Empowered Patient Podcast

Carly Newton is an apheresis expert at Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies, a medical device company that manufactures and designs systems that collect blood components and cells. Their software provides management tools to optimize procedures and help physicians better manage care. The largest patient group treated with red blood cell exchange are those with sickle cell disease and benefit from the Terumo iron-neutral therapy over a simple transfusion.

Carly explains, "We've also got software technologies that many of our blood banks use and they're designed to get the most from blood donors when they go and present at a blood bank. So, for instance, instead of a blood donor just donating a bag of whole blood, our software can actually look at the starting counts of these donors and recommend what the blood donation center should collect from that donor to get the optimal cells from that patient."

"The main goal of any transfusion therapy with sickle cell disease is to increase the oxygenation of the blood. There are different types of transfusion therapy and this is where we spend a lot of time educating physicians and patients on the different types of transfusion therapy. So probably the most common type of transfusion therapy for sickle cell patients in the US at the moment is something we call simple transfusions. And that's really sickle cell patients going into the hospital once or twice a month and having red cell infusions. The purpose of that is to increase the amount of healthy donor cells in these patients and increase oxygenation. "

#Terumobct #RedBloodCellExchange #RBCX #SickleCellDisease #BloodBanks

Terumobct.com

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Carly Newton is an apheresis expert at Terumo Blood and Cell Technologies, a medical device company that manufactures and designs systems that collect blood components and cells. Their software provides management tools to optimize procedures and help physicians better manage care. The largest patient group treated with red blood cell exchange are those with sickle cell disease and benefit from the Terumo iron-neutral therapy over a simple transfusion.

Carly explains, "We've also got software technologies that many of our blood banks use and they're designed to get the most from blood donors when they go and present at a blood bank. So, for instance, instead of a blood donor just donating a bag of whole blood, our software can actually look at the starting counts of these donors and recommend what the blood donation center should collect from that donor to get the optimal cells from that patient."

"The main goal of any transfusion therapy with sickle cell disease is to increase the oxygenation of the blood. There are different types of transfusion therapy and this is where we spend a lot of time educating physicians and patients on the different types of transfusion therapy. So probably the most common type of transfusion therapy for sickle cell patients in the US at the moment is something we call simple transfusions. And that's really sickle cell patients going into the hospital once or twice a month and having red cell infusions. The purpose of that is to increase the amount of healthy donor cells in these patients and increase oxygenation. "

#Terumobct #RedBloodCellExchange #RBCX #SickleCellDisease #BloodBanks

Terumobct.com

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Dr. Daniel Karlin, Chief Medical Officer at MindMed, is bringing an updated approach to developing an LSD-based drug to treat anxiety and depression. Instead of developing a psychiatric medicine to be taken every day, MindMed is changing the paradigm to a session-based therapy that uses psychedelic drugs and therapists to improve psychiatric health. As a trained psychiatrist, Dan works at the intersection of psychiatry and neuroscience with this psychedelic-assisted therapeutic approach to brain health.

Dan elaborates, "For quite some time, I think it feels like psychiatry hasn't been meeting people there. Treatments have been more focused on symptomatic resolution and these sorts of things, and visits with psychiatrists can feel too short and it can be really hard to find and afford psychotherapy. I think that what people are responding to about LSD and other drugs like it and their therapeutic potential is the sense that they offer something more than what people are able to access today. That there's real hope that these are drugs that can help people get at the real reasons they feel the way they feel and come to understand themselves better and their role in the world."

"There's another school of thought that the mechanism of these drugs is largely neurobiological and that the perceptual experience may not even be necessary. Of course, anytime we start to do binaries in biology, we're probably wrong. And it's probably some of both. And we operate under that hypothesis too, that the mechanism by which these drugs cause a psychedelic experience is very well explicated. The mechanism by which they cause lasting change isn't."

@MindMedco #MNMD $MNMD #PsychedelicMedicines #PsychedelicTherapy #LSD #Psychedelics #MentalHealth #BrainHealth #PsychiatricHealth

mindmed.co

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Dr. Daniel Karlin, Chief Medical Officer at MindMed, is bringing an updated approach to developing an LSD-based drug to treat anxiety and depression. Instead of developing a psychiatric medicine to be taken every day, MindMed is changing the paradigm to a session-based therapy that uses psychedelic drugs and therapists to improve psychiatric health. As a trained psychiatrist, Dan works at the intersection of psychiatry and neuroscience with this psychedelic-assisted therapeutic approach to brain health.

