From Accidental Discovery to Market-Ready Innovation with Adam Friedman

In this episode of Startup Physicians, host Dr. Alison Curfman sits down with dermatologist, researcher, and inventor Dr. Adam Friedman to explore what happens when physicians lean into curiosity instead of rigid career plans.

Dr. Friedman shares how an accidental discovery during medical school—creating nanoparticles in a basic science lab—ultimately reshaped his entire professional trajectory. What began as an effort to strengthen a residency application evolved into a long-term commitment to invention, dermatology, and translational research, culminating in market-ready skincare products and an ongoing clinical pipeline.

The conversation explores the reality of physician innovation beyond buzzwords: the role of observation, the importance of teams and mentors, and the nuance of intellectual property when building physical products. Dr. Friedman offers practical insight into how ideas become protected, validated, and scaled—while also emphasizing that sharing ideas thoughtfully is often essential to progress.

Together, Dr. Curfman and Dr. Friedman discuss why many physicians remain stuck at the idea stage, how early-career “yes phases” create unexpected opportunities, and why abundance—not scarcity—drives sustainable innovation. The episode also highlights Dr. Friedman’s work with cannabinoid-based dermatologic products and what it means to see something invented in training become part of patients’ daily lives.

This episode is a grounded, honest look at physician entrepreneurship—one rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and the courage to follow what’s interesting, even when the path isn’t clear.

Takeaways

• Dr. Friedman describes himself as having 'career ADHD' due to his diverse interests in dermatology.
• Curiosity is essential for innovation; asking 'why' can lead to discoveries.
• Accidental discoveries can lead to significant advancements in medicine.
• Saying yes to opportunities can open doors to new paths in one's career.
• Building a supportive network is crucial for success in any field.
• Intellectual property is important for protecting innovative ideas.
• Sharing ideas with trusted individuals can enhance the development process.
• Mentorship plays a vital role in career development and innovation.
• There is an abundance of opportunities in the medical field.
• Technology can significantly enhance treatment options in dermatology.
  
  

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-friedman-0340778/

Chapters

00:00 – Meet Adam Friedman, dermatologist & inventor
01:30 – Why curiosity shaped his career
03:45 – Accidental discoveries that change everything
06:50 – Saying yes early in your career
10:55 – Why many physicians stay stuck
14:10 – From lab discovery to real products
18:55 – The role of mentors and teams
22:40 – Intellectual property myths for physicians
26:10 – Why companies need physicians early
30:05 – Seeing patients use what you invented

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:00.856)
Hi everyone, welcome back to Startup Physicians. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I am pleased to be joined today by Dr. Adam Friedman, a dermatologist. Thanks for coming, Adam.

Adam Friedman (00:11.132)
My pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Curfman.

Alison Curfman (00:15.375)
You can call me Alison.

Adam Friedman (00:15.922)
You know, I was trying to be, you know, you gotta feel it out a little bit, right? Thank you, Alison. Appreciate it.

Alison Curfman (00:23.596)
Well, Adam and I met at a dermatology conference where we were both speaking. I highly recommend anyone who can go to a dermatology conference because they give out great skincare samples, right? Yes. But I was so impressed with your story, Adam. If I had to use a word to describe you that I can't use to describe most doctors is that you are an inventor. Is that how you

Adam Friedman (00:34.676)
We love our swag, absolutely.

Adam Friedman (00:52.036)
I think that's definitely one of my hats, absolutely.

Alison Curfman (00:52.732)
Identify.

Alison Curfman (00:57.164)
And I thought that was so cool. And before we started recording, I was even sharing that a lot of the people that I've interviewed on this podcast either do advisory work or they're more like me and they've helped build like a care delivery model. And I love talking to people who have built a, made a thing because like, like a real physical product, because I'm always, yes, it's, you can buy it, you can hold it because it's so, it's such a different pathway and it has some interesting nuance to it. So.

Adam Friedman (01:11.924)
You can touch it.

Alison Curfman (01:25.346)
I'd love if you can just share a little bit about your career path and what even got you started in the area that took you over to the inventor world.

Adam Friedman (01:33.428)
Yeah, I think the best way to start would just be to say I have career ADHD. And I think one of the reasons dermatology really pulled me in is the breadth of the specialty and the opportunities to really feed that multifaceted hunger in terms of engaging in various areas of medicine, clinical research, teaching, advocacy, community engagement. You know, the list kind of goes goes on and on.

