Dr. Mayank Gandhi, CEO of NEOK Bio, discusses the company's work on bispecific antibody drug conjugates and the limitations of conventional ADCs, which target a single antigen. Using a bispecific antibody to target two unique antigens on a tumor can address the shortcomings of earlier approaches by improving delivery of the toxic payload, overcoming tumor heterogeneity, and reducing off-target toxicity. NEOK has drugs in development for prostate cancer, and lung, head, neck, and gastrointestinal tumors. The trend for ADCs is toward multi-specific and multi-payload drugs, though Mayank warns it is not a simple task to go from one to many in designing these drug conjugates.

Mayank explains, "There have been a lot of advancements in the last couple of decades, and especially the last few years, in various modalities in the treatment of hematological cancers, as well as to a certain degree in solid tumors. However, for many, many solid tumors, there's still a high unmet need given the still significant outcome, poor outcomes that patients experience, particularly with patients having metastatic disease across a variety of solid tumors. Now, if you look at specific modality like ADC or antibody drug conjugates, which is where NEOK Bio is, there's been a renaissance, if you will, with this modality in the last five to six years, particularly after the approval of a drug called Enhertu, which targets HER2 mutation. Now, many ADCs have been approved with different payloads. And so definitely that's made a dent in a variety of tumors, particularly in hematological cancers and select solid tumors as well."

"Conventional ADCs thus far target one antigen or one target on a tumor. So it's an antibody-based approach. The antibody is typically pursuing one specific antigen that's usually an antigen that's expressed on tumors selectively versus normal tissue or normal cells. And then you have a linker and a payload, usually a toxic payload that's conjugated via a linker to the antibody. So that's an antibody drug conjugate construct."

"Thus far, all the ADCs approved have been targeting only one antigen with a couple of different payloads. And so our bispecific approach is targeting two different antigens. If we use a bispecific antibody that targets two unique antigens on the tumor, we have more than one place that a potential antibody can bind and deliver the toxic payload. And then we have made some very significant improvements or changes in the antibody itself."

#NEOKBio #DrugDevelopment #Innovation #AntibodyDrugConjugates #ADC #Oncology #Biotech#Oncology #SolidTumors #BispecificADC #CancerResearch #TranslationalResearch #MedicalOncology #HematologyOncology #ClinicalTrials #Biotech #Pharma #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionOncology #TumorMicroenvironment #TargetedTherapy

NEOKBio.com

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Dr. Mayank Gandhi, CEO of NEOK Bio, discusses the company's work on bispecific antibody drug conjugates and the limitations of conventional ADCs, which target a single antigen. Using a bispecific antibody to target two unique antigens on a tumor can address the shortcomings of earlier approaches by improving delivery of the toxic payload, overcoming tumor heterogeneity, and reducing off-target toxicity. NEOK has drugs in development for prostate cancer, and lung, head, neck, and gastrointestinal tumors. The trend for ADCs is toward multi-specific and multi-payload drugs, though Mayank warns it is not a simple task to go from one to many in designing these drug conjugates.

Mayank explains, "There have been a lot of advancements in the last couple of decades, and especially the last few years, in various modalities in the treatment of hematological cancers, as well as to a certain degree in solid tumors. However, for many, many solid tumors, there's still a high unmet need given the still significant outcome, poor outcomes that patients experience, particularly with patients having metastatic disease across a variety of solid tumors. Now, if you look at specific modality like ADC or antibody drug conjugates, which is where NEOK Bio is, there's been a renaissance, if you will, with this modality in the last five to six years, particularly after the approval of a drug called Enhertu, which targets HER2 mutation. Now, many ADCs have been approved with different payloads. And so definitely that's made a dent in a variety of tumors, particularly in hematological cancers and select solid tumors as well."

"Conventional ADCs thus far target one antigen or one target on a tumor. So it's an antibody-based approach. The antibody is typically pursuing one specific antigen that's usually an antigen that's expressed on tumors selectively versus normal tissue or normal cells. And then you have a linker and a payload, usually a toxic payload that's conjugated via a linker to the antibody. So that's an antibody drug conjugate construct."

"Thus far, all the ADCs approved have been targeting only one antigen with a couple of different payloads. And so our bispecific approach is targeting two different antigens. If we use a bispecific antibody that targets two unique antigens on the tumor, we have more than one place that a potential antibody can bind and deliver the toxic payload. And then we have made some very significant improvements or changes in the antibody itself."

