MSU Research Foundation Podcast

Reimagining Cancer Care and Clinical Trials with BAMF Health

• MSU Research Foundation • Season 1 • Episode 12

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In this episode, David Washburn interviews Chad Bassett, Chief Operating Officer of BAMF Health, a precision medicine company transforming how cancer is diagnosed and treated. Based in MSU’s Grand Rapids Innovation Park, BAMF Health combines advanced imaging, targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy, and artificial intelligence to deliver highly personalized care and accelerate clinical trials.

Chad shares the company’s origin story, which began with a 40-year vision sketched on a restaurant placemat and has grown into one of the most advanced cancer treatment centers in the country. The conversation covers BAMF’s expansion to Detroit, its soon-to-launch clinical trial platform called Radio Nexus, and how the company is using AI to improve care and make it more affordable. Chad also discusses BAMF’s partnerships with Michigan State University, GE Healthcare, and the state of Michigan—and why expanding access and modernizing outdated regulations are key to their mission.

Host: David Washburn
Guests: Chad Bassett (Chief Operating Officer, BAMF Health)
Producers: Jenna McNamara and Doug Snitgen
Music: "Devil on Your Shoulder" by Will Harrison, licensed via Epidemic Sound

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David Washburn:

My conversation today was with Chad Bassett he is the Chief Operating Officer of BAMF Health. A really fun, wide-ranging conversation on the history of the company, how they got their Grand Rapids facility off the ground, their current partnerships and their ambition to reduce the time it takes to do clinical trials and expand their clinical trials platform across the country, something they're going to soon call Radio Nexus. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

David Washburn:

Welcome to the MSU Research Foundation podcast. Today I'm with Chad Bassett, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer of BAMF Health, which is focused on a true precision medicine platform. As a reminder, BAMF Health is a portfolio company of the MSU Research Foundation. Our captive venture fund, Red Cedar Ventures, invested in BAMF in January of 2022. BAMF is also a partner and tenant in the Doug Meyer Medical Innovation Building in MSU's Grand Rapids Innovation Park. So that is all to say, this is not investment or legal advice. Welcome, Chad. So exciting to visit with you today.

Chad Bassett:

Thrilled to be here. Always great to visit the mothership in East Lansing, MSU Headquarters.

David Washburn:

Tell us you know, tell us about you. How did you find your way to BAMF Health? What's your sort of? Where'd you go to school? What was your career path leading up to this, and who do you root for when Michigan plays Notre Dame?

Chad Bassett:

So this is going to end really fast. I don't think anybody at MSU wants to hear where I went to school.

David Washburn:

Oh, that's fine. We love those places.

Chad Bassett:

Went down to, grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan, always huge fan of everything state of Michigan, went down to Notre Dame for a degree in finance, into Chicago working for Bain and Company, a lot of focus on strategic consulting work Over to University of Michigan for my MBA and then into Detroit and back into Chicago to work with Deloitte Consulting, specifically focused on provider performance improvement, multi-state, multi-billion dollar health care systems. How can they serve patients better and reduce cost? Grand Haven has always been home. West Michigan has always been home. I think there's no place better to live, raise a family, start a business than Michigan.

Chad Bassett:

And that's where I met Dr Anthony Chang, who was a researcher at Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids. And Anthony said, hey, I have an idea. And listened to his idea. Listened to his idea in a place in Saugatuck, Michigan, a restaurant called Phil's. Go there if you get a chance. I've been to Phil's. Phil's is a great place, an old movie theater, old movie theater marquee right downtown Saugatuck, and they have paper and crayons on every single table.

David Washburn:

Oh my gosh.

Chad Bassett:

And Anthony drew out a logical step by step, 40 year vision to achieve true intelligence-based precision medicine. And over chicken and bourbon. I couldn't find fault in any of his logic and said why not, there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Sitting across the table from me and thought let's give this a shot, let's see where this can go. So two guys, some chicken and some drinks, and a 40-year vision, and we're about year seven in that vision right now.

David Washburn:

Well, I hope that you all saved that paper place mat and it's sitting somewhere safe and maybe it's framed on a wall somewhere already, not yet, not yet, not yet. And I fear it's framed on a wall somewhere already, not yet Not yet?

