Empowered Patient Podcast

Rick Vanzura, CEO of Freight Farms, and Dr. Amber Orman, Chief Wellness Officer at Advent Health, discuss their partnership in bringing hyperlocal, sustainable food to healthcare facilities. Freight Farms uses modified shipping containers to grow crops, allowing for year-round production with minimal land and water usage. Advent Health recognized the importance of nutrition in whole-person care and saw the opportunity to provide their team members, physicians, patients, and the public with fresh, nutritious food and donate to local food pantries. The partnership has demonstrated the power of food as medicine and the potential for sustainable farming practices in healthcare settings.   Rick explains, "We grow about two and a half to three acres worth of crops out of an 8 by 40-foot shipping container. It looks like any shipping container you would see on a dock or a boat, but it's highly modified to grow food using LED lights, airflow, nutrients delivered through the farm, and controlled through software. It's really designed so you can grow 365 days a year, very clean food, with temperatures from minus 40° to 120°, and do that consistently. And again, get all of the value of it being hyperlocal and fresh and using minimal land and water." Amber elaborates," We have a doctors’ lounge where the doctors, nurse practitioners, and some leaders eat. We also have a public-facing cafeteria, so anybody who visits the hospital can eat in the cafeteria. It's served in there. It's served in our patient meals, so we have certain meals containing the produce, so all of our salads, sandwiches, and wraps. Then we're also supplying anything extra to a local food pantry, and then they also donate to Kingdom Kids Academy in Kissimmee. We are able to sustain all of these things and donate some extra when we have it, even out to the community. It certainly provides better nutrition within a given day to those patients and team members and the people who receive the donations. It's also a way to start educating people about the benefits of eating more plants. We all need to eat more plants for better health, and so that's one of our guiding missions here." #AdventHealth #FreightFarms #VerticalFarming #Healthcare #FoodAsMedicine #AgTech adventhealth.com freightfarms.com Download the transcript here

Guang Qu, Co-Founder of NGGT Corporation is focused on developing gene therapy products using dual functional vector strategies. Guang highlights the importance of distinguishing between recessive and dominant mutations in rare diseases and explains how their approach differs from other gene therapy approaches. The two leading indications caused by a gene mutation that NGGT is working on are Bietti's Crystalline Dystrophy (BCD), a rare ocular disease, and phenylketonuria (PKU), a metabolic disease.   Guang explains, "For our strategies and our product development strategies, I think we are leveraging our experience in the gene therapy field. Later, I will talk more about myself, Dr. Lixin Jiang, and our team. The other thing we are leveraging is our fully integrated team in gene therapy product development, which involves R&D, research and development, CGMP manufacturers, from tox development and clinical regulatory functions and the medical teams. So with all of the teams we built up in the last couple of years, we're in very good positions in developing our gene therapy products." "So, of the two currently leading indications, one is involved in ocular disease, what we call the BCD, Bietti's Crystalline Dystrophy. This disease is caused by a gene mutation. The gene mutation causes lipid metabolic problems. The particular gene is called the CYP4V2 gene. The mutation directly leads to the lipid metabolic process being interrupted. Therefore, lipids are precipitated in the different ocular cells, such as the cornea and the retina. That's most of the disease cell layers affected."  #AAV #GeneEditing #GeneTherapy #PKU #BCD Download the transcript here

Jennifer Jones-McMeans, divisional vice president of global clinical affairs at Abbott’s vascular business, and Dr. Brian DeRubertis, a doctor at the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, shine a light on peripheral artery disease and critical limb-threatening ischemia where artery blockage restricts blood flow to the lower legs. Abbott has developed the Esprit, a dissolving scaffold that opens up the artery in the blocked area and elutes a drug that slows disease progression. Their LIFE-BTK trial demonstrated success in a diverse patient population and is a significant new treatment option for CLTI.  Brian explains, "One of the things that I’ll say is our group is starting to explore doing additional efforts at patient education with our own patients, patients who have actually been diagnosed with this disease, and educating them a little bit more about what it means to have this disease, how they can be involved in the process of trying to prevent their disease from getting worse. And the reason we’re doing this is exactly what you said. Everyone knows what a heart attack is, but very few people understand that the same process that leads to clogged arteries in the heart or blocked arteries in the heart can lead to blocked arteries in the legs. Those blockages can ultimately lead to amputation. And so, the education of patients and keeping them informed about the disease process is one important part of this."  Jennifer elaborates, "This is really a landmark moment for people with this severe form of peripheral artery disease, which we’re calling CLTI. When you think of these minimally invasive procedures to treat this disease, currently in the United States, you only have plain balloon angioplasty. And this is what the LIFE BTK trial was measured against. The Esprit was measured, which is our dissolving stent, and tested against the standard of care, plain balloon angioplasty. And it’s been decades since there’s been any innovation in this, what they sometimes call the endovascular first space. The Esprit is made out of a polymer material similar to what you would think about with dissolving stitches, and it also has a drug on it." #Abbott #CLTI #PeripheralArteryDisease #PAD #LegArteries #PlainBalloonAngioplasty #DiversityinClinicalTrials abbott.com Download the transcript here

