Empowered Patient Podcast

Michael Smith is the Chief Commercial Officer of Sonendo, a commercial-stage medtech company taking on saving teeth from tooth decay by driving changes in root canal surgery and outcomes.  The GentleWave procedure brings innovation to root canal therapy by using a software-controlled fluid management system that can predictably clean and disinfect the inside of the tooth. Michael elaborates, "If you think about dentistry, you can probably categorize it into three distinct segments -- those companies who move teeth, so the orthodontic companies, those who replace teeth, the implant companies, and then those who are focused on saving teeth. That's really been our focus. Tooth decay's the most prevalent chronic disease globally. So our mission is to save teeth and improve lives." "I think that the reality is that root canal therapy is an end-stage of the disease state. It starts with something that's much more minor. The alternative really is that the tooth is extracted. So any technology that can improve that patient experience takes away some of the anxiety that patients have around either going to the dentist, the endodontist or having a root canal therapy. You can imagine how easy that is for patients to relate to it. And we feel that not only is this a significant market, but the technology that we have makes a real difference to the patient experience, but also the way the doctors treat it as well." #Sonendo #GentleWave #GentleWaveProcedure #Endodontics #RootCanal #RootCanalTherapy #RootCanalSurgery #ToothDecay #Teeth #OralHealth Sonendo.com Download the transcript here

Dr. John Bellettiere is the assistant professor of epidemiology at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. Alexis Garduno is a third-year student in the UC San Diego and San Diego State University joint doctoral program in public health and the first author in a multi-institutional research effort better to understand the impact of physical activity on health. Their recently released study analyzed data about the total steps taken per day, the intensity of the walking, and the risk of development of Type 2 diabetes in postmenopausal women. Study results indicated that for each 2,000 additional steps per day, there was a 12% reduction in diabetes risk. John elaborates, "Well, we set out to understand how steps per day was related to incident diabetes in older women. Long have we known that physical activity is important for the prevention of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But for a long time, we have not been able to measure with good accuracy the everyday movements that people make. Previously, we had to ask individuals how much physical activity do you engage in on a given day. And so, with those self-reports, it's hard for people to remember and give good estimates. And we also don't get high resolution on how many steps they're able to take." Alexis explains, "We followed these women for up to approximately 6.9 years, and we had questionnaire data about their medical history, which we also validated with a physician diagnosis and showed high agreement between the physician diagnosis and the questionnaire data. And then all of our physical activity measures were taken from these women wearing the accelerometer." "It's important to think about where you're at and any increase in your daily movement, whether that's remembering to take an extra walk around the block or starting off your morning a little bit more active. All of those steps will make a difference regardless of how active you are at the starting point." @JohnBellettiere @Garduno_Alexis #Type2Diabetes #Diabetes #HealthyAging #Accelerometer Study published in Diabetes Care Download the transcript

Dr. Katherine Iscoe is the Co-Founder and CEO of Advanced Human Imaging.  AHI has developed image processing technology for the body, face, and skin along with health-related risk assessment models for their individual healthcare partners. The analysis of these images can identify early warning signs for a wide range of diseases, including determining if a mole on the skin is benign or potentially cancerous. Katherine explains, "It's big technology in a very small space, that's for sure. We have developed an on-device capturing technology, where we use the phone's camera to capture images of the human body, or it could be the face. And then we take the information that's stored within those images." "Often, we look at a photograph, and we just think, "That's very pretty." Still, there's so much data within those images, and we use that data to process that information within the device. So that's quite important because the images never leave the device." "The output of this processing of data is incredibly accurate results. The data can be used to provide biometrics, which is just this fancy word for measurements of the human body. So these could be everything from your waist or your hip circumference, but the combination of these data points can also be used for health risk markers, such as the relationship between your waist and hip. We know that central adiposity is a very strong marker for future metabolic risk, such as syndrome X." @HumanImaging #HealthTech #FitnessTech #BodyScan #FaceScan #DermaScan #DigitalHealth #MedTech ahi.tech Download the transcript here  

