It is certainly exciting to see healthcare breakthroughs thanks to today’s cutting-edge technology – but they can only be possible by securing the right funding. Zach Gurick sits down with Sam Libby of TCB Capital Advisors to share all about their investments in medical innovation. He sheds light on the urgent need to close persistent gaps in women’s health and the true currency of healthcare investment: clinical data. Sam also emphasizes the importance of democratizing early detection technologies, allowing patients to catch cancers, Alzheimer’s, and other life-threatening diseases before they reach the point of no return.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Making Investments Into Medical Innovation With Sam Libby
In this episode, we’re diving into the powerful intersection of healthcare and investment with a guest whose career perfectly embodies transformation and impact. My guest is Sam Libby, President and Managing Director of TCB Capital Advisors. Sam has overseen more than $20 billion in healthcare transactions, guiding mergers, acquisitions, and capital raises that shape the future of care delivery. With experience at top firms like Piper, Sandler and Ziegler, he brings unmatched expertise to helping healthcare organizations grow in ways that enhance patient access, quality, and affordability.
What makes Sam’s story especially compelling is his personal mission. As the son of two therapists, he has always viewed healthcare through a deeply human lens, and that perspective inspires his work now, backing innovations in oncology, AI-driven diagnostics, digital health and biopharma. He’s passionate about funding solutions that don’t just succeed in the marketplace but actually improve outcomes for patients.
In this conversation, we’ll explore how capital drives innovation, why clinical data is the true currency of healthcare investment, and what it will take to close persistent gaps like the lack of funding in women’s health. Sam will also share where he sees the most exciting breakthroughs coming in the next decade, and how his vision of a truly patient-centered system could transform healthcare as we know it. Get ready for a fascinating conversation on innovation, leadership, and the future of healthcare with Sam Libby.
Sam, thank you so much for being here on the show. I’m really looking forward to this conversation, to learning from you. I feel like you have such a unique perspective because of your area of expertise and your day in and day out life, and the things that you’re exposed to, I think, are probably different than the average person. I’m really excited to learn from you and for our readers to learn from you here. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me. Really looking forward to chatting with you and your audience.
Growing Up As A Child Of Two Therapists
I always like to understand people’s backgrounds and hear their backstory. If you wouldn’t mind sharing, I think you grew up as the son of therapists and just curious, how did that shape the way you think about healthcare and your mission and what drives you and how’d you end up where you are essentially?
I definitely went down a bunch of different paths before I found my footing, my passion. As you mentioned, both of my parents were therapists, so their view of the world is really one of how do we help people? My mom ran housing programs for the homeless and mentally in New York. I grew up visiting some of these programs, so I got a different exposure. Most of my data is from a lot of programs, especially focused in addiction recovery, but also has a ton of working private practice.
I went completely the other way for a while. I was a competitive athlete. I competed in China, filmed a TV show there, and I figured I was going to be a fighter and do that. It turns out you get old pretty quick and when I went to school, I got exposed to the finance environment and banking, and I just happened to get lucky enough to get placed in a healthcare group. Especially on the finance side, when you start with an investment bank, you have very little choice on which group you end up in. You hope for the best.
I ended up in a healthcare group and that broadened my view on how finance can be used to have an impact on patient outcomes, and we can work on technology that is going to change space healthcare. In the same way, very different from my parents who are active on the ground with patients, but have found a way to try to give back and improve human health from the financial.
How TCB Capital Advisors Fund Medical Innovations
I love that you’ve said innovation comes through funding. The work that you’re currently doing with TCB, I’d love for you to share a little bit about your firm, some of the deals that you’ve done and things like that, and how you’re helping to fund these innovations.
There are a lot of companies and a lot of entrepreneurs with great ideas, and that’s staged from is it a science experiment to, is it a business? That’s a big step and it’s really hard for people. Especially on the pharma side, as a good example where there’s the therapeutics that start in the academic research environment. They may even become a company and then they just sit out there as a phase 1, phase 2 drug that never really goes anywhere and doesn’t ever reach the commercial threshold. What we do, and the goal of TCB from its founding was to take a look at indications that are specifically troubled. By troubled, we mean there is either a high mortality rate, there is a high impact quality of life, there is an unmet need somewhere in that market.
