Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Clark Chang is a cornea and keratoconus, KC, specialist at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia and the Director of Global Medical Affairs at Glaukos. Keratoconus is a disease of the eye where tissue thins and gradually bulges outward into a cone-like shape. While changes in the cornea are small, vision becomes very blurry, and the underlying cause may be overlooked. Glaukos has introduced the iLink procedure, a minimally invasive outpatient procedure to slow or halt the progression of this disease and help patients preserve their vision.

Clark explains, "It is associated with age, but it's in the different group of people than most of your audience is thinking. We're very familiar with conditions like age-related macular degeneration. Everybody knows that because it's very impactful to one's vision, and the fear of loss of vision has frequently been rated as one of the top one or two biggest fears in a person's life. Most diseases are age-related in that they can occur with time. This disease more commonly occurs during puberty or in younger patients."

"In order to be able to diagnose this condition, especially at an early stage when there is an extremely small amount of change in the alteration in the shape of the cornea, you really need sophisticated diagnostic technology that we usually call topographer or tomographer. Basically, it maps out the shape of the cornea, either just at the front or front and back of your cornea. Being able to, in a more sensitive way, figure out whether or not there's any small amount of area that's becoming misshapen more than what a normal cornea or tissue would look like."

#Glaukos #Keratoconus #iLink #CornealCrossinglinking #EyeHealth #KCAwareness #LivingwithKeratoconus #EyeDisease #Cornea

glaukos.com

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Dr. Clark Chang is a cornea and keratoconus, KC, specialist at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia and the Director of Global Medical Affairs at Glaukos. Keratoconus is a disease of the eye where tissue thins and gradually bulges outward into a cone-like shape. While changes in the cornea are small, vision becomes very blurry, and the underlying cause may be overlooked. Glaukos has introduced the iLink procedure, a minimally invasive outpatient procedure to slow or halt the progression of this disease and help patients preserve their vision.

Clark explains, "It is associated with age, but it's in the different group of people than most of your audience is thinking. We're very familiar with conditions like age-related macular degeneration. Everybody knows that because it's very impactful to one's vision, and the fear of loss of vision has frequently been rated as one of the top one or two biggest fears in a person's life. Most diseases are age-related in that they can occur with time. This disease more commonly occurs during puberty or in younger patients."

"In order to be able to diagnose this condition, especially at an early stage when there is an extremely small amount of change in the alteration in the shape of the cornea, you really need sophisticated diagnostic technology that we usually call topographer or tomographer. Basically, it maps out the shape of the cornea, either just at the front or front and back of your cornea. Being able to, in a more sensitive way, figure out whether or not there's any small amount of area that's becoming misshapen more than what a normal cornea or tissue would look like."

#Glaukos #Keratoconus #iLink #CornealCrossinglinking #EyeHealth #KCAwareness #LivingwithKeratoconus #EyeDisease #Cornea

glaukos.com

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Dr. Antonin (Tony) de Fougerolles, CEO of Evox Therapeutics, highlights that exosomes, small nanoparticles, are produced by every cell in the body. They contain RNA and proteins that the cell decides to put into the exosome, and they're secreted out into the environment and act as a way that cells communicate with each other. Evox is excited about using exosome therapeutics to load genetic medicines such as RNA interference, small RNA drugs, gene therapy, or genome editing into exosomes and effectively delivering them inside cells. This approach provides a new way to treat rare diseases with an underlying genetic cause.

Tony elaborates, "Exosomes were first discovered or noticed in the scientific literature in the '80s and the early '90s, and at first were thought really just to be vesicles that cells excreted full of what people at the time thought was garbage, things the cell didn't need. In more recent times, in the last 10, 15 years, it's become clear that these exosomes can in some cases serve a function in terms of helping, as I say, cells communicate and sense their environment."

