Empowered Patient Podcast

Steven Goh is the CEO of Achiko which is developing a COVID-19 test based around using a DNA aptamer, a small strand of oligonucleotides, as an alternative to using an antigen. When saliva is placed in a colloidal solution and read by a spectrophotometer, smart software can then classify if the person is likely to be COVID positive or negative. Steven elaborates, "The sum of it all is that we believe that we've got possibly one of the tests with the best value for the money. It looks like the cost per test at scale may only be tens of cents. The sensitivity at very low viral loads... And the customer experience is great. It starts with a minty mouthwash and spit in a tube and scan on a spectrophotometer, and hopefully, in a year with the generation three or four product, it'll end up being scanned on your phone." "In the future, given the advantages that using aptamers give us, yes, we are looking at a polymorphic set of tests where we could actually be able to identify the full range of respiratory diseases

Angie Franks is the CEO of ABOUT, an innovative healthcare technology company, formally known as Central Logic. ABOUT is solving the problem of getting acute patients to the optimal setting of care as they move into and out of the hospital and then to a post-acute facility or their own home.  Angie explains, "Well, a big contributor to physician burnout is really all of the work. I would call it almost unnecessary friction and noise in their day-to-day jobs. So if we take a use case that ABOUT solves every day for health systems across the country, it is addressing the problem of interfacility patient transfers." "When our solution is not in place, the noise and the friction on the clinical staff at the accepting location is tremendous."  "All of this noise to get the decision made is just extra work sitting on clinicians' plates that can be handled in a centralized hub, a support service hub on behalf of the health system. We can take all of that work and all of that noise so that the clinicians inside the h

Dr. Dolca Thomas is the Executive VP of Research and Development and Chief Medical Officer at Equillium, targeting autoimmune diseases where patients do not have a medicine that can lead to complete remission. In development, is the drug itolizumab considered a first-in-class, that focuses on the specific target and impacts what is known in the immune response as costimulation. Dolca elaborates, "Right now, at Equillium, we're focusing on three difficult to treat autoimmune diseases. The first is graft-versus-host disease. This is a condition that develops in patients after they've had a bone marrow transplant where the donor cells that are used to treat the malignancy, the cancer that the patient has, then, later on, starts to attack the cells that belong to the patient. This is a disease that can occur anytime from immediately after transplant up to 100 days post-transplant" "The second area where we're focused on is related to autoimmune disorders and diseases is lupus nephritis. Lupus nephritis is a disea

Tom Lemberg is the Founder and CEO of Curebase and was recently included in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for 2022 for leading positive global change in healthcare. Curebase is shaking up the world of clinical trials by providing software for patients making it easy for them to participate from home, software for doctors that makes it easy for them to participate in the research, along with a virtual research site model that has grown even more valuable due to the pandemic. Tom explains, "In terms of what Curebase does, we're a full platform for what's called a decentralized clinical trial. So, that means taking trials out of the elite institutions and bringing them to patients at home. We have an app for patients which guides them through things like discovering trials, submitting data at home, connecting medical records, scheduling telemedicine appointments, conducting telemedicine appointments, and participating in treatments from home." "We also have software for physicians. So we've brought over 100 commun

Dr. Joseph O'Donnell is the Chief Medical Officer at Phosplatin Therapeutics founded to develop a drug with platinum in it to kill cancer cells. Phosplatin is in clinical trials with PT-112 which is the first cancer therapy molecule that has a pyrophosphate on it and works by harnessing the immune system and causing immunogenic cell death. Dr. Joe explains, "This drug is in this space that's really burgeoning called immuno-oncology, where we're using immune agents to stimulate the immune system to actually affect the cancer, to actually knock down the cancer. And this is one that has a different mechanism than some of the other agents and lots of potential to be used in combination to produce synergy with those other agents in this very exciting space." "So, the checkpoint inhibitors are one group of drugs that seems to be interesting to combine with PT-112, and I suspect we'll see more of that in the future. But just PT-112 by itself, it has this effect called producing immunogenic cell death. That's a way i