Not all of them are the same. When you look at diagnostics, there are two issues. There’s a screening issue, we’re not catching things quickly enough. There’s a therapeutics issue, which is can we treat the things we catch? Both need to evolve. Diagnostics become more popular as there are therapeutics to treat indications and vice versa.
There are two issues in diagnostics: screening, because things are not caught quickly enough, and therapeutic, which pertains to the ability to treat things that are caught.
Neurodegenerative is the same. I don’t know anyone who isn’t somewhat touched by the impacts of Alzheimer’s, Lewy body, FTD, all the various ailments that lead to different forms of dementia. There’s been a lot of innovation in recent years on therapeutics, but we’re still having trouble catching it early enough. It’s like there’s definitely a screening issue. Women’s health, when you actually take the fertility side of women’s health out of the data, women’s health gets very little funding.
I don’t mean to jump into broader topics, but we start first from that step, which is, are there patients suffering in the syndication? From that, the services that we offer, we do invest in some companies directly, but a lot of the work that we do is on the advisory side. Running active mandates for cap raises, M&A, assisting companies with business development, research, collaborations, things like that.
When you look at a lot of these small innovative companies, they have a very small and close-knit leadership team, and they need to be able to perform about four times the amount of work that is capable. We come in and we act as an extension of that in a lot of ways. The needs of the company are always different, but the singular goal that they all share is they’re trying to, one, solve a problem in the healthcare space.
Two, get whatever their product is, be it a therapeutic, an AI-powered tool or platform rather or a diagnostic. They’re trying to get that out to the patient. It’s not always the same pathway for all of them. Some of them are going to commercialize themselves. Some of them are going to target being acquired by a larger company. Others are going to partner with companies that have commercial channels. What we do is we help them figure out, one, what is the pathway for them, and then, two, help them to the best of our ability to execute.
A Typical Day Of A TCB Capital Advisor
On a day-to-day basis, you are probably looking at a lot of different new breakthroughs or new startups and things like that. I imagine some are very exciting and others you’re filtering through. I think that probably gives you a very unique perspective on what’s happening in the world of healthcare and some of the changes that are coming. On an average day, how many companies are you looking at? How many proposals are you looking at? What’s your typical day like as a TCB Capital Advisor there?
I don’t know if there is a typical day, but it runs the gamut. Sometimes it’s back-to-back calls for active clients. We get a lot of inbounds now for innovative technology. I would say 9, maybe 8 out of 10 decks that you see, or healthcare ideas is simply put, haven’t been built to the actual market needs. A perfect example is in the neurodegenerative space, for someone who is having symptoms of cognitive impairment, for them to get a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, they need two things. They need a cognitive issue that is proven, so they need a cognitive assessment, and they need proof of pathology. There’s a lot of new innovation that is trying to come out. At the same time, it hasn’t built that into the model.
It thinks about it the way that liquid biopsy works in the cancer space, which is you go get a blood test and it says you have a certain indication and then there’s confirmatory diligence. It looks at it like that, and the market just works. For a lot of the proposals we see, just right off the bat, they haven’t been built to function the way currently the healthcare provider is operating. That’s one of the first things that we see.
We try to be helpful in a lot of those cases because some of these entrepreneurs are absolutely brilliant, but they might be an AI expert or they might be an expert in the lab, and then this is their first time putting something forward. A lot of these companies that we talk with, they’re not companies that we would invest in. They’re not companies that we might work with directly at the stage they’re at, but I think there’s an element of being a good member of the healthcare community. It’s saying, “Let’s have a call with them. Let’s talk to them. Let’s get to know them.”
A lot of times, we get to learn a lot, too. I would say 20% of each day is spent on these new inbounds and companies where we could feel we could be helpful, but maybe they’re not at the right stage. I would say 80% of it is in working with our active mandates. We’re negotiating research collaborations between two companies. One just got signed, which will be announced. We’re excited about that. It’s going to lead one of our clients to having an established relationship, not only with a partner company, but also with a broader university ecosystem.