Marcio Souza, President and CEO of Praxis Precision Medicines, discusses the challenges in treating central nervous system disorders and is focused on developing life-altering treatments for patients with essential tremor.  Current treatments for epilepsy are often broad-based and not specific to the underlying cause of the disease. Praxis is using insights about genetic epilepsy to understand the underlying imbalances in the brain and develop a precision medicine approach to improve movement disorders.   Marcio explains, "For example, we have four clinical programs right now, four different molecules in the clinic, and many more to come in the future, but four at this given point in time. And one of them is for a very common movement disorder called the essential tremor, which is very common, about 2% of the US population develop this condition. And there is no real understanding of where it comes from. Incredibly debilitating for all the people living with essential tremor. But when you take a step back, and you look into the network, it overlaps with a lot of our understanding of epilepsy." "Other times, we just start in epilepsy, and we end in epilepsy. And I think that’s good as well because there is a huge need for better drugs in epilepsy as well. So we’re using that as a gateway to either better drugs for epilepsy or new drugs in the case of certain types of epilepsy that don’t have any drugs or any treatment available at all. Or to branch out and really understand more mechanistically how to help other diseases. And we think it’s only the beginning. There’s a lot more to be done there." #PraxisMedicines #EssentialTremor #NeurologicalDiseases #MovementDisorder #FirstinClassMechanism #AtHomeTrial praxismedicines.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. John Blair, CEO of MedAllies, was created to address the lack of communication and coordination between healthcare providers and the importance of interoperability in healthcare. While healthcare has become more complicated over the years, with advancements in technology and automation, the lack of reimbursement for coordination of care has contributed to the problem of lack of interoperability. There are incentives and penalties associated with interoperability, including information blocking and the Trust Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) initiative, which aims to standardize interoperability platforms and reduce barriers to entry for healthcare organizations. John explains, "But if you look at hospitals, you've got about 70% of the hospitals in the country connected to a national network. That means there's 30% that are not. And then, if you start to break that down and look at rural areas versus urban, there's a big disconnect. These smaller rural hospitals tend to be far less connected than the larger urban hospitals. Then, if you even break it down in the urban areas, you look at certain areas, the more marginalized communities, and again, those hospitals are less likely to be connected. So that's the real issue right now as we're trying to move with interoperability, and as we're making more and more success or having more and more success, there are still those who are falling behind." "Well, interoperability should improve care and care for an individual, the experience for the individual, the efficiency of the individual getting their care amongst multiple providers, and also improve the efficiency for providers in terms of coordination between other providers. And it will cost money to do that. I mean, it costs money for those connections to run these platforms -- millions and millions of dollars to run these annually."  #MedAllies #HealthcareNetworks #Hospitals #Interoperability #HealthcareCosts #TEFCA medallies.com Download the transcript here

