Theranautilus is reinventing the oral healthcare industry with nanobots

Theranautilus on Tuesday raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by pi Ventures at a Rs 60 crore valuation (about $7.1 million). The round also saw participation from Golden Sparrow Ventures and angel investors, including Abhishek Goyal, Founder and CEO of Tracxn, and Lalit Keshre, CEO of Groww. 

Incubated at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC), the company was founded in 2020 by Professor Ambarish Ghosh, Dr Debayan Dasgupta, and Dr Peddi Shanmukh Srinivas. 

In a conversation with YourStory, Srinivas said that the newly-raised funds will be used to build a high-technology ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) manufacturing facility to scale up and the “other major chunk of the funding will go towards conducting globally first-of-its-kind clinical trials with nanorobots, human trials in 2025.”

He added that a portion of the funding will also be used to file new intellectual property rights. 

Born at the crossroads of dentistry and nanotechnology

The beginning of the trio’s collaboration can be traced back to when Srinivas was pursuing his Master’s degree in endodontic microsurgery which is a branch of dentistry that uses advanced technology to treat the root of a tooth when a traditional root canal is not enough.

The practitioners were trained to perform surgeries under a microscope using instruments that were millimetres in size. While Srinivas was training, he realised that there were certain limitations that clouded these procedures. He wished he could use smaller instruments for better precision. But, doing that would limit human dexterity. 

During that time, he came across Professor Ghosh’s work on using nanorobots which detailed how these robots can be maneuvered inside a living cell. Srinivas realised that there were multiple use cases of this technology in the field of oral health. This pushed him to join hands with Professor Ghosh and Dasgupta to develop Theranautilus in 2019. 

“Initially we started working with root canal. We were focusing on how to ensure that no root canal never fails. Right now about 15 to 20% of root canals fail, you have to visit the dentist again and that was the initial challenge that we took to solve. We solved the problem, we wrote a very nice paper but then as we went ahead we realised that there is an even bigger impactful problem that awaits us which we can solve. So then we sort of stopped doing everything else on oral health and focused entirely on hypersensitivity,” Prof Ghosh said. 

Today, Theranautilus’ solutions utilise core nanorobotics technology to disrupt the $6 billion market for toothpaste that targets sensitivity and takes only 10 minutes to solve the problem as opposed to a toothpaste that should be used every day for a long time to take effect. 

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Solving dentists’ dilemma with nanobots

The company has developed two devices—one that can be used by the clinicians working at a dentist’s office, which would comprise the company’s business-to-business (B2B) segment and an over-the-counter (OTC) device that looks like a toothbrush, which would comprise of its business-to-consumer (B2C) segment. Both these devices will be used in the oral healthcare sector. 

Theranautilus has completed animal testing of these products and is all set to begin human clinical trials, results of which are targeted to be announced towards the end of next year and products to be rolled out in the next two years. 

On how these devices will help combat hypersensitivity, Prof Ghosh said, “When we say nanorobots, we are talking about these extremely tiny particles. These are like little spheres and at the core of them, there is a magnetic element which allows us to make them move using magnetic fields. We apply little magnets and move them around. The size of these things, if you put about a thousand of them, maybe we are talking about the thickness of a hair.”

The way it works is that when these particles are applied to the tooth, they manage to go inside the tooth through tiny pores and come together to form a cluster. This cluster then triggers a chemical reaction and it is “this magical reaction that we have fine-tuned to make a new tooth basically inside the tooth,” Prof Ghosh added. 

According to the founders, the nanorobots become a part of the bone structure inside the patient and one cannot distinguish it from the bone anymore. 

The effects of these procedures have shown to be effective for at least nine months to a year, at least. However, Professor Ghosh added that they will be able to understand the duration of the effect only when people start using it and how daily wear and tear can impact the particles. 

“We really need to know over a long period of time whether daily wear and tear can actually impact these particles so will it be one year or three years? I cannot say. But, we can say it should be greater than one year for sure.”

Path forward

There is a reason why Theranautilus zeroed in on solving hypersensitivity. Apart from the scope of solving it, it was also a low-hanging fruit and a relatable problem, making it a great launchpad for a technological leap in the healthcare industry. 

But Theranautilus’s goal does not end there. The founders want to cure cancer, especially certain types of cancers that have a high mortality rate. 

“But let's first do the simple things, low-hanging fruits, explain to people how this technology works, get some commercial traction, then get into more life-threatening problems, which we are already preparing for,” Professor Ghosh told YourStory. 

The company has already garnered interest from global oral healthcare companies that have reached out to them and are awaiting results from its human clinical trials. 

“The founding team at Thernautilus is well-positioned to transform groundbreaking science into scalable, impactful solutions. We look forward to working with them and supporting their journey in building products that we believe will redefine healthcare on a global scale. Their treatment for dental hypersensitivity could revolutionise a multibillion-dollar global industry and set new healthcare standards,” said Sohil Bhagat, Principal at pi Ventures in a statement.