Why Endometriosis Needs New Treatment Approaches with EndoCyclic Therapeutics’ Dr. Tanya Petrossian

Tania, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for talking about endometriosis, which is often not very well talked about publicly.

So to start, could you tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to start Endocyclic Therapeutics?

Uh, yeah, definitely.

So I have a highly technical background.

I have a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from UCLA and postdoctoral training in bioinformatics and systems biology and inflammatory diseases, and a fellowship training, uh, from Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

So I have a highly technical background, but I've also, uh, have worked on what we call the product development side.

So I've been a strategic product manager now for several different, um, products in the prenatal and the gynecological health space.

And I've been lucky to really be in this space since 2010, um, even before, I guess, this wonderful wave of women's health have come in and all of this attention to women's health have come in.

But a lot of the times what we focused on, uh, was a lot on, um, infertility and, and very much from the aspect and the viewpoint of, you know, IVF or, you know, how to get women fertile.

And not as much regarding kind of the pain, quite physically or metaphorically, that's behind a lot of that infertility journey and other types of gynecological diseases that are not very, uh, much talked about or really that there's not many diagnostic or treatment options.

So I've been in this field for quite a while.

I've had the pleasure of going around and seeing OB offices and reproductive endocrinology offices, fertility offices all around the world, and see how medicine's practiced all around the world, which it's very different.

It's very different in a lot of different regions.

And, you know, not only until I was diagnosed with endometriosis myself did I really stop to think, my goodness, there is such a high prevalence of these types of the diseases that are absolutely destroying a lot of our lives.

And yet, you know, these very off... doctor's offices that we go to and look to for solutions, they don't have the solutions on their hand.

They can't help us.

So a lot of times we're left suffering alone with these diseases.

And so, you know, with my very technical background, with my industry experience, and, you know, having the job title that essentially would fit the role, I decided that, you know, instead of working for a really large company, which I have, and I've actually have had fantastic training in these large companies, and I'm really appreciative of that, uh, experience.

And instead of being person number 30 or person number three in another startup and in prenatal diagnostics, which I've done, which have been, which has also been amazing, I thought that it was kind of the perfect time to sit and think, what is the best way to try to address this disease of endometriosis from a scientific perspective that no one had ever thought of before, you know, non-hormonal, and truly, hopefully, a disease modifying and disease eliminating fashion? How can we actually make a product, a scientific product, a scientific, you know, solution for women that can really change what the standard of care of endometriosis looks like? Because trust me, physicians want to have these tools.

They want to be giving it to all of us to help us deal and eliminate this terrible disease.

So I thought that what we call, you know, product market fit, it was definitely a market that was really undescribed but clearly an unmet need, and that's why I founded Endocyclic Therapeutics.

I thought we could make a huge change in medicine.

Yeah.