Alain Moussy is the Co-Founder and CEO of AB Science a clinical-stage company designing and developing novel drugs to address diseases with high unmet medical needs. Masitinib, their drug in development is being investigated in neurological diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis as well for severe forms of COVID-19 and as an antiviral anti-protease in ambulatory COVID-19 patients. Alain explains, "We have started two such studies in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, which is well known across the world, and another one in a rare disease called Mastocytosis, and those two studies are up and running. We have also started a phase 2 in COVID with masitinib after the University of Chicago discovered that masitinib is actually a potent antiviral against the virus, which was actually a surprise for us. Now that we have this data, we are developing masitinib for COVID as an antiviral. And you know, Karen, we need an antiviral along with the vaccine to fight this

Dr. Abigail Hirsch is the Co-Founder of Lin Health which is bringing innovative chronic pain treatments to a broader audience thanks to their digital behavioral health platform. Lin Health members get specifically designed pain management plans and virtual access for support from a deep team of medical experts. Abigail explains, "Then, let's get to the treatments that work for chronic pain. There's a seminal study that came out in JAMA this past fall, looking at a treatment called PRT, pain reprocessing therapy. There are some other papers with similar findings for similar therapies, but these are behavioral health techniques that were designed specifically to help turn down the pain processing system." "There are very specific techniques that may look a little bit like some other things in behavioral health, a little bit like a cognitive-behavioral approach, a little bit like a mindfulness approach. Still, they actually are quite different because they were designed specifically to help the pain processing p

Dr. Hing Wong is the Founder and CEO of HCW Biologics and a pioneer in the field of inflammaging which recognizes that as we age, chronic inflammation can trigger a range of age-related diseases. Their proprietary platform TOBI is using a unique Tissue FactOr-Based Scaffold to build multifunctional fusion molecules to put a variety of immunotherapeutic molecules together in a drug using subcutaneous injection.  Hing explains, "There is a lot of really strong scientific evidence demonstrating that when we get old, we basically accumulate chronic inflammation. This chronic inflammation with aging basically makes up the word inflammaging. What it does is the accumulation of chronic inflammation and is the cause of a lot of major diseases in humans, such as cancer, neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease also diabetes. So our mission is to try to find drugs, immunotherapeutic in particular, to disrupt this inflammaging in a sense to disrupt the chronic inflammation accumulation during

Joško Bobanović is a Partner, Industrial Biotechnology funds at Sofinnova Partners, a leading European venture capital firm in the life sciences. The focus of this group is finding companies that are applying the mature tools that were initially developed for healthcare into industrial disciplines, specifically, applications in food, chemicals, agriculture, and materials. Joško explains, "In the 20 years from then to now, we have shaved multiple zeros from the cost of sequencing. That's equally true for other areas of biotechnology. That shift has allowed us to open up the application from what we tend to call red biotech, red coming from the blood, in terms of healthcare, to other angles of biotech." "They often come in color-coded. You have the white biotech, green biotech, and blue biotech. The white one is industrial applications or products that are produced in the chemical industry. Then you have the green biotech, which focuses on and deals with plants. Then you have the blue biotech, which is oriented

Tzvia Bader is the CEO and Co-Founder of TrialJectory which is an Ai-powered tech platform that matches cancer patients with the right clinical trials for their exact diagnosis. TrialJectory also gives pharmaceutical companies and CROs access to patient insights to allow them to effectively design and recruit for clinical trials. Tzvia explains, "TrialJectory can really be the place where you can easily see all your options, understand all your options, and act upon your options. And by that remove barriers that exist today in patient access to clinical trials and patient access to the most advanced precision offering that exists today for cancer patients." "I think it's taking some things that have been partially provided, not integrated, and also taking it to the next level of really using smart technology and leveraging it to really personalize it and help and make it relevant and to the patient themselves." #Cancer #PatientChampion #CancerCare #CancerTreatment #CancerJourney #ClinicalTrials #AI #AIPlatfor

