Empowered Patient Podcast

Martin Brenner, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of iBio, is focused on the untapped potential of therapeutic antibodies for obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. Leveraging AI and machine learning, iBio is streamlining the antibody discovery and optimization process and addressing the need for more complex antibody mechanisms of action. Their lead candidate, iBio 600, is an anti-myostatin antibody designed to address the side effects of muscle mass and bone density loss associated with current GLP-1 therapies. Martin explains, "We can separate this into multiple areas. First of all, there's a predictive model that suggests that there are 5,000 different targets related to disease out there. So, there are 5,000 different possibilities to make medicines. All of the currently approved antibodies target only 92 targets. Even worse, 40% of approved antibodies only target about 10. So you can imagine there's a huge untapped potential of novel targets for which antibodies could be used. The problem is that the tec

Dr. Lauren Parks Nicola, Chief Medical Officer at RevealDx, has extensive experience dealing with the challenges of accurately describing lung nodules and distinguishing between benign and malignant nodules based on visual inspection of CT scans. RevealDx software tool integrates into the radiologists' workflow and uses advanced algorithms and a large database of lung nodule data to provide a malignancy score for lung nodules. This technology can help reduce unnecessary follow-up scans and invasive procedures for patients with benign lung nodules while identifying high-risk ones requiring more aggressive investigation. Lauren explains, "Reveal's product is a software that characterizes lung nodules. So lung nodules, little blips on a lung that we find on a chest CT. And the thing is, they're very, very common. Lots of patients have them, they can turn out to be cancer, most of them aren't. But with the knowledge that we have right now, just as radiologists looking at those nodules, it's really hard to tell w

Daniel Getts, the CEO and Founder of Myeloid Therapeutics is focused on the role of myeloid cells in the immune response to solid tumors. These cells are the first responders in the immune system and play a crucial role in bridging the innate and adaptive immune response. The Myeloid Therapeutics' mRNA technology activates myeloid cells in tumors, making the tumor microenvironment hot and attracting other immune cells to fight the cancer. Daniel explains, "The ability to harness our immune systems has revolutionized how we treat cancer. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go, and if you think about some of the worst of the worst cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, and so on, immunotherapy has still not gotten us to a place where we can solve this. It's our mission at Myeloid Therapeutics to overcome these challenges. We've uncovered a lot of really interesting things about these cancers in the last 20 years, and we've been harnessing that knowledge."  "Myeloid cells are at the heart of t

Saul Marquez, Founder and CEO of Outcomes Rocket, emphasizes the need for strategic healthcare communications, including earned media and paid advertising, content creation, and social influencers. The explosion of social media and online news outlets has changed the healthcare information environment, challenging companies to express authentic and intentional messages to their target audience. Identifying pain points and unique propositions is key to effective healthcare messaging that persuades, motivates, and informs. Saul elaborates, "I started the Outcomes Rocket agency as a podcast, and then it evolved into a full-service agency focused on healthcare organizations, leaders, and brands looking to maximize their impact in the market and accelerate their growth. We work in four areas: strategy, earned, owned, and paid. So, under each of those categories, there are different focus areas."  "It's never been more important for leaders to be authentic in an age of artificial intelligence and just so much noise

Robert Maxwell, Founder of ClinConnect, is building this neutral third-party intermediary between patients and clinical trial sponsors, improving on the clinicaltrials.gov platform by streamlining the clinical trial enrollment process. This patient-facing platform provides patients with up-to-date information about trial options and eligibility criteria and guides them through the enrollment process. This resource is particularly significant for the rare disease community, where ClinConnect works with patient advocacy networks to improve study design and identify trial participants.   Robert explains, "One thing that has changed over the last year since we last spoke is we have far more relationships and far better relationships with many clinical trial sponsors. So the folks behind whatever therapeutic or investigational, drug, biologic, whatever it might be. And so when it comes to recruitment and enrollment, we have what are called enrollment criteria, inclusion and exclusion criteria. Those are filed with