And I think like many careers and many, whether it be titles or roles, you often fall into it by accident. You know, you kind of fall, it's about observing something and saying, that's interesting. Let me grab that by the neck and really lean in and make that part of what my future will look like. And to your point about being an inventor that like many of my roles, I have a real problem with collecting titles at the end of my email signature.

It's really, should be on the DSM-IV criteria. It's a psychological issue. But I carry many hats, whether it be chair, program director, director of translational research. I oversee several specialty clinics. But I think about inventor, that really came into play with the kind of need to do something unique to get into a competitive specialty. And actually it didn't start with dermatology. I actually wanted to go into radiation oncology.

to me it was like, look at these cool toys I get to play with. And I get to save people's lives. Like that's a, that's a nice combination. And in a similar fashion, radiation oncology is a relative competitive field. And I was trying to bolster my application by doing research and, know, kind of, relying on past skills. I've been doing basic science research since I was in high school. And so working in a radiation oncology lab, trying to come up with ways to address gaps in care in this case.

How do we mitigate? How do we even prevent potentially radiation dermatitis and expected outcome from what you do as a radiation oncologist, right? Like you are inflicting harm to actually help someone. That's kind of where this all came to be. I didn't go into that work with the mindset of like, I'm going to invent something for radiation dermatitis. I know that's going to change my whole career path and become a dermatologist. I think what it's about is

Adam Friedman (03:55.152)
always being curious in terms of what falls before you. That's where I think we all are inventors. We make observations every single day. The difference is, do you ask that question? Like, why did that happen? Or why is this an issue? And how can we figure it out? And so in playing around with the technology that I'd used to study artificial blood, we're not going to get into that. In looking at how to mitigate radiation dermatitis, I really stumbled onto a way

to make nanoparticles. are little carriers, little thing about little spheres that are at a billionth of a meter in size, they're invisible to the naked eye. This was not purposeful. This wasn't a plan. It was a, what did I just make here? This was a total accident. And then it, this was in a lab. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (04:40.554)
And this was in a lab, like in a basic science lab that you accidentally made nanoparticles.

Adam Friedman (04:44.084)
It a hundred percent. this was an Albert Einstein college of medicine. this was during my third year of medical school. And it really was one of those, like, I didn't expect this to happen. was kind of playing around with this gel-like material I'd worked with for many years. And I tried to dry it out. I mean, not to get into too many details. And it was expecting this like nugget of, you know, material. And it was just this fine powder. I was like, that's weird. And I think to be fair, not everyone has access to the resources of a medical institution.

I went to an analytical imaging facility. had them do extra microscopy, which is not going to be in everyone's backyard. And I discovered I made nanoparticles. But I think the key thing for anyone is, so I find out I made a nanoparticle. What do I do with that? My approach was, all right, well, now that I do this, now I'm a nanotechnologist, apparently, learn everything there is to know about it, become the expert in the room. And then before you know it, you become that expert.

Alison Curfman (05:39.658)
Okay, I'm gonna rewind to a few things that you said that I find really interesting. So first off, you said that a lot of the things that really propelled your career in one direction came about by accident. I am going, I've said that before about myself, but then I'm actually gonna challenge that, that the trigger may have been an accident. Maybe it wasn't an intentional thing. You made this nanoparticle technology that you weren't intending to make.

Same with me, I wasn't intending to go work at a private equity firm. I didn't even know what that was. But when an opportunity or an interesting thing presents itself, you moved in that direction. Like it triggered you to take action and to continue to be curious and to continue to want to develop something or to say yes to something. And I think that there's actually opportunities all around us. Sometimes we're not aware of them, like especially

Doctors that are working in a more traditional setting, think a lot of times are kind of just trying to get through like more heads down, trying to figure out how to navigate the organizational politics and get their patients what they need and still get to their kids soccer games. And so sometimes it's helpful to be in an environment where you're, and I do think of like research labs is like, you gotta be curious to work in an academic research lab. maybe it's not only that,

I mean, somebody else might've made that powder and been like, oops, that didn't work. Like, where's my nugget? But I think that it's having curiosity as a core of one of your values and actually acting on things. Cause you could have made that powder and been like, that's interesting and not done anything. And you would have never gone down this pathway.

