Empowered Patient Podcast

Omri Shor, CEO and co-founder, Medisafe talks about the different aspects of medication adherence and challenges faced by patients trying to maintain their drug therapy schedules. With an eye towards personalized medicine, Medisafe strives to build bridges and integrate healthcare services for patients to allow them to better track and manage their health particularly In the age of COVID-19 when patients as well as caregivers are facing new challenges. While being HIPAA and GDPR compliant, Medisafe can also provide valuable information to drug manufacturers and doctors about common barriers to drug adherence. @medisafeapp #precisionsmedicine #medicationadherence #COVID19 Medisafe.com Download the the transcript here.  

Raj Kannan, CEO, Chiasma is focused on bringing to market oral formulations to patients that face significant challenges with their existing injectable therapies.  Targeting those suffering from the rare disease acromegaly, recent approval of MYCAPSSA brings the first and only oral somatostatin analog to a predominantly injectable dominated market. Their proprietary delivery technology solves the problem of getting peptides through the stomach and delivering the medication to the intestine. Chiasma is excited about the potential of MYCAPSSA being a new standard of pharmacological care. #acromegaly #raredisease #ChronicDisorder #biotechnews Chiasma.com Download the transcript here

Marcy Rogers, CEO and Founder, SpineMark is targeting traumatic brain injuries suffered by athletes, kids, seniors and those getting a concussion from an accident or engagement in a military action. Marcy points out this problem is often ignored and currently there are no treatments for concussions except rest.  SpineMark is developing a breakthrough drug that is a nanoparticle inhaled through the nose and delivered directly to the brain to start working on reducing inflammation and hopefully prevent secondary concussion syndrome. #spinemark #concussions #concussion #traumaticbraininjuries SpineMark.com Download the transcript here.

Harrison Brown Co-Founder and CEO, HeadCheck Health wants to make it easy to better identify, diagnose, manage and clear people who have suffered from a concussion to allow them to resume their regular activities.  While sports teams and other organizations have developed a concussion protocol for managing those who suffer from a head injury, most often the rules are not followed. Patients and athletes are often asked if they have suffered a concussion and HeadCheck wants to provide baseline information as well as indicators of those most at risk for suffering another concussion to assist healthcare providers make more informed decisions. @HeadCheckHealth #concussions #concussion #health #digitalhealth #mhealth HeadCheckHealth.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Jay Anders, Chief Medical Officer, Medicomp Systems addresses how COVID-19 has revealed weaknesses in the US healthcare system and the need to address the challenges from the lack of interoperability and accurate point-of-care information. With an eye to the use of artificial intelligence and remembering that the smartest computer in an exam room sits between the physician's ears, Jay sees many opportunities for AI to make patient health data actionable. @medicompsys #COVID19 #AI #DigitalHealth Medicomp.com Download the transcript here.

Chris Bradley, CEO and Co-Founder, Loki Therapeutics talks about a new generation of cancer immune therapy that takes advantage of the body's ability to fight antigens it already recognizes from a previous childhood vaccination. The delivery mechanism uses an attenuated bacteria listeria monocytogenes that colonizes the tumor and triggers the body's immune system through naive T cells. Early data is showing effectiveness for advanced metastatic pancreatic cancer and advanced metastatic ovarian cancer with potential for treating other solid tumors. #LokiTherapeutics #MemoryTCells #immunotherapy #ovariancancer #pancreaticCancer #Cancer LokiTX.com Download the transcript here

Dr. David Mayer, CEO, Patient Safety Movement Foundation is an advocate for awareness of preventable medical harm in healthcare and steps that need to be taken to keep both patients and healthcare workers safe. With a focus on transparency to allow patients to make informed decisions, Dave emphasizes the need to address gaps in quality and safety data. To inform a larger audience about World Patient Safety Day September 17, Dave is virtually walking across the country and has attracted an international team to walk and run with him through the use of the app Charity Miles. @plan4zero  @WalkforPTSafety  #uniteforsafecare UniteForSafeCare.org Download the transcript here.  

Dr. Tim Rodell, Chief Executive Officer, Aethlon Medical brings us up to speed on the work at Aethlon in developing immunotherapeutic technologies using their Hemopurifier to clear a virus as well as exosomes in patients with cancer as blood flows through the nanofibers of the Hemopurifier cartridge. With more recent understanding of the role of exosomes in the spread of cancer, Aethlon is exploring the advantage of adding treatment with Hemopurifier to make more patients respond to Keytruda. With an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) from the FDA, Aethlon is opening clinical trials on treating COVID-19 with Hemopurifier to remove the SARS-CoV-2 COVID virus from the circulation. @aethlon_medical #immunotherapy #cancer #exosomes #Infectiousdiseases #COVID19 AethlonMedical.com Download the transcript here.

David Hochman, CEO and Founder, Orchestra BioMed is bringing a partnership model to promote healthcare innovation particularly in the field of drug eluting balloons. Their lead product Virtue Sirolimus Angiofusion Balloon (SAB) is delivering an established therapeutic agent in interventional cardiology during balloon angioplasty without needing a stent permanent implant. This unique drug delivery solution encapsulates the drug in a balloon that has no coating and delivers the drug through micropores in the balloon to deliver the intended dose. #CoronaryDisease #Angioplasty #InstentRestenosis #MedTech OrchestraBioMed.com Download the transcript here

Paula Ragan, CEO and President, X4 Pharmaceuticals is developing innovative approaches to treat patients suffering from rare diseases with an initial focus on WHIM syndrome, a rare disease of the immune system that has a basis in a genetic mutation. X4 is also focused on a rare form of lymphoma called Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a blood cancer also caused or driven by a gene mutation.  The X4 drug mavorixafor is in capsule form and is a lifelong therapy that revs up the immune system by attaching to white blood cells. #WHIMSyndrome #WHIM #RareGeneticDiseases #mavorixafor #CXCRA #Waldenstrom X4Pharma.com Download the transcript here

