Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Abu Abraham, Chief Medical Officer at Cloudbreak Pharma,  discusses the disease burden and gaps in care for patients with Pterygium, also known as Surfer's eye. Pterygium is an ocular surface disorder that creates a growth on the eye's surface that can cause vision problems. The condition is more prevalent in individuals over 40, but it can also affect younger populations exposed to risk factors from spending time outside in the sun and being exposed to UV light. Cloudbreak Pharma is developing CBT-001, an investigational therapy, a multi-kinase inhibitor administered as an eye drop that aims to stop the progression of Pterygium. Abu explains, "Pterygium is a relatively common condition. It’s an ocular surface disorder. It’s a growth. The word Pterygium derives from the Greek pteryx, which means wedge-shaped. This growth is also a wedge shape that grows from the mucous membrane that overlies the white portion of a person’s eye and grows in the direction of the cornea. The cornea itself is a curved structure that’s clear, and its function is to focus light or bend light to enter the right way into the eye." "But this can affect anybody who has exposure to UV light. A person working outdoors or even doing a lot of outdoor activities in their free time has the potential to have a Pterygium grow on their eye as one of the triggers. UV light is not the only trigger. There is the potential, possibly, that there are genetic factors. I think they have been identified but may not be fully understood, as well as the genetic factors that contribute to the growth of a Pterygium." #CloudbreakPharma #Pterygium #SurfersEye #OcularDisease #OcularExternalDisease #PatientBurden CloudbreakPharma.com Download the transcript here

Fadi Micaelian, CEO of Sparkdit, teaches machines to think like humans by understanding trade-offs. AI is not good at finding nuance and capturing trade-offs, which is where Sparkdit comes in. They have developed a technology that can teach computers to make trade-offs like humans and put humans at the center of the technology rather than replacing them. Incorporating AI into patient-centered decision formats can revolutionize healthcare, improve the way doctors interact with patients, and address issues like ageism, sexism, and racism. Fadi explains, "We have been working in AI for years. And AI is magnificent when the data is in abundance. However, we felt that AI fell short in a series of areas, and the main one is to teach machines to think like humans. Because AI, at the end of the day, does not think like humans. AI thinks like neurons. But we humans think very differently. Our thinking is universal. Whether you are an Eskimo, or you are in Paris, or you are in Russia, or whether you’re in South Africa, we all think the same way. The way we think is by trade-offs, and AI does not understand trade-offs. So we set our mission to teach machines to think like humans, by trade-offs."  "To do that, we needed to create a platform, and that platform was based on trade-offs. It was based on the way we think. We’re trying to mimic the way humans think, and that’s doing trade-off. How do we think? When we have a decision to make, we take a set of criteria into account. Then, we apply to each criterion a certain logic - how we think about that criterion. Then we overlay that with a set of trade-offs that says really what is the relative importance of the criteria, which ones are important, and which ones are not." #Sparkdit #AI #AppliedAI #AIinHealthcare #TrainingAI Sparkdit.com Download the transcript here

Sofia Elizondo, COO and Co-Founder of Brightseed, discusses the company's focus on bioactives and their potential to improve health outcomes. Bioactives are small molecules found in nature, such as plants, fungi, or bacteria, that activate human biological receptors and positively affect the body. Brightseed uses its AI platform, Forager, to identify and commercialize these bioactive compounds in foods, supplements, and over-the-counter medicine. As part of the food is medicine movement, Brightseed's goal is to make these superfoods more accessible to a broader population.   Sofia explains, "To bring us back to the source, caffeine is a small molecule. It’s a natural chemical that a seed produces. And so we take these coffee seeds, grind them up, and then extract the caffeine and other tasty flavors with water every morning." "When we take a sip of our coffee, it’s actually very well understood what happens with caffeine. We absorb it in our stomach lining. The caffeine molecule goes into our bloodstream, goes into our brain while our blood is circulating around our body, and docks with a biological receptor called the adenosine receptor in our brain. What happens is it interacts with this receptor, and then we feel a bunch of downstream effects. We feel focus and energy, and maybe too much of an adrenaline rush sometimes." "But this is a great example that many of us can be familiar with of the power of such a small molecule. It’s just one bioactive in one bean of one plant that can have this very precise and recognizable effect. In this case, science knows very well exactly what it does." "In the big picture of bioactives, there are hundreds of thousands of them in plants and foods that we eat every day that we may not know or may not have cataloged. Science, in most cases, doesn’t exactly know what it does when we ingest these bioactives, at least not yet." #Brightseed #AppliedAI #Bioactive #Nutrition #FoodisMedicine brightseedbio.com Download the transcript here

