Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Travis Mickle is the President and CEO of KemPharm, a clinical clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company. KemPharm is building on their successful launch of AZSTARYS for ADHD to treat rare sleep disorders like idiopathic hypersomnia as well as sleep disorders that are a symptom of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Travis explains, "We focused most of our history in the CNS area on a broad base, but idiopathic hypersomnia is now a rare sleep disorder. In the past, we focused on ADHD and pain and larger patient populations. But now, I think, we're focusing more on specific needs of patients with severe, debilitating diseases." "As an example, our lead product that just got approved last year, AZSTARYS, for ADHD, we thought, well, perhaps it would be better if that product could last longer, as well as have less abuseability." "That prodrug now makes the basis for our KP1077 for idiopathic hypersomnia. So, you can see how one product can actually have an impact in many different areas when you

John Glasspool is the CEO of Anthos Therapeutics, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on high-risk cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Anthos is developing innovative therapies for treating thrombosis or more commonly known as clots that are caused by a stroke or heart attack. The current agents, while protecting from a clot, also cause more frequent bleeding. The main unmet need is to give protection from the clots while not having the patient bleed.  John explains, "People that are at risk of these are elderly people who obviously have some changes in the dynamics of their vessels. The other area that's of particular common occurrence is in patients undergoing cancer. And even, in fact, the development of a clot sometimes is the first sign for patients with cancer in their disease prognosis and diagnosis." "We're developing a factor XI agent. In fact, it's a dual activity factor XI and XIa. What that really means from a patient perspective is we believe that we can pharmacologically uncoup

Dr. Robert Foster is the CEO and Founder of Hepion Pharmaceutical which is developing Rencofilstat, a drug in the category of cyclophilin inhibition to target cyclophilins a specific type of enzyme that is present in all humans. These cyclophilins perform a number of functions and are responsible to some extent for the formation of collagen which can lead to events like inflammation and scarring of the liver as well as other liver diseases. Robert explains, "Liver disease is, unfortunately, way too common. A lot of us are used to eating fatty foods, lots of sugars, processed foods, things like that. It tends to lead to fatty liver disease, which is just way too prevalent. We estimate one in four people globally that have a fatty liver. Then if we let it progress by not losing weight, exercising, and doing all the right things from a dietary standpoint and just a general health standpoint, it can lead to something called NASH. "NASH is an acronym that stands for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Probably about 20

Dave Rosa is the President and CEO of NeuroOne and an entrepreneur with extensive experience in the medical device industry.  NeuroOne is developing and commercializing thin-film high-definition electrode technology that can dramatically improve neurosurgery where typically, multiple surgeries are needed for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Using a photolithographic process to print out these circuits is a distinct advantage over the outdated approach to manufacturing electrodes by hand. Dave elaborates, "Another key piece of what we're looking to accomplish is to really reduce the number of surgeries that a patient has to undergo by combining multiple functions using the same device. So, when I refer to electrode functions, what I'm really talking about is the ability to record electrical activity in the brain, or other areas of the body, stimulate the tissue for therapeutic purposes, or perform an ablation, which is basically destroying problematic tissue that patients would have if they had epilepsy.

Tim Dyer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Addex Therapeutics, which is focusing on the pharmacology known as allosteric modulation. This emerging class of small molecule drugs known as allosteric modulators is being explored for treating central nervous system and neurologic disorders, particularly movement disorders like dyskinesia associated with Parkinson's and dystonia. Addex did not invent allosteric modulation but is pioneering the screening technologies to find these difficult to locate molecules. Tim explains, "In the conventional world, which people probably know a lot about, are the orthosteric agonists and antagonists. These molecules are binding to the active site. The way to understand, in simple terms, the difference between an allosteric and an orthosteric drug is to use an analogy of the dimmer light switch." "If you think about the dimmer light switch, you're initially turning the light on-- that would be the orthosteric agonist. Turning the light off would be the orthosteric antagonist, and what

