Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. John Qiao.
Hi Dr. Qiao, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Thank you for interviewing me Voyage Houston. I’m the Founder and CEO of a Houston-based med-tech start-up called RadioClash Ltd. Co. My team and I are building a minimally-invasive surgical tool called the Electro-Embolizer Device (EED) which uses electricity to deliver small molecule drugs to solid tumors to help facilitate a new cancer treatment called combination electroporation therapy (CET). We are optimistic that CET will improve and expand interventional treatment options for cancer patients, including hastening the development of personalized cancer vaccines. In my free time, I’m also a resident physician in interventional radiology at the joint University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center program, a Spotify-released musician, husband to a lovely lady from Queens, and dog-dad to a Chiweenie named Lucie.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’m a child of immigrants and moved to the US when I was 5-years-old, so uncertainty is an element that I’m very comfortable in. But getting to this point for building the EED has been truly even more confusing than navigating a new society at an early age. I started this project from an idea over two year ago, and every time I make it past one step, the learning curve for the next step is even steeper. After acquiring provisional patents for my idea, there was the utility patent filing. After that, there was the actual manufacturing of the prototype itself, which would have cost $100K that I don’t have, so I ended up sourcing all of my own raw materials and working with electrical discharge machinery and welding companies in Northside Houston to get the first prototype fabricated myself for $2K. Luckily, I’ve been able to surround myself with a lot of talented people who believe in and are passionate about our work, including our CTO Duane Bester, CFO Sam Dharia, and a team of senior physician advisors in Texas, California, and New York. We are now in the funding phase for our device with favorable analyses from a member of the Central Texas Angel Network and a biomedical innovation analyst at McKinsey and Company. We are presenting ourselves to physician angel and other smart money investor groups and also recently applied to TMC Innovation Accelerator.
Thanks for the informative pitch – so what else should our readers know about RadioClash?
RadioClash Ltd. Co. is the future of combination electroporation therapy, and we are working to improve and expand definitive interventional treatment options for a cancer-free world with our Electro-Embolizer Device (EED) starting with cancer of the pancreas, liver, and bones.
What does success mean to you?
Success to me is a future in which every cancer patient can be treated definitively from Stage 1 to Stage 4. RadioClash, Ltd. Co. plans to significantly decrease the burden of suffering and eventually increase survival for patients in all stages of cancer using CET.
Contact Info:
- Email: john.yang.qiao@radioclash.co
- Website: radioclash.co
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/album/7wU2uM6tojDEONMsEkaMYR?si=KIJimzcZRWCkHjdDDs7AnA&dl_branch=1
