Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Rafael Amado, President, Head of Global Research and Development at Zai Lab, highlights the renewed interest in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) with advancements in linker technology and payload delivery, leading to improved therapeutic windows and reduced side effects. The Zai Lab lead ADC ZL-1310 has shown promising results in small cell lung cancer and the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to treat brain metastases, a common complication in small cell lung cancer. Combining ADCs with immunotherapy can potentially enhance the immune response. Rafael elaborates, "ADCs have undergone a bit of a renaissance. In the past, traditional ADCs had many drawbacks. They had what's called a narrow therapeutic window. So the dose that was effective was very close to the dose that was toxic. This was due to many factors. The construction of the antibodies and the chemotherapy, which we call payload, wasn't liberated in the right compartment. Either the tumor microenvironment or the antibody was not well internalized and didn't go into the cancer cell." "There are now new generations of antibody-drug conjugates, and ZL-1310 is one of them. It uses a technology called TMALIN. The advantage of this is that the linker is quite specific and the antibody internalizes, it can release the payload, which is a different chemotherapy, than a classic ADC. Also, it can be digested in the tumor microenvironment, and the chemotherapy can penetrate cells that don't have the target just by influx into the cell. So that's called the bystander effect." #ZaiLaboratory #innovation #Cancer #ADC #Antibodydrug #Biotech #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #LifeSciences #Healthcare zailaboratory.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Halinder Mangat, Director of Research at the Brain Trauma Foundation, has developed evidence-based guidelines for treating severe traumatic brain injuries, which have been shown to improve outcomes significantly. The Foundation is conducting research in collaboration with the US Defense Department and Veterans Administration, including a clinical trial on the use of lumbar drainage to reduce intracranial pressure from a brain injury. While the brain was once thought incapable of healing, research shows early intervention from injuries can result in the regeneration of cells and formation of new neural circuits. Halinder explains, "The initial focus of the Brain Trauma Foundation's mission was treatment. The Brain Trauma Foundation in 1997 became the first surgical organization and first professional body to produce evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of severe head injury. That means looking at the comprehensive literature body, finding out what robust research is, and compiling it all. Some studies may have contradictory results. We compile it all in a very objective, systematic way to then frame recommendations as to the best practice, and these fall under the umbrella of evidence-based medicine. In 1997, the first edition was published. Over the years, multiple studies have shown that this set of guidelines has improved good outcomes or decreased poor outcomes by 50%, which is the most remarkable intervention, perhaps short of vaccines or antibiotics. But in the surgical field, it is probably the most impactful intervention." "So the first impact of the injury causes X amount of damage, and then following that, there is a cascade of it like dominoes falling. The whole focus has been to prevent downstream dominoes from falling by early intervention. And after the first injury when a few dominoes, for example, have fallen, the goal of the guidelines has been to as early and as intensively as possible to minimize downstream dominos falling, which means secondary injury, which in itself has its own legacy of influencing outcome. Over a period of time, there's been a lot of trials to try neuroprotective drugs, which would, in the first instance, mitigate the secondary injury." #BrainTraumaFoundation #BTF #Neurology #Neurologist #TraumaticBrainInjury #TBI #BrainTrauma braintrauma.org Download the transcript here

Jeffrey Meckler, CEO of Indaptus Therapeutics, is focused on using their decoy platform to activate the immune system to fight cancer and infections. This approach activates the innate and adaptive pathways in a controlled manner using a short-term pulsed dosing regimen and helps avoid the toxicity issues seen in other immunotherapies. The therapy is cleared from the system quickly, allowing the immune system to be modulated and potentially used with other cancer treatments. Jeffrey explains, "It's a very uncommon approach because we have, over the last several decades, really had a paradigm for treating cancer in immunotherapy, and that paradigm is turning one or a couple switches in the immune system to help fight the cancer. Again, as I mentioned before, the concept of doing too much, activating too much comes from this idea that you'll hit toxicities and, like I said, cytokine storm or whatever. What we do is go about it in a way that people are coming to. The big talk right now are these VEGF PD-1 bispecific antibodies and what they're actually doing. Part of this is that the VEGF activates innate immune pathways. The PD-1 activates adaptive immune pathways." "So there's a lot of talk about what's been going on with Summit Therapeutics, and everybody now is doing these VEGF PD-1. We're even broader than that. And more importantly, we're also in a short burst. We call our therapy pulse prime, but it's cleared in the system within a couple of hours. So it does this activation, but instead of keeping the foot on the accelerator the entire time, it lets up. And what we started doing is giving it weekly, and our preclinical models show that weekly administration in combination with other therapies is the most potent approach for us." #IndaptusTherapeutics #Decoy20 #Biotech #Cancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #LungCancer #BladderCancer #LiverCancer #PancreaticCancer #ColonCancer indaptusrx.