Our client is doing amazing things on the sequencing side, so their focus is on being able to get a deep level of epigenetic data and said plainly, really being able to power the next generation of pharma development and diagnostics companies to be able to operate more efficiently, more cheaply, and at a higher level of sensitivity to help patient need.
Changing The Way Alzheimer’s Disease Is Treated
Every day is probably something different and new, and you get to see a lot of these breakthroughs first before anybody else probably does. I would love to just dive into your perspective, like what are some of the companies that you’ve worked with recently or that you’re working with currently that are most exciting to you and potentially will make a significant shift in the landscape as far as the medical field?
There are two that come to mind. The first is a company called Altoida. They’re focused on the neurodegenerative space. They’ve been around for over a decade, but a close colleague and friend of mine joined them a couple of years back as their CEO and reached out to me and presented what they have worked on.
For Alzheimer’s to be diagnosed nowadays, somebody goes to their primary care and they say, “I’m having trouble with this and this symptom.” The primary care says, “Okay, great. We’re going to get you some blood work done.” They either send them to a non-specialist, a neurologist, or they’re trying to refer them to a memory center. There are two approved drugs for Alzheimer’s right now, which help decrease the onset of symptoms. It’s not a cure. It helps to buy someone more time and improve quality of life.
The issue is, in between that, I went to my doctor and I told them I have an issue. I can’t remember, he gets lost in a grocery store. I’m using memory examples. Memory doesn’t tend to be the first place where this shows up. It’s how your speech and things of that sort. Just for this, we go to the doctor and there’s a problem. They send us to the memory center.
To get into the memory center, there was such a backlog in most areas just because this is such a massive growing problem. As I said, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been touched on some front from one of these neurodegenerative conditions. It can take 12 to 18 months from the time where symptoms initially start to be recognized to the point where they get to a memory center, get a cognitive assessment, which takes 60 to 90 minutes and then actually get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Keep in mind that the two therapeutics that are approved are for early intervention to manage symptoms and delay onset. What Altoida created is, and AI becomes this buzzword now, but the truth is, there have been companies working on AI and machine learning powered platforms for years and years. I’ll tell you this. One of them, they’ve been working in the clinical trial space with leading pharma companies on their platform, which utilizes speech recognition, biometrics, augmented reality.
You can actually move things in real space. They’re able to basically complete the same cognitive assessment that a doctor does in 60 to 90 minutes. They do it in 10 minutes, and they have been demonstrating that they can start to see things before the human eye can see them. I didn’t believe that the delay was that big. I diligenced that. I went to a primary care, I got referred to a neurologist, I went and I got the blood test done to rule out autoimmune other things.
I then went and got an appointment at a memory center. I went through scheduling at a memory center. It turns out my neurologist recommended, there was only one scheduler and it took two months to get in touch with them. I was going to be on a wait list for four months. I had to go to the second choice and it still took me 10 months. Ten months as a healthy mid-30s or now late 30s-year-old navigating this who isn’t having trouble with the grocery store, isn’t losing their keys. Someone who’s afraid that they’re developing what’s called mild cognitive impairment, which is a precursor to Alzheimer’s, is expected to navigate this.
When I diligenced the problem and actually solved their solution, this is one of those things where there’s a few times when you’re working on something and it comes across your desk and you go, “This is going to change patient lives and this is going to change the entire way that healthcare system works.” Altoida is one of them. They’re currently looking to expand and growing the recent data that they continue to demonstrate just increases competence in their algorithms and in their models. They’ll be moving towards that FDA approval for an actual diagnostic offering. Right now, they have breakthrough designation and they focus primarily on the clinical trial space, but they’re also launching pilot with universities and just doing amazing things. This is one of those ones where I can’t speak enough about it.
Developing The First-Ever Risk Prognostic For Breast Cancer
Basically, in a typical Alzheimer’s diagnosis, in this example, we’re losing 12 to 18 months just to get the diagnosis from the first appointment that you have. The treatments that we offer are early intervention, so now we’ve missed the window, so to speak. This is really changing that, and like you said, it’s going to change people’s lives. That’s amazing. You mentioned there are two. What’s the other one you’re most excited about?
