Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Alice Martin is the Co-Founder of Dermanostic, the largest teledermatology resource in Europe. Their vision is to give access to a dermatologist to everyone worldwide with a rapid diagnosis and suggested therapy, including prescriptions. While many skin conditions are not life-threatening and are often seen as unimportant by physicians, they impact the quality of life and are treatable. Alice explains, "We have a lot of patients with skin cancer, white and also black skin cancer melanoma, for example, and it's so easy to just make the pictures because we can see the criteria for malignancy. The patients don't want to go to the appointment because they don't have any symptoms. It's just skin, the area that is growing, and by having such easy access, they are sending the pictures. They are getting the diagnosis before it's starting to make any metastases." "So the application is available, for example, on the Apple Play Store or Google Play Store, and you can download it in your language. It's also availabl

Patty Hayward is the Vice President of Industry Strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Talkdesk which is working with payer and provider organizations, life sciences companies, and other clients in the healthcare and life sciences areas.  Its mission is to synchronize data streams so that there is a convenient way for care providers and patients to receive healthcare information and services using their channel of choice. Patty elaborates, "People are really looking for that kind of convenience, and I think that's a radical shift from where we've been in the provider space, where it's really, you hang a sign outside and people came to you. You didn't do as much of the big outreach and marketing unless you were in really congested marketplaces. Even then it was very traditional in how you went about marketing." "I think today that's really shifted. A lot of folks that we're talking to are really looking to digitize their contact centers, digitize their patient experience, and trying to look at things in

Terry Weber is the CEO of BioTE and is on a mission to educate medical professionals about the need to address the hormone levels in patients as they age. With a personalized approach, BioTE focuses on providing hormone therapy to help patients maintain their quality of life and not just be dismissed as getting old when they report discomfort, sexual dysfunction, and loss of muscle mass.   Terry explains, "At BioTE we don't just do hormone treatment. We try to optimize the individual's hormones, and that would be estrogen and testosterone, both for men and women. Testosterone's very important for women. Also, looking at the thyroid and adrenals. What we look to see is how do we balance those hormones in the individuals so that they really feel their absolute best. We take blood tests, and we have very in-depth questionnaires because everyone's reaction to hormone levels is very personal." "BioTE's history has been to focus on putting a light on testosterone for women because it's such a critical hormone. Most

Dr. Diem Nguyen is the CEO of Xalud Therapeutics, a DNA delivery gene therapy company striving to develop and deliver medicines for large, broad-based disease indications like chronic inflammatory diseases, particularly musculoskeletal diseases like osteoarthritis of the knee and as well as neurodegenerative diseases like MS and ALS. Earlier in her career, Diem was the global President of Pfizer, covering multiple therapeutic areas, and has joined Xalud because of their ground-breaking DNA delivery platform. Diem explains, "Gene therapy means a lot of things to a lot of people. And the first, I would say, is most people, when they think about gene therapies, think about viral AAV gene therapy. And a lot of promise is associated with that type of platform because you're seeing this potential, particularly in rare diseases. The challenges associated with AAV sometimes are the safety profile associated with that product. Our particular gene therapy is DNA gene therapy, so we do not have the challenges with genom

Sabrina Johnson is the Founder, President, and CEO of Daré Bioscience. Sabrina points out that there are several unmet needs in women's health and that many of the indications or conditions that women are dealing with are not life-threatening but affect their quality of life. Applying technologies created by smaller companies and academic institutions, Daré aims to become a pipeline for companies that have a global commitment to improving women's health. Sabrina explains, "Our business model is to really be that innovation accelerator that starts with finding and identifying that persistent unmet need. And that's where we start. What is that condition that is not adequately addressed today for her? Developing a target product profile, what would the product look like that might be best suited to address that condition for her? We then go out and look for a technology that has a proof of concept that it should address that and hit that target product profile. We bring that into Daré into our portfolio. We adva