Adam Friedman (07:31.537)
No, you nailed it on the head. actually, you just reminded me of, read an article recently about the history of Kevlar. You know, the bulletproof vests that have saved countless lives. It was an accident. It was actually a mistake. And actually the woman who discovered it was told to throw it out. And instead she had her material analyzed and realized that had incredible tensile strength.

went down the road to save so many lives yet again. I think that's a great example and there's probably so many of you have a fork in the road. And I agree, it's not by accident. If you could walk through life and stumble into all these great opportunities, that would be incredible. We call that luck. It's the opportunity presents itself. It's what do we decide to do with it? And you don't have to be in the lab to make those decisions. It's be in and you also mentioned the culture of yes, which is tricky. I would love for us to get into this is

I think when you're early in your career, you got to say yes to everything within reason, but you really do because you never know what opportunity will lead to many more. I mean, so much of my career, the different hats that I wear, the different even opportunities outside of GW. You mentioned consulting, advising. I could do a ton of it. I love it. It is so much fun and rewarding. I learned so much from it. But saying yes is how it starts. The question is, how do you then learn to then say yes purposefully? And I think that's very hard.

I do not have that answer. I am probably the greatest offenders of overextending. A thousand percent, but I think it is important to start there at least.

Alison Curfman (08:56.922)
You're overstretched. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (09:02.761)
I just had this conversation with the group in my current course and one of the people showed up. She was just like all lit up. She was like, I am so excited about so many things. I'm like, I'm probably doing too much. She's like, I'm pursuing this new board certification because I have all these ideas for this and then I'm doing this and I have these advisory roles that I'm interested in and I might start my own practice. it sounded like it was obviously like too many things for one person to do, but I told her, for it because

I'm very much a proponent of design thinking. And when you think about this, the design thinking, you want to have what's called like a divergent phase and then a convergent phase to narrow in on the problem you want to solve. And then again, for the solution. So what that means is like very broad brainstorming and being open. And when you're talking about like early in your career, you want to be really open.

Or I think that, so if there's like trainees listening, yeah, you wanna be really open because there's unlimited like pathways you could take that could be very, very fulfilling and successful. There's not one life path that someone needs to be on. But I think that also applies to people who may be interested in a career change or something to add to their current career to actually add like a full stack of like various threads to follow.

and start pursuing them until it gets to a point where you're like, okay, I've made my decision, this is not for me, or I am more interested in this one than that one, and so I'm gonna stop doing that other one. So at the moment when this person showed up and was so excited, I was like, none of the things in your head are taking up too much of your time. You're just like brainstorming. So don't shut down your brainstorming of all the different things you could do. I have...

I've pursued multiple pathways at once many times in my career and then dropped the ones that I'm like, oh yeah, now that I've done this a little bit, I'm like, that's not what I want to do. And so sometimes people only want to pursue one thing at a time or they just get paralyzed with like, well, I don't know how I could take anything else on. So I'm just going to sit here thinking about the various options or things I could do. And then I'm just going to still be

Adam Friedman (11:19.317)
And not do any of them.

Alison Curfman (11:24.42)
Not do any of them. Yeah. And actually I think that not taking action is where a lot of people stay.

Adam Friedman (11:29.395)
Yeah, I completely agree with that.

Alison Curfman (11:34.266)
So you not only had a lot of opportunities, were in an environment to be very curious and that was very rewarded in an academic setting and you're still very academic, I can totally tell. But you then were following some of these threads of like, that's interesting. What is this powder? But a powder in and of itself, like Kevlar material with no real purpose.

isn't valuable for anything. You have to figure out like, what is this thing and what purpose could it solve in? How did you get to that point?

Adam Friedman (12:09.269)
Yeah, so I think there are almost two ways people kind of get to inventions. One is you identify a need and then you try to address it with ingenuity and creativity and invention. The other is stumbling upon, and that's probably more likely, that's like 90 % of science, is making observation and then going backwards to explain what it is you're seeing and why it's useful. So we identify, yeah, we can make these nanoparticles knowing the materials that go into making them, knowing that we can...