The other one is Clarity. They came out of Mass General Brigham, Dr. Connie Lehman founded the company, one of the leading experts in women’s imaging. They actually got FDA clearance as the first risk prognostic for breast cancer. What that means is, currently, the way it works is we all know women go for their annual mammogram for breast cancer screening. It is one of the most widely utilized and adhered to screening tools in probably all of healthcare, yet we still catch stage three cancer.
Of all the cancers that are diagnosed, with breast cancer, stage three is 34%. Having a widely utilized screening modality, we’re still missing a lot of patients. There are a number of reasons for it. Dense breast tissue is harder for mammograms to read through, which about 50% of the population has. There’s lifestyle impact, alcohol consumption, fatty food, which all increase the risk.
Hereditary. If there’s a family history of breast cancer, it is actually a very low predictor of if someone could develop breast cancer or not. What Clarity did is Connie Lehman had been on the panels to help set guidelines for how they screen high risk patient populations. There’s a question which is simply, who is a high-risk patient when it comes to breast cancer. Connie and Clarity really set out to answer that question.
Through extensive work and a lot of images, they’re able to look at a standard 2D mammogram and their platform, CLARITY BREAST, can actually assess what is the risk of the next five years of developing breast cancer. There’s something they can do about it, because if someone falls into that medium to high bucket for risk, they can do additional imaging, they can do additional scans to give that extra layer of care and monitoring to those high-risk women.
The beautiful thing is like when we think about additional screening, there’s a cost to it for the payers and for the people that need to calculate this on a dollar and cents. By focusing on the right patients, we’re able to lower clarity’s able to lower the downstream costs because if you can catch more cancers earlier and you can monitor them, the cost of treating stage one and stage three are very wildly different. Over time, Clarity can lead to fewer lost mothers. I’ll say it that way.
That’s something we definitely all want to be investing in. Basically, clarity, just to summarize that, they’re taking the gram screens and then layering on an additional platform to really tell you is this high risk or not.
Basically, the 2D mammogram gets fed into Clarity’s platform and it literally just does read where it can look at the different types of tissues, the different type of breast tissue, and it assesses what breast tissue is most likely to develop breast cancer. It’s obviously much more complex than my very high-level description. It is just amazing. A lot of the technology in the imaging space that’s been focused on how do we empower the radiologist and it’s great. It’s how do we give a second read? How do we help the radiologist catch things better? How do we all sorts of things? It’s all focused on the current workflow.
This, on the other hand, is a set of things. The mammogram is a great tool. The radiologist is doing their job well. At the same point we want to see who is more likely to develop cancer in the next five years. Now that information powers the entire patient lifecycle for those next five years. The score is dynamic, the score changes. The person changes their lifestyle. They stop drinking, as an example. The breast tissue is going to change. I think Connie said it before where it’s a mammogram in breast tissue is the map of a woman’s health. It tells you so much about lifestyle health risk. Clarity is really taking what’s already there and what’s already being done, which is the 2D mammogram and saying, “We can learn more from this.”
A mammogram and the breast tissue are the map of a woman’s health.
I love that. It’s also fascinating that you said that family history is actually a low predictor for breast cancer. I think that’s probably a myth that most people misunderstand. I always thought that’s the highest indicator.
I think it’s 85% of patients who have breast cancer or diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history. Obviously, that percentage will continue to shift because there are more people than have breast cancer, family history changes, but I guess it’s an evolving trait.
Why Early Detection Technologies Must Be Democratized
Those are two big things. Dementia, Alzheimer’s, mild cognitive impairment, and cancers. I know you’re also interested in other early detection technologies. What else is out there that you’re seeing that is exciting you?
There are other things on the cancer side I’m really interested in. On one example, it’s a space that I’m still waiting for it to become what I’ll call accessible or democratized, if you will, where your average person can afford a proper test in the space. In colorectal cancer, it’s one of the leading causes of the death for men. It is highly treatable of caught early. There is a very useful diagnostic that we all know. It’s the colonoscopy and 110 million Americans should be screened for it.
