The Bio Report

The difficulty in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease and identifying it at its earliest stages when interventions offer the best opportunity for success, is one of the critical challenges in addressing the neurodegenerative condition. CorTechs Labs has developed quantitative analysis software that allows physicians to analyze brain images to diagnose and monitor patients with the diseases. We spoke to Chris Airriess, CEO of CorTechs, about the difficulty in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease today, how its technology works, and its efforts to marry its software to genetic data as a way to identify and monitor people who may be at risk of developing the disease.

As people age, the ability of their eyes to focus on objects near to them weakens. The condition, known as presbyopia, affects more than 1.8 billion people worldwide. Though reading glasses provide a solution to the problem, Orasis Pharmaceuticals is developing a corrective eyedrop it says will provide an alternative. We spoke to Elad Kedar, CEO of Orasis, about aging eyes, its experimental eye drop intended to allow people to free themselves from a dependency on reading glasses, and how it works.

Ben Zeskind likens Immuneering’s platform technology to noise-cancelling headphones. Infact, the company’s use of the term “Disease Cancelling Technology” speaks directly to that. The approach, he says, allows the company to build a pipeline of drug candidate that address aspects of disease that have eluded tradition drug development approaches. We spoke Zeskind, CEO of Immuneering, about the company’s evolution from its roots in bioinformatics, its movement into drug development, and how its proprietary platform technology works.

One reason immunotherapies fail is because of the ability to tumors to alter the microenvironment in which they exist and hide themselves from detection by the immune system. In some indications, as few as 20 percent of patients benefit from checkpoint inhibitors. Oncolytics Biotech is developing pelareorep, an immune-oncolytic virus that activates the innate and adaptive immune systems, triggering inflammation in the tumor, and overexpressing checkpoints to increase the number of patients that can benefit from the use of checkpoint inhibitors. We spoke to Matt Coffey, president and CEO of Oncolytics Biotech, about Pelareorep, how it works to treat cancer, and why it can make checkpoint inhibitors more effective.

The brain converts short-term memories into long-term memories through the formation and stabilization of new connections between neurons. Tetra Therapeutics is working to treat cognitive impairment and memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease by developing an experimental therapy intended to stabilize these connections. We spoke to Mark Gurney, CEO of Tetra Therapeutics, about memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease, the company’s experimental therapy to treat the condition, and a recent study he was involved in that suggest TNF inhibitors may provide protection against the condition in patients with autoimmune conditions.

A holiday tradition at The Bio Report is to take a moment to reflect on the year past and look ahead to the new year with Adam Feuerstein, senior writer and national biotech columnist for STAT. We talked to Feuerstein about some of the highs and lows of the year in biotech, a few of the big stories he followed, and the big fourth quarter for biotech stocks. Feuerstein offers us a look at the best and worst CEO of 2019, the upcoming JPMorgan conference, and what to watch in 2020. Last week we released an additional episode of the podcast that featured the Himalayan Cataract Project (https://soundcloud.com/levine-media-group/an-effort-to-eradicate-preventable-blindness), which is working to eradicate preventable blindness throughout the world. There are 18 million people in the developing world who are unable to perform the tasks of daily living because of easily treatable cataracts that can be addressed with a fast and inexpensive procedure. We’re helping raise $100,000 through a GoFundMe Campaign (https://gate.sc/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcharity.gofundme.com%2Fo%2Fen%2Fcampaign%2Fgiving-the-gift-of-sight-in-ethiopia-and-eritrea&token=26d7bc-1-1577387027965) to bring the organization back to Ethiopia and Eritrea, where on a recent trip to the region they performed 4,300 sight-saving surgeries. If you’d like to learn more, have a listen to the special episode in our feed. We’ll include a link at the bottom of this week’s episode to the campaign. Thanks to all who gave and if you haven’t, we encourage you to consider making a contribution to this cause.

We spend a lot of time on The Bio Report talking about innovation. We are living at a time of great scientific advances that are translating into remarkable therapies that are changing people’s lives. Sometimes, though, the type of innovation needed to address a global health problem has more to do with access and delivery than technology. This was brought home to me when my friend Menghis Bairu, an Eritrean-born physician, life sciences executive, and philanthropist, returned from a recent trip. Menghis had gone to Ethiopia and Eritrea, where he worked with the Himalayan Cataract Project. HCP is working to eradicate curable blindness. There are some 18 million people in the developing world who are unable to perform the tasks of daily living because of easily treatable cataracts that can be addressed with a fast and inexpensive procedure. During a one-week period in these countries, the organization performed nearly 4,500 sight-saving surgeries and provided training to doctors in there. We spoke to Matt Oliva, associate clinical professor in the division of international ophthalmology at the Casey Eye Institute and Oregon Health Sciences University, and a member of the Himalayan Cataract Project board who is involved in the clinical and programmatic direction of HCPs outreach in Ethiopia, about the burden of blindness in the developing world, the global health need HCP is addressing, and its model for delivering care and training to cure preventable blindness. We’re doing this special edition of The Bio Report podcast to help Menghis’ fundraising efforts to bring HCP back to Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2020. The campaign is seeking to raise $100,000. We’ve provided a link to the GoFundMe campaign (https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/giving-the-gift-of-sight-in-ethiopia-and-eritrea). We encourage all of our listeners to consider making a contribution to support the effort.

Inhaled insulin has been one of those biotech ideas that have seemed better on paper than in practice. Huge investments have been made to carry these products through challenging development only to end in market flops. Aerami Therapeutics, a company founded by one of the pioneers in the field, is advancing its version of inhaled insulin and building a pipeline of other inhaled biologics behind it We spoke to Anne Whitaker, CEO of Aerami, about its pursuit of inhaled insulin, why she believes the company will be able to avoid the pitfalls others have faced, and the case for delivering insulin and other biologics through the lung with its technology.

In August, Nabriva Therapeutics won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for Xenleta for the treatment of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia in adults. It was the first new antibiotic with a novel mechanism of action approved by the FDA in nearly two decades for the condition. We spoke to Ted Schroeder, CEO of Nabriva about Xenleta’s unique mechanism of action, why it may be less prone to the development of resistance, and why policymakers still need to take additional steps to spur development of novel antibiotics.

Healthcare decisions are often flawed because of the limited information on which they are based. But with the growing ability to capture massive amounts of data digitally and apply artificial intelligence to its analysis, there is a growing potential to gain better insights into healthcare and improve patient outcomes. Komodo Health has an ambitious plan to do that with its AI-drive platform that captures 15 million patient encounters with the healthcare system daily to provide a real-time picture of patients and their various encounters. We spoke to Aswin Chandrakantan, chief medical officer and senior vice president of corporate development at Komodo Health, about the changing data landscape, how Big Data has the potential to reshape healthcare decision-making, and what it is enabling everyone from patient groups to payers to do differently.