The Bio Report

The latest reports on the coronavirus outbreak put the number of infections at nearly 75,000 and deaths at more than 2,100. Against the backdrop of the outbreak, we spoke to Evan Loh, chairman of the Antimicrobials Working Group and CEO of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, about the global changes that are fueling the threat of infectious disease outbreaks, the state of the antimicrobial arsenal, and what needs to be done to spur the development of new agents to combat the rise deadly bugs.

Orchestra BioMed may play at the intersection of drugs and devices, but’s its business strategy is clearly drawn from the biopharmaceutical industry. The company develops its pipeline and then leverages strategic alliances with global partners who can best commercialize its products and maximize their potential. We spoke to David Hochman, CEO of Orchestra BioMed, about the company’s therapeutic devices, the large market opportunities it is targeting, and how it seeks to rewrite the way medtech companies think about partnering.

Psychedelics have long been viewed as having potential to treat a range of mental health disorders including depression, addiction, PTSD, and ADHD. Government policies, though, have long impeded studies of their benefits. Mind Medicine is developing a pipeline of therapies based on psychedelics in the hopes of developing needed medicines for psychiatric conditions. Its lead experimental therapy is an ibogaine-derived molecule for the treatment of opioid addiction. We spoke to Steve Hurst, founder and CEO of MindMed, about the potential for psychedelic-based medicines, what’s known about them to date, and the challenges of working with these substances.

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.