Empowered Patient Podcast

David Nichols, CEO of Orthobond aims to address the unmet need of medical device infection and contamination due to bacteria preventing devices from bonding to the bone or tissue. Orthobond's solution is the Ostaguard technology, which uses a molecule with a positive charge to attract and rupture bacteria. The technology is effective against common strains of bacteria and is primarily needed in the operating room, where medical devices can be exposed to bacteria before being implanted. This mechanical approach to fighting bacteria does not require a drug that can potentially create a superbug. David explains, "Our bodies have great immune systems, and normally, it takes tens of millions of bacteria to cause an infection. However, numerous studies show that in the presence of an implant, a hip or a knee, or a pacemaker, it could take as few as 200 bacteria to cause an infection. When an implant goes in the body, it seems to overwhelm the immune system and can't eradicate that bacteria from your body. It takes a lot fewer bacteria than we think." "Also, that may not manifest into an immediate infection that happens during the first week of the hospital. It may be, especially for mechanical devices like hip, knees, and spinal implants, that bacteria forms into a biofilm that causes implants to get loose. So one of the bigger problems is a long-term failure of function of these implants that sometimes happens in the first, second, or third year post-surgery." #Orthobond #Implants #MedicalDevices #OperatingRoom #Hospitals orthobond.com Download the transcript here

Anupam Girdhar, CEO of medical and life sciences at Ascential Technologies, provides contract manufacturing services primarily to Fortune 100 companies, focusing on solving the most complex drug development and manufacturing challenges. By aligning with customers early on to understand the scope and risks of a project, Ascential can save time and money when bringing drugs and medical devices to market. At the same time, Anupam reminds us that innovation and inefficiency are part of the process for those trying to explore the unknown. Anupam explains, "This is where I enjoy some of the interactions we have with our customers, because if you think about fundamentally what the industry is trying to do, it is about democratizing care to the patients. We are all in the business of serving them and improving patients' lives. A lot of these challenges that we encounter are mostly in the areas of, how do we provide access to more and more patients, as well as, how do we lower the cost fundamentally for both the companies and consumers? That's where the challenges we encounter are mostly." "You've probably heard of so many projects that were thought of as game-changing and did not do much in the world. I know when customers come to us, everybody thinks their idea is the best, and I don't blame that. That should be the attitude, and that's how big things happen, but they cannot close their eyes to the learning. I mean, there are times when they completely overlook what it takes to fully scale something. There are technologies that are just unfeasible, where we will try to do something that is just against what is possible based on the laws of time or how much cost it takes to get there. There are still areas where we look back into our own backgrounds and then go ahead and incorporate those in the design." "An example is our proteomics board. In the past, and even in my experience, we've had more focus on genomics, and there are companies that were focused on proteomics. Still, now we have enough technology to combine things and learn multi-omic processes and so on. That just gives me so much joy to be able to now integrate things that we could not do five to ten years ago." #AscentialTechnologies #AscentialMedicalLifeSciences #Ascential #ContractManufacturing #ManufacturingAutomation #CellTherapy #MedicalDevice AscentialTech.com Download the transcript here

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