Dr. Jessica Smith Beaver started working as a pharmacist in 1995 after graduating from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy—the same year that the opioid oxycontin first hit the market.
Since 2015, synthetic opioids (especially fentanyl) have caused more deaths than any other drug, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. It’s been a painful path for many during those nearly three decades.
“I watched as that drug basically started what we now know to be the opioid crisis,” Dr. Smith Beaver said. “And I have friends that are affected.”
When former co-worker Dr. Tom Mercolino asked Dr. Smith Beaver to join Verinetics, a tech startup nearing commercialization and focused on substance control for recovering opioid addicts, its mission drew her to the RTP-based startup. She came aboard as Chief Regulatory Officer in October, 2021, and last October she took over as CEO.
“Like a lot of people during COVID, I was contemplating what I was doing with my life, time and talent,” Dr. Smith Beaver said. “So it was really about […] being able to then use [my] talent in a different direction to something that was meaningful.”
Verinetics’ primary product is a take-home box that controls the distribution of methadone, a common treatment for opioid use disorder. The startup will present its technology at CED’s Venture Connect summit in Raleigh on March 20-21.
Methadone clinics can prescribe a Verinetics box for patients to take home. At home, the passcode-protected box dispenses the proper dosage of methadone once a day for the patients.
Once the patient has taken their dosage, they put the empty bottle in the box. The LTE-enabled box uses sensors to determine if the dosage was taken and if the patient put the empty bottle back into the box, and sends the recorded results to the clinic.
This wasn’t always Verinetics’ mission, though. In 2012, Dr. Mercolino set out to authenticate prescription medication pills under the name CertiRx.
In 2018, the National Institute on Drug Abuse approached Dr. Mercolino to see if he could apply CertiRx’s technology to opioids. This prompted the startup’s shift from authentication of prescription medications to substance control for those with opioid use disorder.
Typically, people with opioid use disorder aren’t allowed to take methadone home with them; they have to go to a clinic daily to get their methadone dosage. If they are allowed to take it home, it’s usually given in a lockbox, opening the door for methadone abuse.
For rural citizens especially, this makes recovery from opioid addiction difficult. They must either drive long distances each day to the nearest methadone clinic or use the lockbox system with little accountability for falling into methadone abuse.
Verinetic’s product makes recovery from opioid addiction much more equitable for rural citizens by enabling them to make fewer visits to methadone clinics and by holding them accountable.
“Now, they don’t have to drive to the clinic,” Dr Smith Beaver said. “They don’t have to spend that time going to the clinic. They don’t have to have extra child care [or do] whatever it’s going to be. As you might imagine, that’s cumbersome every day.”
When combining savings from daily transportation to and from the methadone clinic, childcare and lost wages, Dr. Smith Beaver says Verinetics is a tenth of the cost of administering methadone through the traditional clinic system.
For the clinic, the cost of using the Verinetics boxes is also quite reasonable. The clinics make monthly payments on the boxes they use, similar to how people make monthly phone payments. Smith Beaver said the daily cost of each box is less than a daily cup of coffee in the area.
So far, two different medical entities, with varying numbers of clinics underneath them, have agreed to be customers once Verinetics releases its products, likely by mid-year. The startup also attracted funding from a small group of seed investors and a contract with the National Institute of Drug Abuse worth $1.7 million.
After commercialization, Dr. Smith Beaver said the startup will look to raise a Series A funding round so that the company can scale. From there, Dr. Smith Beaver said the company hopes to slowly scale the business while maintaining the startup’s mission of keeping prices low and access to treatment equitable for all.