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Charles Bridges, the CSO at CorVista Health, has developed a cardiovascular diagnostic platform that uses a simple device to collect various heart signals. The platform then sends that data to the cloud for fast machine learning-based analytics, which can detect conditions like pulmonary hypertension and coronary artery diseases. This test can be given at the point of care and is significant, as these conditions are frequently under-diagnosed due to a lack of accessible testing. Charles explains, "It's really an amazing breakthrough. Yes, it's a very simple device from the point of view that it's about the size of an iPad. It requires that you connect seven electrodes to the patient. An electrode is identical to what they put on your chest when you get an electrocardiogram, an EKG, and a PPG sensor on the finger. Those of us who made it through COVID-19 probably learned a little about PPG sensors because those we use to measure your arterial oxygen saturation and the most severe cases of COVID-19 were associated with a reduction in that. So it's always reassuring to see that yours was 98%, for example, which would be normal, but we're not using that sensor to measure oxygen saturation. We're measuring the raw light signals, the red and infrared light signals." "As we do for the electrical signals we measure, we apply very sophisticated mathematics to those 10 million data points we derive. And we get that all in about three minutes and we send those in a very secure fashion to the cloud." "To summarize that, the CorVista device, while the patient is still in the office, gives the doctor a report in about 15 minutes, both about pulmonary hypertension and about coronary artery disease, which are comparable and, in some cases, arguably more accurate than the standard of care for those two diseases." #CorVistaSystem #CorVistaHealth #CardiovascularCare #Cardiology #CardioDiagnostics #HeartHealthInnovation #NonInvasiveDiagnosis #MedicalDevice #MedTech #Diagnostics #PointOfCareSolutions #ML #DigitalCardiology #HealthEquity #HealthcareAccess #CardiologyDesert #PulmonaryHypertension #CoronaryArteryDisease #CardiovascularDisease corvista.com Download the transcript here

Sean Ainsworth, the CEO of Immusoft, is developing novel cell therapies by programming B cells to produce therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, enzymes, signaling proteins, and other protein types. This autologous cell therapy has shown promising results in early clinical trials for enzyme replacement therapies for rare lysosomal storage disorders. Some advantages of this approach are the ability to re-dose patients as necessary and to cross the blood-brain barrier. Initial findings are opening the door to other indications such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and obesity. Sean explains, "We're developing B cells as modalities for therapeutic protein delivery. B cells have an exceptional ability to produce and release therapeutic proteins into the bloodstream. So naturally, they're producing and releasing antibodies, which are a type of protein. And so we're harnessing that biofactory capability of these B cells, programming them to manufacture our therapeutic protein. The idea is that once we've done that, we deliver the cells back to the patient. They naturally will go to the bone marrow and engraft, and once they've engrafted, they can live for many years, potentially decades. The two key things about the B cell are A, it's a natural biofactory, and B, they naturally engraft in the bone marrow." "We got started with antibodies that we would programmed initially against HIV. So, it was a natural starting point for B cells, given that they produce antibodies. We were just coaxing them to produce very specific antibodies. And then the idea came about that if they can produce antibodies, we could probably enable them to produce other therapeutic protein types. So we began to experiment with enzymes, signaling proteins, and a number of different protein types. We found that under the right conditions, indeed, we could enable these B cells to produce a broad array of different protein types. But that ultimately means we have applications across a multitude of different therapeutic indications as well." #Immusoft #CART #CellTherapy #BCells #RareDisease #LysosomalStorageDisorders immusoft.com Download the transcript here