Luke Piggott, principal scientist at Debiopharm, has a unique business model in the drug discovery and development to commercialization landscape. Focusing on rare cancers, they license drugs from smaller biotechs and conduct clinical trials before out-licensing them to larger pharmaceutical companies with marketing capabilities. The use of AI is expanding biomarker discovery and the identification of potential novel mechanisms for targeted therapies.  Novel-novel combinations are being explored to provide therapies with more selective profiles with fewer side effects. Luke explains, "Rare cancers is an interesting area. I mean, it’s never an easy one to be developing in the space of rare cancers. With a business model like ours, we have the opportunity to take some of these assets that perhaps are not as, shall we say, financially attractive to investors because of the smaller market opportunity. As a privately owned company, we have the ability to develop these kinds of drugs and move them ahead with solid financial backing. And so I think that’s one of the areas that we have the opportunity where some other companies would not." "We do see overlap there with other diseases, although they may be morphologically different than the current specific sites that are more rare than other diseases. These underlying mechanisms are consistent across the different types of cancers. Now that we’re in the era of precision medicine and going after specific key oncogenic drivers of these tumors, it does allow potential opportunities to treat them in a more similar fashion, shall we say, to the larger populations or at least re-purpose some of those drugs and try them out on these rarer diseases." #Debiopharm #RareDiseases #RareCancers #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionMedicine #BiotechInvestment Debiopharm.com Download the transcript here  

Tiara Green, President of Accessia Health, provides financial assistance for copayments, physician visits, durable medical equipment, radiology testing, and travel expenses to support individuals with rare and chronic healthcare conditions who cannot afford their care. They also offer educational services to help patients navigate the healthcare system and make informed decisions about their healthcare. They are reaching out to patients through physicians, pharmacies, patient advocacy organizations, and faith-based and community-based organizations. Accessia Health aims to improve overall healthcare outcomes by using online tools to reduce emergency room visits and help patients adhere to treatment plans.   Tiara explains, "Accessia Health is a national nonprofit organization. We’re a patient assistance organization that supports individuals with rare and chronic healthcare conditions. I think we all have been impacted or have been in the healthcare system to receive care, and we know that the cost of care is extremely high. So, our mission is to serve as a safety net for those individuals who cannot afford their care. I love our tagline, "We speak health and human," because we realize the human side of healthcare in that we’re people first, and individuals are not necessarily defined by their condition. However, we also understand what it means to navigate the healthcare system. We want to do our part to stand in the gap for them and help them with their costs so that they can focus on their healthcare journey." "We also provide educational services. We have a webinar series, Amplify Your Voice, Control Your Care, where we want to give those individuals tools for success, helping them navigate the complex healthcare system to make informed decisions about their healthcare. So, it may be a topic on, "How do I properly communicate with my physician?" Or it can be a topic such as, "What does the Inflation Reduction Act mean for me?" However, we want to ensure that they understand their healthcare so that they can make the appropriate decisions." #AccessiaHealth #PatientAssistance #FinancialAssistance #RareDiseases #ChronicConditions AccessiaHealth.org Download the transcript here

