For this edition of Founder Spotlight, intern Jonah Baer had a chance to sit down with Jeff Chininis, the founder and CEO of Fairway Biomed. Jeff and his company are a part of the ZeroTo510 Accelerator this summer on the road to FDA clearance.
Fairway Biomed is a medical device company improving surgical oncology. Cofounders, Jeff Chininis and Chet Hammill, both share a passion for creating innovative surgical technologies. Chet brings experience in surgery with over 15 years as a hepatobiliary surgeon at various prestigious cancer treatment centers across the country, while Jeff brings a background in medical technology, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Together, the two have invented the LIVO device, a patent pending technology that better controls bleeding in resection surgeries to remove cancer in the liver, kidney, and lungs. By controlling bleeding in a safer and more targeted way, vital organ tissue will be preserved improving patient outcomes and increasing the number of patients eligible to have surgery.
Jonah: How did you first get interested in the engineering and medical innovation space?
Jeff: Starting out, I always knew I wanted to go into engineering for a couple reasons. I was always great at math and science. Also, on my mom’s side, two of my uncles and grandfather were all engineers. I always looked up to them as they had successful careers. For me, it seemed like a natural field to go into.
I had no idea what type of engineering I liked and in my freshman year, I took an intro to engineering class. It was for undecided engineers and they would bring in a different person each time, graduates of the different engineering backgrounds: mechanical, civil, biomedical. One day, they brought in a biomedical engineer who was designing prosthetics. The chance to do something in the healthcare industry and help people along the way seemed really fulfilling to me.
One of my best friends in undergrad created a startup company in college and I saw them put a lot of work into their business. Seeing that they could make something that is of value for somebody else made me think that I could also create a business. Lastly, when I was graduating from undergrad, I saw that Washington University had this new biomedical innovation program for biomedical engineers looking to be entrepreneurs. I entered into a year-long master’s program and that has led me to where I am today with Fairway Biomed.
Jonah: What inspired you to first create this innovation?
Jeff: My master’s program allowed you to shadow doctors in areas that you’re interested in and I started sitting through surgeries. I sat through a couple surgeries and thought that it was amazing watching them operate on people.
Through this experience I met Chet Hammill, who is now my cofounder. Chet is a liver surgeon and has a long list of ideas for new surgically related technologies. From the beginning even when we were first getting to know each other he was always so nice and generous with his time. We would have meetings in his office for an hour or two and he invited me to come to his surgeries so I could better understand his ideas and choose which one I most wanted to work on. No other doctor quite opened doors and gave me the opportunities that Chet did. Plus, he’s brilliant and I think up until this point we’ve made a great team.
Jonah: Taking a step back from the business, a couple summers ago in between your junior and senior year of undergrad you lived and worked in Rwanda for a couple months. Tell me more about that experience.
Jeff: It was a program called Engineering World Health. At the end of my junior year of college, I was looking for a chance to get good experience in biomedical engineering but also wanted to go to a unique place. I wanted to go somewhere that I never saw myself going to. I heard about this opportunity to be able to live and work in Rwanda, applied, and ultimately got in.
They take students who are mostly biomedical engineers but you could really be any type of engineer. Their whole purpose is to go into developing countries and repair their medical equipment. Typically, these countries will get a lot of equipment donated to them from countries like the U.S. but a lot of times it’s old or broken and people won’t know how to use it. This program brings students over from the U.S. that are educated in this area. The students can help train the people and fix things that are not functioning and save these people tons of money. It was a very eye-opening experience.
Jonah: How did you come up with the name Fairway Biomed?
Jeff: About a year ago, my dad passed away from pancreatic cancer. When I was starting this company, my dad was really sick. He had a couple of big surgeries. Seeing him go through that was the worst part. When he passed away, it was almost like a relief because he had gotten so beat up during his treatment. Seeing this project as being something that could improve surgeries and improve patient outcomes was really important to me. That’s been a big inspiration and something to light my fire.
So where does Fairway come from? My dad and I used to golf together all of the time. He was a huge golfer. The business was formed from him so that is why Fairway was a reference to the golf. Also, it’s a spin on words: a “fair way” to fight cancer.
Jonah: Where do you see Fairway Biomed five years down the road?
Jeff: At this point, since it is our first product, we would love to get it into the hands of a bigger medical device company. If that means a little bit of less return for us, that’s okay because our goal is to get this technology and many other technologies to market. We think that’s the smart way to do it to start out. We would love to sell our technology and then possibly continue to help them out, but let them handle the commercialization and manufacturing.
Jonah: How did you go about designing your device?
Jeff: A lot of times with the design, you realize the more and more you understand the problem, there’s not that many decisions to make. The product almost creates itself once you fully understand the problem. A lot of our design came from talking to surgeons and my co-founder in St. Louis. I would meet with Chet for a couple hours during his free time to talk about these ideas and problems in surgery. A year ago I knew nothing about any of this, and now I feel like I could almost give one of these surgeries myself. I really started to understand the problem and ultimately the solution through talking to him.
Jonah: Why Memphis and Zeroto510?
Jeff: This was definitely the best option. For someone to say we will give you investment on good terms, give you people who are experts in your field, and teach you how to be a business person, there was no other option like that. It was either stay in St. Louis and keep working with Chet to try to raise money or come here, and there was nothing else like this program. The timeline worked out really well for when I was graduating my master’s program and when the accelerator started.
Jonah: What has Zeroto510 done to help this summer?
Jeff: They’ve brought in so many experts like people from Smith and Nephew and MRCX, which is a regulatory consulting company. With Ryan, Chris, and Wally here to guide me along the way, I have the opportunity to talk to these medical device experts whenever I need. They have expertise and have done this, which is something I didn’t have before. The biggest thing is having people who are very smart and experienced in this area to tell me exactly what I need to be doing.
Jonah: Where would your company be right now if you weren’t in this program?
Jeff: It’s not even comparable. We would still be trying to raise money, which I guarantee we wouldn’t have done by now. We would be trying to search on google for how to go through the FDA, which is horrible and would not have gotten us anywhere. To be honest, if it wasn’t for this, I had another job offer I could have taken and Fairway might not even be a thing any more. This came at the perfect time. We needed a little bit of capital but we also needed guidance.
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Jeff Chininis is a Cofounder and the CEO of Fairway Biomed. He grew up living in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri. Jeff got his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Missouri in Bioengineering and a Master of Engineering in Biomedical Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis. It was at Wash U that Jeff fell in love with entrepreneurship, taking advantage of many of the university’s entrepreneurial resources and earning an honor’s in entrepreneurship from the university. In his free time Jeff enjoys traveling, hanging out with friends, and following the Kansas City Chiefs and University of Missouri basketball and football teams.
Jeff’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-chininis-57360391/
By Jonah Baer