Angela Adams, CEO at Inflo Health, is addressing the opportunity to improve the tracking and follow-up of radiology findings. Info Health uses natural language processing to understand radiologists' reports and identify findings that require additional imaging and possible actions. Healthcare providers often lack the resources to manage radiology test results effectively.  Inflo Health's solution can drive significant revenue to these providers by minimizing missed follow-ups and appointments. Angela explains, "Inflo Health is a technology company that serves healthcare—primarily health systems and imaging centers. We're built around solving the problem for health systems of never missing a follow-up related to radiology. If you look at the research, it will show you pretty readily that about 50% of radiology findings and actionable findings are missed in the healthcare system today, primarily because it's a really difficult problem to solve. You've got a radiologist who dictates a report in real-time, under

Dr. Chris Duma, President and Founder of Regeneration Biomedical, is developing stem cell therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and multiple sclerosis. Their approach involves directly injecting the patient's stem cells into the brain ventricles to stimulate the brain's innate stem cells to repair and replace damaged neurons. Current clinical trials are showing promising results and, notably, minimal side effects compared to other Alzheimer's drugs. Chris explains, "So our focus is to treat the full disease and make a difference in the disease's progression. The way the disease presents itself and the way that the disease is actually cured. The focus until now has been to target particular areas of abnormality in patients’ brains. Those with Alzheimer's disease, as we know, have plaques in the brain, and they have tangles in the brain. Alzheimer's disease was discovered or invented by a pathologist in the early 1900s. When they sliced the brain of an Alzheimer's patient, they f

Will Ho, President, CEO, and Co-Founder of IN8bio, a company developing next-generation cellular therapies using gamma delta T cells, which play a unique role in bridging the innate and adaptive immune systems. GDT cell therapies may have reduced side effects compared to other T cell therapies as they can more selectively target tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. IN8bio is conducting clinical trials using autologous and allogeneic gamma delta T cells for leukemia and glioblastoma with the goal of eliminating the cancer.   Will explains, "As you probably are aware, our immune system is generally broken down into two halves. One is the innate or the immediate portion of the system, which is why we're called IN8bio, the gamma delta T cells, which are considered innate immune cells. On the other, the adaptive is the memory part of our immune system. The gamma delta T cells bridge between both the innate and the adaptive. They actually have features across both. In particular, one of their natural function

Patrick Mobley, CEO and Co-Founder of Vivid Health has developed a platform to address the inefficiencies in the post-acute care industry. Home health and hospice nurses often spend hours completing required paper-based forms and assessments to create personalized patient care plans and submissions for payments. This technology aims to streamline the workflow and collection of patient information while proactively monitoring patients and using AI-powered voice agents to improve patient engagement. Patrick explains, "So the way it works with your standard home health organization is that referral is received from a hospital, and most of the work from that point on takes place within any EMR. There are some other vendors that process places, but there is no getting around that form. It is required that you've got to complete every single step. There's really no difference no matter what state you're in or what jurisdiction; you might see slight variations between Medicare, Medicare Advantage, or Medicaid, but i

Dr. Jonathan Usuka, CEO of Sapient, uses insights about proteomics and metabolomics to provide deep molecular characterization of diseases from a single sample to support drug discovery, development, and approval. The company's unique dataset combines real-world data with longitudinal molecular profiling of tens of thousands of samples across different diseases, ethnicities, genders, and ages.  By measuring proteins and metabolites, this data and insights engine helps pharmaceutical companies gain a significantly more comprehensive view of the molecular basis of disease, better understand drug targets, and predict potential drug outcomes and safety. Jonathan explains, "We support drug discovery and drug development, and a couple of things are going on in the industry right now in discovery and development. One is the overall pharma landscape of how a drug gets approved. That's been fairly static since the 1970s with the creation of the FDA. So clinical trials are well established, but the structure of it was

