Empowered Patient Podcast

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

Ron Chiarello PhD, Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Alveo Technologies talks about the need for a low-cost, easy-to-use diagnostic platform to allow more people to detect and manage an infectious disease like COVID-19. Winning the XPRIZE Rapid COVID-19 Testing Competition has highlighted their be.well diagnostic platform which uses an at-home system to take a nasal swab that gets placed in a disposable cartridge that goes into an analyzer that communicates to a mobile device with RNA-based test results in less than 30 minutes. #COVID19 #COVIDVaccine #COVIDTesting #InfectiousDisease #PublicHealth AlveoTechnologies.com Download the transcript here

Dr. R.J. Tesi, President and CEO, INmune Bio shines light on the complexity of the immune system by pointing out that while much work has been done on the adaptive immune system, the key to treating Alzheimer's might be to address the dysregulated innate immune system due to chronic inflammation. R.J. talks about developing XPro1595 a second generation selective TNF inhibitor which is designed to reduce inflammatory activity in the brain. They are also validating novel neuroimaging techniques and biomarkers to help predict which patients may respond to treating neuroinflammation as an underlying cause of their Alzheimer's. @INmuneBio #neuroinflammation #Alzheimers #cytokine #biotech #clinicaltrial #biomarkers #InnateImmuneSystem INmuneBio.com Download the transcript here  

Mary Guillermin, Director of Communications and Senior Pellin Practicioner at the Pellin Institute International and author talks about her book John Guillermin: The Man, The Myth, The Movies a story about her husband the British writer and film director of such films as King Kong, The Towering Inferno, The Blue Max and Rapture. Mary talks about her own experience dealing with depression, the need to understand the mood swings of those with bipolar disease particularly of those creatives types like John, and why we need to destigmatize mental health care.   #WildMan #MentalHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #BiPolarAwareness #Worldbipolarday #OldHollywood #Knownforhistemper #JohnGuillermin John Guillermin: The Man, The Myth, The Movies by Mary Guillermin PellinInstitute.com Download the transcript here        

Stephanie Culler PhD, Co-Founder and CEO, Persephone Biosciences describes how the microbiome, the microbes that exist in our GI tract, impacts our overall health and specifically the immune system. Their goal is to leverage the impact of a healthy microbiome to improve the effectiveness of drugs and vaccines. By creating the VOICES study, Persephone is looking at a representative population to look at the connection between the microbiome and clearance of viral infections as well as vaccine efficacy to better understand how the microbiome is impacting a patient's response to the COVID-19 vaccines.  @persephonebio #GutMicrobiome #Microbiome #COVID19 #vaccine PersephoneBiosciences.com Download the transcript here

Maria Maccecchini PhD, Founder, President, CEO, Annovis Bio has been on the path to find a way to protect nerve cells to maintain overall health. Lead therapy ANVS401 (phase 2) is designed to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases by tapping into the brain's defense mechanism to get rid of toxic proteins that impair axonal transport, the body's information highway. Affecting the manufacture of amyloid, tau and alpha-synuclein, the treatment is lowering inflammation and showing statistical improvement in function. #Alzheimers #Parkinsons #axonaltransport Annovisbio.com Download the transcript here

Usama Malik, CEO, Fore Biotherapeutics is aiming to treat patients with rare cancer mutations with a hyper targeted precision or personalized approach by using the Fore AI-based technology platform to investigate which drugs might work best for each mutation. While most cancer companies focus only on the most prevalent mutations, Fore is expanding the search by looking at hundreds of mutations to identify driver mutations that actively contribute to the growth of tumors. Fore is in search of unaddressed patient populations and patients where existing therapeutics are not working. #ForeBiotherapeutics #cancer #raredisease #oncology #BRAF #precisionmedicine #personalizedmedicine #DriverMutations Fore.Bio Download the transcript here

Kurt Workman, Co-Founder and CEO, Owlet describes a digital healthcare platform for parents of infants that is part of a connected nursery ecosystem providing critical and reassuring real time and archived data about the baby.  The pulse oximetry technology in their anchor product Smart Sock allows parents to track the baby's heart rate, oxygen levels, information about movement, sleep quality and skin temperature and notifies the parent in real-time if they need to check on the baby. This new source of data about babies, once they have left the hospital and are home, is being used by researchers to study infant cardiac issues and high risk as well as presumably healthy babies. @owletbabycare #newparent #newdad #newmom #baby #babyregistry #sleeptraining #digitalhealth OwletCare.com Download the transcript here