Colonoscopy and the fit test, which are things like Cologuard, really still leave about 60 million Americans unscreened out of about 110 million. That is a massive market that is unscreened. We have a couple of issues. One, people don’t want to utilize the two primary methods, which is a fecal test, and the other, which is a colonoscopy for their own reasons. They just aren’t willing to. There have been approvals for blood tests, but they’re expensive.
When liquid biopsy continues to be $700 plus, you got to hope you have approval for it. If you don’t, people can’t afford it. Not all plans pay for the same thing. It’s just the other issue. There are diagnostics. New Day Diagnostics, I’ve known the CEO, Eric Mayer, for a long time. They now operate out of University of Tennessee, actually as part of the innovations valve expansion. They currently have ColoHealth, which is an approved or FDA-cleared diagnostic, which I believe runs for like $200. It’s self-pay test. They’re working on their second-generation test, which takes the approved product, which utilizes mSEPT9 faults on protein biomarkers. We’ll be able to perform at a much higher level.
One of the other things, it’s not only about detecting colorectal cancer. It’s also about adenoma detection, detecting cancer before it becomes cancer. When I think about colorectal cancer as the proving ground for liquid biopsy, it’s the space where probably more money from investors have gone than anything else when it comes to liquid biopsy. There’s still not the right solution out there. We’ve seen a couple of mega deals and collaborations come out, but I’m not seeing it seeing it hit the patient at the doctor’s office yet. The movement in that space gives me hope for when we look at like pancreatic cancer. When we look at ovarian cancer, ovarian cancer has a really high mortality rate. When you really think about it, I think the data is 1 in 5 women who develop it.
The issue with some of these cancers is, one, the people are asymptomatic until it’s very late. The answer for that is we need better liquid biopsy and we may need more affordable diagnostic testing. Let’s just say I was able to, at an affordable rate, go get tested for the 5 or 6 cancers I’m most likely to die from on an annual or every other year basis, that’s going to make a big difference.
Pancreatic cancer moves really quick and people are asymptomatic until late, and so being able to get screened for that in a more regular interval. I look at the colorectal cancer space and I see promise for the specialized tests that can become affordable. The other side of it, which is the multi-cancer pan-cancer panel, which really hasn’t worked very well.
There is a lot of offerings out there. They have various levels of success and everyone has their own opinion on it but I haven’t seen it make its way to the primary care physician in a way that’s going to change the direction of a patient’s life. I think if we’re going to define success in the healthcare space, it’s not about what is your market cap? It’s about is it helping a patient to navigate care and changing the course of their life? I think that’s the bar we should be holding ourselves to.
New Health Diagnostics’ ColoHealth
Thanks for sharing that. That driver, that motivator, that’s what should really be the main thing behind it, whatever we’re doing. The liquid biopsy and making that more affordable and more accessible can really change the diagnostic space for cancers is essentially is what you’re suggesting there. That’s coming, we’re making progress there. Some exciting work being done. The test you mentioned is called ColoHealth and that’s one that’s about $200.
ColoHealth is sold by New Day Diagnostics. I’ll just say I personally have used it and it’s actually funny because New Day’s been a long-time client of TCB. We were their banker when EDP and New Day Diagnostics actually merged forming what is currently New Day Diagnostics. We then worked with them on the acquisition of Epigenomics, which is a German public company that had actually gotten the first liquid biopsy test for colorectal cancer approved. New Day had acquired them.
I remember that following that transaction, they did their soft launch in a rural community there in Tennessee. Their focus was we wanted to change outcomes for the people of Appalachia. That’s where it started for them. They really are very focused on the community and it was like the first time that they got a positive when they were doing their pilot and they navigated the person to go get care.
It was like, great, it was caught early, it was able to be treated, it was able to be dealt with. I’ve done a lot of transactions. I’ve taken companies public, and I’ve worked as a banker for my entire career. Something was like, I’ve got to hear this story. I was like, something I did actually mattered. For the first time, I was like, “That person is now healthy because of the work that everyone on the TCB team, on the New Day team, what everybody did.” I would say that’s probably my proudest moment as a banker.