Dr. Joel Salinas, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Julius Bruch, Co-Founder and CEO of Isaac Health, leverage virtual care and home visits to provide proactive, technology-enabled services for early diagnosis and treatment of dementia. Their mission is to reduce barriers to cognitive assessment and improve access to personalized care plans and treatments that can delay brain disease progression. The key is respecting the patient's decisions and building trust with the care team. Joel explains, "The first thing is really just meeting people where they're at. It's so hard to get access to high-quality care due to wait times and geographic reasons. What we're building at Isaac is meant to require zero distance and move a hundred times faster than the current care journey. The other piece is we develop these partnerships where we're much more proactive about identifying changes that someone might be having with memory or thinking. We are looking at risk factors that they may have within their health

Dr. Traci Sweet, Co-Founder and COO of Holon Health has developed an approach to treating substance use disorder that emphasizes integrating physical and behavioral health with an awareness of the impact of social determinants of health. Focusing on serving a marginalized criminal justice population that has struggled to navigate the healthcare system, Holon Health is making treatments accessible with 24/7 digital support and human-to-human interactions. Features of the Vibe app include daily affirmations, lessons, and contingency management. The key is looking forward, not revisiting the past. Traci explains, "We developed Holon Health because so many people struggle with navigating the system, particularly in terms of integrated complete treatment, for so many years now. And I've been a doctor in the field for 31 years. For so many years, we've had such a spidered system where we look at the physical health of a patient, and we look at their behavioral health and SUD needs, and we never come together to lo

John Orosco, CEO and Co-Founder of Red Rover Health is focused on interoperability in the healthcare industry and the potential impact of AI and automation in streamlining healthcare processes. The emergence of revised industry-wide standards has helped improve integration, but true ease of data sharing remains elusive. An app store approach and real-time data access are the next steps in the evolution of integration methodologies, allowing providers to access the best solutions and integrate them with the core EMR systems. John elaborates, "The app store concept, which goes back to what I was saying when I started in this industry in 1998, was the approach. It was to pick the best solution regardless of the vendor that solves this departmental workflow need and let's implement the best solution. Well, integration with the core electronic medical record system was so tough and so painful and so ugly that pretty much the entire industry shifted to one vendor of record. They were like, we're just going to sele

Mike Esworthy, Chief Strategy Officer at EnableComp, understands the challenges that health systems face when dealing with complex health claims such as workers' compensation, Veterans Administration, motor vehicle accidents, Medicaid, and out-of-state claims. These exception-based claims require deep subject matter expertise to identify the right payer and process the claims correctly. Using AI-driven technology, EnableComp helps hospitals manage complex claims, minimize the number of denials, optimize revenue, and allow them to focus on their core commercial claims.  Mike explains, "I think the easiest example to provide in that context, if you look at a worker's comp claim, more often than not, when a patient comes into the hospital, they don’t know who their company's workers' comp provider is, and so often they hand over the commercial insurance card. If that doesn't get caught early, the commercial insurance gets billed, it results in a denial, and the claim sits out there in the ether for 30, 45 days

Dr. Neal Kassell, Founder and Chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation,  is working to raise awareness and drive the utilization of focused ultrasound to treat a wide range of medical conditions. This non-invasive technology uses medical imaging to precisely target and treat tissue deep in the body. Focused ultrasound has multiple mechanisms of action and can be used for destroying tumors, modulating neural activity, delivering drugs, and stimulating the immune system. Neal explains, "So focused ultrasound is a new, totally non-invasive therapeutic technology, and it's the intersection of medical imaging, which is either ultrasound or MR imaging, which is used to identify the portion of the body that we want to treat to plan the treatment, and then to guide the treatment. Then, the focused ultrasound technology delivers the energy that treats the tissue. The way it works is analogous to using a magnifying glass to focus beams of light and burn a hole in a leaf." "But at that focal point where all the bea