Amit Kumar is President and CEO, Anixa Biosciences, a Silicon Valley based biopharmaceutical company focused on the prevention and treatment of cancer and now developing novel treatments for COVID-19. Using high performance computing, molecular modeling and virtual testing techniques, Anixa is focusing exclusively on the genetics and machinery of the virus and developing a new drug from scratch that targets the operation of the virus itself and can be formulated as a pill. Amit discusses the latest developments in Anixa's COVID-19 drug discovery program and the race underway to develop new therapeutics and vaccines. @AnixaBio #COVID19 #coronavirus #COVID19Therapeutics Anixa.com Download the transcript here

Dr. Juan Dominguez-Bendala is Director of Stem Cell Development of Translational Research and Research Associate Professor of Surgery at the UHealth Diabetes Research Institute, Miami Miller School of Medicine. Juan talks about their recent research on the regeneration of the human pancreas using an innovative approach to keeping human pancreatic slices alive for a long time compared to current techniques where cells die quickly. This additional time allows researchers to explore beta cell regeneration in human cells to better understand how to treat type 1 diabetes. @DiabetesResearch #diabetes #type1diabetes #pancreas DiabetesResearch.org Download the transcript here  

Dr. Cameron Durrant, Chairman and CEO, Humanigen explains the condition called cytokine storm and how their research into GMCSF, the master switch of the cytokine storm, has led to the development of the drug lenzilumab, LENZ, that neutralizes GMCSF. Adding LENZ to Remdesivir has shown promising results in early clinical trials and Humanigen recently announced they have signed an agreement with the National Institutes of Health to test LENZ in a larger trial in the search for a therapeutic for COVID-19. @humanigen #cytokinestorm #COVID19 #LENZ #Remdesivir #NIH Humanigen.com Download the transcript here

Dietrich Stephan PhD, CEO, NeuBase Therapeutics discusses the history of research into the genetic basis of all diseases, NeuBase's PATrOL™ platform allowing for intelligent design of drugs that engage with a malfunctioning gene, and the company's therapies in development for Huntington's disease and myotonic dystrophy, which Dr. Stephan describes as "heat seeking missiles" because they are so specific and targeted to the broken gene of interest. @NeuBaseinc #RareDisease #GeneSilencing #HuntingtonsDisease #DM1 $NBSE NeuBaseTherapeutics.com Download the transcript here.

John Dimos, CEO, Fountain Therapeutics describes their approach to the treatment of age-associated diseases and points out that there is a big difference between chronological and biological age. In the search for finding a way to intervene in the aging process, Fountain is taking a hypothesis-free approach and with the aid of artificial intelligence, they are looking at cells holistically to find potential therapeutics that make old cells look and act more like young cells. @FountainTX #aging #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #DrugDiscovery #AgingTherapeutics #DiseasesofAging FountainTX.com Download the transcript here  

Anne Whitaker, CEO, Aerami Therapeutics talks about imatinib their inhaled treatment for the rare disease pulmonary arterial hypertension which could potentially be the first therapy on the market to actually reverse the disease.  First approved as a cancer therapy, imatinib stops the progression of the stiffening and thickening of the blood vessels in the lungs and is delivered using a breath-activated, Bluetooth enabled, hand-held nebulizer device delivering the drug centrally in the lung and in the peripheral area. @aeramiTx #inhaledtherapies #RespiratoryDiseases #PulmonaryArterialHypertension #PAH #imatinib Aerami.com Download the transcript here

Apostolos Stathopoulos, CEO, ERC-Belgium talks about using immunotherapy to treat glioblastoma, the most malignant of all gliomas or brain cancers.  ERC's therapy, which stimulates the patient's immune system to mount an immune response against the tumor cells, has demonstrated a clinically meaningful survival benefit with minimal toxicity and unprecedented regressions of this deadly disease. #ERC #immunotherapy #glioblastoma #cancer ERC-Immunotherapy.com Download the transcript here  

Ayla Annac, CEO and Co-Founder, InvivoSciences shines light on the next generation of precision medicine and explains how IVS is personalizing the drug development process with patient-derived and gene-edited human samples.  The company's Novel Heart Tissue on a chip platform NuHeart™ enables rapid identification of the safety and efficacy profile of a given treatment for a specific patient group.  IVS is saving time and money in developing new therapies while increasing the success rate of approval for cardio safe therapies. #COVID19 #ChronicHeartFailure InvivoSciences.com Download the transcript here  

Mel Kaspin Blume is a copywriter and storyteller and the author of Screens, Beans and Quarantines, a free downloadable children's book addressing the questions kids have about the impact of COVID-19.  With a six year old daughter and three year old son, Mel decided to make up a story to help parents open up the conversation with their kids about the changes in their lives.  Mel also shares how her previous work as Head of Copy at Disney Consumer Products informs her ability to get the attention of both kids and parents with relevant short and snappy dialogue. #COVID19 OnceUponABlume.com Download the transcript here

Pascal Descargues PhD, Founder and CEO, Genoskin talks about bringing the only living injectable human platform to the market to enable clinical testing of drugs for efficacy and toxicity by biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Their standardized platform uses real human skin tissue to test the consequences of drugs administered topically or injected in the skin. Currently Genoskin is also looking at using their platform to test the immunological signature induced by a COVID-19 vaccine candidate to predict if a vaccine can be effective. @genoskin #genoskin #skin #drugtesting #vaccines #clinicaltesting Genoskin.com Download the transcript here.