Joy Duemke, Director of Marketing North America at Terumo, BCT, and Barry Linden, President and Managing Advisor of Patient Voice Advisors, highlight the importance of medical device companies engaging with patient associations to incorporate patient feedback into the design and development of their products. Patients can provide unique insights to engineers and researchers that may lead to better outcomes and patient experiences. The discussion focuses on the collaboration related to improving blood therapy delivery for sickle cell patients. Barry explains, "So if medical device companies want to ensure that their technologies are going to get to the people that need them and that those folks want to be able to take potentially some risks of having the device implanted or used on them, they need to listen to the patient and understand what kind of outcomes are important to them and what they're willing to tolerate." Joy elaborates, "With medical devices, it's very personal to the patient. It's not a bag that's hung or a pill that's taken, but it's typically something that might be, as Barry mentioned, implanted in their body or interacting very closely with their body. So the processes are very technical. There's often a high amount of training that has to happen with those operators, and it's often even a specialty department that might utilize those devices. So for me, at least on the medical device side, I think it's even more important that we understand what that patient impact is going to be with the innovations that we're launching into the market and making sure that they have a positive experience and that they can access those therapies." "So what's interesting about blood therapy for sickle cell disease is it takes a lot of players to come to the table to successfully enable care. As we get excited about some of the transformative therapies on the horizon for sickle cell, we still need to manage those patients well with blood therapy like automated red cell exchange. And to get that, you need to bring together the patient, the prescriber, a service provider, and blood donor to bring that blood to the table because it's very, very specialized and matched to the donors that donate those cells." #TerumoBCT #PatientVoiceAdvisors #MedicalDevices #MedTech #SickleCell terumomedical.com patientvoiceadvisors.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Simrit Parmar, Founder of Cellenkos, is developing T regulatory cell therapies from cord blood to treat aplastic anemia, myelofibrosis, and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Their three-prong strategy focuses on resolving inflammation and alleviating the burden of transfusions. Treg cells from cord blood are naturally tolerant and do not risk rejection, meaning they can be administered to patients without the need for matching. The cells can be consistently manufactured in a scalable way and distributed globally. Simrit explains, "Tregs, the T regulatory cells, are actually regulators of our immune system. So if you think about it every day as a human being, we face many challenges. We face many insults and injuries to our body, both externally and internally, but our body has a way to maintain that balance. The T regulatory cells are the cells that are the mastermind of making sure that any response by our body, for example, to get rid of an antigen or to get rid of an irritant does not overstay the welcome because our body utilizes the mechanism of inflammation to get rid of these injuries or these insults." "So umbilical cord blood is, or the umbilical cord is, the connection between the baby, the fetus, and the mother. And if you think about it, the baby is 50% mismatched to the mother, and nature allows it. Nature allows a permissive environment where the baby can grow and eventually give birth, and the whole species is advanced. What happens is that nature has allowed the tolerance, and one of the mechanisms by which this tolerance, the maternal-fetal tolerance, is induced by the very T regulatory cells that populate the conduit between the mother and the baby, is the cord blood. So what we did is harness the power that nature has bestowed upon these cells to just do one job and one job only, which is to resolve inflammation. This is the fundamental reason we went after cord blood as a starting material because as a physician and drug developer, we wanted to make sure that the product, the cells we're giving into the patient, are doing its job." #Biotechnology #DrugDevelopment #LifeSciences #AplasticAnemia #Myelofibrosis #GVHD #ALS #Tregs #CellTherapies #TargetedTherapies #AutoimmuneDiseases cellenkosinc.com Download the transcript here

Jay Hartenbach, the President and COO of Diakonos Oncology, is developing a dendritic cell therapy to treat late-stage and aggressive cancers like glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer. This approach uses the patient's cells and tumor tissue to generate a personalized treatment. The resulting vaccination tricks the immune system to attack cancer cells by making them look like a virus which the immune system knows how to eliminate. Jay explains, "Our vaccine works by using something called a dendritic cell from the patient. And so the dendritic cell is what we like to think of as the master of the immune system and somewhat the general that directs immune responses against threats, whether a bacterial threat or a viral, fungal threat, whatever it may be. The dendritic cell sits on top of the immune hierarchy. So, we