Congrats on that. When you start to find that we’re actually impacting lives and making a difference, even just with one life, that’s what it’s all about.
If any of your readers want to learn more, they can go to NewDayDiagnostics.com and there should be information on ColoHealth. I am not advertising it. I’m just saying that I have used it and I like it and I believe in the company.
Valuable Biohacks: How Sam Keeps Himself Healthy
You’re somebody who looks at these kinds of things all day, every day. I’m curious about your own habits and how do you keep yourself healthy. What kinds of diagnostic tests besides ColoHealth are you personally using? What other breakthroughs or biohacks are you utilizing to keep yourself healthy as you go now?
Yeah, so a number of different things. I have unique medication allergies. For me, the genetic tests and especially genetic tests that focus on how my body metabolizes different therapeutics were really important to me because I’ve had adverse reactions to antibiotics and all sorts of things. I was an early adopter of all of that. Myriad’s GeneSight, I think, is like the starting point. There are a lot of other genetic tests, like New Amsterdam has a really good offering and a number of different ones.
I’ll be honest, on that side, they get expensive. You can run up a bill. Getting the genetic information becomes almost like an obsession of people like collecting stamps. The truth is the majority of that information is not that useful. It’s about figuring out what’s going to be the best bang for your buck and what are the things you really care about.
Is it you want to understand your risks of specific cancers so you can manage your lifestyle? The things that we eat, the habits that we have have a bigger impact on our lives than most other things. I do try to work hard on regulating sleep because sleep is by far the number one thing that’s going to take care of my brain. I’m going to lower my risks of memory issues, neurodegenerative conditions so allowing my body to do what it is or what it needs to do.
Sleep is the best way to take care of your brain. It lowers the risks of memory issues and allows the body to do what it needs to do.
Also, my fiancée got me really into cold plunges and that’s one of those things where I can’t tell you if everything that everyone says about it is true. I can only tell you from my experience, it brings about a sense of calm. I sleep better, I feel better, my mind works better and I manage stress a lot easier. It’s like the data seems to support it. My personal experience has been great. That being said, I absolutely hate the cold. It is a push.
It’s just being in the know. I recommend that people utilize it. One of the most interesting avenues for information on a lot of the stuff has been LinkedIn where it’s like following, especially the experts in the neurodegenerative space and learning more for them. I actually cut off all other social media besides that because I believe it is, at least for me, detrimental to my life. We’re saying the goal is longevity, but not just in increasing the number of years, but the quality of those years.
I noticed you are wearing an Oura ring as well? Is that how you monitor to your sleep?
It was funny because until I used the Oura ring, I never thought about the fact that time in bed isn’t the same as time of sleep. That was mind-blowing for me. I’m like, “I was in bed for 10 hours. I slept terribly. The room was too hot or this was wrong, or I had caffeine too close to it.” Just getting the education, I’m like some of the things I think about taking care of myself, I’m wrong.
Having that data gives you the feedback loop and then you can see what’s impacting you or not. On that note, do you do your cold plunges mostly in the morning or in the evening? Do you find a difference in terms of your sleep scores?
I would love to do them in the morning and I have found the benefit is much higher. I’m just not a morning person. I found the afternoon is a really nice reset. I’ll give myself like a little break in between work and I get to go have my mini mental vacation and then come back to the world. The sleep definitely improves. The mood, though, is the most noticeable thing for me.
Getting Genetic Tests And Making A Lifestyle Change
You mentioned two different genetic tests, but you said that obviously they can get expensive. Can you say those again?
Yeah. Myriad Genetics has GeneSight. I believe they were the first genetic test to really be focused on the behavioral health market. That test discusses really how your body metabolizes certain medications. It was really interesting and it is been around for a while, so it’s given pretty good results. New Amsterdam is more focused on the genetic side of things, but I had a good experience.
One of my doctors had recommended their panel. I took it. Suddenly, I had a call with a doctor who walked me through everything. I know a lot of people have done like the Ancestry or the 23andMe. This is a different level where it’s like we’re the doctors are really going to dive into the how and why these genetic markers matter. I had a couple of positives for cancer in my family and then we found out there are other genetic markers that are passing through the family. We’ve all been checking to see who’s positive and who’s negative.