"It wasn't until one of our co-founders, Professor Matthew Wood, used exosomes as a deliberate vehicle. He had the idea, "Well, cells are constantly producing these exosomes. What they put into them is not at all random, it's very directed, and can we make use of that knowledge to actually proactively engineer drugs into these exosomes and then use the exosome's natural ability to deliver cargos inside cells? Can we use that to actually deliver drugs of our interest?"

#EvoxTherapeutics #RareDisease #Exosomes #RareGeneticDiseases #ExtracellularVesicles #RNATherapeutics #Biotech #GeneTherapy #GeneEditing #ProteinTherapeutics #Innovation

EvoxTherapeutics.com

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Dr. Antonin (Tony) de Fougerolles, CEO of Evox Therapeutics, highlights that exosomes, small nanoparticles, are produced by every cell in the body. They contain RNA and proteins that the cell decides to put into the exosome, and they're secreted out into the environment and act as a way that cells communicate with each other. Evox is excited about using exosome therapeutics to load genetic medicines such as RNA interference, small RNA drugs, gene therapy, or genome editing into exosomes and effectively delivering them inside cells. This approach provides a new way to treat rare diseases with an underlying genetic cause.

Tony elaborates, "Exosomes were first discovered or noticed in the scientific literature in the '80s and the early '90s, and at first were thought really just to be vesicles that cells excreted full of what people at the time thought was garbage, things the cell didn't need. In more recent times, in the last 10, 15 years, it's become clear that these exosomes can in some cases serve a function in terms of helping, as I say, cells communicate and sense their environment."

"It wasn't until one of our co-founders, Professor Matthew Wood, used exosomes as a deliberate vehicle. He had the idea, "Well, cells are constantly producing these exosomes. What they put into them is not at all random, it's very directed, and can we make use of that knowledge to actually proactively engineer drugs into these exosomes and then use the exosome's natural ability to deliver cargos inside cells? Can we use that to actually deliver drugs of our interest?"

#EvoxTherapeutics #RareDisease #Exosomes #RareGeneticDiseases #ExtracellularVesicles #RNATherapeutics #Biotech #GeneTherapy #GeneEditing #ProteinTherapeutics #Innovation

EvoxTherapeutics.com

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Dr. Eugene Chan, Chairman and Co-Founder of Abpro, talks about the next generation of antibody therapies that can target more than one target to activate the immune system in the fight against cancer. Abpro is also working on a prophylactic antibody therapy to help prevent immunocompromised patients from getting COVID.

Eugene explains, "Abpro has developed the antibodies, in a lot of these cases, to be able to target more than one target. This basically activates the immune system more so that whatever you're targeting is cleared more rapidly from the body. This applies to the cases of cancer that we are focused on, and we've basically developed these antibodies called bispecific antibodies - bi for targeting two different sites. These antibodies essentially have more and greater activity than conventional antibodies."

"We developed a program and antibodies that bind to HER2+, which is one of the molecular markers on breast and gastric cancers. This particular therapy brings the immune system, the body's own natural immune system, to these cancer cells in a very active manner, which then allows it to get cleared from the body much sooner than the other mono-specific therapies that are currently out there."

"Monoclonal antibodies are the body's own natural defense system for a lot of diseases. The ability to take these and augment and make them better is really the way to go because, ultimately, the body is already accustomed to these types of molecules. So we know to some degree they're safe. When compared to things like chemotherapy or even radiotherapy, these things are going to be much safer because they naturally exist in some way, shape or form in the body when you're fighting a disease or when your body's exposed to a new antigen or some sort of new threat. We're taking this approach and enhancing the body's ability to fight cancer and infection by augmenting the structure of these molecules."

#Abpro #Antibodies #MonoclonalAntibodies #Cancer #Tumors #COVID #HER2+

abpro.com

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Dr. Eugene Chan, Chairman and Co-Founder of Abpro, talks about the next generation of antibody therapies that can target more than one target to activate the immune system in the fight against cancer. Abpro is also working on a prophylactic antibody therapy to help prevent immunocompromised patients from getting COVID.