take a patient's dendritic cell, and we also take a sample of that patient's tumor. We replicate effectively a viral infection with those tumor-derived antigens, the tumor-derived specific genetic material." "By mimicking how a virus would infect those dendritic cells with the specific tumor antigens, we're able to trick the body into thinking that the cancer cells are virally infected cells. And from there, the body's good at eliminating those cells because we've all fought viruses before, and we're all standing and walking around and alive today. We just take over or hijack into that immune response except instead of killing infected cells, the body is now targeting those cancer cells." #Diakonos #Vaccines #Cancer #Oncology #Glioblastoma #PancreaticCancer #Tumors #DendriticCells diakonosoncology.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Pol Boudes, CMO of Rectify Pharmaceutical, highlights the importance of membrane proteins, specifically the role transporters play in how cells interact with their environment. Rectify is working on developing positive functional modulators (PFM) to address diseases related to dysfunctional transporters the first being primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disease with no current treatment options. The PFM can potentially restore the normal function of transporters involved in bile composition and secretion, which are key mechanisms in PSC. Pol explains, "So you have different types of membrane proteins, but what we're working with are called transporters, so they’re proteins that are based on the membrane but channel components out and in the cells. So basically, it's a way for the cell to interact with its environment, and you have multiple types of transporter proteins. We're specifically working or started to work with one group of family of proteins that are called the ABC transporters. They're a very important function, and they can either be disrupted because there is a mutation in the protein, so it's a genetic disease, or they are potentially disrupted because there is just a functional deficit of this transporter. The protein is normal, but it's not functioning properly. So it's a functional deficit of what we call the wildtype protein." "So with the PFMs, what we're doing is to use small molecules that you can administer orally, and they bind to the transporter, and by doing so, they can modify the three-dimensional structure of the transporter and consequently the way this protein behaves within the cellular environment. So we correct the function of the transporter by changing the size, if you want, of the shape of the transporter. So we started to focus on this type of proteins and you have many potential diseases due to transporter deficit." "We're focusing on one disease, liver disease. That's our lead PFM for a disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis, which is a disease of the liver. This very severe liver disease is also a disease that has no treatment available, which is a little bit frustrating because the progression of this disease leads to liver cirrhosis. And the only thing you can do at this stage is liver transplantation. As you might know, liver transplantation is problematic because it's a very complex process, it's also very expensive, and unfortunately, there is a shortage of transplants. So we're trying to address this problem." #RectifyPharma #PrimarySclerosingCholangitis #PSC #RareDisease #LiverDiseases #BileProduction #Transporters rectifypharma.com Download the transcript here

Neetu Rajpal, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Lilac Software, brings data and analytics tools to healthcare payers with a specific focus on addressing health disparities and improving benefits for Medicare Advantage members. The Medicare Advantage Star Rating program is a key incentive for health plans to be more innovative about data analysis to improve quality measures and receive financial incentives. Timely, reliable information in an accessible format and better data analytics improve decision-making, patient outcomes, and engagement with providers and patients. Neetu explains, "Health plans tend to have lots of data. They have lots of valuable tools, but those tools have data that is locked inside those tools themselves. So if you're, for example, part of an actuarial team, you may actually be getting PDFs, you may be getting spreadsheets, you may be getting access directly to a CSV file. You may get all these things on a one-off basis, and you have to make sense of all this data. The burden of cleaning and making use of this data falls on you." "This is exactly where lots of energy is lost, lots of labor costs are lost, and lots of efficiency is lost. So with Lilac, we're trying to make sure that all of this stuff of banal value is just available behind the scenes. This is exactly what tech is supposed to be doing for you. Help you operate at the top of your license. If you're an actuary, do actuarial things and let tech make sure that the data you need to do your work is available to you when you need it, and you can just rely on and trust it." "Yes, unfortunately, there is still a lot of paper in the process. Some of the paper is regulatorily required. So if you're a payer, you're required to send any of your members a directory of providers that are available. If they ask for it in paper, you are required to send them ID cards that can be paper. We all know about the fax machines and all of those things on paper." #LilacSoftware #DataAnalytics #HealthAI #AI #MedicareAdvantage #MedicareStarRating #HealthPlan #HealthcarePayers #HealthcareInsurance lilacsoftware.