Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Bill Williams is the President and CEO of BriaCell, which is bringing a cellular approach to cancer immunotherapy. Building on their knowledge about HLA molecules, BriaCell is genetically engineering multiple HLA types of therapy to match the HLA types of cancer patients. Breast cancer and other cancers like prostate cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma are being explored for treatment with this approach. Individuals have up to 14 different HLA molecules, and BriaCell has seen that a single match is a strong predictor of the success of treatment.

Bill elaborates, "So, what we notice is that with our cellular therapy, we can predict patients that are very likely to respond based on the HLA type of a patient matching the HLA type of our cellular therapy The way that we do this, practically speaking, is we take our cells, grow them under GMP conditions, good manufacturing practice conditions Then after we harvest them, we irradiate them so they can't grow anymore, but they're still alive They are viable, but they don't really grow anymore."

"Then we freeze them down, and they're stable in that state for years, as we have proven at this point. Then, when the patients come in, we can ship them overnight to the clinic, where they can pull them out. Then they're injected into the skin of the patient in the upper back of the thighs to generate a very potent immune response, and the immune response generated will then attack the cancer of the patient."

@BriaCell #Immunotherapy #Tumors #Cancer #BreastCancer #HLATypes

briacell.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Bill Williams is the President and CEO of BriaCell, which is bringing a cellular approach to cancer immunotherapy. Building on their knowledge about HLA molecules, BriaCell is genetically engineering multiple HLA types of therapy to match the HLA types of cancer patients. Breast cancer and other cancers like prostate cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma are being explored for treatment with this approach. Individuals have up to 14 different HLA molecules, and BriaCell has seen that a single match is a strong predictor of the success of treatment.

Bill elaborates, "So, what we notice is that with our cellular therapy, we can predict patients that are very likely to respond based on the HLA type of a patient matching the HLA type of our cellular therapy The way that we do this, practically speaking, is we take our cells, grow them under GMP conditions, good manufacturing practice conditions Then after we harvest them, we irradiate them so they can't grow anymore, but they're still alive They are viable, but they don't really grow anymore."

"Then we freeze them down, and they're stable in that state for years, as we have proven at this point. Then, when the patients come in, we can ship them overnight to the clinic, where they can pull them out. Then they're injected into the skin of the patient in the upper back of the thighs to generate a very potent immune response, and the immune response generated will then attack the cancer of the patient."

@BriaCell #Immunotherapy #Tumors #Cancer #BreastCancer #HLATypes

briacell.com

Download the transcript here

Tom Gibbs is the Director of Debiopharm's Innovation Fund, which is focused on in-licensing early-stage assets to help innovators bridge the gap between invention and bringing solutions to market. Investments are being made in technology that might help in drug development and digital technology that is enhancing the patient treatment pathway.

Tom elaborates, "Debiopharm is actually a quite successful pharma company that most people haven't heard of. And this is really down to the business model. We were set up more than 40 years ago with the idea of taking molecules that have been dropped in development, bringing them into the clinic, proving that they really worked, and then getting them out to as many patients as possible. And so, the business model then is an in-licensing model where we go around the world looking for new compounds, typically at a pre-clinical stage, then we in-license them and develop them with our own money."

"We invested in a company based out of California called VeriSIM Life, and they're modeling exactly this translational stage, and they've modeled six different species. So you can see what might happen in a mouse and see how that translates to a human. This is super important because we all start our studies in mice and rats and dogs and monkeys. Then we try and move them into humans, and often the results don't correlate so well because humans aren't monkeys and monkeys aren't rats and so on and so forth. So that I think is coming, but also has not been greatly exploited up to this date."

"Another aspect is about psycho-oncology. We recently invested in a German company called Fosanis that has a platform called Mika, and that's all about supporting cancer patients. In fact, they don't even have a provider-facing component. It really is direct to patients and it gives cancer patients psychological support. This is information, training, and coaching tools that can help them get over the psychological effects of having a cancer diagnosis and being in treatment, which is super important, as I think we all know."

@DebiopharmFund #DebiopharmInnovationFund #DigitalHealth #DrugDevelopment #Oncology #Pharma #ClinicalTrials #Biopharma #ClinicalResearch #DigitalBiomarkers #DigitalTherapeutics

debiopharm.com

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Trisha Bordelon is a patient advocate and active participant with the PatientsLikeMe organization. Trisha talks about her journey from when the doctors first diagnosed multiple sclerosis through her attempts to find an effective medication. Along the way, she discovered some genetic and environmental factors in developing this disease. She also found a community of patients and advocates on PatientsLikeMe, where she found guidance and where she shares resources and advocacy support.

Trisha explains, "I found PatientsLikeMe just by surfing the internet, and I didn't want somebody else to go through what I went through when I was first diagnosed. My doctor, when I was diagnosed with MS, handed me two brochures. One was for Copaxone, and the other one was for, I believe, Avonex. And he said, "Take these home, take a look at them, come back next week, and we'll decide which medicine you're going to start on." I didn't know anything about MS, in my mind's eye, since I had a relative that had it, I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to end up in a wheelchair within six months. I won't be to work anymore. My life as I know it is over." I want to spare somebody else going through that agony."

"I stayed off work from 2017 to 2021 and then went back to work full-time for one of the hospitals. They were so short-staffed and could not get enough people that they were reaching out to people that might have a disability or might have a problem. I did not try to hide my MS from them, but I also didn't volunteer it. I put down that I had been formally on disability, and I told my boss that I did have some limitations, but no one ever asked, so I did not disclose them."