Erica Jain is the Co-Founder and CEO of Healthie, a software as a service (SaaS) platform and family of APIs that allow healthcare providers to move more easily to a digital environment to interact with patients. Erica explains, "Healthie serves organizations in over 25 specialties and verticals and healthcare. We got started in the nutrition and behavioral health space, and we have thousands of dietitians and health coaches that use our platform to deliver longitudinal care. We also work with digital healthcare startups, universities, and grocery stores, all of whom are popping up in scaling these virtual first experiences." "The beauty of the problem that we solve is that companies are able to come to us, save two years and millions of dollars to prop up and scale the virtual care delivery. And by virtue of us having both an out-of-the-box solution, but coupling that with an API first experience means that really, we're able to see our organizations get started with us, experiment with us, and figure out ho

Eric Adams is the CEO and President of InMed Pharmaceuticals, exploring the benefits of rare cannabinoids from the cannabis plant. We have these naturally occurring cannabinoids in our body and a number of receptors throughout our body that respond to this class of compounds. Because these rare cannabinoids exist in low quantities in the plant, they have been hard to isolate or extract, which has limited research into their therapeutic value. InMed has developed ways to economically manufacture bioidentical compounds and investigate potential benefits for treating eye and skin disorders. Eric elaborates, "InMed Pharmaceuticals is a global leader in the manufacturing, clinical development, and commercialization of non-intoxicating, rare cannabinoids. We have two branches to the company. One is the pharmaceutical drug development program where we're taking the traditional clinical trial, FDA pathway approach to bringing important medicines to market for hard t  treat diseases. On the other hand, we also have a

Natasha Drapeau is the Executive Vice President of BioSig Technologies, pioneers in advanced biomedical signal processing solutions that will unlock the future of bioelectronic medicine, starting with the PURE EP™ System and their work on common and complex cardiac arrhythmia. Approximately more than half of patients diagnosed with this heart rhythm disorder have AFib. The BioSig noninvasive technology works with all the systems generating data to get an entire cardiac picture for diagnosis and performing a cardiac ablation procedure. Natasha explains, "What we're focusing on with our technology is really to prevent that signal distortion. That's happening both through our different hardware architecture and the software algorithms. We focus on delivering a much cleaner, more detailed cardiac picture displayed to the physician in real-time." "But also, we're uncovering a lot of diagnostic data that was simply not there before. We have side-by-side comparisons because we have other technology in support at the

Sylvia Hastanan is the CEO and Founder of Greater Good Health and shines a light on the experience and new skills that nurse practitioners have developed as a result of the demand for virtual care during the pandemic. Sylvia wants to empower and train NPs as primary care providers to provide more access to underserved communities and to promote a stronger partnership between nurse practitioners and physicians to handle the ever-increasing demand for chronic and senior healthcare.  Sylvia explains, "Greater Good Health is building a medical group of nurse practitioners simply with a mission to expand more access to care to people who need it. We believe in supporting nurse practitioners, who we think have been an overlooked and maybe underutilized resource in healthcare, and nurse practitioners specifically as primary care providers." "Well, my background has always been in healthcare and provider services. I worked for organizations across the United States that supported physician groups, primary care physic

Dr. Adam Kaplin is the Chief Scientific Officer of MyMD Pharmaceuticals which is developing a drug that gets to the cause of inflammation. Since chronic inflammation is a factor in pathological aging, managing inflammation shows opportunities for slowing aging. Their lead drug MyMD-1 is a TNF-a inhibitor that can cross the blood-brain barrier and treat the brain where other anti-TNF-a treatments do not.    Adam explains, "By delaying aging, what I mean is they not only lived longer, but they didn't lose their function. So, they retained their strength and their cognition. Because if we were only developing a drug that would just allow us all to get older and demented, that wouldn't be good for the economy, good for our personal health, good for anybody. So really, what we're excited about is the prospect of actually slowing the aging process and extending the healthy portion of our lifespans." "So, aging probably is going to end up being the result of two primary processes. One is inflammation, and that is th