Making Patients The CEOs Of Their Own Health
When you get that test done, then you’re actually helping your family members as well. I’m curious. As you look out over the next 5 to 10 years, what do you envision the healthcare field will look like and what significant changes do you see coming from your perspective?
I’ll say that there’s a change that I really hope is coming, which is in ‘s environment, especially for patients going through cancer treatment, they come to a point if things don’t go the way they want them to go and they progress and the cancer progresses and they run into issues and they get into late stage cancer treatment where they start looking and everyone asks the same question. “Is there a clinical trial I can join?” I’ll say this. Patients who join a clinical trial are doing a public service. They are heroes, hands down. You don’t know what the outcome is going to be. You don’t know what the symptoms are going to be. They are explorers in the unknown for the best interest of the next patient who might suffer.
That is how our system works. It’s a sense of pride and a willingness to be the first through the door to help the next person who might be there. They ask, “Is there a clinical trial?” Hopefully, there’s a clinical trial that your oncologist is a part of in the health system that you were going to because finding a clinical trial is extremely hard.
I had a family friend who was late-stage breast cancer and they had a good oncologist and they went through a number of different treatments, they had mutations that occurred. The woman’s daughter is probably the best note-taker to ever exist as a patient advocate in your family. She went to every doctor’s appointment. She transcribed notes. We actually connected them to someone that was helping to connect them to the Yale clinical trial ecosystem.
Now we had to go from Florida and there wasn’t a clinical trial form to get them to Yale to have conversations about potential clinical trials. There really isn’t a central access point for patients to say, “I’m in rural Alabama and I have this type of cancer. What universities are around me or not around me,” because you’re late-stage cancer, you don’t care. You might have to move for a while. That information shouldn’t require someone to go to ClinicalTrials.gov and search through dozens and dozens of things. This is a change that I hope is on the horizon because, again, every person who chooses to participate in a clinical trial is doing a public service. We should at least make it easy for them.
You’re envisioning maybe there’s a more accessible way to spread the word, get people enrolled in clinical trials, like an app or something that could do some of that filtering for you and make it accessible.
I do think that coming out of the pandemic, the patient became a real thing to the providers and to the healthcare environment. It’s weird to say that, but all of the messaging is so much more patient-focused. It’s about democratizing healthcare. It’s about patient access. These are what companies are focusing on. The trend that we’ve seen since the pandemic to now is that patients can get diagnostic tests at home, that patients get better, more access to their data than they historically have. You could see a doctor. Some states have tried to restrict it and it’s been a real big disappointment. Originally, you could see a doctor in one state, in any state. You were able to see the best doctor over telehealth. Now, there are a lot more limiting laws, but that’s fine.
The control that we individuals have as patients, because we all are over our healthcare data and choices, it’s much higher. If we see that trend continue. The outcome is just going to be more positive healthcare outcomes for people and a greater level of knowledge and care at the patient base. It has to be balanced because not all patients are the same. Some patients don’t have a smartphone still. Some patients don’t have a bandwidth internet. Some patients don’t understand some of these things.
There’s a balance between the doctors, the nurses being stewards of patients, and patients being able to be advocates for themselves. Net-net, that’s a positive trend. As we see the next 5, 10 years of that continuing, I think it’s going to be a game-changer. Even the things that we’ve been talking about in our discussion are all powered by patients having choice, patients being educated, and patients being able to move healthcare forward.
Ultimately, when I talk to people like this, it does seem like that’s a very common theme that we’re becoming the CEOs of our own health. We need to be in control of our own health. We don’t just wait for 1 of the 5 different doctors we see throughout the year to tell us what to do. They’re not all talking to each other, but we’re much more empowered to take action on our own. That’s exciting stuff.
Find People Who Are Willing To Challenge You
I have one last question for you. If someone has a great idea or they’re an entrepreneur or they’re working on some exciting new breakthrough, what advice would you give them to help them be you? You said like 8 or 9 out of 10 pitch decks that come across your desk are not ready for the market, are not really set up the correct way. What advice do you have for somebody who does have a great idea that wants to get it out there? How can they structure it?
