Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Emily Hamilton is the Senior Vice President of Clinical Research at PeriGen, which is applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to early warning and clinical decision support in healthcare.  With a focus on labor and delivery, PeriGen is providing real-time information to clinicians to drive down the likelihood of birth-related brain injury. Emily explains, "So, what we have developed is an AI machine learning-based way of looking at the tracing to identify contractions, to notify nurses and doctors that there are excessive contractions, and that's gone on for a while. We've also used that to recognize patterns in the fetal heart rate, which indicate that the baby's not responding well to labor and to notify them of that so that they can intervene and prevent the adverse outcome." "Likewise, we can look at the labor, and we can compare a patient's labor to a group of similar women who are having the same frequency of contractions, a number of other variables, and indicate whether or not this labor is on course or whether or not it's slower or perhaps faster. It's all done in a very consistent, quantifiable way." @PeriGen #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #ML #WomensHealth #LaborandDelivery #BirthRelatedBrainInjury Perigen.com Download the transcript here

Arjan Haverhals is the CEO and President of Milestone Scientific, which is exploring how to modernize hypodermic syringe use. One application of their injection technology is for women during labor and delivery to inject the epidural needle more accurately and control the pain. Milestone is also looking at dentistry, chronic pain, neuro-surgery, and cosmetic medicine as additional opportunities to deliver more efficient, precise, and safer injections. Arjan provides a historical perspective, "Just to give you some background information from a study from last year. It was found that even when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, female patients' pain is often seen as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication as compared to men's pain. And I do believe that this gender gap in healthcare could lead to bias diagnoses related to chronic pain for women and may also explain why very little has changed in the field of epidural delivery. And any way we can aid in closing that gap is a win-win." "Now, if women go for labor and delivery these days, it is still a technology that is used stemming from the 1860s, and it is nothing more or less than a hypodermic syringe, later positioned in the medical field as the loss of resistance technique, which is a very manual, subjective way of placing the epidural needle in the epidural space. And the reason why we entered this field is a strong belief that we can solve the problems, and the associated risk factors, with this high-risk epidural analgesia procedure." @MilestoneSciInc #CompuFlov#WomensHealth #Pregnancy #LaborandDelivery #Epidural #DuralPuncture #MedicalDevice #MedTech MilestoneScientific.com Download the transcript here