Chad Bassett:

Not yet and I fear it's lost. We were fortunate enough and I will skip ahead just a little bit but to be working from the Grand Rapids Innovation Park MSU's GRIP right before or during the pandemic and when that closed down we threw everything five, six of us into boxes and exited and I think that's in a box somewhere. Maybe, maybe it'll be a treasure someday.

David Washburn:

Well, let's talk about what is BAMF Health. I love the notion of um it's on your website empowering patients to become people again. I mean that is that is powerful. Um to become people again, I mean that is powerful. And the focus is theranostics. What's theranostics?

Chad Bassett:

Theranostics is the most backwards term someone created not us, but it's therapy and diagnostics into one word. However, why is it backwards? It just literally is the diagnostics comes first, the therapy comes second, and it can be applied to a lot of different types of medicine, but specifically in radiopharmaceuticals or radioactive medicine, what we're uniquely able to do is image a patient and see exactly where the disease is, quantify how much disease there is and understand and know without a doubt the target reached, where it was supposed to go. So what do we do with that information now? We now are able to pair that with a targeted treatment.

Chad Bassett:

It's phenomenal in the radiopharmaceutical world. You use the same targeting molecule and now put on a therapeutic agent and re-inject into the body. It's a simple IV injection. The drug circulates, the body, finds all of those targets, binds to it and now burns it out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with almost minimal or no damage to surrounding tissues, and then we can start the process all over again. We can then image and see did the drug reach where it was supposed to go, how much drug reached every single target, and then start to be prognosticating of how many rounds of therapy will be needed to eliminate this disease. So incredibly data-driven and a lot of opportunity there.

David Washburn:

And you have some serious hardware in your shop in Grand Rapids, if I'm not mistaken. Absolutely, what's sitting over there that makes all this happen from the hardware side?

Chad Bassett:

From the hardware side we are really thankful to be partnered with Michigan State University and Doug Meyer and the Meyer Foundation donated money to Michigan State University to help build out one of the world's most advanced dual cyclotron radiopharmacies. So it's about an 80-20 split on ownership of MSU and BAMF and we operate that radiopharmacy. So in that radiopharmacy are two of GE's most advanced cyclotrons. The whole building started there. So imagine this field of grass and then all of a sudden a bunker goes up in downtown Grand Rapids. So that bunker was six feet of concrete on all sides to house these two state-of-the-art cyclotrons. And then there's a lot that you can't see in the building. A lot of IP, a lot of thoughtful design, a lot of innovation.

Chad Bassett:

Every time those cyclotrons run they create radioactive gas. That gas is sucked underneath the building into a delay maze. It looks like one of those English garden mazes you see in the in the movies, except this one's made out of concrete. And so the radioactive gas walks through the maze and by the time it's done with the maze it's no longer radioactive. Then goes to the seventh floor of the building where there are two strobic fans that shoot the gas, another two three hundred feet above the building in an incredibly safe way. We release less radiation into the environment than currently exists, so we're also just one big air purification system too. Wow. So you know, nice service to the the city. That's coupled with the imaging clinic. The imaging clinic is a BAMF facility that has a total body PET CT made by United Imaging. It's one of only two in patient facing use in the United States. The scan can take go as fast as 30 seconds. Oh, Head to toe. Right now we run a five minute protocol.

David Washburn:

Mm-hmm.

Chad Bassett:

So most of our scans are right around five minutes. And it covers head to toe and it has 40 times, 40X more specificity than any other piece of equivalent machinery in the U S. And that means we're able to see more. Our theory there is that if you see what you treat, you're able to treat what you see in. The best therapy always starts with the best image in right here, Grand Rapids, Michigan, at BAMF Health best image hands down. It's also coupled with the state's first PET-MR, the only PET-MR in the state of Michigan.

Chad Bassett:

Previously, Michigan residents would need to drive to Chicago for this type of imaging. Couple that with our therapy clinic where we're able to treat 30 or 40 patients per day with these radiopharmaceuticals, these radioactive drugs, Highly complex facility, a lot of lead lined case goods, a lot of thought into the width of hallways, into the placement of where staff is able to interact with patients, because every single one of these patients is radioactive when they're being treated, and so a lot of careful considerations have to go into the design in order to protect not only the patients but the team members who are treating those patients. And up onto the seventh floor is where overhead sits. I know this is an innovation discussion. So not as much innovation happening in all of those core functions, except for really the software and the.