Dan elaborates, "For quite some time, I think it feels like psychiatry hasn't been meeting people there. Treatments have been more focused on symptomatic resolution and these sorts of things, and visits with psychiatrists can feel too short and it can be really hard to find and afford psychotherapy. I think that what people are responding to about LSD and other drugs like it and their therapeutic potential is the sense that they offer something more than what people are able to access today. That there's real hope that these are drugs that can help people get at the real reasons they feel the way they feel and come to understand themselves better and their role in the world."

"There's another school of thought that the mechanism of these drugs is largely neurobiological and that the perceptual experience may not even be necessary. Of course, anytime we start to do binaries in biology, we're probably wrong. And it's probably some of both. And we operate under that hypothesis too, that the mechanism by which these drugs cause a psychedelic experience is very well explicated. The mechanism by which they cause lasting change isn't."

@MindMedco #MNMD $MNMD #PsychedelicMedicines #PsychedelicTherapy #LSD #Psychedelics #MentalHealth #BrainHealth #PsychiatricHealth

mindmed.co

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Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, CEO and Founder of Biotricity, shines a light on the need for better data about heart rhythm throughout the day, not just for a limited time. Biotricity has developed a non-invasive, cost-effective, available over-the-counter monitor that provides patients and cardiologists with a new level of understanding of heart activity and enhances diagnosis and disease management.

Waqaas explains, "I'll take a step back to try to explain the problem that we were trying to solve. Dexcom created a continuous glucose monitor, saying that there are these data points that are in between when you're pricking your finger and collecting your information, which is quite valuable and insightful."

"In the continuous heart monitoring world, or in the heart world, patients don't really have anything. You have an implantable loop recorder, which records your ECG continuously. But you have to be a high-risk patient, it's a very high cost to get that implanted, and when it comes to a non-invasive solution, you have a 30-second ECG. If we look at the criteria, the patient issues are asymptomatic. They happen while you're sleeping. If it's a 30-second or 3-minute ECG and you're sleeping and don't feel the symptom, you're not waking up to collect that information. And even if you were, by the time you wake up and get the device, that information is gone."

#Biotricity #Cardiology #Cardiovascular #HeartDisease #Wearables #ContinuousHeartMonitoring

biotricity.com

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Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, CEO and Founder of Biotricity, shines a light on the need for better data about heart rhythm throughout the day, not just for a limited time. Biotricity has developed a non-invasive, cost-effective, available over-the-counter monitor that provides patients and cardiologists with a new level of understanding of heart activity and enhances diagnosis and disease management.

Waqaas explains, "I'll take a step back to try to explain the problem that we were trying to solve. Dexcom created a continuous glucose monitor, saying that there are these data points that are in between when you're pricking your finger and collecting your information, which is quite valuable and insightful."

"In the continuous heart monitoring world, or in the heart world, patients don't really have anything. You have an implantable loop recorder, which records your ECG continuously. But you have to be a high-risk patient, it's a very high cost to get that implanted, and when it comes to a non-invasive solution, you have a 30-second ECG. If we look at the criteria, the patient issues are asymptomatic. They happen while you're sleeping. If it's a 30-second or 3-minute ECG and you're sleeping and don't feel the symptom, you're not waking up to collect that information. And even if you were, by the time you wake up and get the device, that information is gone."

#Biotricity #Cardiology #Cardiovascular #HeartDisease #Wearables #ContinuousHeartMonitoring

biotricity.com

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Dr. Eddilisa Martin is the CEO and Founder of M & B Sciences, which has created the Neighborhood Trials online platform and app available in the Apple Store and the Google Store. Their mission is to drive more diversity in clinical trial participation by providing accessible information to patients, providers, and caregivers looking for therapies and opportunities for trials.

Eddilisa explains, "When we talk about diversity, people most often think of race and ethnicity. And that's very, very important. But diversity means having representation across a whole spectrum of things. So whether that's age, whether it's your sexual preference, whether you live in the country versus the city, whether you have lots of comorbidities, lots of illnesses in conjunction with the disease that's being tested, or whether that's the only thing you have. There are a whole host of things that we're talking about when we say diversity."

"But you hear people talk about their hesitancy to be a guinea pig. And so it really does help people to understand that things have changed from the way they used to be. People hear horror stories from years and years ago, but they don't realize all of the protections that are in place for patients now. So the FDA committee has oversight. There are all of these safety committees that are involved in every single clinical trial. There's a safety committee that's looking at results as they are going, so they're not waiting until the end of the trial and seeing if there are different side effects that are popping up. They're measuring that on an ongoing, continuous basis."