mix and match and it's extremely flexible to design these little tiny particles. However, we see fit for their intended purpose. So I think the malleability of the platform allowed us to really dive in and say, all right, if we tweet this or do this, how does that change their behavior? And that that's actually what the last 20 plus years has been to really characterize this technology, which ultimately is a platform technology, a delivery technology. And once we understood

how it behaves, then we can start playing around. Well, let's put some stuff into it. Let's put biologically relevant, whether it be established things like established drugs, like antifungals, chemotherapeutics, or things that have not made their mark, whether it be over the counter or by prescription, because of shortcomings not in a vehicle. So let's say, I've got a great example in dermatology. I think most people know about vitamin C. Vitamin C is a hot topic. And oh, just throw some vitamin C on your skin. That will work out nicely.

said no scientist because vitamin C is extremely light sensitive. It will oxidize as it hits air and it's pretty much useless. So it's about the delivery that will allow you to capitalize on everything we know vitamin C for example can do. So there are a lot of things like that that you really can't deliver effectively without a purposeful fill in the blank delivery vehicle. And that's kind of where the next part came in is understanding how we can use these particles to stabilize, to deliver, to make them make

actives that should be, for all sorts of purposes, effective in the clinical space. Actually, in the clinical space. We went from the petri dish to animal models to now clinical studies. And we have products on the market. We actually have also RX pipelines, NIH funded programs, looking at how this technology can be used to deliver something that you would say, we can't do it. It's not going to get through the skin. It's not going to get to its target.

Adam Friedman (14:35.101)
we now can deliver things that at their unadulterated form will never actually get through the incredible barrier that is this skin. Because that's right, our outer layer is our armor. It's designed to keep things out. That's also a problem when we're trying to get things through the skin.

Alison Curfman (14:53.098)
Okay, so here you are a medical student. You found this powder, you realized it could be valuable. You could find different ways to get it to treat things. You did more studies on it or research on it or whatever you were doing, discovering in a lab and took a career pivot and you're like, you know what, instead of playing with redunk fancy machines, I'm gonna go be a dermatologist and I'm gonna, you still have fun lasers to play with. So you still have some machines, right?

Adam Friedman (15:18.316)
We do, we do.

Alison Curfman (15:22.106)
So you chose a different specialty and continued to develop this concept or this idea. Did you get a PhD? I can't remember. You sound like someone who has a PhD. Sounds like you didn't need one.

Adam Friedman (15:29.159)
I didn't, I was torn. was thinking about it. So my father is M.D.P.H.E. So a lot of this research, another nice side piece, if you can work with family in a way where you don't want to murder each other, it is wonderful. Like my father is my partner. He's like my best friend. it's so great because there are no boundaries that you would have with a hierarchy. Like he's my dad. So I can literally say almost anything to him, which makes it...

Alison Curfman (15:50.63)
That's great.

Adam Friedman (15:58.697)
Both interesting, but also very productive. So he was MD, PhD. I considered it, I, because of his, was, and a lot of this work was done in his lab. had it like foot points or touch points is probably the right word, in the lab since high school. So I had all this exposure without having formal training. So it was something I didn't have to go that route, but I think a lot of, I would love to believe that. Yes. A hundred percent.

Alison Curfman (16:21.283)
You got a PhD by osmosis.

Alison Curfman (16:27.013)
That's so cool. I've actually met several people this year who are physicians like you who work with their dad, which I think is so cool. Now I have to ask you, do you call him dad or do you call him by his first name?

Adam Friedman (16:39.829)
Oh yeah, oh no. Well, you know, yes, I call him dad. No, no, yes, 100%. It is, it is a little, it always ends up coming out and he is the one to bring it out. Like he'll, he'll somehow work in a joke that on his son. I'm like, oh God. and, and credibility completely undercut, but I know he means the best intentions, but yeah, no, if there are times it's so weird, I'll be like, oh, you know, Joel said, I'm like, did I say that out loud? It sounds really weird to say my father's name out loud.

Alison Curfman (16:44.823)
If you're in a business meeting, I'm sure you used this first statement.

Alison Curfman (16:56.175)
That's so funny.

Adam Friedman (17:09.267)
with him right there, but usually it is dad or my father.

Alison Curfman (17:12.569)
That's funny. Yeah, that's so funny. What a cool way to stay connected with family. I'm totally going off on tangents, but I had a call with my business mastermind last night. We were all reflecting on our core family relationships and how as you become an adult, it becomes complicated. It can be hard to keep up with even your core family members. And it's so hard for me to...

Adam Friedman (17:22.239)
Love it.