Chad Bassett:

AI teams so they sit up on seven, as well as Kosovo and in the Philippines, and really focus on providing innovative tools that will enable affordable access as quickly as possible.

David Washburn:

Well, I, you know, thanks for leaning into that, because I was curious about you. Know you? You put all this hardware in there and you're processing, caring for patients, and I'm sure there's a sort of combination of kind of off the shelf software that might come with these machines and sort of patient portal type software systems. But there's probably a bunch of stuff you had to build along the way and, as an earlier investor, we know that you've adopted AI really really early as part of this whole process. So I mean mean that in itself, that whole platform has got to, uh, to really be working well and, um, probably not a trivial thing to build. Can you, can you expand on that a little bit?

Chad Bassett:

it's really exciting and and we made the decision early on to invest in AI related team members, data scientists, um, some world-renowned team members who had a lot of experience here we brought them on board while the building was being built in order to start to set up the structure, to capture the data, in order to always have the right analysis on that make-or-buy decision that you were talking about earlier.

Chad Bassett:

It will, off the shelf software, be the best use here of our time, of our resources, or do we need to make something custom as well? So that's a rigorous analysis. The team always goes through, but really it was getting the not only the structure set up, but we're working with patient data too, so getting IRB approval, understanding patient consent, putting together the whole concept of why should patients participate in sharing their data with us, and really testing that and getting that in place before the doors were even open. Now we've treated thousands of rounds of therapy, thousands of images, and we're getting to the point where the data and the infrastructure that was built is really creating unbelievable insights, unbelievable products, unbelievable tools, and that is currently being used for physician-assisted decisions in our clinic and it's just really incredible the ability to look at a whole life history of a patient and their treatment history and really understand the exact right dose or the exact right timing of treatment and how that could ultimately enable them to fully eradicate these terrible diseases that they've been burdened with.

David Washburn:

And I assume when you build one of these facilities, the health center, you probably need a certificate of need from the state. You probably have to get, you know you have a cyclotron in there, right? So you probably have to get approval from nuclear regulatory types. And if you're a radio pharmacy, does the FDA have to come in and bless that as well?

Chad Bassett:

You have hit on a fraction of it.

David Washburn:

Okay, you name a three-letter agency and they're talking to them, we're talking to them and they regulate us.

Chad Bassett:

Okay, so the NRC, the Board of Pharmacy here in Michigan, we're talking to them and they regulate us.

Chad Bassett:

Um so the NRC, the board of pharmacy here in Michigan we're drawing doses, and a lot of innovation went into the design of the facility, because we needed to label each of these areas differently in order to ensure that only specific areas would be governed by some of these regulations. I see so, in the absence of a wall, that makes everything a pharmacy, even though it might not technically be so. It was right down to where we place the walls in order to have the right governance at each location and also enable us to be as efficient as possible. You don't want to have ISO certified space where it's not needed. So a lot of this was thoughtful design of a very expensive facility, but to decrease the build cost and the ongoing cost as well. Every single agency. We probably work with them.

Chad Bassett:

You brought up something really interesting CON in the state of Michigan. Michigan's a CON state. I believe when we've looked into it, there's about 17 CON states as well. But we recently had and I'm not sure if you're aware of this the Michigan Legislative Exchange, which is an MSU program where a Democratic state rep, paired up with a Republican state rep from a different district, visits each other's districts.

Chad Bassett:

So BAMF Health was one of the stops last week, nice, and we talked about all of this regulation and received really great feedback from MSU that of all the places that they stopped, they thought the most opportunity would be to partner with BAMF Health and really reach across the aisle. And we've experienced some bipartisan legislation before right around CON but a lot of opportunity to understand how do we keep patients safe, how do we keep our team members safe? But how do we speed up innovation? How do we make Michigan an innovation hub? How do we partner in Grand Rapids with our neighbors like Corwell Health and MSU and Van Andel Institute that all sit in a half mile radius of each other and work together to get the right regulations in place to really speed up that bench to bedside? And that's really what the medical mile in Grand Rapids was for. But it's hampered by a lot of regulations. Well-intentioned but not necessarily advantageous or necessary regulations anymore.