#NEOKBio #DrugDevelopment #Innovation #AntibodyDrugConjugates #ADC #Oncology #Biotech#Oncology #SolidTumors #BispecificADC #CancerResearch #TranslationalResearch #MedicalOncology #HematologyOncology #ClinicalTrials #Biotech #Pharma #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionOncology #TumorMicroenvironment #TargetedTherapy

NEOKBio.com

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Louis Blankemeier, CEO and Co-Founder of Cognita, describes the significant gap between the number of radiologists and the rising volume and types of medical imaging that need to be reviewed. The Cognita generative visual language model is an advancement over earlier radiology AI applications that were designed to flag single findings. This integrated approach emulates a radiologist by analyzing complex images and generating full draft radiology reports, demonstrating reduced time per case, increased detection of critical findings, and decreased cognitive burden on radiologists.

Louis explains, "Radiologists look at a number of different imaging types. So there are X-rays, and these are basically 2D images or 2D projections of the inside of the body. So you see all the organs superimposed on each other in a 2D image. And the radiologists have to take this 2D image and create almost a 3D representation in their head to understand what's going on in the body. They also read CT scans, which use X-ray radiation but take multiple images from different angles of the body. And then you basically reconstruct a 3D video that shows you what the inside of a body looks like. And then there are also MRI scans, which use magnetism to create a video of the inside of the body. And CT and MRI are 3D imaging modalities. So they're both kind of like videos. And you have an ultrasound, which uses sound waves, and you have a long tail of different imaging types. But radiologist spend most of their time looking at X-rays, CT scans, and MRI images."

"A vision language model is a model that has eyes, so it can actually look at images, and then the language part describes how we are generating text in the output. And we can actually add one more descriptor to vision language. We can add the term generative. So we're actually generating text in the output of our model. We're generating the radiology report. And this is in contrast to most models out there today that are discriminative. There are these classifier models that are saying, " Is there a disease present or not? And the output is binary. It's zero one. It's not a text report in the output."

#Cognita #AIinRadiology #GenerativeAI #VisionLanguageModels #RadiologyWorkflow #DiagnosticImaging #MedicalAI #HealthcareInnovation #RadiologistSupport #ClinicalDecisionSupport #PatientSafety #BurnoutReduction #FDA #BreakthroughDevice #DigitalHealth #HealthTech

Cognita.ai

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Louis Blankemeier, CEO and Co-Founder of Cognita, describes the significant gap between the number of radiologists and the rising volume and types of medical imaging that need to be reviewed. The Cognita generative visual language model is an advancement over earlier radiology AI applications that were designed to flag single findings. This integrated approach emulates a radiologist by analyzing complex images and generating full draft radiology reports, demonstrating reduced time per case, increased detection of critical findings, and decreased cognitive burden on radiologists.

Louis explains, "Radiologists look at a number of different imaging types. So there are X-rays, and these are basically 2D images or 2D projections of the inside of the body. So you see all the organs superimposed on each other in a 2D image. And the radiologists have to take this 2D image and create almost a 3D representation in their head to understand what's going on in the body. They also read CT scans, which use X-ray radiation but take multiple images from different angles of the body. And then you basically reconstruct a 3D video that shows you what the inside of a body looks like. And then there are also MRI scans, which use magnetism to create a video of the inside of the body. And CT and MRI are 3D imaging modalities. So they're both kind of like videos. And you have an ultrasound, which uses sound waves, and you have a long tail of different imaging types. But radiologist spend most of their time looking at X-rays, CT scans, and MRI images."

"A vision language model is a model that has eyes, so it can actually look at images, and then the language part describes how we are generating text in the output. And we can actually add one more descriptor to vision language. We can add the term generative. So we're actually generating text in the output of our model. We're generating the radiology report. And this is in contrast to most models out there today that are discriminative. There are these classifier models that are saying, " Is there a disease present or not? And the output is binary. It's zero one. It's not a text report in the output."

#Cognita #AIinRadiology #GenerativeAI #VisionLanguageModels #RadiologyWorkflow #DiagnosticImaging #MedicalAI #HealthcareInnovation #RadiologistSupport #ClinicalDecisionSupport #PatientSafety #BurnoutReduction #FDA #BreakthroughDevice #DigitalHealth #HealthTech

Cognita.ai

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Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools.

Ashok explains, "Physical therapy is growing with experiential growth. Means you would look at the data. It's approximately 6% to 7% a year growth going long. On top of that, not only are there requirements, but this is also like a demand-and-supply situation. If you'll just look at the other side of the data, the demand side of it, where every day, like recently, I read, it was like 10,000 people are crossing the Medicare eligibility. So every single Medicare-eligible person means there's more demand for physical therapy and rehab services."

