Empowered Patient Podcast

Jared Bauer is the CEO of IONIQ Sciences which is exploring new ways to detect cancer at an earlier stage using non-invasive bioimpedance-based technology. This approach is not looking for the presence of cancer cells but rather changes in the interstitial fluid. Using a low level of electric current, the IONIQ AI-enhanced technology can identify where in the body the cancer is. Jared explains, "It's a bioimpedance-based technology, and the way the system works is we inject a very low level of electrical current, not enough for you to feel. You can't even recognize that it's there. Still, we inject electrical current using DC power, direct current. If you just think physics 101, electricity 101, whatever you want to call it, DC power, the path of least resistance, and that electricity is going to go through the interstitial fluid. Then we pull that back out with an EKG electrode on the other side. And we're scanning that interstitial fluid over distances, allowing us to see that immune response." "When someone doesn't have cancer, the ions or that electricity is going to flow freely. When someone does have cancer, a malignancy is present, and we see that cytokine storm, the changes in the chemokines, and the changes in the protein matrix. All of the interstitial fluid gets jumbled up, and those ions don't move as smoothly through. So over the course of a 20-minute, non-invasive test, just electrical current, it's all digital, we pull 10,000-plus data points from our scan, and we analyze that using our proprietary algorithm to give you an answer of malignant or benign." #IONIQSciences #EarlyDetectionofCancer #Cancer #LungCancer #Bioimpedance #CancerScreening ioniqsciences.com Download the transcript here

Colin LeClair, CEO of Connections Health Solutions, shares his concerns about the lack of resources for people needing behavioral health crisis care and solutions for urgent and emergency psychiatric services in a facility-based setting. With a community-based approach, Connections partners with hospitals, care facilities, service providers, and law enforcement to better understand patients dealing with complex behavioral challenges and provide new alternatives for care. Colin elaborates, "Right now, we have two of the largest crisis facilities, as we call them, in Arizona, one in Tucson and one in Phoenix. And those services include emergency psychiatric services, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Crisis stabilization services for patients who need a few days to recover and get back on their medication regimen and for whom we can prepare a care plan. In addition, there is an observation unit, a 23-hour observation unit for patients who are very acute and require immediate stabilization in a very unrestricted environment to get them back on their feet and on the path to recovery. The facilities look like small hospitals. We operate in about 20,000 to 40,000 square feet. We see about one thousand patients a month in each of our facilities." "We take a lot of pride in saying that we never say no to a patient. And so the crisis is very self-defined. A patient who's in crisis may be having an anxiety attack, they may be new to the neighborhood, and they don't have a primary care physician or a primary psychiatric medical home. They just need a prescription refill. Or it could be somebody having a psychotic episode. We will treat anyone who comes to us." "On the higher acuity end of the spectrum, about 60% of our patients arrive with first responders. They're often picked up in the community by first responders. And we're trying to be a better alternative for police and for the patient than going to an emergency department where treatment is not designed around a psychiatric patient or potentially jail. And so, again, 60% of our patients come to us involuntarily. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we are able to convert more than half of those patients to voluntary status. In other words, they agree to engage in their own treatment, and that's a very, very difficult thing to do." #ConnectionsHealthSolutions #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek #MentalHealthisImportant #CrisisSupport #SelfCare #MentalHealth #MentalHealthMatters #988 ConnectionsHS.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Shankar Musunuri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ocugen, which is a biotechnology company focused on vaccines for public health, gene therapies targeting rare diseases in the retinal space, and cell therapies for regenerative medicine applications in cartilage repair. One key opportunity is to develop an inhalation vaccine that would be durable and efficient at preventing and controlling transmission of COVID and able to be combined with a flu vaccine. Shankar explains, "There is a linkage if you take some of these vaccines and gene therapies. Some of the processes we use to make gene therapies can also use similar processes for vaccines. So there is a shared science, a shared manufacturing platform, and shared expertise. And then if you take the biotech itself, cream-of-the-cream in the pharmaceutical industry, they work in cell and gene therapies and vaccines, very complex science." "If you have a mucosal vaccine, which will create antibodies in the respiratory tract and control where the virus enters, it can neutralize it. And also, if you have neutralizing antibodies in your respiratory tract where the virus enters, you'll not only neutralize what is entering, it'll prevent transmission or control transmission of the disease." "If we can move COVID into this annual booster, just like flu, we thought we could provide solutions for COVID, flu, and combination. So, imagine yourself walking into a CVS, and what Ocugen wants to do is provide solutions for customers. If you want only flu, you'll get your flu inhalation vaccine. You want only COVID, and you'll get that. If you want a combo, you're going to get a combo. So we created three different vaccines, COVID, flu and combination, using our inhalation technology and novel vector platform." #Ocugen #Vaccines #InhalationVaccines #InhaledVaccines #COVID #Flu ocugen.com Download the transcript here