Eugene explains, "Abpro has developed the antibodies, in a lot of these cases, to be able to target more than one target. This basically activates the immune system more so that whatever you're targeting is cleared more rapidly from the body. This applies to the cases of cancer that we are focused on, and we've basically developed these antibodies called bispecific antibodies - bi for targeting two different sites. These antibodies essentially have more and greater activity than conventional antibodies."

"We developed a program and antibodies that bind to HER2+, which is one of the molecular markers on breast and gastric cancers. This particular therapy brings the immune system, the body's own natural immune system, to these cancer cells in a very active manner, which then allows it to get cleared from the body much sooner than the other mono-specific therapies that are currently out there."

"Monoclonal antibodies are the body's own natural defense system for a lot of diseases. The ability to take these and augment and make them better is really the way to go because, ultimately, the body is already accustomed to these types of molecules. So we know to some degree they're safe. When compared to things like chemotherapy or even radiotherapy, these things are going to be much safer because they naturally exist in some way, shape or form in the body when you're fighting a disease or when your body's exposed to a new antigen or some sort of new threat. We're taking this approach and enhancing the body's ability to fight cancer and infection by augmenting the structure of these molecules."

#Abpro #Antibodies #MonoclonalAntibodies #Cancer #Tumors #COVID #HER2+

abpro.com

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Dr. Edith Perez, Chief Medical Officer at Bolt Biotherapeutics, describes the innovative approach Bolt is taking to bring together the precision of antibodies against the tumor with the power of the innate and adaptive immune system by activating the immune system at the tumor site. This approach can minimize side effects from systematic activation of the immune system and reinforce long-term anti-tumor efficacy.

Edith explains, "The myeloid cells are a wide range of cells in the body, and initially, the myeloid cells can start attacking the tumors right away. But as important, or even more importantly, is that they secrete the cytokines and chemokines to teach the T-cells to essentially develop an immunological memory to be able to fight these foreign bodies for a long time."

"First of all, there are the abnormalities of the tumor themselves, and we target those with monoclonal antibodies. Then we actually link that with what we call a non-cleavable and non-cell permeable linker. Again, the idea is to bring the activation of the immune system right at the site of the tumor, which could be dramatic for humans."

"So these monoclonal antibodies essentially find the tumor cells because the tumor cells are circulating, they're in the body, so they latch onto these proteins in the membrane and with our compound, with our Boltbody compounds. What we have here is the attachment of the monoclonal antibodies with what we call the linker payload. The payload is really the activation factor of the immune system. We bring that activation of the immune system, tied into the monoclonal antibody, to the site of the tumor. That way, we can be very precise related to where the activity of the compound will occur."

@BoltBio #BoltBio #ISAC #Immunotherapy #Oncology #Tumors #ImmuneSystem

boltbio.com

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Dr. Edith Perez, Chief Medical Officer at Bolt Biotherapeutics, describes the innovative approach Bolt is taking to bring together the precision of antibodies against the tumor with the power of the innate and adaptive immune system by activating the immune system at the tumor site. This approach can minimize side effects from systematic activation of the immune system and reinforce long-term anti-tumor efficacy.

Edith explains, "The myeloid cells are a wide range of cells in the body, and initially, the myeloid cells can start attacking the tumors right away. But as important, or even more importantly, is that they secrete the cytokines and chemokines to teach the T-cells to essentially develop an immunological memory to be able to fight these foreign bodies for a long time."

"First of all, there are the abnormalities of the tumor themselves, and we target those with monoclonal antibodies. Then we actually link that with what we call a non-cleavable and non-cell permeable linker. Again, the idea is to bring the activation of the immune system right at the site of the tumor, which could be dramatic for humans."

"So these monoclonal antibodies essentially find the tumor cells because the tumor cells are circulating, they're in the body, so they latch onto these proteins in the membrane and with our compound, with our Boltbody compounds. What we have here is the attachment of the monoclonal antibodies with what we call the linker payload. The payload is really the activation factor of the immune system. We bring that activation of the immune system, tied into the monoclonal antibody, to the site of the tumor. That way, we can be very precise related to where the activity of the compound will occur."

