Imagine a place where a physician can see patients in the morning, teach a class in the afternoon, go to the lab to check in on their research, then finish their day at their startup’s office—all without ever having to get in the car.
GelSana Disrupts the Band-Aid
John Himes
July 1, 2024
What if you never had to rip off a Band-Aid ever again?
GelSana is disrupting more than your first aid kit. Their innovative biogels act like soft, slightly sticky putty that can stretch out across any wound and come off just as easily. They’re elastic enough to let you pinch off a tiny bit for a cut on your finger or roll into a sheet to cover full-body burns.
This medical technology has a number of attractive properties. It’s anti-inflammatory and promotes healing with moisture regulation. It can gradually deliver medicine to a wound over days, weeks, or even months. It’s also chemically incapable of absorbing bacteria or other contaminants.
Cleragel, GelSana’s first commercial product, will be coming soon to a pharmacy near you, courtesy of Dr. Melissa Krebs, founder, CEO, and inventor.
Breaking out of the lab
After discovering this biopolymer at The Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Dr. Krebs took the leap to entrepreneurship. She wanted to realize the potential she saw after her eureka moment in the lab that came with her first animal studies.
“You work your career trying to develop new technologies, and it’s great to contribute to the scientific body of knowledge. But then to be able to have something that truly has clinical potential is an exciting moment,” says Dr. Krebs. “This deserves commercialization.”
Dr. Krebs and her team of fellow scientists discovered something brand new, something that’s an upgrade to a product as ubiquitous and universally useful as a bandage. If this product can pass muster with the FDA later in this year, GelSana will have a massive opportunity on their hands.
A major challenge will be scaling up the company and manufacturing, but GelSana is in the right place. They’re just outside of Denver, Colorado.
Medtech for healing open wounds
GelSana’s biomaterial has big implications. Unlike traditional bandages, it promotes healing of chronic wounds like diabetic ulcers.
“We spend $78B on wound care in the US currently, and people still lose their limbs all the time,” explains Dr. Krebs. “We’re spending a lot to not solve the problem.”
That’s because when a wound is so highly inflamed that it can’t proceed to healing, it stays open. That inflammation isn’t addressed by gauze, hydrogel, or even tissue grafting. By helping reduce inflammation, GelSana’s first product works to heal ulcers, surgical incisions, burns, and more.
Plus, their gel doesn’t have to be changed as often as traditional wound dressings, nor does it hurt to take off. While today’s patients must often suffer through a dressing change twice a day, Cleragel makes it so they only need to do so once a week, such as during a regularly scheduled outpatient visit. And it’s painless to remove.
Dr. Krebs explains how this will help Air Force surgeons, for instance, treat full-body burn victims. “Right now, they have to change dressings twice a day, and the patient is in so much pain that they literally leave the hospital with PTSD because of the chain of care. The doctors hate causing this trauma, but they have no way around it with the current standard of care. We’re hopeful that we can change this story.”
How it works
What is it about GelSana’s biomaterials that makes this possible?
“The polymer itself is our secret sauce,” says Dr. Krebs. “A high distribution of opposite charges goes down the polymer backbone, and this gives it the magic because nothing can come in and associate with the material.”
Basically, because there’s no room for anything else to bond with the polymer, it repels bacteria, prevents protein deposition, and evades the immune system response caused by a foreign body reaction. It stays invisible to the body.
This same charge density property also helps reduce inflammation by affecting immune cells.
One example of how this works involves altering “macrophages, a type of immune cell with two phenotypes,” explains Dr. Krebs.
“One is inflammatory, and it’s the first type to show up in a wound. It secretes inflammatory markers, and that’s a good thing in a healthy wound to start the healing cascade. They then convert to a pro-healing phenotype, which secretes markers that help close that wound up and heal it. Our polymer can take the pro-inflammatory macrophage and reprogram it into a pro-healing one.”
Another unique feature involves drug delivery. GelSana encapsulates drugs in the polymers and controls their release over time—up to four months in some cases, though most topical medicines are delivered over the course of one week. By changing the way they assemble the polymer and embed the drug, they can control release time and dosing.
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From the lab to the board room
When GelSana launched in 2020, the first major challenge was taking their tech from the academic lab bench to work through scaling and manufacturing. On top of the engineering itself, the fact that the product is regulated by the FDA added an additional layer of challenge.
They’re hoping to get FDA approval by the end of 2024, and then it becomes a matter of scaling production while continuing to research and develop new products. Going beyond wound care, Dr. Krebs sees opportunities for blood-clotting and anti-scarring polymers. They may even license the technology to cosmetics manufacturers on the side.
