HOULTON, Maine — An Aroostook County biomedical researcher who invented breast cancer early detection software for high risk women won the Regional Top Gun Pitch on Thursday night in Houlton.
Kendra Batchelder, co-founder and CEO of Waved Medical LLC in Presque Isle, is one of two County entrepreneurs set to compete for $25,000 in the state Top Gun Showcase Pitch Event at the Maine Entrepreneurs Summit in Portland on May 16. The Top Gun program provides training and mentorship to business people and is run by the Portland-based Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.
“The opportunity to present our company, our business plan and our research to the community was really exciting,” Batchelder said.
Spurred by the early onset breast cancer death of her University of Maine mentor, Batchelder said she made it her mission to translate her Ph.D. research into the marketplace.
As part of her graduate work, Batchelder took astrophysics measurements, originally developed to characterize galaxy formations and star formations, and applied them to mammography to predict tumor formation.
From that she invented an add-on software for mammography that identifies at-risk dense breast tissue, which is a precancerous marker for an invasive breast cancer.
“This leads to early detection of breast cancer in women who are most likely to progress to an invasive disease, and they can receive treatment when it’s most likely to be effective,” she said.
Seventy percent of breast cancer cases occur in women with dense breast tissue but it is a challenge to detect it with mammography in those women, she said.
Women’s breasts are made up of dense breast tissue — milk glands, milk ducts, and supportive tissue — and fatty breast tissue made up of fat cells, according to the Mayo Clinic.
On a mammogram image, fatty breast tissue is transparent and dense breast tissue appears as solid white, making it hard to see through, Batchelder said.
“Radiologists are searching for cancer inside an image full of white,” she said.
Batchelder, who went to high school in Bangor, has received numerous awards and recognition for her research.
In 2022, she received the Impressive Innovator Award from the University of Maine for her patented computational approach to aid in the early detection of breast cancer. This fall she was a featured speaker at the Jackson Laboratory’s Maine Biomedical Innovation and Technology Conference in Portland.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research organization with research centers in Maine, Connecticut, California, Japan and China.
The Waved Medical software that Batchelder and co-founder Andre Khalil, University of Maine professor of biomedical engineering, invented was first patented in 2013 and there have been several patents since.
They are currently wrapping up National Institutes of Health Phase I studies using a prototype before submission to the FDA for approval this fall.
Once the software is integrated into breast imaging centers, a woman’s mammogram would run through it before a radiologist reads the image
“The radiologist will make an assessment and then turn on our software to see our results,” she said.
To date the project has received about $2 million in National Institutes of Health funding, with $405,950 in 2023.
“We’ve identified an engineering firm we will work with for a National Institutes of Health Stage II study that is coming up,” Batchhelder said.
Suzy Hiltz, owner of Chapped Hide in Cary Plantation, won the second place prize in Thursday’s competition at the Houlton Performing Arts Center. Batchhelder won a $2,500 cash prize, and Hiltz $500. They both move on to the state event next week.
While the entrepreneurs appreciate the regional cash award, it was the 15-weeks of Top Gun training and mentorship that was most helpful, they said.
For the first time in 10 years, Aroostook County entrepreneurs were included in the state’s highly competitive Top Gun Program.
With the help of the Northern Maine Development Commission, a Top Gun 2024 partner, the program this year expanded into Houlton and Machias, making this the second time for Houlton and a first for Machias.
The County businesses selected for the 2024 15-week program, who competed for the chance to head to Portland next week were Batchelder, Waved Medical; Hiltz, Chapped Hide; Charles Amara, Automated Waste and Recycling, Inc.; James Dempsey, Caribou Painting Company; and Jack Westfall, LYFT Avenue.
Each entrepreneur’s pitch was judged on a rubric of scalability, feasibility, innovation and presentation of the business plan.
Judges included LeRae Kinny, CEO of Ignite PI in Presque Isle, Fred Grant, owner of WHOU FM, Market Pizza and the Temple Theater and Corinne Watson, CEO of Tiny Homes of Maine in Dyer Brook.
During her presentation, Suzy Hiltz, inventor and owner of Chapped Hide, talked about how her plantain salve has grown into a heal-all skin salve that has been shipped to over 15 states in the last six months.
“This native to main wild herb called plantago major or plantain, is the reason we have our business,” she said. “We want to be the first business to commercialize this incredible wild herb.”
Hiltz said that in 2023, Chapped Hide secured a grant that helped push them into a dozen retail locations and with an added ecommerce boost they increased sales by 1,000 percent.
Chapped Hide just received a Maine Domestic Trade Grant of $25,000 that will increase sales and exposure, Hitlz said.
“All we need now is the Top Gun cash prize so we can upgrade our production space to meet the expected sales,” she said. “We are calling on you to answer our S.O.S, please help Chapped Hide be the winner of Top Gun for this year so we can expand in the way we need to.”