Daniel Teper is the CEO and Founder of Cytovia Therapeutics and talks about using natural killer, NK, cells as an alternative to T-cells in immuno-oncology. He shares insights about the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, IPSC-derived NK cells, iNK cells, used by themselves or using their Flex-NK cell Engagers or in combination to address the challenges cancer patients face. Daniel elaborates, "That's also where the NK cells may have advantages over T-cells, in that it hasn't been reported that they cause CRS, GBHD, or other side effects that would require the patients to be kept in the hospital. Now, if we say the first iteration was derived from the patient's own blood, the second iteration is donor, the third generation, which we are one of a handful of companies to pursue and master, is the production of immune cells, including NK cells, from induced pluripotent stem cells." "We see also that you can direct the cells in two ways. You can direct the cells by inserting what's called a CAR, or chimeric antigen receptor, that's like a GPS on the cell. But alternatively, we can redirect the NK cells to kill the tumor cells by combining them with antibodies, and particularly with what we call NK engager antibodies. So our brand of NK engager antibodies is called Flex-NK cell engager antibodies. And what they do is that they have one arm that binds and activates the NK cell, and another arm that binds into the tumor cell, and the NK cells are redirected to kill the tumor cells." @Cytovia #CytoviaTX #Oncology #ImmunoOncology #Cancer #CancerTherapeutics #CellTherapeutics #NKCells #iNKCells #NaturalKillerCells CytoviaTX.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Phil Kantoff is the CEO and Co-Founder and Alex Brown is the COO of Convergent Therapeutics which is developing the next generation of targeted therapies to treat cancer. Drawing on insights from developments in radiopharmaceuticals, Convergent focuses on radioantibodies that are radioisotopes attached to antibodies directed to treat prostate cancer. Phil explains, "Antibodies will recognize surface molecules on cancer cells and they can be linked to radioisotopes. We are focused on an isotope known as Actinium-225, which is an important radioisotope because it's different than isotopes that have been previously used, it's an alpha-emitting radiopharmaceutical. Alpha particles are much larger, they're much more powerful, and they travel a shorter distance. You can deliver a very powerful, very targeted therapy to cancer." "We have clinical trials that are taking place right now that are showing remarkable activity using the combination of the directed antibody against prostate cancer cells, specifically prostate-specific membrane antigen coupled to this isotope, Actinium-225." Alex continues, "Our radioantibodies, which is what we're talking about here, are novel enough that there are few if any, examples of marketed products out there. It's a field that's emerging, so aside from having the experience in antibody development and commercialization, some of this is new to our team as well as to others." @ConvergentRx @DrPhilKantoff #ProstateCancer #Radiopharmaceuticals #PSMA #Radioantibody #RadioLingandTherapy #Oncology #Biotechnology ConvergentRx.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Eric Brouwer is the Chief Scientific Officer for SQI Diagnostics, which believes that lung health is human health.  Their focus is on the lung and ranges from COVID PCR, antigen, and antibody tests, across the spectrum to assessing lung transplant donors. With demand going up for lung transplants and new protocols for COVID screening of donors, diagnostic tests help better identify good candidates for organ donors. Eric elaborates, "We're a Canadian-based company, and we have the distribution rights in Canada for a technology that was developed by the US military. The product is called Biomeme, and it's a portable PCR analyzer. So it does very rapid thermocycling that will enable the results to be delivered in just over two hours." "This is deployed in mines and remote locations, on TV and film crew sets, and so that technology exists. We're using it, and that really makes that testing cycle reduced, so we can get same-morning tests, same-day testing, versus sending it in to a central lab which has the travel time, which has the review time, which has the execution time, that's pushing four to eight, sometimes 24 hours, before those results can get back. So the technology is out there, and it's becoming more widely available." #SQI #COVID #COVIDTesting #PCRTest #Lungs #LungTransplants #Antibodies #Inflammation #LungDiagnostics #TransplantDiagnostics #PrecisionMedicine SQIDiagnostics.com Download the transcript here

Dave Lareau is the CEO of Medicomp Systems, which has spent 44 years working with providers to understand better the kinds of information that is most relevant to a diagnosis and therapeutic approach.  With 400,000 concepts and tens of millions of relevancy links and mappings to data, Medicomp is prepared to handle the flood of information expected with the standardization of person-centered care. Just finalized in January, TEFCA, the Trusted Exchange Framework, and Common Agreement is expected to provide an infrastructure for sharing information. Dave explains, "So there's a new era starting in healthcare, which is the data belongs to the patient. It doesn't belong to the provider or the organization. And now there's a framework in place for sharing it, a trusted framework. It's right in the name, TEFCA. And I think it's going to open up new possibilities, new opportunities, new challenges. And for the first time, the patient will be able to participate in the viewing and managing of their own care. It will radically change the way that people interact with information all along the continuum of care." @MedicompSys #TEFCA #ElectronicHealthRecords #EHR #DataExchange #Interoperability Medicomp.com Download the transcript

Wei Escala is the founder and CEO of Eggschain, the first biotech on the Bitcoin blockchain. This blockchain-integrated approach brings order to the management of tracking patient  and biospecimen information. Their goal is to bring the healthcare industry to Web3 through decentralization. Wei explains, "We're the first blockchain-enabled and blockchain-integrated inventory management and chain-of-custody solution for tracking all biospecimens. When I say all biospecimens, I mean sperm, eggs, embryos, genome, stem cells, tissues, organs, DNA and RNA, and more. So, essentially, we are the bridge between biology and blockchain. And our goal is to bring the healthcare industry to Web3 through decentralization." "Yes, a blockchain-integrated platform helps tackle the problem of centralized records. Let me talk about what might be some of the issues of centralized records. Centralized records can be lost or can become inaccessible in times of need. And we all have heard that centralized records can be corrupted and can also be hacked. So, a blockchain approach, through decentralization, brings an added layer of security or backup to the current system." @Eggschain #Eggschain #Blockchain #DigitalHealth #HealthRecords #Web3 Eggschain.com Download the transcript here