Dr. Nick West is the Chief Medical Officer and DVP, Global Medical Affairs in Vascular for Abbott and is back on the podcast to talk about their Beyond Intervention global research.  This second annual survey looks at hurdles in the patient journey to see where improvements can be made in the patient experience. Nick explains, "So the year two survey, again, global survey, we went to 13 different geographies, conducted nearly 2000 interviews, half of which with patients, about a quarter with physicians, and then probably slightly less with healthcare leaders or administrators. And we really focused on that upstream portion of the patient journey, from people becoming patients, the awareness and development of symptoms, how that led to interfacing with healthcare, and then diagnostic testing." "The uncomfortable truth is that patients simply are not getting a good experience. If we look at patients with coronary disease or peripheral arterial disease, there is a huge disconnect between the quality of care that

Dr. Dan Gold is the President and CEO of MEI Pharma and is tackling non-Hodgkin's B cell lymphoma to bring a therapy to patients minimizing the toxicities that are associated with current treatments. Their drug candidate zandelisib is a P13K delta inhibitor. It is being studied in lymphoma in B cells to determine if this is a way to block signaling and diminish the malignant capacity of the B cell. Dan explains, "We sort of think of lymphoma in two flavors. it's either a more chronic disease, or it's a more aggressive disease, and then there is sort of a spectrum that spans that. In the less aggressive, we call it indolent diseases, the patients will live with these cancers for many, many years. " "So for the cancers that we treat most commonly or that we're studying most commonly, they're more of the indolent variety. It is interesting because the fact that it's indolent, the patients will respond to therapies. But, eventually, the efficacy of that therapy will wane, and they'll need something else. But ther

Justin Miller is the VP of Customer Success at eVisit and has recently returned from a tour of client sites to see how telehealth is functioning particularly in the real-world application of the Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3) emergency medical response model. eVisit is the only end-to-end enterprise care delivery platform built for hospitals and healthcare systems with a focus on the virtual care space.  Justin explains, "So Emergency Triage, Treat and Transport is effectively a model where telehealth is now engaged in this innovative approach to care delivery. And so typically, a medic would show up after a 911 call on someone's doorstep, sometimes on the worst day of someone's life, right? But they're showing up in these situations that are sometimes things like motor vehicle accidents. Sometimes they're things like, I'm having a behavioral health crisis. Sometimes they are things like, I actually don't have a primary care physician, and I believe that I need care right away, but it isn't emer

Bill Hinshaw is the President and CEO of Axcella Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company founded by Flagship Pioneering, Founder of Moderna. Using their platform to create compositions of endogenous metabolic modulators, EMMs, Axcella has generated two liver programs including 1125 for treating NASH.  Preclinical and clinical data led them to test 1125 for long COVID fatigue in conjunction with Dr. Betty Raman Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. Bill explains, "So 1125 is a composition of amino acids and their derivatives, which is put together to address specific biologies. And we have tested it all the way into phase 2b in NASH patients. And what we've seen is it has an effect on important energy aspects, so bioenergetics, along with inflammatory redox, and immune and muscle functions." "And what happens, in this case, is that basically, the virus comes in, hijacks the mitochondria to help it reproduce or redirect its efforts towards pr

Dr. Betty Raman is the Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford and has been studying the effects of COVID-19 since the pandemic began to better understand the effects of COVID on multiple organ systems. Betty elaborates, "At Oxford, we've led a program where hundreds of patients recovering from COVID-19 volunteered to participate in our study. We undertook comprehensive assessments on magnetic resonance imaging, as well as cardiopulmonary exercise testing and blood tests." "What has come out from all this work is that a significant proportion of people recovering from moderate to severe and even mild COVID continue to experience lingering symptoms of fatigue, pain in various parts of the body, breathlessness and difficulty breathing. Some patients also report post-exertional breathlessness, post-exertional malaise." "So, we were quite interested in this new drug that Axcella wanted to test out, which had potential benefits for mitochondrial dysfuncti