Luke Smith, Client Operations Analyst, Central Logic and the Director of the Arizona Surge Line finally has time to reflect on the work that went into managing access to hospitals and post-acute care for patients suffering from COVID-10 throughout the state of Arizona, at one point the number 1 hot spot in the world for positivity.  The Surge Line Access Center worked with public and private organizations to expeditiously transfer patients from a diverse population to the level of care they needed as well as get them back home safely. @CentralLogic #HealthSystems #PatientOutcomes #HealthIT #PublicHealth #Arizona #COVID19 #RevenueCapture #ClinicianEffectiveness #Hospitals #BedVisibility #PatientExperience CentralLogic.com Download the transcript here.

Amy Grover, Director of Patient Advocacy, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals works primarily with patients suffering from Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome LEMS an ultra-rare disease which is very similar to a larger rare disease myasthenia gravis MG. Working with the patient community and patient advocacy groups, Catalyst is providing support, tools and resources that for the most part have moved online during the pandemic.  As a seasoned patient advocate, Amy is aware of how unique each patient's journey is and how important their participation is in driving research. @CatalystForRare #RareReason #rarediseases #LEMS #MG #patientadvocate CatalystPharma.com Download the transcript

Sally Embrey, Vice President Public Health and Health Tech, DataRobot is applying knowledge from work as an enterprise AI company to attacking the problem of containing and defeating COVID-19. ContagionNET was created to identify leading and lagging indicators of the next COVID-19 hotspot and to help people understand their status, risk and ability to spread the disease. Combining science, testing data and AI-based technology, models have been created and used by NIH, HHS, FDA and other partners to better allocate resources, recruit for vaccine trials, and make more accurate long-term forecasts. @ContagionNET #DataRobot #COVID19 #pandemic #NIH #PopulationHealth #AI #VaccineTrials #COVIDHotSpots DataRobot.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Stephen Brannan, Chief Medical Officer, Karuna Therapeutics discusses the need for creating and delivering transformative medicines for people living with psychiatric and neurological conditions particularly schizophrenia. Pairing the muscarinic agonist with a pan-cholinergic antagonist that does not cross into the central nervous system, KarXT is mitigating the peripheral side effects like weight gain and sedation but still retaining the benefits from muscarinic agonist. @KarunaPharma $KRTX #NeuroTwitter #CNS #schizophrenia #schizoprenia #Neuroscience KarunaTX.com Download the transcript here

Jonathan Rigby, CEO, Revolo Biotherapeutics discusses the company's revolutionary therapies powered to reset the immune system to achieve superior long-term remission for patients with autoimmune and allergic diseases, with less frequent chronic dosing and without suppression of the immune system. A goal that others have not been able to reach. Revolo Bio's platform drug candidates '1805 and '1104 are in development for rheumatoid arthritis, uveitis, eosinophilic esophagitis and allergic diseases. @RevoloBio #AutoimmuneDisease #AllergicDisease #RheumatoidArthritis #Uveitis #EosinophilicEsophagitis RevoloBio.com Download the transcript here

Anthony Comfort, VP Product Management, VisiQuate reflects on how far science and technology have come in helping monitor the health of diabetics with a new understanding of chemical changes in the body as well as cognitive and behavioral aspects. With the change from manual monitoring blood glucose readings to continuous data streaming in real time, patients and endocrinologists are able to stitch together data from a variety of sources to come up with personalized plans. Applying AI-enabled models and working with payers, providers and medical device companies, the goal is to optimize outcomes for patients and reduce costs. @VisiQuate #DigitalTransformation #AI #COVID19 #DiabetesManagement #DigitalHealth #precisionmedicine VisiQuate.com Download the transcript here  

Derek Maetzold, President and CEO, Castle Biosciences is harnessing the power of genomics to understand the biology of skin cancer. Castle has developed genomic tests to determine how aggressive melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma are in order to better inform dermatologist and patients about intervention decisions. With both diagnostic and prognostic tests and assist from artificial intelligence machine learning-based algorithms, calculations are made for assessing the risk of developing metastatic disease for each individual patient. @CastleBio #SkinCancer #Melanoma #SquamousCellCarcinoma #GenomicTesting #Dermatology CastleBiosciences.com Download the transcript here