How Shantanu Gaur is rethinking obesity treatment with a swallowable balloon

Society for Science hosts Tech Series events throughout the year featuring conversations with distinguished alumni about emerging technologies, innovation and scientific discovery.

This past month, Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of Society for Science and Executive Publisher of Science News, spoke with Shantanu Gaur (ISEF 2003, 2004), co-founder and CEO of Allurion, a company developing non-surgical weight-loss technology to address obesity.

Maya began the conversation by asking Shantanu how his experience at ISEF has continued to shape his career more than 20 years later.

“ISEF was really the first time where I saw what exceptional science and engineering look like,” Shantanu said.

Shantanu’s two ISEF projects were both biomedical research. In one project, he studied a rare genetic mutation in the Afro-Caribbean population of Trinidad and Tobago that is associated with prostate cancer, with the goal of developing a screening tool to identify individuals at greater risk for the disease. For his senior-year project, he investigated a protein involved in the retinal development of chick embryos. While the results weren’t as positive as Shantanu hoped, he says the work taught him a great deal.

Years later, while attending medical school, a class project evolved into what would become Allurion. “We got some traction from people around us—faculty members who said, ‘This is a really good idea. You should pursue it,’” Shantanu said. Maya asked what came next since Shantanu was reaching a pivotal point in his career where he could pursue this business idea or continue the path of being a practicing doctor. After a conversation with his father, he gained some clarity.

“He sat me down and told me I have two choices,” Shantanu says. “You can become a doctor and that’ll be a very fulfilling career, a very noble career. Or if you go out and build a business around this idea, you have the potential to touch the lives of millions of people.”

He left a lasting question to Shantanu: “Do you want to maximize your life for impact or not?”

“At the end of the day, that’s what really drove me toward Allurion,” Shantanu said. “I felt like this was an opportunity for me to work on a problem that’s really pervasive and really important for the world.”

“Obesity is the health issue of our generation,” Shantanu says. “When you have a chronic disease like obesity, it affects nearly every aspect of your health. A lot of what we’re seeing now in obesity has already happened with things like heart disease and cardiovascular disease; it used to be that if you had a heart attack, you needed surgery.”

Allurion is a non-surgical, less invasive medical device patients use for four months to feel fuller. Like bariatric surgery, the device is a biodegradable polymer balloon patients take in a capsule form and rests in the stomach until it’s naturally passed by the patient after four months.

“It’s almost like we’re implanting a meal inside the stomach that stays there,” Shantanu says. “You feel hungry, you eat a meal, and you feel full very fast. We train patients to live life on smaller portions. We don’t kill or suppress the drive to eat. That’s something medications do. We’re really focused on the stomach and helping you feel full.”

While GLP-1s could be deemed as competition for Allurion, Shantanu says it is not.

“We’re certainly complementary,” Shantanu says. “GLP-1s are quite effective and safe. When the patient remains on these medications, they will keep the weight off. One issue people are having, though, is that they stop taking these medications.” Shantanu says Allurion can be an alternative, especially if a patient doesn’t want to be on a medication their entire life.

Allurion received FDA approval this year and is now approved in over 80 countries. Looking ahead, Shantanu envisions future versions of the device that could remain in the stomach for up to 12 months or deliver medications such as vitamins or GLP-1 therapies.

“There are going to be all sorts of permutations and combinations that people are going to be using to treat obesity,” Shantanu says. “I really want Allurion to be at the forefront of that.”

Watch the full Tech Series conversation here.