Roger Rivera, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at Mente Suave Psychiatry, discusses the different types of bipolar disorder, the potential causes of the disease, available treatment options, and the importance of early detection and management. Roger emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to care and highlights the impact of bipolar disorder on patients' lives and society as a whole. While there are currently no biological markers for bipolar disorder, ongoing research and initiatives, including the use of AI, show promise in improving diagnosis and treatment.   Roger explains, "So rather than bipolar disorder, it should probably be called bipolar disorders just because of the different manifestations that it has. One of those manifestations could be manic episodes. Manic episodes could be described as just expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, more targeted flight of ideas, and all these other things, which have a very strong correlation with functional impairment. And that's just one of the variations of bipolar disorder."   "We also have bipolar II, which has more hypomanic type features. So, if we look at the diagnostic manual that we use in psychiatry, we'll see that for bipolar I, it highlights we need at least one manic episode, but we didn't need a depressive episode. Yet, when we look at bipolar II, we usually need at least one depressive episode associated with that." #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealthAwareness #TreattheWholePatient #BipolarTreatment #PatientEngagement mentesuavepsychiatry.com Download the transcript here

Punit Dhillon, Chairman and CEO of Skye Bioscience, focuses on anti-obesity and developing a drug that targets the cannabinoid receptor 1, which plays a role in signaling the body to store fat. The next generation of CB1 inhibition moves from a centrally mediated pathway to targeting CB1 receptors outside the brain. Deploying the endocannabinoid system, their lead drug candidate targets the major organs where CB1 receptors reside in fat tissue to increase mitochondrial activity and burn more fat.  Punit explains, "Skye is focused on exploring research modulating different therapeutic targets via the endocannabinoid system. Our research has narrowed in on the CB1 receptor, where we’re modulating it by focusing on this pathway of inhibition. There’s a big body of evidence, actually existing validation of this cannabinoid receptor 1 being a really important target to reduce caloric food intake and increase energy expenditure. It’s been a really important target for weight loss because of its particular relevance in that therapeutic area. So we’re advancing in a very interesting clinical pipeline and immediately a Phase 2 study that will look at that particular target. We hope that we will be able to show its relevance in the anti-obesity medication landscape." "I feel like the current landscape of drugs that have been getting the most attention has been focused on caloric restriction. Weight loss is driven by that particular pathway of restricting the amount you eat. We are trying to shift that paradigm to the opportunity to address the underlying issues relating to weight loss so you can essentially have this aspect of targeting fat and being able to address fat metabolism. That comes back to this link to the exercise comment you made because it’s driving the underlying mitochondrial activity, which is helping to improve the thermogenesis and the conversion of that fat into thermogenic energy."  #SkyeBioscience #Obesity #EndocannabinoidSystem #WeightLossDrug #CB1Receptor #GLP1 skyebioscience.com Download the transcript here

Joe Ferra, CEO of Elevation Oncology, highlights the unmet needs in gastric cancer and the potential of targeting Claudins, proteins involved in cell adhesion. The current competitive landscape of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) confirms the promise of a targeted therapy that delivers a cytotoxic drug directly to cancer cells. Targeting Claudin 18.2 with an ADC approach offers an opportunity to treat a broader range of tumors expressing a lower level of Claudin 18.2 than those currently treated by CAR-T therapy. This approach is being investigated as a single-agent drug with promise for use in combination for gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer and esophageal cancer. Joe explains, "As you likely know, in the continuum of cancer drugs, you have chemotherapy on one end that indiscriminately kills everything it touches. On the other end, you have uber-targeted therapies looking at specific drivers of what’s driving that specific tumor. In our case at Elevation Oncology, we’re focused on what we like to call selected targeted oncology drugs so that we are using the unique characteristics of the tumor to target and meet in a targeted way attempt to kill the tumor for a better outcome for the patient." "Gastric cancer in and of itself was an area where Claudin 18.2 is known to be highly expressed, but for gastric cancer, to your point, there’s a huge unmet need. For most patients, once they’re in second line or third line, the opportunity for drugs that are available to them today is, unfortunately for all of us, very dismal. We think there’s a significant opportunity to utilize a Claudin 18.2 antibiotic drug conjugate for overall better outcomes for patients living with gastric cancer." "We quickly saw an ADC approach as an opportunity to treat a broader range of Claudin 18.2 expression. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, in any target in any tumor, there’s always a range of expression for Claudin 18.2. In gastric cancer, it’s known that as much as 80% of gastric cancer expressed Claudin 18.2 at some level. With that expression, we think an ADC approach will be able to treat a broader range of expression." #ElevationOncology #ADC #AntibodyDrugConjugate #SolidTumors #Claudin182 #Claudins #Cancer ElevationOncology.com Download the transcript here 