It hasn’t always been easy getting to this point. Between the challenges of starting a company during the pandemic and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (and the ensuing capital dryspell), Dr. Krebs did sometimes wonder how they were going to make it. So I asked her how she pulled through.
“Perseverance, eternal optimism, and not being willing to give up,” she replied.
She may come from an academic background, but she’s certainly had a crash course in entrepreneurship over the past few years. Thankfully, she hasn’t been riding the rollercoaster alone.
After receiving pre-seed funding from Innosphere Ventures, a venture capital (VC) firm based in Fort Collins, she went through a pair of accelerator programs, one with Innosphere itself and one with the Colorado Small Business Development Center. She emerged with advisors, a first employee, a product, and a relationship with a contract manufacturer.
Since then, GelSana has worked on scaling manufacturing and building out the company with the help of two seed rounds and non-dilutive grant funding. Now they’re gearing up for a bigger series A and getting ready to go to market with their first product.
“Seeing it used on patients will be a huge milestone,” says Dr. Krebs.
Sana is the Latin word for healing. For a medical technology company like GelSana, there’s no greater reward than seeing their hard work make a real difference in people’s health.
Bioscience in the Colorado tech ecosystem
Our local startup ecosystem has an outsized impact on those who call it home, including many of the innovators we’ve covered in the Colorado Tech Spotlight. Between valuable relationships, top-tier schools, and a scaffolding of startup-friendly infrastructure, setting up shop in our state has been huge for GelSana’s success.
Of course, the story begins at the Colorado School of Mines. The research community, the lab, and the students—two of which have served as interns at GelSana—are all contributing factors. Dr. Krebs is a tenured professor at Mines and has taught there since 2012.
The recent addition of a class in bioentrepreneurship is particularly timely. “I can bring lessons back from GelSana to the classroom and teach students what I just learned,” says Dr. Krebs with a smile.
The University of Colorado (CU) Anschutz Medical Campus is also part of the equation. GelSana’s first hire, Dr. Adam Rocker, came out of Anschutz, and he is now their Director of R&D.
“GelSana is able to grow and thrive thanks to the support of the local Colorado tech community,” says Dr. Rocker. “Having the Anschutz Medical Campus and other startup companies nearby is invaluable to us.”
GelSana’s facility is literally across the street from Anschutz. Not only does this mean they can tap into the hospital’s resources, but it also means they’re surrounded by other life science innovators.
Their office and lab space are currently housed in the Fitzsimons Innovation Community. This startup incubator is solely dedicated to life science companies, meaning there’s always someone with whom to bounce ideas around, share equipment, or even just enjoy some camaraderie.
Colorado's life sciences industry continues to climb
Another key relationship in Colorado is with Innosphere Ventures. In addition to their accelerator program that Dr. Krebs went through, Innosphere has led all of GelSana’s fundraising and continues to support their growth. Mike Freeman, Innosphere’s CEO, also sits on GelSana’s board of directors.
“Dr. Krebs exemplifies the kind of visionary leadership we seek to support,” he says. “Her dedication to advancing medical technologies through GelSana is truly inspiring. We look forward to continuing our support for Melissa and the mission of GelSana as they work towards revolutionizing wound care and improving patient outcomes.”
Financing is crucial to the success of any business, especially in tech startups that need to invest in R&D, manufacturing, and, in this case, compliance for FDA approval. “Colorado has a lot of advantages for startups,” explains Dr. Krebs. She points to the OEDIT advanced industries grants, state tax credits for investors, and an influx of VCs that arrived in our state in 2020 seeking sunshine and a refuge from the busy coasts.
The last piece of the puzzle is industry associations that facilitate partnership, advocate for local businesses, and connect workforce with industry. Dr. Krebs is a member of the board of directors of the Colorado Bioscience Association. She volunteers her time because she “feel[s] strongly that there is an opportunity for upward growth, for Colorado to become one of the top five in the country.”
Of course, we didn’t even begin to mention the local clinical advisors, the contract manufacturer based in Boulder, or the service providers that all play a role in supporting GelSana’s growth.
We’re here together in Colorado, working to grow our local startup ecosystem while also enjoying the quality of life our beautiful state has to offer. If you have to set up shop somewhere, concludes Dr. Krebs, “why not be in the state that has 300 days of sunshine, the mountains in our backyard, and still has good access to capital?”
About the Colorado Tech Spotlight
The Colorado Tech Spotlight highlights local innovations and the stories behind them. The series explores how the Colorado tech ecosystem creates an environment that promotes technological progress.
It is produced by Dynamic Tech Media and written by John Himes. Photography by Kort Duce.
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