Dr. Jens Bjørheim is the Chief Medical Officer at Ultimovacs which is taking advantage of the environment for R&D in the science around cancer vaccines in the Oslo region of Norway. Ultimovacs is working with peptide vaccines and long peptides. These peptides will drive for a specific subgroup of immune cells called the CD4 cells, or the helper cells, which coordinate the immune attack against infection and cancer. Jens explains, "In some patients, they do not have the sufficient number or repertoire of immune cells that are needed to kill off the whole tumor. And we believe that adding T-cells or immune cells that can recognize specific things in the tumors, like in our case, an enzyme called telomerase, can benefit the patients in the future. So the checkpoint inhibitors on one side, they allow the immune system to kill off the cancer. On the other side, the immune system sometimes needs more help. There need to be more T-cells and more differentiation among the T-cells to really cure people from cancer

Anthony Capone is President of DocGo and brings his background in computational learning theory and artificial intelligence to the world of mobile medical solutions. By creating a robust routing and dispatch system integrated with first responders and up-trained lower-cost healthcare providers, DocGo is able to treat patients in emergency situations as well as provide on-site and at-home comprehensive healthcare. Anthony explains, "Just in the past couple of years, the acceptance in a community for point-of-care tests for COVID really changed the landscape. However, COVID is one thing. The key component is that now people are more receptive to that idea, and there's a lot more investment from them going in. So things where you normally would have to drive to a lab and have to wait a couple of days to get your results, you can now do a point-of-care test right then and there. So if you combine that together with a remote diagnostic system, then what you end up getting is care that might have taken three episod

Anish Sebastian is the CEO and Co-Founder of Babyscripts, which is focused on improving prenatal and postpartum care for mothers and their newborns.  Using remote monitoring and a robust digital environment, low and high-risk pregnancies are supported with virtual care as well as in-office appointments.  Babyscripts works with care teams, providers, healthcare providers, OBGYNs, nurse midwives, nurses, and the whole care continuum to improve access to and quality of care. Anish explains, "So this was sort of our moment to provide the market with tools that could really help improve access. One of the things that we do is remote patient monitoring for blood pressure for high and low-risk moms. And that is such an important and pivotal thing in prenatal and postpartum care. So providers across the nation, a lot of our practices that we work with said, Hey, Babyscripts, how can we work together to still give good quality care and maintain access, but handle some of the shortages that we knew were going to come."

Lynn Carroll is the Chief Operating Officer at HSBlox and is in the business of helping payers and providers move from a fee-for-service to a value-based model. One of the critical challenges in scaling these solutions so that they can work with legacy systems and provide data and performance metrics to determine and improve outcomes in the value-based arena. Lynn explains, "So, as we think about the overall landscape of healthcare that traditionally has been on a fee-for-service basis, the legacy systems on both the payer and provider sides have been geared toward billing and transactional mechanisms. Submitting claims and getting paid based upon those claims is a very fragmented approach." "And what we have noticed is that the ability to operationalize these value-based programs with the legacy system is a challenge. Both hierarchically in terms of which providers are participating, what population is assigned, but also in the funding pool management, whether they're from employers, from commercial payers,

Craig Parker is the CEO of Surrozen, experts in the Wnt pathway, which is one of the fundamental pathways that help to establish the structure of organs, renewal of stem cells, and recovery from injury. This is a story of discovering the right combination of their tissue-specific approach and the right molecules to enhance or activate the Wnt pathway. Craig elaborates, "So, in the liver, for example, when we injure our liver by drinking too much alcohol, the Wnt pathway is activated and is really the key pathway that's responsible for the regeneration that we're all able to stimulate in our liver." "There are many, many other organs where the Wnt pathway is known to play a role in how that particular organ is maintained and responds to injury. So, what we're trying to do is take advantage of that biology that's so important in all of us during development and in adulthood and to stimulate it in a very selective way to get organs like the liver or the intestine or the retina to regenerate in response to the in