The first piece of advice that I give them is, people naturally gravitate with the people that are telling them what they want to hear. I would say basically do exactly the opposite is my advice. Find the people that are going to challenge you. Find the people that know the clinical landscape, the development landscape, the research landscape, the payer landscape. If you’re in healthcare, you are touching on 10 or 12 different things because you’ve got government regulatory side, you got regulatory compliance and patient management like HIPAA. There are all sorts of things.
You need an abundance of people who are going to challenge you and are going to give advice from that perspective. That would be my first thing, which is go to the people who are going to give you the notes. You’re in the conversation, you feel like you’re running into walls, I think that’s your best friend because they’re helping you to flush out what the flaws are in the structure. A lot of the times, you have a great idea, but they’re trying to place it in the wrong part of healthcare, or they don’t understand the payer environment and how reimbursement works. It’s one of those things that takes a great idea and makes it where it’s not going to be functional.
Get In Touch With Sam And TCB Capital Advisors
Yeah, that’s helpful. I do meet a lot of people that are doing really fascinating, amazing work, but sometimes, it’s that challenge to get across the finish line and get it into a really profitable business so that they can actually impact more people with it. Finding those people that will challenge you poke holes in the structure or the business plan to make it better and make it work. If people want to connect with you or with have a great idea they want to bring to TCB Capital Advisors or invest alongside of you to help fund some of these innovations, where can they find you? How can they get involved?
TCBCapitalAdvisors.com and I can be reached at SamLibby@TCBCapitalAdvisors.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I absolutely love talking to people, both from different sides if they have a good idea or if they have questions, they’re navigating healthcare issues. I’m not a provider so I can’t give anyone medical advice, but if they want to talk about like, “I’m thinking about how to manage and think about liquid biopsy in my life, like what are some companies,” I’m happy to navigate and just like I did here, suggesting people to take a look at new data diagnostics. There are lots of different companies, but I’m always happy to have a conversation.
People naturally gravitate toward individuals who tell them what they want to hear. Try to do the opposite and find those who will challenge you instead.
Sounds good. This has been fascinating, Sam. I really appreciate your time. I know you have a lot of other things to get to, but thank you so much for being with us for sharing your wisdom and experience and advice and expertise. It’s been really fascinating and I’m definitely taking a lot of things away from this conversation. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me.
All right. We’ll see you next time.
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Thanks for reading a fascinating conversation with Sam Libby from TCB Capital Advisors. I hope you found a nugget or two in there. A few things that stuck out to me. The fact that it takes 12 to 18 months to get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and really the only treatments that we have are early interventions. I know there are things on the horizon, there are breakthroughs that are coming that hopefully will make a difference in that, but it’s exciting to hear about a company like Altoida that is really trying to change the landscape and how we can diagnose that sooner so that we can get those early. Inter intervention started much more quickly.
We talked a lot about liquid biopsies and making that more accessible, more affordable, and there are some exciting companies that are doing that and working on that, like New Day Diagnostics. They have a liquid biopsy test for colon health called ColoHealth. It’s about $200, so you can check that out. One of the leading causes of death for men is colorectal cancer, as we mentioned. We want to make sure that we’re screening appropriately and catching things early. As he said, if we can catch cancers at stage one, that’s very different than catching it at stage three in terms of treatment, outcomes and affordability as well.
Those are a couple of things. The genetic tests he mentioned as well, I think that’s interesting. The Myriad Genetics GeneSight, getting some of those tests done, but really making it actionable is where the impact comes in. Understanding what risks we have and we can then adapt our lifestyle to mitigate those risks as much as possible.
Getting good sleep, obviously, that’s a theme we hear over and over again on this show. Making sure that we’re setting up our environment to sleep as soundly as we can, getting that deep sleep, maybe using an Oura ring or some other device to measure it so that you can get that feedback that you need as well to know what affects you and what impacts you the most. Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you next time.
Important Links
- TCB Capital Advisors
- Sam Libby on LinkedIn
- New Day Diagnostics
- Clinical Trials
- SamLibby@TCBCapitalAdvisors.com