Empowered Patient Podcast

Manolo Bellotto, PhD is General Manager and President Gain Therapeutics and dedicated to redefining drug discovery through the use of supercomputers and proprietary algorithms to understand rare diseases and diseases where there is a high medical need related to protein misfolding. These indications include cancer, neurodegenerative, metabolic and inflammatory diseases. While traditional drug discovery around protein misfolding was through high-throughput screening, Gain can efficiently identify a select group of molecules that can potentially correct misfolding or induce misfolding of specific proteins.  In a short period of time, using a personalized approach in each different target, they have the biological characterization to see if they can intervene on the protein, potentially leading to a pharmacological solution. @GainThera #ProteinMisfolding #DrugDiscovery #RareDisease #Oncology #LysosomalStorageDisorders #Neurodegenerative #Supercomputer #technology #ComputationalChemistry GainTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

Tim Aumueller is the Co-CEO of Avidon Health and an expert on combining digital solutions and human coaching to help patients living with chronic diseases make lifestyle changes.  While drugs will most likely always be part of a treatment plan, direct behavior change science is demonstrating the impact that healthy behaviors have on prevention and mitigation of chronic diseases especially those related to obesity. With a focus on the different elements of meaningful engagement, Avidon is deploying Engagement Rx to take into account learning style and preferred method of communication to provide the appropriate mixture of personalized support and online guidance. The key is to see the patient as more than the medical condition and coming up with an approach that fits with their lifestyle and encourages healthy behavior changes. It is also critical to measure progress and when goals are accomplished. @Avidonhealth #digitalhealth #mhealth #chronicdiseases #precisionmedicine #personalizedmedicine AvidonHealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Kate Burke is Senior Medical Advisor at PatientsLikeMe and Jed is a patient leader, advocate and patient with a range of conditions including ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and Lyme disease. They join me on the podcast to talk about the robust online community PatientsLikeMe and how it helps patients with rare diseases take charge of their health and helps life science organizations better understand patient needs. By integrating medical data from a variety of sources, the site helps patients share that data with their care team and make more informed healthcare choices.  The community also encourages connections amongst those suffering from the same rare disease and facilitates participation in virtual or semi-virtual clinical trials. COVID-19 forced a re-evaluation of the power of online access for this community. Many of the barriers for participating in live group activities have been removed by going online and both Kate and Jed agree the changes are here to stay. @PatientsLikeMe #rarediseases #digitalhealth #ankylosingspondylitis #AS #COVID19 PatientsLikeMe.com Download the transcript here

Vlado Bosanac is Co-Founder of Advanced Human Imaging, a B2B tech company based in Australia.  Using the camera on a smart phone, their applications can accurately track 12,000 data points across the human form to give a number of the markers that a doctor would look at. Giving this sort of information to individuals allows them to understand their health in a new way and facilitates preventative care, telehealth visits and chronic disease monitoring. One of the applications DermaScan is a unique patient AI technology that draws on the world's largest skin database and can identify 588 different skin conditions across 133 categories. and provides early warning signs of skin cancer and other skin conditions. FaceScan uses transdermal imaging to image the blood flow within the face to report back vital signs. Working with health app developers, insurers, care groups and health and fitness organizations, Advanced Human Imaging is finding ways to encourage participation through gamification and rewards to empower users to track progress and changes. @MyFiziq #mhealth #telehealth #personalizedmedicine #skincancer #diabetesmonitoring #digitalhealth AdvancedHumanImaging.com Download the transcript here

Kistein Monkhouse is the Founder of Patient Orator, a start-up that is focused on providing services to racial and ethnic minorities, lower-income communities, the elderly, LGBT communities and other people who are marginalized or underrepresented in receiving healthcare. With a focus on systemic racism and implicit bias, this app is being developed to help patients overcome communication barriers, data silos, and the imbalance of power between the patient and medical professionals. Addressing the social determinants of health SDOH is top of mind in the improvement of population health particularly in the age of COVID-19. @patientorator #patientdata #populationhealth #precisionhealth #socialdeterminantsofhealth #SDOH #healthcaredata #COVID19 PatientOrator.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Marc Hedrick, President and CEO, PLUS Therapeutics describes the challenges of fighting brain cancers like glioblastoma. The PLUS lead investigational asset Rhenium NanoLiposome (RNL) delivers radiation directly to the tumor using a method called Convection Enhanced Delivery.  This approach allows the neurosurgeon to put catheters directly into the brain by using stereotactic brain biopsy, imaging and software driven planning bypassing the normal structures and delivering 20 or more times the amount of radiation than can be delivered by external beam radiation. @PLUStxinc #braincancer #braintumor #GBM #Glioblastoma #RNL #Oncology #RareDisease #Neurosurgery #Nanotechnology #radiotherapy #pharmaceuticals #NIH #FDA #OrphanDrug #FastTrack $PSTV PLUSTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here

John Mulcahy PhD, President and CEO, SiteOne Therapeutics talks about broadening their pipeline from acute pain to hypersensitivity disorders like chronic cough and itching. Approach is to inhibit voltage-gated subtype sodium channel Nav1.7, a genetically validated target for pain. Stopping the pain signal in the peripheral nervous system before it gets to the spinal cord avoids some of the liabilities with existing pain medication like opioids. Lead candidate is now an intravenous analgesic showing proof of concept for the treatment of acute pain and itch. #pain #hypersensitivity #sodiumchannels #opioids SiteOneTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here  

Michael McCullar, CEO and Hong Tang, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer OnQuality Pharmaceuticals describe the pipeline they are building to address unmet clinical needs in the area of oncology supportive care for skin rashes such as Hand-Foot Skin Reaction and GI toxicities like chemotherapy-induced diarrhea.  As leaders in the emerging oncodermatology and oncogastroenterology fields, the mission is to develop cancer supportive care drugs to deal with the most common toxicities to make it easier for patients to tolerate their cancer treatments. @OnQualityRx #cancer #cancertherapy #cancerresearch #chemotherapy #supportivecare #cancertherapeutics #pharma OnQualityRx.com Download the transcript here

Richard Brand, Chief Financial Officer, DiaCarta discusses precision molecular diagnostics that are being used for early detection of cancer. By using liquid biopsy technology, blood draw can be used for early detection and monitoring of people who have cancer and avoiding the need for a physical biopsy.  Also a radiation therapy and chemotherapy tests are supporting personalized medicine for those undergoing treatment who are at the extreme tails of the population - either very sensitive to it or have a very robust response - so as to better determine appropriate dosage.  @DiaCarta_DX #DiaCarta #liquidbiopsy #earlycancerdetection #precisionmedicine #personalizedmedicine #coloncancer DiaCarta.com Download the transcript here

Rick Anderson, President and General Manager of North America, DarioHealth discusses how the company is leading the way on digital therapeutics combining digital technologies, artificial intelligence, software, and human coaching to help people manage chronic conditions including hypertension, diabetes, obesity and back pain. Patients are getting digital coaching, specific suggestions, feedback and support on the device of their choice through dynamic personalized programs.  Studies across a variety of conditions are showing consistent improvement, maintenance, and significant reduction in pain. @DarioHealth #ChronicConditionManagement #DigitalHealth #AI #DigitalTherapeutics #BackPain #Diabetes #DiabetesManagement DarioHealth.com Download the transcript here