Bill Stilley is the CEO and President of Adial Pharmaceuticals, which is focused on developing medicinal therapies for the treatment and prevention of addiction.  Their first drug is a genetically targeted drug to treat alcohol use disorder, otherwise known as alcoholism. Bill explains, "Yes, in the end, a lot of diseases are based on our genetics, and addiction seems to have some genetic components. I mean, for decades, it's been known that people that have had family members with an alcohol use problem have a much higher rate, and the numbers thrown around a lot are a nine times greater likelihood to have the problem themselves. Of course, some of that's going to be due to an environment, but it's clear that there's a genetic component." "So, we believe that we have identified some defects in the serotonin system of certain patients which will allow them to respond to treatment with our drug, which is a serotonin-3 receptor blocker. By that, I mean what it seems to indicate in clinical trials to date, is that we can reduce the craving that these patients have that's driven through their serotonin system to encourage them where they have a need to drink, rather than just a desire to drink." "In our phase 2 study, which is a 283 patient clinical trial that was run with our drug, patients that were on the drug that had the right genetics reduced the frequency of their drinking by almost 50%. When they drank, they reduced the amount they drank by almost 60%. So they picked up the bottle less often, and when they picked it up, they could put it back down. We think this is a really meaningful result for these people." @AdialPharma #Addiction #AlcoholUseDisorder #Alcoholism #AddictionTreatment #MentalHealth adialpharma.com Download the transcript here  

Dr. Mark Berman is the Chief Medical Officer at Better Therapeutics, using a prescription digital therapeutic to treat diseases caused by human behavior, particularly type II diabetes. While PDT model might be expected to be effective with younger patients, clinical trial data is revealing that older patients 60+ are getting the most benefit in blood sugar reduction from this approach. Mark elaborates, "We are, at Better Therapeutics, trying to pioneer a prescription digital therapeutics platform with the intent of treating a whole host of cardiometabolic conditions, starting first with type II diabetes. Then moving on to other related cardiometabolic conditions that all share their roots in health behaviors that really drive the pandemic of disease that we're seeing in cardiometabolic health. And so, at Better Therapeutics, we're bringing about this platform to enable scalable means of treating those root causes of cardiometabolic conditions." "The notion of prescription digital therapeutic is that instead of prescribing yet another drug to help those types of patients, they're going to prescribe an FDA regulated mobile medical app, a prescription digital therapeutic, which is easy to fill, and it comes directly onto the patient's smartphone. And from there, it's the job of the digital therapeutic to really personalize the therapy for the patient. We don't believe that the providers have the time or the ability to really get very granular into the nature of the behavioral therapy. We really need to rely on the digital therapeutic to do that personalized work about what behaviors to target and how to be effective in each patient." @Better_TX #DigitalTherapeutics #DigitalHealth #PDT  #PrescriptionDigitalTherapeutic #Type2Diabetes #MobileHealth BetterTX.com Download the transcript here      

Dr. Tom Lendvay is the Chief Medical Officer of Tend, which addresses the gut microbiome of the severe intestinal infection Clostridium difficile CDIF. Currently, recurrent Clostridium difficile is the only FDA-regulated disease for the use of microbiome transplants outside of a clinical trial. Clinical trials are also underway applying microbiome transplants to intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, and even other diseases outside of the gut. Tom explains, "Tend is focused on two types of offerings. One is a device called the CAP device, a collection processing device that allows a clinician or a researcher to collect a sample and process it, mix it, filter it and encapsulate it into orally ingestible capsules that can be stored in a freezer." "The other side is the data side, which is understanding. So, doing microbiome analyses on the donors, on the recipient ill patients and seeing how their microbiome changes over time and learning who's the best donor for the best recipient. Those two offerings do not exist today, and right now, the process for a clinician, for a researcher to provide microbiome transplants to their patients is extremely onerous and laborious." @Tend_Health #FMT #CDIF #Microbiome #GutMicrobiome #MedicalDevice #Healthcare #Patient tend-health.com Download the transcript here