This founder is using sound waves to fight lung diseases

Maria Artunduaga moved from Colombia to the US at 26 with one goal: to become a pediatric plastic surgeon. Her sister, who has cerebral palsy, was struggling to find care in their home country, and Artunduaga says she wanted to help her walk.

So she headed to the US to attend Harvard for postdoctoral training in human genomics, then went to the University of Chicago for plastic and reconstructive surgery. While in the Midwest, though, she experienced discrimination and treatment she describes as hazing that made her rethink her career.

Around the same time, her grandmother died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Globally, COPD accounted for 3.5 million deaths in 2021, the World Health Organization reported, adding that almost 90% of COPD deaths in people under 70 happen in low- and middle-income countries.

This sent Artunduaga down a new path: respiratory health. She headed to the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California, Berkeley to study public health, and by 2018, she founded Samay.

Getting to know Sylvee. With the help of her husband, who is a digital audio signal processing expert, Artunduaga created a device called Sylvee—named after her grandmother—to detect lung conditions in real time.

“Some things happen for a reason,” she told us.

Patients with lung conditions often wait until they have a flare-up, like when they’re having trouble climbing up stairs or get the flu, before going to see a doctor, she said. By then, the patient may need a CT scan to reveal health issues, such as pockets of air in the lungs.

“We haven’t really incorporated in medical practice air trapping [when there are pockets of air] as a parameter or a biomarker to follow patients or monitor them” because detection requires an expensive CT machine, which is usually only found in hospitals, she said.

Artunduaga recalled her high school physics class, where she learned about acoustic resonance, which is essentially how musical instruments have a higher or lower pitch based on their shape.

“If patients’ lungs are trapping more air, that resonance should change because the physical characteristics of that lung inside are changing,” she said. “What if we actually stimulate the lung with sound?”

That’s what Sylvee does, she explained. Patients wear the sensor on their back near their lungs and the device uses audio to make the lung resonate. Then it detects issues for diagnosis or treatment.

While still an estimated three years away from FDA approval, Artunduaga plans on pricing the device around $40 and selling initially to primary care providers and pulmonologists, a steep discount compared to a $90,000+ CT machine.

“We want to become the standard of care for pulmonary function,” she said.

Business breakdown. As the company continues to test the prototype and work toward regulatory approval, Artunduaga is making money through “strategic partnerships” with pharmaceuticals, medical device companies, and research labs including pharma company Chiesi. Samay is currently valued at $15 million, she said.

Companies like Chiesi use Sylvee to figure out if their medication is working on patients; this way is easier and cheaper than having to test them at the hospital with a CT scan. Aside from Chiesi, Artunduaga referenced additional private collaborators but didn’t disclose specific details about those partnerships.

“Respiratory trials in general are less successful and the most expensive because they rely on subject data,” Artunduaga said. Sylvee is designed to provide these trials with better information about whether the medication testing or product is working.

Planning ahead. The same goes for primary care doctors and pulmonologists, the founder added, in that Sylvee is meant to replace expensive machines and provide quicker results.

“The main idea is to have real-time data or diagnostics so that I can diagnose you, classify you, and immediately start the treatment,” Artunduaga said.

In an effort to continue closing health disparities and pay homage to her roots, Artunduaga also plans to deploy Sylvee across Latin America in 2028.

Founders of color are still severely underrepresented in startups. Crunchbase reported in 2020 that startups with Black and Latino founders accounted for only 2.6% of all funding (receiving $2.3 billion of $87.3 billion) through Aug. 31 of that year.

With that in mind, it’s fair to say Artunduaga has come a long way since leaving Chicago.

“I just decided to put the pieces back together, rebuild my life, and especially be my own boss,” she said.