Dave Mehalick, Chairman, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Coeptis Therapeutics, focuses on developing cell therapies for oncology and respiratory diseases. They aim to create a universal cell therapy that can be used for various types of cancer and move it from a later line of treatment to a frontline therapy. The company has developed a unique CAR therapy called SNAP-CAR, which utilizes off-the-shelf cells and a targeting mechanism to attack cancer cells at different points, making it difficult for the cells to mutate and evade treatment. Coeptis is conducting clinical trials using its cell generation platform, including a trial for COVID-19 patients and a trial for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients. Dave explains, "Coeptis is a cell therapy company mainly focused on oncology, although we have recently broadened into respiratory disease. And really, the prime mission of the company would be to what we would term universalized cell therapy to make it available for the masses. Right now, cell therapy has to be very highly targeted to certain people. It’s extremely expensive. With a lot of the technologies that Coeptis has brought together under one roof, we feel it will solve a lot of those issues and make it not only available to mostly all people but also move it from a third, fourth, and fifth-line therapy for different issues, all the way up to a frontline therapy." "We were able to license an amazing cutting-edge, next-generation CAR therapy developed at the University of Pittsburgh called SNAP-CAR. If you are familiar with CAR therapies such as CAR T, which have developed over the years, I believe it was initially founded at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, CAR T therapy has been rather successful in being able to attack previously thought of incurable cancers and create great results for patients." "The interesting thing about a CAR T is that each CAR T is a very highly specialized cellular structure that is designed to target a very specific point on a very specific cancer. What happens with that is when you devise it, it will be used for this exact area. And what the scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and in collaboration with Coeptis now have designed is a CAR, which is the cellular CAR, the construct that is universal. What I mean by that is it’s not initially targeting anything on a cell. We’ve created the CAR that we attach to the effector cell, whether it be a natural killer or a T cell, a macrophage, etc. However, CAR does not instantly attack anything until we use a targeting mechanism. In this case, we’re utilizing monoclonal antibodies right now that fuses with the CAR and then pulls that into attack itself. So why is that important?" #Coeptistx #Oncology #OncNews #CellTherapy #Immunotherapy #CART #CARNK #NKCells #AML #MDS #COVID coeptistx.com Download the transcript here

Ross Bundy, President and CEO of CRISPR QC, shines a light on the current state of CRISPR gene editing technology and how the field has advanced rapidly since the discovery of CRISPR's potential to edit the human genome. The focus of CRISPR technology has primarily been on curing rare and genetic diseases, but there is also potential for targeting cancer tumors' resistance to chemotherapy and the development of customized therapies for various indications. The services offered by CRISPR QC include a unique sensor platform and data analytics capability to monitor and control the gene editing process. The company aims to create a database of information to improve the understanding and control of CRISPR chemistry. The CRISPR Chip is a new semiconductor technology that integrates carbon electronics to analyze complex biological processes. Ross explains, "What we find is that it can be very difficult to get that chemistry to target exactly in the right place. We don’t know yet how much the right amount is. Is it too much, too much? Is too little, too little? How do we get all these correctly into the cell? How do we deliver them to the right place? Sometimes CRISPR edits in the wrong place, it can edit multiple places across the genome, the target, and a few other places we don’t want to edit, and the cell goes and repairs it, and now we’ve changed the DNA somewhere else. So we definitely don’t want that. If we’re going to edit DNA, we want to edit just the part we want, and we don’t want to change anything else. So, the challenge today is that we don’t know exactly how this chemistry works. It is still a very new field." "We’re saying, can we open up that black box and say, here’s all the gears and all the levers, all the buttons, and the pharma companies can now then precisely control this chemistry and deliver the result that they want. So that’s what we’re able to start doing for the field. This is the maturation of a new science coming out, proving it’s capable, and now moving to an industrial process. We’re helping transition that industrial process." #CRISPRQC #CRISPR #CRISPRCas9 #GeneEditing #CellularGeneTherapy CRISPRQC.com Download the transcript here  

Nicolas Poirier, CEO of OSE Immunotherapeutics, uses immunology and molecular engineering to develop innovative immunotherapies for oncology, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, and organ transplant.  The same immune cells, lymphocytes and macrophages, are involved in both immuno-oncology and immuno-inflammation, and OSE aims to re-educate these cells to recognize and eliminate cancer cells or restore immune tolerance in autoimmune diseases. He also discusses the potential of cancer vaccines in re-educating the immune system to target cancer cells, and the importance of combination therapies in improving treatment outcomes. Nicolas explains, "There are two big families in the immune system. We have the adaptive immunity generated by lymphocytes. We have several types of lymphocytes: T-lymphocytes, B-lymphocytes, and so on. This is a very specific immune response that humans and other species have developed to recognize, very specifically some antigens from viruses, for tumors, and so on. We can control these cells." "On the other side, there is innate immunity composed of macrophages, NK cells, or others, and this is a non-specific immune response that recognizes either danger signals or pathogen signals. These are mostly the elements that are implicated in many chronic inflammatory diseases. Still, there are also some elements that we can manipulate or re-educate in oncology to help the immune system globally work better. Because these lymphocytes and these macrophages, this adaptive immunity or innate immunity, work together, and all together, we can re-educate and orchestrate this immune response in a good direction."  "There's a big promise and big hope now in the field of therapeutic cancer vaccines. It's important to understand that it's therapeutic. It means we're not yet able to prevent cancer development, this might be in the future, but we use cancer vaccines to re-educate the immune system of patients that have developed a tumor. It's a therapeutic drug, and we're developing one of the most advanced therapeutic cancer vaccines in the world with the upcoming new registration phase three in lung cancer patients in second line." #OSEImmunotherapeutics #Cancer #LungCancer #CancerVaccine #ImmuneSystem #Macrophages #Inflammation #InflammatoryDisease ose-immuno.com Download the transcript here