David Washburn:

Yeah, it's a whole process and you have to be thoughtful on how you work your way through all of those things.

Chad Bassett:

I wondered, and it's never fast, no, no.

David Washburn:

I wondered um earlier in the conversation you you mentioned um, uh, Mr. Meyer, Doug Meyer. Uh, I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about, uh, the relationship that uh BAMF Health has with Mr. Meyer. Uh, I mean, it's, it's I think it's pretty well documented, but it's a it's a good story to tell.

Chad Bassett:

Doug is just an incredible man, and Dr. Chang, Dr. Baer, some others really were helping him with his prostate cancer early on and he has shared this publicly and broadly, you know.

Chad Bassett:

So we are able to talk about some of this from a HIPAA standpoint, so I just wanted to be clear about that and they identified that even six, seven, eight years ago with prostate cancer, we were currently using the best of worst methods and teams of doctors in Michigan around the country couldn't really get a handle on where his cancer was, how it was migrating, where it was going and what the best course of action was.

Chad Bassett:

This was early on in theranostics, and they actually traveled to California where they were able to produce one of the first PSMA imaging drugs that stands for prostate specific membrane antigens and they were able to do a PET scan there and understand exactly where the prostate cancer had migrated in his body.

Chad Bassett:

And, knowing that it had migrated, the actual best opportunity for him would be to travel to Germany. At the time, one of the few places this type of treatment was offered.

Chad Bassett:

So Doug and team, Dr. Chang, Dr. Baer, others traveled to Germany for him to receive treatment and the concept was always how do we get this in an efficient and effective and scalable way back to America, back to Grand Rapids, back to Michigan, back to a community that Dr. Chang was living in and Doug Meyer and the Meyer family really loves? And so they said how do we work together to make this happen? And Doug Meyer, Dr. Norm Beauchamp, who was the dean of the medical school at the time, and Anthony really sat down and put a plan together on bringing this to Grand Rapids and bringing it in a way that is affordable, efficient, effective and ultimately can scale to help people across Michigan and around the world. And so just an incredible man, big heart, worked with the Meyer Foundation as well to make that happen. We're big, big fans of not only Doug and the family, but the Meyer grocery stores too.

David Washburn:

Was that another placemat conversation with a crayon at Phil's?

Chad Bassett:

Got a little more detail than that and actually I want to share too this hasn't been very widely talked about. Peter Secchia, an enormous champion of MSU, was involved in those conversations early on as well, that's right. So Peter again an incredible man, fiercest advocate for MSU, I think that ever that might ever have existed, he was, and so he actually helped some of those earlier conversations in fostering that relationship as well.

David Washburn:

Oh, that's great. Well, so now you, um, you have the Grand Rapids prototype. You've learned a lot building these things and now you're going to do it again in Detroit. Can you, um, can, can you talk about, uh, how you intend to expand in Detroit? It looks very exciting.

Chad Bassett:

Detroit's an incredible opportunity. First and foremost, we wanted to consider patient access. And being open and serving patients for a little over two years now we realized patients were coming from last year alone, 24 different states, oh wow, but not a lot of patients driving over from Detroit, and we learned that for certain patient populations there's a willingness to drive of about two hours. Okay, and we're seated just outside of that in Grand Rapids. Detroit, I believe, is the 10th largest MSA in the country enormous population and home to a black-brown population that is disproportionately affected not just by cancer and a lot of devastating diseases, but prostate cancer specifically, and so we thought it was imperative on BAMF to find a way to locate in Detroit to serve the people that needed it the most. We were able to work with the legislature and the governor and receive $25 million in appropriations in order to help bring that to life. Now that's a fraction of what it ultimately will cost. The facility can cost upwards of $100 million depending on how it's fitted out. But that was really vital to partner with the state, partner with that location and others.

Chad Bassett:

Again, forgive me for saying this. At Ferris State University they have a specific program in nuclear medicine that MSU doesn't currently have. Hopefully MSU will bring one of those on board as well and would always love to work with them. But also partnered with Ferris on that location and it's at an incredible location for the city of Detroit, so it's at colloquially or familiarly known as the Fail Jail site. It's had a lot of stop and start. Dan Gilbert in Bedrock has really put together an incredible vision for an innovation park there and, similar to the MSU Innovation Park, BAMF Health is the anchor tenant there, so we're really excited to help bring that project to life, activate that space and really continue to build out innovation in the state of Michigan.