Alison Curfman (17:40.832)
envision right now because I spend so many waking moments with my children and they spend so much time with each other. It's just weird to think that like, you know, someday we're not going to have that natural connection that we all live under the same roof. And I think that's such a special connection that you have with your father to be able to work with him. I myself am trying to really expose my kids to entrepreneurship. Anyone who knows me knows that we're kind of

crazy and this year our kids are not going to school. They go to like some crunchy granola co-op, they are, they get all their work done in like a couple hours and they spend a ton of time outside and then they're taking a lot of courses on AI and other science topics. And my oldest son, who's 13, went to a Tony Robbins conference with me and came home and he's like, I'm starting a business. I was like, wow, that's great. Like, so I would love to have that sort of relationship that your dad has with you.

Adam Friedman (18:15.779)
Right.

Adam Friedman (18:23.487)
Cool.

Adam Friedman (18:30.645)
That's awesome.

Alison Curfman (18:39.448)
with my kids someday, but that is a very, very special little caveat to your career path. So it sounds like, but it also highlights the fact that like whether this was your father or someone else, like one of the most important things for success is to have the right people around you with the right skillsets. And this leads into one of the things that I wanted to talk about with you, which was,

Adam Friedman (18:55.061)
100 %

Alison Curfman (19:04.841)
understanding, so nobody can develop an idea that's going to be successful, whether it's like, like what I did with a care delivery model or what you did with a nanoparticle drug delivery system, without a ton of feedback and input from a very broad set of, of stakeholders. And I see a lot of physicians get worried when they have an idea that like,

Oh, I can't tell anyone. I don't know what secret, I don't know what's not. And so I'd love to get your take on IP, especially from the perspective of creating an actual physical product. I joke with people that nothing that I contributed to imagine is actually IP. Like I could tell anyone all of our care delivery model because it's just like, this is the very best care we could possibly dream of to give to complex kids. Like it's not a secret that like, oh, hey, if you like,

support their moms more, or maybe they're gonna do better, they should, yeah, right? Or if they get their medications, they're gonna have better disease control. And so all of our IP comes from our contracting models and our data infrastructure that we've built and all the way we pulled together the claims data and HIE data to make predictive analytics. And so it's a tech and a contracting IP, but.

Adam Friedman (20:02.537)
What? Who knew?

Adam Friedman (20:10.195)
Right.

Alison Curfman (20:30.678)
We could tell anyone what we do for these kids and it's just best practice. But I would love to hear as you walk down this pathway of accidentally inventing something and then trying to figure out how to protect it and then you've obviously done more things, what's your perspective on that?

Adam Friedman (20:47.773)
Yeah, so you need a team and I know the historic there's no I in team which Whatever that's such a silly thing to say but but the reality is you cannot do this on your own and let's start with the piece about holding it close to the vest so when we think about patentability and protecting an idea it's really referring to the public space so Really what an ip lawyer is going to say is please for the love of god do not publish this do not present it at a national meeting until we get this protected or

it's almost protected because as soon as it gets out to the public sphere, you have roughly a year to protect it. So from purely a legal protection standpoint, that's really what they mean. Now, in terms of sharing it, you've got to, I mean, I guess certainly there are exceptions to every rule, but a lot of what I've learned about taking something from bench to the bottle in every respect, not just creating something, but protecting it and, and, you know, getting a company going, licensing deals, all those things.

It was really learning in the moment. And you learn a lot through mistakes and pitfalls, but you can absolutely share this information. You're going to have to, maybe somewhat of a parallel to even career development. There's no such thing as too many mentors because everyone's going to bring a unique, know, anecdote, a unique experience, a unique insight that can help. And I think having just one or two will be two, one or bi-dimensional. So I think it's absolutely fine with people you trust to share the idea.

because sharing the idea does not make them an inventor. So if we're gonna define inventorship from an IP perspective, it's that the people who came up with something that is not intuitive to some of your same knowledge, fund of knowledge and skill set. So if you took three dermatologists and put them in a room, would all three come up with the same exact idea? If the answer is yes, like your point, providing support to parents of a sick kid is gonna relate to good outcomes.

We all would come up with that. That's not panable. But if a unique way of delivering that care, not everyone come up with, that's what is protected. So I think it's fair to share the idea. Sharing the idea does not make someone an inventor. And actually, if you put inventors on your patent that actually don't fit the definition of an inventor, that could actually undermine the patent. Your competition could say, I'm going to challenge that patent. Let's pull out. They have 30 inventors on here. That's weird. How did all 30 people contribute to this?