Dr. Travis Mickle is the President and CEO of KemPharm, a clinical clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company. KemPharm is building on their successful launch of AZSTARYS for ADHD to treat rare sleep disorders like idiopathic hypersomnia as well as sleep disorders that are a symptom of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Travis explains, "We focused most of our history in the CNS area on a broad base, but idiopathic hypersomnia is now a rare sleep disorder. In the past, we focused on ADHD and pain and larger patient populations. But now, I think, we're focusing more on specific needs of patients with severe, debilitating diseases." "As an example, our lead product that just got approved last year, AZSTARYS, for ADHD, we thought, well, perhaps it would be better if that product could last longer, as well as have less abuseability." "That prodrug now makes the basis for our KP1077 for idiopathic hypersomnia. So, you can see how one product can actually have an impact in many different areas when you make a new, improved prodrug form." @KemPharm #SDX #SleepDisorders #CNS #ADHA #Prodrug #IdiopathicHypersomnia #AZSTARYS #RareDiseases KemPharm.com Download the transcript here

John Glasspool is the CEO of Anthos Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on high-risk cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Anthos is developing innovative therapies for treating thrombosis or more commonly known as clots that are caused by a stroke or heart attack. The current agents, while protecting from a clot, also cause more frequent bleeding. The main unmet need is to give protection from the clots while not having the patient bleed.  John explains, "People that are at risk of these are elderly people who obviously have some changes in the dynamics of their vessels. The other area that's of particular common occurrence is in patients undergoing cancer. And even, in fact, the development of a clot sometimes is the first sign for patients with cancer in their disease prognosis and diagnosis." "We're developing a factor XI agent. In fact, it's a dual activity factor XI and XIa. What that really means from a patient perspective is we believe that we can pharmacologically uncouple the prevention of your pathological thrombosis, your clot, and yet leave intact your normal hemostasis. If you have a bleed, you clot normally, but we don't increase the bleeding by interfering with normal hemostasis. In our ideal world, and we need to prove this clinically, the drug is still in development, we stop clots while not increasing bleeding." @Anthos_Tx #Abelacimab #Anticoagulant #Thrombosis #Hemostasis AnthosTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Robert Foster is the CEO and Founder of Hepion Pharmaceutical which is developing Rencofilstat, a drug in the category of cyclophilin inhibition to target cyclophilins a specific type of enzyme that is present in all humans. These cyclophilins perform a number of functions and are responsible to some extent for the formation of collagen which can lead to events like inflammation and scarring of the liver as well as other liver diseases. Robert explains, "Liver disease is, unfortunately, way too common. A lot of us are used to eating fatty foods, lots of sugars, processed foods, things like that. It tends to lead to fatty liver disease, which is just way too prevalent. We estimate one in four people globally that have a fatty liver. Then if we let it progress by not losing weight, exercising, and doing all the right things from a dietary standpoint and just a general health standpoint, it can lead to something called NASH. "NASH is an acronym that stands for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Probably about 20% of people with a fatty liver will develop NASH. Within the North American context as well, probably 5% to 10% of the population will have NASH. NASH is one of the leading causes of the development of liver cancer. Unfortunately, it's a little bit too common, and it's a global problem." "So, there are all these different cyclophilins that do all these different things in terms of driving disease forward. Rencofilstat is a once-a-day oral medication. By giving this medication to people, our hope sincerely is that we can reverse a lot of the things that are leading to this liver disease." "But together with myself, we have collectively over 100 years of experience only in this class called cyclophilin inhibition. Really, just about all we know is cyclophilin inhibition, and drugs developed around this whole body of knowledge." @HepionPharma #LiverDisease #Fibrosis #NASH #NonAlcoholicSteatohepatitis #HCC #Cyclophilins #CyclophilinInhibition  HepionPharma.com Download the transcript here

Dave Rosa is the President and CEO of NeuroOne and an entrepreneur with extensive experience in the medical device industry.  NeuroOne is developing and commercializing thin-film high-definition electrode technology that can dramatically improve neurosurgery where typically, multiple surgeries are needed for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Using a photolithographic process to print out these circuits is a distinct advantage over the outdated approach to manufacturing electrodes by hand. Dave elaborates, "Another key piece of what we're looking to accomplish is to really reduce the number of surgeries that a patient has to undergo by combining multiple functions using the same device. So, when I refer to electrode functions, what I'm really talking about is the ability to record electrical activity in the brain, or other areas of the body, stimulate the tissue for therapeutic purposes, or perform an ablation, which is basically destroying problematic tissue that patients would have if they had epilepsy." "All the commercially available electrodes that are cleared by the FDA are fairly thick and not flexible. That becomes really important, the flexibility and thinness when you're trying to insert these through minimally invasive procedures. So, for example, in the spine, the thinness and flexibility of our device allow you to basically roll it up into a tube and push it through a needle, which is commonly used in back surgery procedures. Or you can create smaller holes in the skull to insert these electrodes, as opposed to having to remove the entire part of the skull." @N1MTC #Electrodes #ThinFilmElectrodes #ParkinsonsDisease #Neurosurgery #BrainSurgery #Epilepsy #Depression #ChronicBackPain #MedicalDevices n1mtc.com Download the transcript here  