Dr. Steve Goldberg, physician and Senior Clinical Advisor at DecisionRx, and Dr. Jamie Wilkey, pharmacist and expert on medication therapy optimization, explain that medications are the fourth leading cause of death in the country. They emphasize the need to consider genetic information and pharmacogenomics to design personalized medication plans to improve health outcomes.  The DecisionRx solution is integrated into the pharmacist's workflow to improve medication safety, reduce avoidable costs, and enhance communication with providers, pharmacists, and patients. Steven explains, "Our goal is to help people get more benefits from the medications that they use. A couple of starting facts. The US spends about $500 billion-plus a year on medication, and sadly, there are hundreds of thousands of ER visits, hospitalizations, and deaths that occur to people attributable to medications. There are a number of reasons for it, but relative to what we do, it is often triggered by people having genetics that make them not do well with particular medication. It’s often the regimen that they’re on has too many drugs, and that creates a problem. Finally, and potentially most importantly, they’re not taking the time or not given the time to have their medication regimen carefully reviewed by a well-trained pharmacist to help organize things for the best outcomes. And best outcomes, reduce health risks, control chronic disease, and provide treatment."   Jamie elaborates, "We also consider the genetics of people taking their medication, which has been overlooked significantly in the past. Specifically, the way our body metabolizes medication is so different based on ethnicity, background, and gender, and you can’t just tell by looking at a person how they’ll metabolize medication. We can finally understand what medication is likely to work for a person, which is unlikely to work, and what is probably going to give them a lot of terrible adverse reactions before the patient has to go home and try it." #DecisionRx #Healthcare #MedicationTherapyOptimization #PrecisionMedicine #Pharmacogenomics #HealthcareInnovation  decisionrx.com Download the transcript here

Ryne Natzke is the Chief Revenue Officer for TrustCommerce, a Sphere company that facilitates electronic payments in the healthcare industry, helping ensure security and compliance in transactions between patients and providers. Healthcare payments present unique challenges, as patients have varying preferences and are impacted by economic factors on their ability to make healthcare payments. TrustCommerce aims to make the payment process easier for patients by integrating with electronic health record systems and patient billing systems, reducing friction in healthcare payments and providing patients with more options and transparency in pricing. Ryne explains, "Some people like paying online, and some people pay in person. There are payment plans. So what we do with our technology and our partnerships with EHRs like Epic and patient billing systems is help make sure that they can facilitate those patient financial experiences across the board and have that happen within systems they’re already using. So within MyChart, for example, or just while the patient’s checking in at the front desk. We help take that PCI compliance and security piece off the shoulders of our partners and our healthcare systems using our technology." "Nobody really plans to have a disease like cancer, and all of a sudden, you have a whole bunch of oncology appointments or plans on getting into a car accident and showing up in the emergency room. So it’s not really a budgetable expense the same way as I’m going to save up for a Peloton or a new TV or whatever it is. So you’re kind of balancing this unknown of what the balance is and being able to line up what that patient might be able to do. Somebody might be able to pay a $2,000 bill when they receive it, and a lot of people can’t. So how can we put them on a payment plan and be empathetic of where they are within their situations while also still having all of the compliance and security pieces that come with the transactions?" #TrustCommerce #TransparencyinPricing #HealthcareCosts #HealthcarePayments trustcommerce.com Download the transcript here