#NeighborhoodTrials #ClinicalTrials #DecentalizedClinicalTrials #DiversityinClinicalTrials

NeighborhoodTrials.com

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Dr. Eddilisa Martin is the CEO and Founder of M & B Sciences, which has created the Neighborhood Trials online platform and app available in the Apple Store and the Google Store. Their mission is to drive more diversity in clinical trial participation by providing accessible information to patients, providers, and caregivers looking for therapies and opportunities for trials.

Eddilisa explains, "When we talk about diversity, people most often think of race and ethnicity. And that's very, very important. But diversity means having representation across a whole spectrum of things. So whether that's age, whether it's your sexual preference, whether you live in the country versus the city, whether you have lots of comorbidities, lots of illnesses in conjunction with the disease that's being tested, or whether that's the only thing you have. There are a whole host of things that we're talking about when we say diversity."

"But you hear people talk about their hesitancy to be a guinea pig. And so it really does help people to understand that things have changed from the way they used to be. People hear horror stories from years and years ago, but they don't realize all of the protections that are in place for patients now. So the FDA committee has oversight. There are all of these safety committees that are involved in every single clinical trial. There's a safety committee that's looking at results as they are going, so they're not waiting until the end of the trial and seeing if there are different side effects that are popping up. They're measuring that on an ongoing, continuous basis."

#NeighborhoodTrials #ClinicalTrials #DecentalizedClinicalTrials #DiversityinClinicalTrials

NeighborhoodTrials.com

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Eric Shaff is the President and CEO of Seres Therapeutics, which is focused on the gut microbiome in order to develop bacteria as an oral treatment for bloodstream infections, cancer, and immune system diseases. The first therapy is SER-109 for recurrent C. diff infection an orphan disease with inadequate solutions for patients. The starting point for Seres is that the health of the microbiome is the starting point for preventing infections from occurring.

Eric explains, "The real susceptibility of someone getting C. diff is not just the bad actor bacteria. But really the susceptibility of the microbiome and an injury to the microbiome, and susceptibility to infection. Typically what happens is if people get antibiotic therapy, which can be very effective in knocking back or killing all bacteria, it creates a significant niche in the microbiome, or an injury. There is what we call a race to repair, so either a patient will naturally repair and restore their microbiome, or C. diff may infiltrate, which can lead to an infection and a recurrence."

"Typically, if a patient is going to have a recurrence, it happens quickly. If they get C. diff, they take antibiotics, and the hope is that C. diff will not infiltrate to cause an occurrence. If it does, then people typically recur quickly. What happens following antibiotic therapy, is we treat patients with an oral regimen of SER-109, which is a consortium of bacteria in spore form you put in the capsule. That was the approach we took to our phase 3 study, where we had an 88% reduction in recurrence, which is a significant impact for patients suffering from this terrible disease."

@SeresTX #SeresTherapeutics #Microbiome #OralMicrobiomeTherapy #Cdiff #RecurrentCdiff #AMR #AntimicrobialResistance #InfectionProtection

serestherapeutics.com

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Eric Shaff is the President and CEO of Seres Therapeutics, which is focused on the gut microbiome in order to develop bacteria as an oral treatment for bloodstream infections, cancer, and immune system diseases. The first therapy is SER-109 for recurrent C. diff infection an orphan disease with inadequate solutions for patients. The starting point for Seres is that the health of the microbiome is the starting point for preventing infections from occurring.

Eric explains, "The real susceptibility of someone getting C. diff is not just the bad actor bacteria. But really the susceptibility of the microbiome and an injury to the microbiome, and susceptibility to infection. Typically what happens is if people get antibiotic therapy, which can be very effective in knocking back or killing all bacteria, it creates a significant niche in the microbiome, or an injury. There is what we call a race to repair, so either a patient will naturally repair and restore their microbiome, or C. diff may infiltrate, which can lead to an infection and a recurrence."

"Typically, if a patient is going to have a recurrence, it happens quickly. If they get C. diff, they take antibiotics, and the hope is that C. diff will not infiltrate to cause an occurrence. If it does, then people typically recur quickly. What happens following antibiotic therapy, is we treat patients with an oral regimen of SER-109, which is a consortium of bacteria in spore form you put in the capsule. That was the approach we took to our phase 3 study, where we had an 88% reduction in recurrence, which is a significant impact for patients suffering from this terrible disease."

@SeresTX #SeresTherapeutics #Microbiome #OralMicrobiomeTherapy #Cdiff #RecurrentCdiff #AMR #AntimicrobialResistance #InfectionProtection

serestherapeutics.com

Download the transcript here