George Georgallides is the Founder of Basis, a start-up that is taking an advanced view of helping patients achieve better health and reach health and fitness goals.  Integrating data from a wide range of sources, Basis is striving for a real-time approach to engaging patients in making small but significant adjustments as they go through their day. George explains, "So, what we've essentially built is the unique integrative approach to help them that combines all this information that we're getting. We're actually addressing and combining it with workout, nutrition, mindfulness, and sleep in one platform. Those are things that exist in silos. The data exists in unstructured and incomprehensible ways for the person." "We've structured all those things around specific health goals. My background is in bioinformatics. My team is data scientists and health experts from universities and programs. So, we have an amazing team, and we've been able to build very interesting models around data that most people don't r

Dr. Jim Feng is the CEO and Founder of Phyxable which is serving up curated content specific to an injury or chronic condition to help patients overcome physical pain.  Using a virtual approach, Phyxable is engaging patients with gamification and social media type notifications to keep people on a plan and encourage them to not drop off. Jim elaborates, "We actually combine it with some machine learning algorithms to personalize the solution for you. And along the way, we also found that good guidance and coaching still play a good part in recovery, so we provide that service as well." "And the last point, we're actually building on the high technology side in the augmented reality part. So, there's one side to understanding where you're at and what you need to do. But the other aspect of it is checking in to make sure you're actually doing it right on a daily basis. We're utilizing augmented reality technology just on your phone camera in order to provide the feedback in real-time." @Phyxable #Health #Pain #

Dr. Ketan Patel is the Chief Medical Officer at SyTrue which has taken on the challenge of modernizing the exchange of information between providers and insurance companies. Transitioning from a traditional system designed for reactive healthcare to one of preventative care means information flow and analysis need to change as well.   Ketan explains, "As we start thinking about healthcare in the next few decades, it's really about receiving value back from the money we see spent. It's about getting involved earlier, looking at those risk factors at a really early stage when the intervention can cost a 10th or a 20th of what it might cost later in life. And that's a paradigm shift, and our systems aren't really created for that. They were never designed for that kind of thinking. And we now realize this is important, and we have to do this. This is where there's a need for technology to get to that information, but there's also a need to look at that information differently." "So, structured data, I'll start w

Dr. Josh Liu is the CEO and Co-Founder of SeamlessMD is working with care providers to safely discharge patients home sooner by at-home monitoring to track progress and reduce readmission rates. This allows hospitals to free up beds so they can actually see more patients, get more surgeries and other inpatient care done sooner. Josh elaborates, "Where SeamlessMD is differentiated from other patient engagement solutions is that we think of ourselves as more of a digital care journey platform. So the idea is that we work with hospitals and health systems to engage, monitor, and stay connected with patients across this entire healthcare journey when you're going through something like a surgery, a cancer journey, or chronic care journey." "The funny thing is when we first started SeamlessMD about nine years ago, just by chance, we focused initially on the older, higher risk, the complex patient population in their sixties, seventies, or eighties. So from day one, we had chosen to design this for the most challen

Dr. Brian Roberts is a Senior VP and Head of Clinical Development at Rezolute which is developing first in class therapies in the treatment of metabolic diseases. In addition to working on a therapeutic for congenital hyperinsulinism, a rare disease, Rezolute is also in clinical trials with RZ402, an oral small molecule to treat diabetic macular edema which is showing an increase in prevalence due to the increase in the number of people suffering from diabetes. Brian explains, "DME or diabetic macular edema is a complication of diabetes. It's a subset of diabetic retinopathy. And like other complications of diabetes, the blood vessels in the eye become injured or corrupted. And this leads to inflammation in the leakage of fluid across the blood vessel into the eye. And in this case, into the macula of the retina, which is responsible for high-resolution vision. If that continues, it can result in progressive visual loss and even blindness." "Another problem with these therapies is that in some patients, they