"The physical therapists specialize in different settings or different styles of treatments. So I would say virtual care can address almost 80% of all diagnoses and 100% of all patients at any time during the injury or recovery period of rehabilitation. So we do have multiple programs. We have an ortho program for virtual care. We have a neuro program for virtual care. And then we have a pelvic health or women's health program for virtual care. So we're taking one step at a time and adding different programs. The next would be the pediatrics, and then we'll be adding that as well, slowly. So we're trying to bring in experts from each field and then make sure that our program is very tailored to the patient's needs. And then obviously it's not a traditional, conventional physical therapy that you can do."

#Theranow HybridCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #ClinicianWorkflow #PhysicalTherapy #Telehealth #DigitalHealth #RehabInnovation #VirtualCare #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #ValueBasedCare #HealthSystems #Medicare #HealthTech #PatientEngagement #ClinicianExperience #MusculoskeletalCare

Theranow.com

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Dr. Ashok Gupta, CEO and Founder of Theranow, highlights the growing demand for physical therapy and the challenges patients face in accessing care. The Theranow telehealth solution uses technologies such as computer vision and AI to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual care and to measure and document progress to support the clinician's work with the patient. Virtual physical therapy is demonstrating outcomes equal to in-person care and showing higher patient engagement and compliance, driven by the convenience of scheduling and remote monitoring tools.

Ashok explains, "Physical therapy is growing with experiential growth. Means you would look at the data. It's approximately 6% to 7% a year growth going long. On top of that, not only are there requirements, but this is also like a demand-and-supply situation. If you'll just look at the other side of the data, the demand side of it, where every day, like recently, I read, it was like 10,000 people are crossing the Medicare eligibility. So every single Medicare-eligible person means there's more demand for physical therapy and rehab services."

"The physical therapists specialize in different settings or different styles of treatments. So I would say virtual care can address almost 80% of all diagnoses and 100% of all patients at any time during the injury or recovery period of rehabilitation. So we do have multiple programs. We have an ortho program for virtual care. We have a neuro program for virtual care. And then we have a pelvic health or women's health program for virtual care. So we're taking one step at a time and adding different programs. The next would be the pediatrics, and then we'll be adding that as well, slowly. So we're trying to bring in experts from each field and then make sure that our program is very tailored to the patient's needs. And then obviously it's not a traditional, conventional physical therapy that you can do."

#Theranow HybridCare #PatientExperience #HealthcareAI #DigitalHealth #ClinicianWorkflow #PhysicalTherapy #Telehealth #DigitalHealth #RehabInnovation #VirtualCare #AIinHealthcare #RemotePatientMonitoring #ValueBasedCare #HealthSystems #Medicare #HealthTech #PatientEngagement #ClinicianExperience #MusculoskeletalCare

Theranow.com

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Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition.

Javier explains, "It's a devastating, profoundly affecting disease whereby children are typically born normally and born asymptomatic. And over time, they develop an accumulation of a toxic substrate throughout the body, but primarily the brain. And because of that, it eventually results in a fairly young age, usually between two and a half and I would say three and a half, in symptoms starting. That toxic substance builds in throughout the brain and starts affecting initially learning behavior. Sleep patterns are very much affected, whereby children don't sleep at night and sleep during the day, and they're very hyperactive. And sometimes the diagnosis is confused, and there's no clarity as to what is going on with the child, early in the onset of the disease."

"Yes, it's a genetic disease that's inherited. There's a missing enzyme responsible for the metabolism of this toxic substrate, which I talked about, called heparan sulfate. So when heparan sulfate builds up in the brain, it causes inflammation and neurotoxicity, ultimately resulting in neurodegeneration. Think about it as a disease that is very similar to what you end up seeing with Alzheimer's, whereby the toxic substrate in Alzheimer's is between neurons and outside of the actual cell. In this case, in this disease, the toxic substance, which is different than the one that accumulates in Alzheimer's but builds within the neural cells. Yes, so that's very well-known and very well-characterized."

#SpruceBio #SanfilippoSyndrome #MPSIIIB #CureSanfilippo #RareDiseases #EnzymeReplacementTherapy #LysosomalStorageDisorders #BiopharmaceuticalInnovation #ClinicalTrials #RareDiseaseResearch #HealthcareInnovation #PrecisionMedicine

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Dr. Javier Szwarcberg, CEO of Spruce Biosciences, is developing drugs for rare diseases with a primary focus on Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B, a devastating genetic neurodegenerative disease affecting children. The source of this condition is a lack of an enzyme, which results in a buildup of a toxic substance in the brain. The company's drug is an enzyme replacement therapy administered directly to the brain to bypass the blood-brain barrier, and clinical trial data is showing a strong effect on the toxic substrate in the brain and a meaningful benefit on cognition.