David Washburn:

Well, that sounds really exciting and I think congratulations on the partnership with Ferris. I think you all have shown a remarkable ability to partner along many, many fronts and listening to you talk, obviously there's a sort of diagnostics business and a therapy business. You're also doing radiopharmacy production, but I assume you also are doing clinical trials because you've got a unique platform that would be very interesting to a lot of different partners. I'm sure to do clinical trial work, so I wondered if you could maybe expand on some of your partnerships. I know that there's been some in the news GE Healthcare, for example but tell me how else you partner with other folks around the country.

Chad Bassett:

Really well-timed question. This month, in the June-July timeframe, BAMF Health is launching and has partnered with one of the top five healthcare systems in the country, with 20-plus states covered with their hospitals well over 100 hospitals and we will be helping them launch clinical trials in their facilities. So bringing this specialized knowledge, specialized expertise, the relationships we have with the pharma companies in order to enable access to everyone who could benefit from it. One of the key goals of BAMF Health has always been shortening the time of everything. You brought up production, you brought up therapy, but also shortening the time of clinical trials.

Chad Bassett:

Clinical trials from idea through commercialization can take up to 10 years.

Chad Bassett:

In our portion, launch time with generally academic medical centers takes about a year from phone call to getting up and running. We've been able to shorten that to six weeks, and so we look at any time we can take time out of the process that's getting beneficial drugs to patients who need it faster. So our clinical trial platform runs off of all of those aspects that we've brought together the expertise in manufacturing the drugs, imaging the patients and treating the patients and so we've really put a clinical trial platform on top of that. Our clinical trial platform is going to be branded Radio Nexus. So you're going to see the Radio Nexus clinical trial platform at locations across the country and that will really help speed up the time to completion and we've had really, really, really early conversations. But it's something that we're excited about, drug companies, production companies and others of saying how can we plan appropriately and let's shorten that 10 year cycle to one year and that will save an incredible amount of money and also get better drugs to patients faster.

David Washburn:

Really, it's that's what it's. That's what it's all about. Yeah, that would be a game changer. Well, um, how many, uh how many individuals work inside of BAMF Health?

Chad Bassett:

So I think we're at around 150 or 160 right now. Okay, I've moved beyond the day. I used to be able to say today there's 33 employees and now I get an update from HR every month, so I think we're probably about 160 when this is published.

David Washburn:

You're probably no longer interviewing each person that comes through the door. I wish I could, yeah, but you're not. I wish I could, but I'm not yeah, each person that comes through the door.

Chad Bassett:

I wish I could, but I'm not. But the BAMF team members are absolutely incredible and every single one of them has a story on how cancer or Alzheimer's or other diseases has impacted their lives. And it's not just a job for anybody at the company. They have joined this mission of affordable and accessible as soon as possible. It's just a true delight and honor to work with every single one of them every single day.

David Washburn:

Awesome. I wonder to the extent you're comfortable. Can you talk about the sort of early stages of the company in terms of, I mean, we came in as an investor. There were many others. Can you, can you talk about the, the venture investment journey? Um, specifically curious um also about the sort of state of Michigan's innovation ecosystem and how that has been in terms of, uh, um, enabling BAMF to sort of get where you are today.

Chad Bassett:

I don't know if it's a saying that we made up or if it's in the fundraising field, but we've always said raising money is really hard unless you're curing cancer. But we've learned it's still really hard even if you're working on curing cancer. So we've been really fortunate in our journey. A seed round, a million-dollar seed round, a $10 million Series A, a $30 million Series B, and we looked we were raising $75 million in a Series C. We cut that short because of the grant from the state of Michigan. So all in, we still did achieve about $75 million in that raise. So, right, around $100 million raised in total to date.

Chad Bassett:

An incredibly non-linear path. Going to business school or studying any of this, it looks really linear until you're, until you're trying to do it, and I'm sure there's there's those who have experienced that linearity. You know we we certainly haven't. But we have a number of really phenomenal investors. You know, like MSU and Red Cedar, the um, Doug Meyer, an incredible uh, philanthropist and backer. Recently the Arrington family has come on board.

