Vision & Leadership
The physician behind SPORASTAT
More than two decades of clinical insight
For more than 26 years, Dr. David A. Stoller has dedicated his career to treating patients with persistent skin and nail infections.
Through thousands of clinical encounters, he observed a recurring challenge: many infections involved multiple contributing factors, yet conventional therapies were often designed to address only a single cause.
Rather than accepting incomplete outcomes, he began exploring a more comprehensive approach—one grounded in years of patient care, scientific observation, and practical medicine.
An inventor’s origin story
For more than two decades practicing podiatric medicine, I have treated some of the most stubborn and painful skin infections the lower extremity can produce. What became clear to me early in my career — and what took years of clinical observation to fully articulate — is that the standard approach to these infections was built on a flawed premise. Most treatments are designed to address a single pathogen: a bacterium, a yeast, or a mold. But in practice, what I was seeing on my patients was never that simple. These were mixed infections, simultaneously involving bacteria, yeast, spore-forming fungi, hyphal mold species, and the inflammatory response that compounds all of it. Treating one component while ignoring the others was, at best, a temporary solution. At worst, it left patients cycling through months of ineffective therapies with no resolution in sight.
That clinical frustration became the foundation for what would eventually become Sporastat. I began systematically breaking down these infections into four distinct biological categories — fundal, yeast, bacteria, and inflammation — and for each category, I identified the single most effective and widely used topical agent already available. The four I selected were mupirocin for bacterial coverage, clotrimazole for yeast, terbinafine for dermatophytes, and hydrocortisone to address the inflammatory cascade. The logic was straightforward: if each component of the infection has a proven treatment, combining all four into a single formulation should address the full pathological picture in one application. What I did not anticipate was the degree to which two of those agents would potentiate each other.
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The synergy between clotrimazole and terbinafine turned out to be the most significant discovery of my clinical career. Clotrimazole is a fungistatic agent — it arrests the reproduction of yeast and mold, preventing the infection from spreading. Terbinafine is fungicidal — it actively kills the organism. When used separately, either agent can be effective, but both carry limitations and neither addresses the full fungal lifecycle simultaneously. Together, they work on two fronts at once: the clotrimazole halts new growth while the terbinafine eradicates what is already present. In my clinical experience, this combination clears the affected area within one or two applications — an outcome that is simply not achievable with any single-agent treatment currently on the market, many of which require weeks or months of consistent use and still may not fully resolve the condition.
Over the past two years, I have used this formulation clinically on hundreds of patients without observing a single significant adverse reaction. The safety profile has been remarkably clean. Beyond the podiatric conditions that originally motivated the formulation, patients have voluntarily reported success using it across a broader range of skin conditions — including persistent and unresponsive skin rashes, psoriasis, acne, diaper rash, cuts and scrapes, poison oak, and virtually any condition involving itch, inflammation, or secondary infection — with consistent positive outcomes. These unsolicited reports suggest the formulation’s utility may extend well beyond its original intended indication, pointing to a broader market opportunity for the right development partner.
The resulting formulation — now patent-protected — has demonstrated meaningful clinical utility across the full spectrum of conditions I treat: athlete’s foot, fungal toenail infections, and skin fold infections. Sporastat is currently pre-NDA, and the path forward involves formal FDA submission to bring this combination therapy to the patients who need it most. After 26 years of watching people suffer through incomplete treatments, I am confident that this formulation represents a genuine step forward — not because it is novel for novelty’s sake, but because it is built on a precise clinical understanding of what these infections actually are.
David A. Stoller, DPM
Doctor of Podiatric Medicine · Inventor, Sporastat
A different way to solve a longstanding problem
Years of clinical observation revealed that many skin and nail infections involve more than a single pathogen. This insight inspired a broader therapeutic strategy designed to address the key contributors commonly found in real-world infections.
Bacteria
Recognized as a common contributor to mixed skin infections.
Yeast
Frequently present in moist skin environments and recurrent infections.
Dermatophytes & Mold
Associated with persistent fungal infections affecting skin and nails.
Inflammation
A key factor influencing symptoms, discomfort, and skin recovery.
My goal was never to create something new for the sake of innovation. It was to solve a clinical problem that I had witnessed throughout years of caring for patients.
— David A. Stoller, DPM
My goal was never to create something new for the sake of innovation. It was to solve a clinical problem that I had witnessed throughout years of caring for patients.
— David A. Stoller, DPM