Tim Dyer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Addex Therapeutics, which is focusing on the pharmacology known as allosteric modulation. This emerging class of small molecule drugs known as allosteric modulators is being explored for treating central nervous system and neurologic disorders, particularly movement disorders like dyskinesia associated with Parkinson's and dystonia. Addex did not invent allosteric modulation but is pioneering the screening technologies to find these difficult to locate molecules. Tim explains, "In the conventional world, which people probably know a lot about, are the orthosteric agonists and antagonists. These molecules are binding to the active site. The way to understand, in simple terms, the difference between an allosteric and an orthosteric drug is to use an analogy of the dimmer light switch." "If you think about the dimmer light switch, you're initially turning the light on-- that would be the orthosteric agonist. Turning the light off would be the orthosteric antagonist, and what Addex is, is the dimmer. We leave the body in charge of turning the light on, so to speak, and then the Addex, allosteric modulator, if it's a positive modulator, we are really turning up the intensity of the light. If it is a negative modulator, we are turning down the intensity, so we're really modulating the intensity of the signal." @AddexPharma #AllostericModulators #CNSDrugDiscovery #NeurologicDrugDiscovery #DrugDevelopment #ParkinsonsDisease #Dyskinesia #Dystonia #Blepharospasm #MovementDisorders Addextherapeutics.com Download the transcript here  

Erica Jain is the Co-Founder and CEO of Healthie, a software as a service (SaaS) platform and family of APIs that allow healthcare providers to move more easily to a digital environment to interact with patients. Erica explains, "Healthie serves organizations in over 25 specialties and verticals and healthcare. We got started in the nutrition and behavioral health space, and we have thousands of dietitians and health coaches that use our platform to deliver longitudinal care. We also work with digital healthcare startups, universities, and grocery stores, all of whom are popping up in scaling these virtual first experiences." "The beauty of the problem that we solve is that companies are able to come to us, save two years and millions of dollars to prop up and scale the virtual care delivery. And by virtue of us having both an out-of-the-box solution, but coupling that with an API first experience means that really, we're able to see our organizations get started with us, experiment with us, and figure out how they want to deliver clinical care and clinical outcomes. They can also leverage our API to create, over time, those pixel-perfect experiences that they want to deliver to their clients." @GetHealthie @EricaAJain #DigitalHealth #MedTech #SaaS #VirtualCare #Startups #Healthcare gethealthie.com Download the transcript here    

Eric Adams is the CEO and President of InMed Pharmaceuticals, exploring the benefits of rare cannabinoids from the cannabis plant. We have these naturally occurring cannabinoids in our body and a number of receptors throughout our body that respond to this class of compounds. Because these rare cannabinoids exist in low quantities in the plant, they have been hard to isolate or extract, which has limited research into their therapeutic value. InMed has developed ways to economically manufacture bioidentical compounds and investigate potential benefits for treating eye and skin disorders. Eric elaborates, "InMed Pharmaceuticals is a global leader in the manufacturing, clinical development, and commercialization of non-intoxicating, rare cannabinoids. We have two branches to the company. One is the pharmaceutical drug development program where we're taking the traditional clinical trial, FDA pathway approach to bringing important medicines to market for hard t  treat diseases. On the other hand, we also have a group that is manufacturing rare cannabinoids for the health and wellness space, so things that will be sold over the counter, such as the CBD mark t, for instance. Those two sides are joined by manufacturing know-how and a general understanding of this class of compounds that we call rare cannabinoids." @InMedPharma #cannabinoids #rarecannabinoids #rarecannabinoid #cannabinol #CBN #glaucoma #minorcannabinoids #ophthalmology #epidermolysisbullosa #rarediseases #science #pharma InMedPharma.com Download the transcript here