Adam Friedman (23:13.811)
And they can go through and they pull records and they can find that someone did it and that will actually undermine the patent. So I think it is very important to share your idea to pressure test it with people you trust. But then you're going to need a team and expertise because there's no way one person can wear every single hat that's needed from legal to commercial, even from a clinical and even basic science perspective, you're going to need support. So building that team that has that good collaborative spirit.

that will challenge, that won't just nod their head. It takes a very long time, but you absolutely need to do it.

Alison Curfman (23:51.392)
And this actually really highlights something on the other side that is really helpful for doctors to understand is that every concept, like we're talking about us as doctors creating a concept and getting feedback from a lot of different people. Now turn it around. If you have a founder or a firm that's building a concept that is, they're not clinical. Now you see how deeply they need that broad

set of feedback and why they need clinical advisors. They may have a ton of advisors on like a payer strategy or contracting strategy or how to build the tech. if they don't have that clinical strategy and insight, especially if they're building a clinical product, they could end up so far off target that it could kill the company. It could kill the concept. could make it completely their safety concerns. Like we talked about this all the time and imagine like if we

If we launched and something bad happened to a child, it would be horrible, horrible. And the company would be over. And so I've really brought a lot of perspective on exactly what these kids need and how we could deliver it safely. And no, no other background could have brought that. Like we need physicians in this space. And so the idea, that's why companies have advisory boards. That's why they have a governing boards. They, you know,

Adam Friedman (25:10.602)
Yes.

Alison Curfman (25:16.513)
it's an application of the concept that we need a lot of perspective and a lot of eyes on our idea in a protected way. And so if you're going to join someone as an advisor, you'll have an agreement in place, you'll sign an NDA. I tell anyone who is kicking around a concept that they feel like maybe they could someday be interested in being a founder, just peel it apart and recognize what if this is like,

pre-NDA versus post-NDA, and NDA is non-disclosure agreement for people that don't know that, but like, what is a secret and what is not a secret? So I tell people to like, pretend they're making a public-facing webpage. Anything that goes on the public-facing webpage, great. Tell anyone, tell everyone, it will bring more mentors to you, it will bring more people, that people will make connections for you. So if your idea is to make a cardiology telehealth company and you have this, you know, cool idea, like a lot of...

care delivery, like the value is gonna be in the execution, not in the idea.

Adam Friedman (26:16.373)
No, I agree. think and I want to hand on so many points amazing points you brought up. So first this is for any company sitting in the bleachers get physicians involved early. I cannot tell you how many times I've been at an advisory board where the clinical trial protocols already all said and done. They already have all their data and you're like, what the F were you thinking? Like who on earth?

Alison Curfman (26:39.444)
You didn't even measure the right thing, yeah.

Adam Friedman (26:39.475)
Like what, like this is usage and, really what the company is asking for is for the, stamp of approval. They don't, they're not about to go backwards and you're like, baby, no, no, that was not the right. Yeah. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (26:54.334)
Like this is a horrible study. It was clearly not designed by someone who understands anything about science. Yeah, it's a huge need. And I've actually had like a lot of companies approaching me recently about designing validation studies. And so I'm trying to pass those opportunities along to appropriate physicians within my network that have that specialty background. it's a very, you know, for those of you who are academic that are listening, heck, if you, you know,

sensitivity and specificity and number needed to treat all those things that we learn and have to take on our boards all the time. Like those are really valid skill sets that believe it or not, most venture firms don't have.

Adam Friedman (27:31.541)
I also like that you brought up the concept of paying it forward because it's a double win. So first of all, we can't do everything. There's no way we can do everything. And something that's really fun and I enjoy is giving others opportunities because none of us got here without that support. Like early in my career, I was very lucky to pull in a cohort of a lot of wonderful mentors, each of which opened different doors, whether it be to serve on an advisory board, be involved in early research, speaking opportunities, you name it.

We got to keep that going. so knowing that we can't do everything, even though you might want to, there is such gratification of helping someone else step up. And also it reflects well on you. think a lot of people miss the point. When you build someone else up, it reflects well on you and your brand and will actually create more opportunities. You are not giving something away. You're investing in yourself and that other individual. So I find that one, especially as a department chair, that's one of my responsibilities to build my faculty. And when I see my faculty succeed, it is.