Ben Casavant, Co-Founder and CEO of Tasso, focuses on making diagnostics more accessible to patients that allow collection of blood samples at home. Their customers include pharmaceutical companies conducting research and healthcare providers. Using Tasso's technology in decentralized clinical trials allows for easier recruitment, increased patient participation, and more data collection. The simplicity and ease of use of Tasso's blood collection device have resulted in positive patient responses and improved retention rates in clinical trials. They offer liquid and dried blood collection options to accommodate different lab processes and sample types.   Ben explains, "When we think about the customer bases we're serving, we're working with many different pharmaceutical companies conducting critical and life-changing research. We just announced a partnership with the Parkinson's Foundation so they can help find ways to gather information and data about patients living with Parkinson's disease. But they need that access and data from patients. By working with Tasso, we enable them to have that reach and accessibility."  "When we're working with various pharmaceutical companies. They're seeing this real need to get subjects into their trials, to ease recruitment, to help make sure they're hitting their recruitment targets. To help make sure that as a patient goes through a clinical trial, they're able to meet all the data points that are needed so that they can have a completed data set for their own submission. And broadly, in that industry, we're seeing this huge shift. It's really exciting that pharma companies, sponsors, and CROs are looking for more tools to provide patients with better access and lower the barrier, lowering the bar for people to participate in these trials." #Tassoinc #DecentalizedClinicalTrials #DCT #ClinicalTrials #HealthTechnology #HealthTech tassoinc.com Download the transcript here

Chris Darland, President and CEO of Peerbridge Health, discusses technology breakthroughs that enable early, low-cost detection of heart issues with a cardiac monitor that uses AI to analyze heart rhythms over time to detect patterns that may indicate heart failure. The device is based on ECG technology that drives the Holter monitor and delivers a full 12-lead ECG with a volumetric 3D view of the heart. The goal is to reach more patients who may not proactively seek medical attention and provide early intervention and treatment.  Chris explains, " I think the problem with the current state is largely that it's too late. And I say that to mean that 80% of all heart failure cases today are getting caught after an emergency room visit. So, it's not necessarily that we don't have the tools to find heart failure and the cardiologists and expertise to identify it, but we're not getting it in time. So if you are one of those patients who, let's say, are caught earlier or maybe unfortunately when you come through the ER, a lot of the tools are existing in the hospital. So you'll get an ultrasound, an echo, to get a view of your heart. We'll do an ECG in the hospital and potentially a cardiac MRI. There's a suite of tools available in the acute care setting that can get to this conclusion relatively quickly if you have all the tools right in front of you." "The nice part about it is it's relatively accepted from a workflow perspective, a tool that's used quite commonly and has become exceedingly convenient over the last five to 10 years. There is a lot of innovation in a handful of companies to make it easy to wear, light, waterproof, etc. And when we think through the innovation we're working through right now, it's essentially using that tool and the output of this ambulatory cardiac monitor that we have in Peerbridge. Then doing some interesting AI advanced diagnostics on top of it to pick up patterns that were maybe lost historically or potentially missed based on signal fidelity of devices that were in the market. Then using those patterns to try to get a head start on heart failure diagnosis as well as a handful of other things we can show they do." #PeerbridgeHealth #Cardiology #Cardiologists #ECG #HeartHealth #HeartFailure #EarlyDetection #RemotePatientMonitoring PeerbridgeHealth.com Download the transcript here