Dr. Antonia Chen is the Director of Research for the Division of Adult Reconstruction and a surgeon performing total joint arthroplasty in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital. In addition to informing surgeons and other healthcare professionals about ways to avoid surgical site infections, Antonia emphasizes there is also a need to educate patients about preoperative actions to optimize them for surgery. Antonia explains, "Surgical site infections unfortunately still plague us today, and they basically are infections that happen after surgery. It can happen in any patient and after any surgery. There are some surgeries that have a higher likelihood of it and some surgeries that don't. What happens is that after we make a cut through the skin due to surgery, the bacteria on your skin that is natural can actually get into your wound and potentially cause a surgical site infection or SSI." "It's really nice to have something inside the wound to prevent the bacteria from growing.

Dan Greenleaf is the President and CEO of Modivcare and is presenting a complete solution for vulnerable patients whose healthcare outcomes are most affected by recognized social determinants of health. Dan elaborates, "But our view is it's not necessarily about the clinical intervention. It's about having access to the healthcare system through transportation. It's about getting a nutritious meal on a daily basis or meals on a daily basis. It's about in the event you need somebody to help you with activities of daily living that we can provide that member a caregiver. Or it's about remote monitoring where we have a way to be in kind of a constant conversation with that patient about whether it be their vitals, whether it be about medications, or whether it be about personal emergency response systems." "We're a one-of-a-kind company doing what we're doing right now. I joined this company two years ago. It was largely a transportation company, but it did have access to 25 million lives at the time. We're 30 m

Kathy Lee-Sepsick is the President, CEO, and Founder of Femasys, and not looking at minor levels of improvement in women's healthcare, but products and technologies that change the standard of care.  With a focus on reproductive health, they are looking at infertility as well as a permanent birth control option for women. Kathy explains, "So one of our major products is called FemVue. And what we did here is another example of what we're trying to do in these other product categories. We have developed a way to move an essential test for infertility diagnosis from radiology back to her GYN, utilizing ultrasound. So FemVue offers a saline and air contrast, or we call it bubbles, where those bubbles enable the evaluation and viewing of her fallopian tubes, which is suspect when a physician is evaluating all potential infertility factors." "And at the same time, we are also advancing through clinical trial work, our FemBloc solution, which is our permanent birth control option for women. And both of those are de

Dr. Aharona Shuali is the Vice President of Medical Affairs at Nucleix developing a liquid biopsy to detect cancer. It can be a blood test or a urine test that looks at DNA, but it doesn't look at DNA as mutations. Rather, it's looking to detect changes in methylation which are small molecules that are sitting on the DNA and have shown to be much more important than mutations in the early detection of cancer. Aharona explains, "What we do is a unique approach that is actually using enzymes. We have a very good signal-to-noise ratio. So I'll just talk a little bit about the standard. It is usually bisulfite, and bisulfite is a chemical that is very harsh. So it usually degrades, it ruins up to 90% of the DNA, and then it also introduces a lot of noise. So when you find the low amount of DNA in the blood that is coming from the tumor, if you treat it with bisulfite, you actually are going to destroy most of it. Then what is remaining is going to be very hard to tell if this is a real signal or it's actually noi

Nataly Youssef Ph.D. is the Co-Founder of Reclaim Health trained as an industrial engineer, with expertise in operations research, AI, and big data. Nataly explains, "So this is the genesis of Reclaim. Really being able to provide that tool for patients, to be able to be well informed about both their health insurance and then to be able to manage their healthcare bills in the very context of that health insurance, all data-driven basically. This is all personalized to their own claims data, to their own information, and to provide them with these actionable items, actionable recommendations, in the context of their own journey." "We sort of say, most of the people that I ask recommended X, Y, and Z, and that's why I'm going with X, Y, and Z. But imagine AI doing exactly the same, but at a scale of asking millions of people that could look like you. And, as a result, be able to really democratize these insights of all of our experiences and being able to make it available to each one of us. But the importance