Chad Bassett:

The Arrington family started Prasco. Prasco is the world's largest authorized generics producer. They have relationships with 63 drug companies across the globe. They're incredibly passionate about what we're doing and how we're doing it. And then some investor groups with some well-known Michigan names involved banded together and made some meaningful investments as well. Every single one of them has seen that there's great opportunity for return. But a lot of them also understand and are thrilled that we are treating patients today and making a meaningful impact on lives today, and that was always part of their investment thesis and that was always part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing as well. We really believe if we put the patient first, then our team members second, that the investor will win, and win in a really substantial way as well, and I think everybody that's participated to date really embraces that mission and vision as well.

David Washburn:

Well, that's great and I think the healthcare, the delivery of sort of solutions to patients, is critical and I know you've spent a lot of time working a couple of other partners. So you know, talking and educating physician partners around the state is probably an ongoing piece of work. And and also your you know work with the insurance industry. You know I suspect it's a heavy lift to work through the sort of recommenders and the payers and their sort of sort of steady progress on all of those things, because this is a new idea, this sort of theranostics idea. But I wanted to sort of say all that to set up, you know the fact that you've set up a foundation, the Foundation for Medical Advancements and Breakthroughs, which is very cleverly BAMF backwards. Tell us about. Do you call it FMAB or what do you call it?

Chad Bassett:

Well, I was told we used to call it FMAB and what we were then told is "Chad. No one knows what FMAB is, so we need to stick to Foundations for Medical Advances and Breakthroughs until everyone knows what FMAB is. It really was born from patients and we didn't go about setting this up on our own. We started to receive contributions from people we had treated.

David Washburn:

Oh, I see Saying thank you.

Chad Bassett:

Oh, interesting, if you, we want you to utilize this to help anybody who might not be able to afford a copay, because this changed my life and we quickly need to figure out a vehicle to put that in.

Chad Bassett:

Yeah, and so I think the testament to that is absolutely incredible. So we thought, wow, you know, people are really grateful, people are really excited. What should this foundation be? And so it's meant for three different aspects. Number one, why patients gave in the first place, to enable access, to enable access to anybody who can't afford it and they'll probably shoot me for saying this because they never would themselves but before that, our physicians and Dr Chang, when they saw an image where they knew this patient would be benefited by the treatment but insurance denied them, they paid for it out of pocket themselves. That hasn't been shared and they certainly haven't asked to share that. They're incredibly wonderful people, humble people, who believe in the power of what we're doing. Now they no longer have to pay out of pocket for that when they come across somebody who who really needs that. So we're grateful for that. So the three areas are access, education. You brought up physician education, but this is new. Participating in various community events to share what we're doing, why we're doing it, broadening awareness, hosting conferences, aspects like that.

Chad Bassett:

And then, third, conducting research. Right now, this is only FDA-approved and insurance-reimbursed for prostate cancer and neuroendocrine cancer. Theranostics approach is also available for Alzheimer's and that's FDA-approved and insurance-reimbursed. But there's so many applications. This in theory and we see this in clinical trials should be able to treat every single type of cancer period. Including blood cancers. So there's so much opportunity to rapidly conduct research, and that's the goal of the Foundation for Medical Advances and Breakthroughs as well. The mouthful FMAB is to rapidly conduct yes or no trials. We're really blessed that we can image and see drugs and image and see where the drug goes, and so we can design a research study that might only have one or two or three patients and get that done really fast to visually see is there a yes or no there, is there a go or no? Go there. So the goal is to conduct a $5,000 trial or a $10,000 trial, not these massive multi-year, multi-million dollar research studies, but really start to inform the thinking as well. So we're excited about that.

David Washburn:

Well, thanks for saying all that about the foundation and specifically covering some of the diseases that you're already working on and where this could go. My guest today has been Chad Bassett, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer of BAMF Health. BAMF is focused on true precision medicine theranostics. What's the website, Chad?

Chad Bassett:

www. bamfhealth. com. And we're on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, because we want to be everywhere our patients are.

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David Washburn

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