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Sean Ianchulev, CEO of Iantrek, is developing a new approach to treating glaucoma, which involves a biologic implant that can be customized to the patient's disease progression. This technology is designed to be more durable compared to traditional glaucoma treatments, which often require lifelong use of eye drops. This treatment is a combination of microinterventional technology with biologic tissue technology to transform the approach to eye care. Sean explains, "So we are a first not only for ophthalmology but also for medicine. We are the first, made of biologic technology, and we're to implant that tissue without any hardware, which is important because it minimizes implantable response. We can treat glaucoma patients who need intraocular pressure opening by opening and stenting the outflow pathway in a very unprecedented way. So, we've created a new categorical treatment, which we call bio-interventional." "I think in cataract, we can say we've probably been able to cure that disease by cataract surgery and have a permanent cure. Unfortunately, glaucoma is difficult, affecting the optic nerve. And when you talk about neurodegenerative diseases, we're not yet there where we can cure them, but if we can slow them down, and we can slow them down to the point where it does not impact somebody's well-being and vision until the end of their lifespan, I think that's almost equivalent to cure because we've been able to enable them to have a productive life." #Iantek #Glaucoma #Innovation #Biointerventional #Microinterventional #Biotissue #EyeCare #Ophthalmology iantrekmed.com Download the transcript here

Robert Den, Chief Medical Officer at Alpha Tau Medical, is changing cancer treatment using their Alpha DaRT technology to deliver a potent form of alpha radiation directly into solid tumors with minimal side effects. There is potential for the Alpha DaRT to be combined with immunotherapy and chemotherapy to further invoke an immune response. This one-time alpha radiation treatment has shown the ability to treat all solid tumors, only limited by the ability to deliver the Alpha DaRT directly to the tumor. Robert explains, "So alpha radiation is one of the three types of radiation that occur naturally, and it's been known as a very potent form of radiation for several decades now. The challenge with alpha radiation in the treatment of patients with localized disease and with solid tumors, meaning tumors not like leukemias or lymphomas but more like pancreas, lung, and prostate cancer, is that the alpha particles themselves aren't only able to travel a very short distance inside tissue or inside the cancer itself." "Before Alpha Tau and the Alpha DaRT technology, there was no pragmatic way to use this super potent and very safe type of radiation because you could not put enough alpha particles inside a tumor to cover the tumor with the radiation dose. What Alpha DaRT technology does is rely on the movement of what's called alpha-emitting daughter atoms." "So essentially, we take a biocompatible inert metal seed, which means that if you were to put this seed into the body, there would be no immune effect. Patients could have it inside them for the entirety of their life. Essentially, what we do is we cover this seed with a radiopharmaceutical called Radium-224. We just put Radium-224 on the outside of the seed. Then, we insert it either through a minimally invasive approach or using a different endoscopic approach inside the tumor directly. So now we have the seed covered with the radium inside the tumor, and this is basically where the magic happens." #AlphaTauMedical #Cancer #TargetedRadiation #ClinicalResearch #RadiationOncology #Oncology #CancerTreatment #AlphaRadiation alphatau.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Daniel Vitt, the CEO of Immunic Therapeutics, is taking a different approach to treating autoimmune diseases, focusing on neuroprotection, gut barrier restoration, and anti-inflammatory effects. These dual-mechanism small-molecule drugs are initially developed for multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel diseases. The lead candidate for MS aims to reduce relapses, slow disease progression, and help prevent reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus due to the antiviral properties of the oral drug. Daniel explains, "If you look back over the last 20 years, maybe even longer, you figure out that there have been limited improvements in treating big chronic indications like autoimmune diseases. Specifically, looking from the patient’s point of view, there are a lot of things missing. So, there are a lot of indications that are untreatable or not sufficiently solving the medical need or a lack of convenience for use, for example. Another thing that is highly underestimated usually is the safety and tolerability of the drugs. And it's our mission to work on having better drugs with better safety and tolerability profiles to offer patients more convenient and easy-to-use therapies." "That is