Like no other feeling, like you can't buy that feeling. And so I really would encourage people that you do not lose anything when you support someone else and it will lead back to you at the end of the day from many different perspectives. But as a great, but I'm glad that we share that enthusiasm for passing those opportunities on to others.

Alison Curfman (28:49.735)
Yes. I think it goes back to, again, something we talked about before we started recording, which is like this abundance mindset. So I think that it's easy as humans to become kind of a scarcity mindset, like, there's only so many opportunities and I wouldn't want anyone else to take them from me. But we were saying this, like, there's no shortage.

of opportunities, there's no shortage of companies or ideas. There's no shortage of ideas. There's so many ideas. I am never worried about competition ever because one of my goals with Imagine was I want us to create competition in this market. I want to do so well that other companies and other firms are like, you know what we should do? We should go provide more services for kids. Let's go get into the pediatric space. I was like, that is when we'll really succeed is if we can actually

Adam Friedman (29:18.943)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (29:44.819)
develop a robust market for this. And so on that point, I want to actually highlight some of the work that you've done. And I will even say, like, when I asked you to share, like, is there a website you'd like to share? You gave me your LinkedIn, which is great, because I think that anyone who wants to reach out to Adam, like, he's obviously really great to talk to, loves to invest in other people. He is on LinkedIn, Adam Friedman.

Adam Friedman (30:01.269)
Sure.

Alison Curfman (30:13.95)
But he also has a website for product which I love to support other physicians and sharing what they've created so We will put that in the in the show notes as well. It is CI Elements MD, right? Is that right?

Adam Friedman (30:31.413)
carry the what? Yes, I think that's how you spell it.

Alison Curfman (30:35.838)
Okay, so C-Elements MD. So it's the actual product, is, again, I went to a dermatology conference with you and I received one. So really cool product that is using your nanoparticle technology to deliver our skincare into the skin. Is that a good way to say it?

Adam Friedman (30:52.957)
Yeah. Yeah. So it's in the same vein of deliver and deliverable. So it's a it's a cannabidiol CBD based product. cannabinoids, obviously very hot area, kind of has had a almost an arrhythmia like, you know, kind of story and that people are really excited, especially when the farm bill passed, and you could throw CBD and everything and it was legal. But all these products came out without any actual evidence and it kind of

injured the space and I think CBD has so much potential in so many areas of medicine, but you have to deliver it correctly and that's what we did and in a clinical trial published in the number one Derm Journal, we showed we could prevent DNA damage from ultraviolet radiation.

Alison Curfman (31:34.718)
So if we want to look radiant into our adulthood, we should get our skin high.

Adam Friedman (31:40.967)
Yeah, I see what you did there. I like it. Yeah. So it's supposed to be the best friend to your sunscreen you want to protect and prevent injury. Forget even all the other cool things that CBD will do when it gets into the skin, but we specifically studied and showed that we could prevent the classic DNA injury that you would get from exposure to ultraviolet radiation with this product.

Alison Curfman (32:03.742)
That's very cool. something you invented in medical school, people are buying and putting on their face. That's pretty cool.

Adam Friedman (32:07.411)
Yep. It's such a crazy. Yeah, I think that that alone I can like, you know, drop the mic and the fact that something I invented, your boy invented as a med student of all times of my life and that people are using and buying it's helping them. That is one of the most gratifying concepts. It's still I have to wrap my head around that, you know, that people actually use this stuff and.

It's the, also when I get feedback about it, for even using it, they actually like it. That's, that's another piece, you know, getting those testimonials. It's, it's so unbelievably rewarding. One of the many rewards of pursuing that inventorship pathway.

Alison Curfman (32:47.453)
That's so cool. Well, I appreciate you joining me today and indulging me on all these random rabbit holes that we went down. That was really fun. and again, if anyone was yes, all over the place, this is what you get when you get to people like us in a conversation. It's like, you just have no idea what you're going to get. well, thank you so much for joining and I hope everyone really enjoyed, this discussion and definitely connect with Adam or check out his product.

Adam Friedman (32:50.133)
I love it. We said ADHD, right? Yeah, that makes sense. Right. Absolutely.

Alison Curfman (33:15.805)
And we will see you all next time. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Friedman (33:17.269)
Thanks so much.