Bryan Mazlish is CEO of Surf Bio, a company focused on novel subcutaneous formulations of biologics to enable patients to self-administer these treatments at home. The limitations of subcutaneous administration have historically made time-consuming IV infusions necessary for many biologics. The growing number of biologics and biosimilars in development will further strain the capacity of infusion centers, making subcutaneous administration a way to increase access, reduce healthcare costs, and improve patient adherence. Bryan explains, "Surf Bio is focused on enhancing the ability for patients to take a lot of the innovative and novel biologics that are currently on the market and in development. The vast majority of these historically have required a trip to the infusion center at the hospital, which is quite burdensome and takes a lot of time and resources from the patients and the healthcare system. We focus on creating novel formulations of those same drugs. These biologics can be self-administered at ho

Mark Newman, CEO of Nomi Health, focuses on building an operating system for self-insured healthcare to lower costs, remove friction, and simplify the transaction process for employers and providers. Nomi emphasizes holistic preventative healthcare by eliminating barriers like deductibles and copays to encourage the utilization of primary care, mental health, and other services.  The company leverages technology, AI, and asynchronous care to improve access to diverse communities, including Spanish-speaking and low-income workers. Mark explains, "Our model, starting from scratch and starting from a blank sheet of paper, is focused on getting providers out of the collection business so they can focus on the care business. Simplifying the entire transaction of buying and paying for healthcare has been a revolutionary way for our customers to cut their healthcare costs by 20% to 30%. And someday, I think we can hit 50%." "Last time I checked the cost curve in American healthcare has not slowed down and has done

Maureen McBeth, Senior Medical Affairs Liaison for ImpediMed, a company that develops bio-impedance spectroscopy technology for the early detection and monitoring of lymphedema. This swelling, a common side effect of breast cancer surgery, is often overlooked until it impacts the quality of life of the patient. Using this advanced diagnostic technology,  objective data on the risk and progression enables personalized intervention at the mild stage to prevent progression to severe, irreversible stages. Maureen explains, "Breast cancer-related lymphedema is an underappreciated side effect. Most people think that it's not an issue anymore because we do sentinel node biopsy. Still, we know that any time lymph nodes are removed, damaged, or radiated, they can cause problems with the plumbing system in that area of the body. And inflammation starts, and that's the first thing. People don't feel that, but over time, it starts to impact the lymphatic vessels, and those lymphatic vessels don't pump as well, and a flu

Dr. Sam Clark, Founder and CEO of Terran Biosciences, is developing a long-acting once-daily formulation of a new class of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. The use of a prodrug approach to modify the new drug Cobenfy allows for improved bioavailability and has been shown to have fewer side effects than traditional antipsychotics. This novel class of antipsychotic drugs targets the muscarinic receptor system, which is a different mechanism of action compared to existing treatments.  Sam explains, "Schizophrenia is a very severe disease. It has both hallucinations and delusions. It also has a set of symptoms called negative symptoms, which encompass social withdrawal and symptoms that can resemble depressive symptoms, cognitive dysfunction, and memory issues. So, with this patient population, there are a number of drugs that are approved to treat schizophrenia called antipsychotics. But until now, there hasn't been a new drug approved with a new mechanism. So, all drugs have the same mechanism to tr

Joe Tucker, CEO of Enveric Biosciences, is developing non-hallucinogenic psychedelic drugs that aim to induce neuroplasticity and beneficial changes in the brains of patients with mental health disorders. The FDA rejected the approval of MDMA for PTSD treatment due to concerns about the inability to run blind trials to separate the placebo effect from the effects of the drug. Enveric addresses the promise of neuroplastic drugs that stimulate the neural connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala without hallucinations. Joe explains, "And the problem, endemic to hallucinogenic psychedelics, is that there's no question in the patient's mind, in the doctor's mind, in everybody's mind whether or not they got an hallucinogenic agent. And so when everybody knows whether they got it or not, that's what you call functional unblinding. And so the FDA was very concerned about this. They said you must be able to separate the placebo from the actual drug. Until we see data that gives us confidence that you s