Dr. Kimberly Kilby is the Vice-President and Medical Director of Health and Wellbeing at MVP Health Care. Trained as a family and preventive physician, Kimberly is focused on the patient journey and expanding the options for virtual care. MVP collaborates with virtual care providers and other digital health solutions, supporting virtual primary care, urgent care, chronic care management, and specialty care. Kimberly explains, "We want to be sure that patients are finding options for virtual care that are actually high-quality medicine but also thoughtfully integrated into the rest of their care continuum. That's part of the professional reason why a physician is dedicated to that key customer experience as you expand options in the virtual care space." "A lot of the data is showing that patient and consumer preferences within healthcare have obviously changed dramatically, and patients are looking for more convenience and availability. And I'm really charged with determining which of the innovative options pe

Mai-Britt Zocca is the Founder, CEO, and President of IO Biotech, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Denmark. They are developing immune modeling cancer therapies based on their T-win technology. Using these cancer vaccines, pre-existing T-cells are being directed in patients to attack and eliminate solid tumors. Mai-Britt explains, "Currently, we have a leading program that is in Phase 3. So, this is in first-line advanced melanoma. We have a breakthrough therapy designation granted by the FDA, based on the earlier data that we have seen in melanoma. Our targets also are able to be used in other cancer indications. We are not melanoma per se. We are already running trials in first-line solid tumors where we are including also lung, head, neck, and bladder cancer." "What we do is vaccinate, as I mentioned before, and the vaccination process is a combination of first a booster program, where we give vaccination or injections several times. Then we have a maintenance phase after that. T

Dr. Hernan Bazan is the CEO and Co-Founder of South Rampart Pharma and focuses on finding a new way to treat acute and chronic pain with a drug that has no expectation for abuse and is not toxic to the liver, kidneys, or cardiovascular system. Hernan explains, "This is a tremendous unmet need in that there really has been no innovation in the pain space for over 50 years. Tylenol itself, acetaminophen, Tylenol was born in the '40s and the early '50s and worked by actually someone that was at the NIH that came to visit us a few times, a very well renowned neuroscientist. And he really discovered it incidentally, looking for another pathway, but we won't go into that. And that was adopted by McNeil Laboratories, and then eventually Johnson & Johnson." "And then, in the '60s and '70s, non-steroidals, non NSAIDs, were marketed as Advil and ibuprofen, and a bunch of NSAIDs were derived. And these are very good medicines for preventing inflammation and treating pain in the short term. The challenge with both of

Sheila Frame is the President for the Americas at Amryt Pharma, founded on the belief that rare and ultra-rare diseases were an opportunity to support underserved patients differently than the big pharmaceutical companies could. With the acquisition of Mycapssa, Amryt is changing the treatment for the rare disease acromegaly from painful injections to the first and only twice-daily oral medication. Shelia explains, "We're currently commercially, at least, in three different areas. So lipodystrophy is a pretty significant leptin deficiency for people who suffer from that. It's a fairly rare disease, with about 300 patients roughly in the US. The second one is in homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, and again, a very rare genetic disease, probably even fewer patients than what we see in lipodystrophy. And then the third area, of course, is acromegaly with Mycapssa, where we actually have products in the market." "I think what's interesting about not only the technology that we have with Mycapssa but also t

Allison London Brown is the CEO of LUMINELLE, inventors of an advanced endoscopic system with a camera and biopsy device that allows physicians to perform gynecological procedures in their offices more safely, more efficiently, and with better reimbursement. Being able to look inside the uterus and bladder and perform operations that in the past would have required a hospital outpatient visit means that women and their doctors are more likely to identify problems sooner and get a prompt diagnosis of cancerous tissues. Allison elaborates, "If you have problems, it can also help with things like drug delivery for overactive bladder. And it can be used for fertility, both treatments, as well as trying to prevent pregnancy. So it's a pretty versatile system. It's very low cost, and it's really so that women can have procedures done in the comfort of their physician's office with less anesthesia and certainly less cost." "And for the payers, if you're catching things sooner, you're not incurring all these costs th

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 l

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

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 chi

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 p

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 tr

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

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 an

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 th

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 o

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