something currently not addressed by the drugs available for patients today. Therefore, our drug is making a difference because our mode of action is a dual mode of action. On the one hand, the molecule is a potent anti-inflammatory drug by inhibition of a protein called DHODH. Secondly, we also have our molecule, a very good activator of a protein called Nurr1. This is a neuroprotective factor and plays an important role in the different areas of the brain, directly in the neurons in the brain, but also in the environment of the brain. That is why we believe Nurr1 activation is a key step forward to treating patients and offering a better benefit for slowing down the disability." "This is because quality of life is one of the important parameters for judging whether a drug does its job or not. We need to address this more in our industry, and therefore, I agree that it's an important piece. And with gut wall repair, you're more on the side of ok, maybe we can fix the problem in general and the body returns to normal behavior. So, in a perfect world, in further clinical trials, we can see cases of patients who maybe flip back to healthy status or disease-free status or something like that, for example, in celiac disease or other GI indications." #ImmunicThera #MultipleSclerosis #MS #AutoimmuneDiseases #InflammatoryDiseases #EpsteinBarrVirus #UlcerativeColitis #IBD imux.com Download the transcript here

Kent Dicks, CEO of Life365, has extensive experience in the remote patient monitoring industry and is focused on developing wireless and cost-effective RPM technologies to connect patients to their healthcare providers and improve patient engagement and care. The mission is to support the shift from reactive to proactive care by using RPM data fed into AI and machine learning systems to identify trends and the need for early intervention. Working with partners and large enterprise clients, Life365 is connecting patients in rural areas with RPM technology. In an arrangement with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the company is part of a remote patient monitoring initiative to identify biomarkers and early warning signs so patients can stay compliant with their therapy plan. Kent explains, "I've been in the industry for about 18 years now and dealing with remote patient monitoring. We've been fortunate to have built the vision when there wasn't reimbursement and when remote patient monitoring had been started by previous companies that were using wired technology. Our strategy was to use wireless and cost-effective technology to try to get into see patients or to connect with patients who were especially in hard-to-reach places like rural locations, trying to connect them to their doctors." "So Life365 is about making sure that we can help support the new models of care that are emerging, that are out there, value-based care, the ability to connect people in rural locations. The ability to get data cost-effectively from patients used to mean feeding the data directly into their HER. It's now really important to be able to feed the data into artificial intelligence and machine learning systems that are going to be used a lot to be able to monitor patients and see trends occurring. This is way before a patient decides that they need to go to the emergency room and be admitted to the hospital." #Life365 #CareAccess #CareatHome #ConnectedCare #CommunityCare #Datasharing #Healthcare #HealthEquity #HospitalatHome #PopulationHealth #RemotePatientMonitoring #RPM #ValueBasedCare #VBC #VirtualCare #VeteransCare Life365.Health Download the transcript here

Dave Rosa is President and CEO of NeuroOne, a company focused on advancing neurotechnology by developing thin-film minimally invasive electrode technology that can perform diagnostic and therapeutic functions for neurological conditions. The company's OneRF ablation system allows doctors to identify and ablate problematic brain tissue in a single hospitalization. NeuroOne is expanding its technology beyond the brain to include the spine to treat pain and is addressing various neurological conditions through ablation, stimulation, and drug delivery. Dave explains, "The OneRF ablation system is an electrode that looks very similar to the electrode that we got cleared shortly after our last discussion. So that was in October of 2022. But that device only had diagnostic capabilities. So what doctors would do is they would implant those electrodes, and they would leave the patient in the hospital for, say, up to a week on average." "The goal was for the neurosurgeon and neurologist to be able to identify the parts of brain tissue that were triggering seizures or causing neurological issues. Then, after that procedure was done, the devices would be removed, and patients would go home. So that was kind of the old way of doing it." "What we did was to have the ability to reduce the amount of hospitalizations a patient would have to experience. We did develop this electrode technology that looks very similar to the diagnostic one approved in April but with the capability of not just doing the diagnostics but also the ablation. So the difference here is that when the patient comes in for the diagnostic procedure after that concludes, the doctor will wheel them into the patient's room, not the operating room." #NeuroOne #Neurosurgery #ElectrodeTechnology nmtc1.com Download the transcript here

