadleck from Lonza in Inhalation magazine.

June 2022

Dr. Beverlin presents and discusses Quench Medical's inhaled lung cancer treatment with Lonza's Maureen Kadleck at the PharmTech webinar.

May 2022

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical's inhaled lung cancer treatment at the Respiratory Drug Delivery conference in the session "Designing DPIs - Perfecting Powders."

January 2022

Quench Medical is awarded a second Launch Minnesota Innovation Grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

April 2021

Quench Medical's inhaled therapy for treating lung cancer is demonstrated to be highly effective in reducing tumor burden at half of the standard of care IV dose in a non-clinical lung cancer model.

January 2021

Quench Medical is accepted into the FDA CARES program at the National Cancer Institute.

September 2020

Quench Medical is awarded a Launch Minnesota SBIR Phase II Matching Grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

August 2020

National Cancer Institute awards Quench Medical a Phase I SBIR grant for continued development of an inhaled therapy for treating lung cancer.

Quench Medical awarded a Phase II SBIR grant from the NHLBI, continuing Phase I work awarded in March 2018. The grant will support further development of a proprietray inhaled therapy to target the small airways of patients with asthma.
Dr. Beverlin is accepted into the NHLBI Mentorship Program.

June 2020

Dr. Beverlin featured on Conscious Millionaire Podcast episode 1775.

February 2020

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical at the Colorado Life Sciences Night in Denver.

January 2020

Quench Medical is awarded a Launch Minnesota Innovation Grant from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

November 2019

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical at the Colorado Capital Conference and takes home first prize as voted by the Rockies Venture Club investors in Golden, CO.

June 2019

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical during the David vs. Goliath session at the Converge oncology conference in Philadelphia.

May 2019

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical at the startup showcase at Drug Delivery West conference in San Francisco.

January 2019

Dr. Beverlin presents value proposition to potential investors at JP Morgan conference in San Francisco.

December 2018

Poster presentation at Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) conference in Edinburgh with researchers at VCU.

November 2018

Poster presentation at PharmSci360, an American Asociation of Pharmaceutical Scientists conference in Washington DC with researchers at VCU.

August 2018

Quench Medical joins the Medical Alley Association, a hub of healthcare innovation and resources in Minnesota. Dr. Beverlin is featured and answers questions on their news blog.

July 2018

Quench Medical's CEO Bryce Beverlin II has been invited to participate in the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's Mentorship Program to connect Dr. Beverlin with veteran CEOs in the greater NHLBI community.

June 2018

Nancy Ness has joined Quench Medical as acting CFO! We are very excited to have Nancy's experience on board.

Quench Medical is featured in MHTA's entrepreneur profile news.

May 2018

Dr. Beverlin presents Quench Medical's progress at the gBETA Medtech's event liveBETA, a celebration of gBETA Medtech's latest class of innovative startups focused on medical technology.

April 2018

Quench Medical joins the inaugural cohort of gBETA Medtech accelerator, sponsored by Boston Scientific, Mayo Clinic, and the University of Minnesota. gBETA is a free, seven-week accelerator for early-stage companies with local roots, started by nationally ranked startup accelerator gener8tor. Read more at the Star Tribune

Dr. Beverlin attended the Respiratory Drug Delivery conference, sponsored by the VCU School of Pharmacy, where he met with key people in aerosol medicine development in academia, industry, and the FDA.

March 2018

A Phase I SBIR seed grant from the National Institutes of Health is awarded to Quench Medical to develop a novel highly efficient dry powder aerosol formulation.