What happens when a leading infectious disease researcher decides to become a businessman? For Chad Roy, a professor at Tulane University School of Medicine and associate dean of research, the result was the discovery of a molecule that has completely revolutionized modern-day surgery.
Roy is a leader in medical research and the founder of three startups. His passion for medicine began during his master’s program at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where he first became immersed in infectious disease research.
“Not many people are in the field, but to this day, it fascinates me,” Roy said. “Infectious disease in general is one of the interfaces in the health sciences that is continuously changing.”
Roy began his entrepreneurial journey while working for the U.S. Army as a junior principal investigator at the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland. There, he spent nearly a decade developing vaccines and therapeutics, and co-invented a precision inhalation system that earned his first patent. Roy’s technology is still widely used in infectious disease research today.
Roy came to Tulane in 2006, where he began researching bacterial infections in contact lens wearers.
“I started working with an ophthalmologist in our school of medicine [who] was running into these terrible eye infections… people had contact lenses that were contaminated with bacteria,” Roy said. “She [asked if] I could come up with something that is better than what was commercially available.”
Roy developed a contact solution that made it all the way to the FDA, but ultimately did not reach the market. Despite this, Roy said the experience taught him invaluable lessons in business and sparked the creation of his most recent startup.
“It was my first real lesson in not necessarily being successful in a commercial entity, but I took a couple of years and then went to the next thing,” Roy said.
His newest startup, Bio Protectant Technologies, uses a molecule called EQ12. Roy discovered EQ12 while analyzing a contact lens disinfectant solution that contained a complex mixture of compounds. Curious which molecule was most effective, Roy synthesized and tested them individually. He found that EQ12 was responsible for 99% of the solution’s antimicrobial efficacy.
Roy’s company has primarily focused on using EQ12 as a surgical irritant. Roy said that during surgery, these solutions are used to clean wounds, flush away debris and reduce the risk of infection by sterilizing the environment. He added that EQ12 offers a significant advantage over traditional irritants, as it is much more potent at lower concentrations, making it optimal for clinical settings.
Beyond the operating room, Roy envisioned a wide variety of applications for this novel antimicrobial.
“We think in the medical field and other fields… it’s going to be remarkably useful and remarkably practical for a bunch of different things,” Roy said.
Scientists can embed EQ12 into fabrics, plastics and sheets to make it a permanent part of the material.
“We actually took baby tennis shoes… and [EQ12] protected the tennis shoe to where, every time it comes into contact with bacteria, it would sterilize itself,” Roy said. “We just created something that could transform all these different things into functionally, a self-sterilizing piece that would improve durability, elasticity, longevity, color, because you can’t wash [EQ12] away.”