Michael Demurjian is Chairman and CEO of Aspargo Labs, a drug development company focused on improving drug delivery through suspension-based formulation and smart device technology. Traditional pill-based drug delivery has significant limitations, with poor absorption rates and difficulties swallowing for many patients. The company's initial focus is on an oral spray formulation of sildenafil to treat erectile dysfunction that has shown rapid absorption. Suspension technology can be applied to reformulate many prescription and over-the-counter drugs to improve drug delivery, adherence, the onset of action, and user experience. Michael explains, "Here at Aspargo we have a proprietary technology, both in the suspension and in how we coat it, so that we can mask the taste of the drug itself. And so I know you're going to probably go down the path of our first drug to market, and I'll answer the next question, but masking is key because there are two things that happen with the masking. One is you make it more of a pleasant experience. People are more willing to adhere and comply than administering the drugs. If you don't, people are going to say, my goodness, that tasted horrible, and I'm not going to do that again. Or they're going to be resistant in particular children, they won't do it." "Well, 30 years in the drug development business, and I will tell you, you bring an ED product to market where you're showing a five-minute absorption time, it captures a lot of people's attention. So we've been very well received. Our first drug to market is an oral spray, sildenafil, which is the active ingredient in Viagra. And what we've shown is a five-minute absorption time. So, it has a lovely peppermint flavor. Now, here's the key there. Sildenafil is extremely bitter. It's one of the top 20 most bitter drugs that is manufactured. Our taste is peppermint. Through the proprietary technology that we have, we've successfully bonded the flavor agents right to the molecule without damaging it. I'll tell you, it's an interesting experience. Typically, it's the medical community. But when you're looking at a drug like Sildenafil, it's a consumer experience as well." "You have to remind yourself the efficiency of absorption is critical. We look at patients, particularly in oncology, where we know that if they miss a dose of a medicine, cancers rapidly reproduce. So, missing one dose can set a patient back. What we look at and focus on is two things. One is our device to remind patients to dose their medicine. And if they forget that their physician, the physician assistant, or the office manager can intervene and text or call them saying your device just said you didn't dose. That's key." #AspargoLabs #DrugDelivery #ED #ErectileDysfunction #Sildenafil #DrugAdherence #MedTech aspargolabs.com Download the transcript here

Kathy Lee-Sepsick, President, Founder, and CEO of Femasys, uses innovative medical technologies to address unmet women's reproductive healthcare needs. Femasyis is developing treatments for infertility and birth control and diagnostic tools to support its treatment offerings. The devices are intentionally designed to be more accessible, less invasive, and safer for women than existing options, some of which have not changed in 100 years. Kathy explains, "Our technologies are just for women. So, we include broad categories of women. And we did this, particularly with the FemBloc product that we're advancing. It's a non-surgical permanent birth control solution for women that is delivered in the office. No anesthesia, no incisions, no hormones, no implants, none of the things that come par for the course for what's out there right now. And we included in our patient population women who did not have children before, which had never been done before." "So, there've been other technologies that have come and have failed in this market in an attempt to bring forward a permanent birth control solution that's non-surgical. And they only included women who have had children. When you include women who haven't had children, you have to be very responsible to do that because women should have a choice no matter what their choice is as far as childbearing." "When we think about infertility, it's not just a woman’s issue. And we're seeing the problems in donor sperm also, whether it's a single person or the LGTQ community that's coming forward, they have to get the sperm to contribute to the overall process. And the sperms compromised, like I said, even with donors. So we see a third of the time that it's strictly the male issue. About a third of the time, it's a female issue only, and then the combination is both. So about 50% of the time the male factor is contributing." #Femasys $FEMY #WomensHealth #IVF #Fertility #Birthcontrol #FemaSeed #FemBloc #FemVue #FemCerv femasys.com Download the transcript here