Javier explains, "It's a devastating, profoundly affecting disease whereby children are typically born normally and born asymptomatic. And over time, they develop an accumulation of a toxic substrate throughout the body, but primarily the brain. And because of that, it eventually results in a fairly young age, usually between two and a half and I would say three and a half, in symptoms starting. That toxic substance builds in throughout the brain and starts affecting initially learning behavior. Sleep patterns are very much affected, whereby children don't sleep at night and sleep during the day, and they're very hyperactive. And sometimes the diagnosis is confused, and there's no clarity as to what is going on with the child, early in the onset of the disease."

"Yes, it's a genetic disease that's inherited. There's a missing enzyme responsible for the metabolism of this toxic substrate, which I talked about, called heparan sulfate. So when heparan sulfate builds up in the brain, it causes inflammation and neurotoxicity, ultimately resulting in neurodegeneration. Think about it as a disease that is very similar to what you end up seeing with Alzheimer's, whereby the toxic substrate in Alzheimer's is between neurons and outside of the actual cell. In this case, in this disease, the toxic substance, which is different than the one that accumulates in Alzheimer's but builds within the neural cells. Yes, so that's very well-known and very well-characterized."

#SpruceBio #SanfilippoSyndrome #MPSIIIB #CureSanfilippo #RareDiseases #EnzymeReplacementTherapy #LysosomalStorageDisorders #BiopharmaceuticalInnovation #ClinicalTrials #RareDiseaseResearch #HealthcareInnovation #PrecisionMedicine

sprucebio.com

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Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving complex claims.

Zach explains, "I think that, especially serving the post- COVID landscape that we exist in today, staffing has become a kind of delicate thing. If you think about the rate posts or during the post-pandemic period, it was really hard to staff revenue cycle offices or staff business in general. Now, you kind of fast-forward to 2026, and maybe it's not as difficult as it was, but I think hospitals and businesses want to make sure they're very precise and strategic in how they utilize resources."

"Obviously, keeping overhead at a manageable level is really important to growth and success. So I think it's an invariable value that should always be discussed, particularly when it gets into the complex claims space, as we do. The work comps, the VAs, and claim types like that may take or require a little bit more manual intervention. It's super important to determine whether it's worth taking on these things myself or if outsourcing them is justified so I can focus on things that maybe have a slightly higher yield."

#EnableComp #RevenueCycleManagement #RCM #HealthTech #FTEEfficiency #ComplexClaims #RCMTechnology #HealthcareRCM #RevenueCycle #HealthcareFinance #StaffingStrategy #HealthcareOperations #AIinHealthcare #WorkforceOptimization #HealthcareLeadership #PatientFinancialServices

enablecomp.com

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Zach Shultz, Senior Director of Product Policy and Solutions at EnableComp, describes the challenges of revenue cycle management in healthcare with a focus on the strategic importance of full-time equivalent (FTE) allocation. Hospitals could improve their bottom line by outsourcing complex, low-reimbursement claims, such as those from the VA so that in-house staff can focus on higher-value commercial claims. Despite the emergence of AI as a significant factor in automating the review process, human intervention is irreplaceable for quality assurance, managing escalations, and resolving complex claims.

Zach explains, "I think that, especially serving the post- COVID landscape that we exist in today, staffing has become a kind of delicate thing. If you think about the rate posts or during the post-pandemic period, it was really hard to staff revenue cycle offices or staff business in general. Now, you kind of fast-forward to 2026, and maybe it's not as difficult as it was, but I think hospitals and businesses want to make sure they're very precise and strategic in how they utilize resources."

"Obviously, keeping overhead at a manageable level is really important to growth and success. So I think it's an invariable value that should always be discussed, particularly when it gets into the complex claims space, as we do. The work comps, the VAs, and claim types like that may take or require a little bit more manual intervention. It's super important to determine whether it's worth taking on these things myself or if outsourcing them is justified so I can focus on things that maybe have a slightly higher yield."

#EnableComp #RevenueCycleManagement #RCM #HealthTech #FTEEfficiency #ComplexClaims #RCMTechnology #HealthcareRCM #RevenueCycle #HealthcareFinance #StaffingStrategy #HealthcareOperations #AIinHealthcare #WorkforceOptimization #HealthcareLeadership #PatientFinancialServices

enablecomp.com

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