@BoltBio #BoltBio #ISAC #Immunotherapy #Oncology #Tumors #ImmuneSystem

boltbio.com

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Dr. Romain Micol, CEO, and Dr. Tom VanCott, Chief Scientific Officer, at Combined Therapeutics, are excited about the opportunities to design mRNA vaccines that target specific tissue cells to restrict protein expression and have stronger potency in the fight against infectious disease and cancer. They have designed their vaccine platform to keep the vaccine antigen expression at the injection site, protecting the liver, kidney, and heart.

Romain explains, "So mRNA vaccines are highly effective both for infectious diseases and, more recently, to treat cancer. It's an ideal technology that is relatively easy to make and to manufacture. It could be very rapid and can get expression in vivo where protein would be folded properly. We can currently use the mRNA vaccine to deliver multiple materials to prevent infectious diseases and also cure cancer."

"The main challenge we see at Combined Therapeutics, both for vaccines for infectious disease and for cancer treatment, is in their biodistribution and potency. Our platform at Combined Therapeutics is a proprietary technology that enables us to focus protein expression in specific tissue cells and prevent off-target expression in selected cell tissue. At the moment, our R&D program covers both oncology and infectious disease."

Thomas elaborates, "What we've done here at Combined Therapeutics is we're taking advantage of something called micro RNAs. Now, what are micro RNAs? A lot of people don't know about them, but they're really just small RNA molecules that are naturally present throughout the body. They're actually fairly small molecules. They're about 22 nucleotides in size."

"But what's really important is that they're distributed differentially throughout the body. So, if you look at the lungs or the heart or the muscles, you'll see a different array of micro RNAs that are expressed in each one of those tissues, and that is exactly what we take advantage of. What we do in our mRNA is engineer into it what we call these blockers. And what's a blocker? A blocker is really a binding site for the micro RNA."

@Combined_tx #CombinedTherapeutics #mRNA #Vaccines #Cancer #Oncology #InfectiousDisease

combinedtx.com

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Dr. Romain Micol, CEO, and Dr. Tom VanCott, Chief Scientific Officer, at Combined Therapeutics, are excited about the opportunities to design mRNA vaccines that target specific tissue cells to restrict protein expression and have stronger potency in the fight against infectious disease and cancer. They have designed their vaccine platform to keep the vaccine antigen expression at the injection site, protecting the liver, kidney, and heart.

Romain explains, "So mRNA vaccines are highly effective both for infectious diseases and, more recently, to treat cancer. It's an ideal technology that is relatively easy to make and to manufacture. It could be very rapid and can get expression in vivo where protein would be folded properly. We can currently use the mRNA vaccine to deliver multiple materials to prevent infectious diseases and also cure cancer."

"The main challenge we see at Combined Therapeutics, both for vaccines for infectious disease and for cancer treatment, is in their biodistribution and potency. Our platform at Combined Therapeutics is a proprietary technology that enables us to focus protein expression in specific tissue cells and prevent off-target expression in selected cell tissue. At the moment, our R&D program covers both oncology and infectious disease."

Thomas elaborates, "What we've done here at Combined Therapeutics is we're taking advantage of something called micro RNAs. Now, what are micro RNAs? A lot of people don't know about them, but they're really just small RNA molecules that are naturally present throughout the body. They're actually fairly small molecules. They're about 22 nucleotides in size."

"But what's really important is that they're distributed differentially throughout the body. So, if you look at the lungs or the heart or the muscles, you'll see a different array of micro RNAs that are expressed in each one of those tissues, and that is exactly what we take advantage of. What we do in our mRNA is engineer into it what we call these blockers. And what's a blocker? A blocker is really a binding site for the micro RNA."

@Combined_tx #CombinedTherapeutics #mRNA #Vaccines #Cancer #Oncology #InfectiousDisease

combinedtx.com

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