Kim Brunisholz, director of Population Health Research at Johnson & Johnson, is conducting research to bridge the gap between evidence-based care and its implementation in routine clinical practice. Overcoming the challenges of translating research into practice requires understanding patient-provider perspectives and using qualitative and quantitative methods to identify and address care gaps. This research can also identify root causes and barriers to care, enabling stakeholders to develop and implement interventions to improve patient care. Kim explains, "My goal is really around how I impact the translation and implementation of evidence-based care into routine practice. What I'm looking to do is ensure that all patients have access to what we know works in medicine. So, there are a variety of questions that we may pursue in our research programs, mostly around how we might think around closing the evidence-to-practice gap for patients and bringing what we know works to them." "It starts with the patient-provider relationship. And it's probably a lot harder than the public realizes around how we can actually deliver in healthcare, the standard of care. For example, there's a statistic from the early 2000s where we're seeing that it takes on average, about 17 years to translate research into practice. That takes a long time to get what we know works into the hospitals and the clinics and to the bedside." "What's even worse is that not only does it take forever for that evidence to get to the frontline, but even when it does, what we're seeing is, on average, only about 14% of clinicians will actually adopt that innovation as standard of care. So that means over 80% of patients are getting that low-value care, potentially ineffective care. I think that's what shows up as poor outcomes for our patients." #MultipleMyeloma #HealthEquity #PopulationHealth #SDOH #SocialDeterminantsofHealth #CancerCare jnj.com Download the transcript here

Nick Orser, General Manager at Verato, highlights the importance of trusted identity data in the healthcare industry and how master data management can help healthcare organizations deliver personalized patient experiences. The proliferation of data sources and health record systems makes maintaining a single, accurate view of each patient challenging. The MDM technology can help healthcare organizations access patient data across multiple systems to improve care outcomes and provide effective analytics and population management tools. Nick explains, "To summarize what I'm talking about here, despite EHR consolidation with many organizations choosing to go all Epic or all Cerner, despite health system consolidation where organizations are buying up hospitals and physician practices like crazy, there's now this challenge in the industry that is 10 times harder today than it was just a decade ago." "The challenge is that dozens of these new applications in which a patient's data might be stored that an organization needs to tie together and unify. That data spans numerous clinical encounters, but now, there are marketing applications, digital applications, call centers, joint ventures, telehealth, and home health portals. And it's not just the number of applications that's really hard. It's the fact that my data as a patient might be represented differently across each application. In fact, 30% of stored patient identifying data is out of date, incorrect, or incomplete, making it hard to identify the same patient's data across all these different touch points because patients move and change their address. They get married and change their names, fill out a web form and provide only their email address, and schedule an appointment for a call center that mistypes their birthdate." #Verato #HealthData #MasterDataManagement #WhoisWho #PtExperience #AIinHealthcare #PatientInformation verato.com Download the transcript here

Richard Mackey is the Chief Technology Officer at CCS, a company that provides chronic care management services focusing on diabetes. CCS uses machine learning and generative AI to analyze patient data from continuous glucose monitors and patient interactions to predict potential issues and proactively provide personalized information and support. CCS works with the patient's healthcare provider to support the prescribed care plan, improve adherence to care plans, and improve outcomes. Richard explains, "On the machine learning side, we have a tremendous amount of data and information about how our patients will understand the devices they might be using. For example, continuous glucose monitors or CGMs are an important standard of care that we work with a lot of patients across the US to equip them, find the right device, help them begin using that device, and best understand what it can do and how it can help them make better decisions to manage their conditions." "We might talk to the patient once or twice a month. We might be talking to them multiple times within a quarter. In some cases, we're interacting with a patient more often than others in the ecosystem, maybe more often than even their physician in terms of the number of interactions per month or period, even their provider, their health insurance provider, as an example. So all that interaction helps give us information and data to take insights on what those patients might need, what's most important to them, how they interact with us. We also can work with a variety of other sources to bring information together. And by using the machine learning tools that we've developed, we can understand things that are important to them. So, it might be around the product or specific information related to the plan or the payer they're working with." #CCSmed #Diabete #CGM #ChronicCare #HealthAI #AI CCSmed.com Download the transcript here