Steve Glover, Co-founder and CEO of ZyVersa Therapeutics, focuses on rare kidney diseases and diseases with an inflammation component. Inflammasomes, the first response in the innate immune system, create an inflammation cascade. The ZyVersa approach targets multiple inflammasomes to address diseases caused by the malfunction of this response. Steve explains, "Inflammation drives a lot of different diseases. And as we get into this a little bit more today, it's everything from kidney disease such as rare diseases such as FSGS and Alport syndrome and diabetic kidney disease all have an inflammation component. And in addition to that, when you look at diseases like Alzheimer's or MS, or Parkinson's, they're inflammation driven as well. So there is a connection between the two disease classes." "I've been in the industry a long time, and every so often the industry finds a new interesting discovery, and inflammasomes are clearly one of those new discoveries. In fact, one of the things I talk about quite a bit is that ten years ago, there were about two or so publications that were available on inflammasomes. Now there are over 20,000 publications available on inflammasomes. And this whole concept of inflammation driving certain diseases has become an area of an immense amount of research and development of products that can inhibit the inflammation you don't want in the human body." "When inflammasomes go into overdrive and are left uninhibited, they can cause a lot of damage to organs and cells in the body. And so, for example, they drive a lot of different diseases, everything from cancers to diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and a whole host of CNS diseases, as well as non-CNS diseases, that are driven by this inflammasome activation. So it's really important to find a way to inhibit those cytokines by inhibiting the inflammasome." #ZyVersa $ZVSA #RareDisease #InflammatoryDiseases #KidneyDisease #RenalDisease #FSGS #FocalSegmentalGlomerulosclerosis #AlportSyndrome #DiabeticKidneyDisease #Inflammasomes ZyVersa.com Download the transcript here

Carly Newton is an apheresis expert at Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies, a medical device company that manufactures and designs systems that collect blood components and cells. Their software provides management tools to optimize procedures and help physicians better manage care. The largest patient group treated with red blood cell exchange are those with sickle cell disease and benefit from the Terumo iron-neutral therapy over a simple transfusion. Carly explains, "We've also got software technologies that many of our blood banks use and they're designed to get the most from blood donors when they go and present at a blood bank. So, for instance, instead of a blood donor just donating a bag of whole blood, our software can actually look at the starting counts of these donors and recommend what the blood donation center should collect from that donor to get the optimal cells from that patient." "The main goal of any transfusion therapy with sickle cell disease is to increase the oxygenation of the blood. There are different types of transfusion therapy and this is where we spend a lot of time educating physicians and patients on the different types of transfusion therapy. So probably the most common type of transfusion therapy for sickle cell patients in the US at the moment is something we call simple transfusions. And that's really sickle cell patients going into the hospital once or twice a month and having red cell infusions. The purpose of that is to increase the amount of healthy donor cells in these patients and increase oxygenation. " #Terumobct #RedBloodCellExchange #RBCX #SickleCellDisease #BloodBanks Terumobct.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Daniel Karlin, Chief Medical Officer at MindMed, is bringing an updated approach to developing an LSD-based drug to treat anxiety and depression. Instead of developing a psychiatric medicine to be taken every day, MindMed is changing the paradigm to a session-based therapy that uses psychedelic drugs and therapists to improve psychiatric health. As a trained psychiatrist, Dan works at the intersection of psychiatry and neuroscience with this psychedelic-assisted therapeutic approach to brain health. Dan elaborates, "For quite some time, I think it feels like psychiatry hasn't been meeting people there. Treatments have been more focused on symptomatic resolution and these sorts of things, and visits with psychiatrists can feel too short and it can be really hard to find and afford psychotherapy. I think that what people are responding to about LSD and other drugs like it and their therapeutic potential is the sense that they offer something more than what people are able to access today. That there's real hope that these are drugs that can help people get at the real reasons they feel the way they feel and come to understand themselves better and their role in the world." "There's another school of thought that the mechanism of these drugs is largely neurobiological and that the perceptual experience may not even be necessary. Of course, anytime we start to do binaries in biology, we're probably wrong. And it's probably some of both. And we operate under that hypothesis too, that the mechanism by which these drugs cause a psychedelic experience is very well explicated. The mechanism by which they cause lasting change isn't." @MindMedco #MNMD $MNMD #PsychedelicMedicines #PsychedelicTherapy #LSD #Psychedelics #MentalHealth #BrainHealth #PsychiatricHealth mindmed.co Download the transcript here

Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, CEO and Founder of Biotricity, shines a light on the need for better data about heart rhythm throughout the day, not just for a limited time. Biotricity has developed a non-invasive, cost-effective, available over-the-counter monitor that provides patients and cardiologists with a new level of understanding of heart activity and enhances diagnosis and disease management. Waqaas explains, "I'll take a step back to try to explain the problem that we were trying to solve. Dexcom created a continuous glucose monitor, saying that there are these data points that are in between when you're pricking your finger and collecting your information, which is quite valuable and insightful." "In the continuous heart monitoring world, or in the heart world, patients don't really have anything. You have an implantable loop recorder, which records your ECG continuously. But you have to be a high-risk patient, it's a very high cost to get that implanted, and when it comes to a non-invasive solution, you have a 30-second ECG. If we look at the criteria, the patient issues are asymptomatic. They happen while you're sleeping. If it's a 30-second or 3-minute ECG and you're sleeping and don't feel the symptom, you're not waking up to collect that information. And even if you were, by the time you wake up and get the device, that information is gone." #Biotricity #Cardiology #Cardiovascular #HeartDisease #Wearables #ContinuousHeartMonitoring biotricity.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Eddilisa Martin is the CEO and Founder of M & B Sciences, which has created the Neighborhood Trials online platform and app available in the Apple Store and the Google Store. Their mission is to drive more diversity in clinical trial participation by providing accessible information to patients, providers, and caregivers looking for therapies and opportunities for trials. Eddilisa explains, "When we talk about diversity, people most often think of race and ethnicity. And that's very, very important. But diversity means having representation across a whole spectrum of things. So whether that's age, whether it's your sexual preference, whether you live in the country versus the city, whether you have lots of comorbidities, lots of illnesses in conjunction with the disease that's being tested, or whether that's the only thing you have. There are a whole host of things that we're talking about when we say diversity." "But you hear people talk about their hesitancy to be a guinea pig. And so it really does help people to understand that things have changed from the way they used to be. People hear horror stories from years and years ago, but they don't realize all of the protections that are in place for patients now. So the FDA committee has oversight. There are all of these safety committees that are involved in every single clinical trial. There's a safety committee that's looking at results as they are going, so they're not waiting until the end of the trial and seeing if there are different side effects that are popping up. They're measuring that on an ongoing, continuous basis." #NeighborhoodTrials #ClinicalTrials #DecentalizedClinicalTrials #DiversityinClinicalTrials NeighborhoodTrials.com Download the transcript here

Eric Shaff is the President and CEO of Seres Therapeutics, which is focused on the gut microbiome in order to develop bacteria as an oral treatment for bloodstream infections, cancer, and immune system diseases. The first therapy is SER-109 for recurrent C. diff infection an orphan disease with inadequate solutions for patients. The starting point for Seres is that the health of the microbiome is the starting point for preventing infections from occurring. Eric explains, "The real susceptibility of someone getting C. diff is not just the bad actor bacteria. But really the susceptibility of the microbiome and an injury to the microbiome, and susceptibility to infection. Typically what happens is if people get antibiotic therapy, which can be very effective in knocking back or killing all bacteria, it creates a significant niche in the microbiome, or an injury. There is what we call a race to repair, so either a patient will naturally repair and restore their microbiome, or C. diff may infiltrate, which can lead to an infection and a recurrence." "Typically, if a patient is going to have a recurrence, it happens quickly. If they get C. diff, they take antibiotics, and the hope is that C. diff will not infiltrate to cause an occurrence. If it does, then people typically recur quickly. What happens following antibiotic therapy, is we treat patients with an oral regimen of SER-109, which is a consortium of bacteria in spore form you put in the capsule. That was the approach we took to our phase 3 study, where we had an 88% reduction in recurrence, which is a significant impact for patients suffering from this terrible disease." @SeresTX #SeresTherapeutics #Microbiome #OralMicrobiomeTherapy #Cdiff #RecurrentCdiff #AMR #AntimicrobialResistance #InfectionProtection serestherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Ashley Perry is the Chief Strategy and Solutions Officer at Socially Determined, a social risk analytics and solutions company working with payers, providers, and life science companies. Their Socialscope risk and data analytics platform helps organizations understand social determinants of health, identify and manage risk and advance equity for the populations they serve. These organizations are able to be data-driven and action-oriented to mitigate community and individual-level risk. Ashley explains, "The evidence is very clear from a multitude of sources that up to 80% of healthcare utilization, cost, outcomes, and, importantly also, equity are driven by non-clinical factors or non-medical cost drivers. That includes all aspects of everyday life. So, you think about factors like food insecurity and housing instability, transportation barriers, and health literacy challenges. We see consistently in the data that we look at every day the impact these factors have on those utilization costs and outcome measures. Our customers are ultimately focused on population health and the overall health and well-being of the communities and populations they serve." "Socialscape is a platform that assesses both community-level SDOH risk exposure for the entire United States as well as individual-level social risk factor scores for millions of adult Americans. Importantly, we do that across different domains. For example, on the community side, we look at factors like the economic climate, the housing environment, and the digital landscape. On the individual patient or member side, we look at factors like food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation barriers." "Across all of those different domains, we're able to quantify risk using a standardized one-to-five scale. One indicates little to no risk, five indicates severe risk. It empowers the organizations that we work with to be able to identify the contours and concentration of community-level risk for the markets that they're serving. As well as identify the segments of their overall population that they bear the risk for that face elevated risk across those different social domains." @SocDetermined #SDOH #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #ACOREACH #HealthEquity #SocialRisk #Data #DataAnalytics sociallydetermined.com Download the transcript here