@PatientsLikeMe #MultipleSclerosis #MS #ChronicKidneyDisease #PatientAdvocacy #ChronicIllness

PatientsLikeMe.com

Listen to the podcast here

Trisha Bordelon is a patient advocate and active participant with the PatientsLikeMe organization. Trisha talks about her journey from when the doctors first diagnosed multiple sclerosis through her attempts to find an effective medication. Along the way, she discovered some genetic and environmental factors in developing this disease. She also found a community of patients and advocates on PatientsLikeMe, where she found guidance and where she shares resources and advocacy support.

Trisha explains, "I found PatientsLikeMe just by surfing the internet, and I didn't want somebody else to go through what I went through when I was first diagnosed. My doctor, when I was diagnosed with MS, handed me two brochures. One was for Copaxone, and the other one was for, I believe, Avonex. And he said, "Take these home, take a look at them, come back next week, and we'll decide which medicine you're going to start on." I didn't know anything about MS, in my mind's eye, since I had a relative that had it, I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to end up in a wheelchair within six months. I won't be to work anymore. My life as I know it is over." I want to spare somebody else going through that agony."

"I stayed off work from 2017 to 2021 and then went back to work full-time for one of the hospitals. They were so short-staffed and could not get enough people that they were reaching out to people that might have a disability or might have a problem. I did not try to hide my MS from them, but I also didn't volunteer it. I put down that I had been formally on disability, and I told my boss that I did have some limitations, but no one ever asked, so I did not disclose them."

@PatientsLikeMe #MultipleSclerosis #MS #ChronicKidneyDisease #PatientAdvocacy #ChronicIllness

PatientsLikeMe.com

Download the transcript here

Stan Abel is the Chief Executive Officer of ProJenX, working on developing therapeutics to get into the brain to access the motor neurons that are dying in ALS and other brain and neurological diseases. Their drug prosetin is optimized to be bioavailable and administered in a small amount of liquid which is an advantage to someone living with ALS. Research is showing promise in increasing motor neuron survival in other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and perhaps Alzheimer's.

Stan explains, "In ALS, we need the therapeutics to get into the brain to access the motor neurons where the pathology is taking place and where those motor neurons are dying. The team at Columbia actually optimized a family of compounds. Not only were they screening these drugs to see that they were neuroprotective, and in these ALS models, they could see that we were actually really improving the survival of motor neurons in vitro, which means basically in a Petri dish. They optimized the compound so that it would easily cross the blood-brain barrier."

"These are two really important aspects. I think the advantage, in fact, that ProJenX has and prosetin has versus other programs that have been advanced in ALS is that this drug, all along the way, was based on ALS disease pathology. It was then was optimized to actually get into the brain and access the motor neurons that need the help."

@ProJenX #ProJenX #ALS #ProjectALS #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #BrainDiseases #BloodBrainBarrier #ColumbiaUniversity

projenx.com

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Stan Abel is the Chief Executive Officer of ProJenX, working on developing therapeutics to get into the brain to access the motor neurons that are dying in ALS and other brain and neurological diseases. Their drug prosetin is optimized to be bioavailable and administered in a small amount of liquid which is an advantage to someone living with ALS. Research is showing promise in increasing motor neuron survival in other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and perhaps Alzheimer's.

Stan explains, "In ALS, we need the therapeutics to get into the brain to access the motor neurons where the pathology is taking place and where those motor neurons are dying. The team at Columbia actually optimized a family of compounds. Not only were they screening these drugs to see that they were neuroprotective, and in these ALS models, they could see that we were actually really improving the survival of motor neurons in vitro, which means basically in a Petri dish. They optimized the compound so that it would easily cross the blood-brain barrier."

"These are two really important aspects. I think the advantage, in fact, that ProJenX has and prosetin has versus other programs that have been advanced in ALS is that this drug, all along the way, was based on ALS disease pathology. It was then was optimized to actually get into the brain and access the motor neurons that need the help."

@ProJenX #ProJenX #ALS #ProjectALS #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #BrainDiseases #BloodBrainBarrier #ColumbiaUniversity

projenx.com

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Dr. Stacia Woodcock is Clinical Cannabis Pharmacist at Curaleaf, which is bringing medical and adult use of cannabis to several states throughout the country. Their model is to include a pharmacist in their dispensaries to educate practitioners and patients on the ways to use and manage cannabis products to address their concerns. Curaleaf is also developing products that take a more nuanced view of the elements of the plant to explore how the use of minor cannabinoids can support everyday wellness and pain management without undesirable effects.

Stacia explains, "So the Plant Precision line is five different formulations of the minor cannabinoids. The first one is CBG, which is cannabigerol, and CBG is a soothing anti-inflammatory. It can be really beneficial for people that have stomach issues, gut issues, and people that work out and want faster recovery from working out. It can help soothe all of that inflammation. It's for the active, involved person or someone who maybe has some stomach troubles, which we all do nowadays. Along with like a probiotic, it can be really beneficial for just soothing."

"CBN gets a lot of attention. It's actually what happens to THC over time. It degrades into CBN. So that cannabinoid is really relaxing. It's associated with sleep and not in a way that leaves you hungover the next morning or gives you lower quality sleep. It helps you have a really nice restful sleep without, again, that intoxicating effect. So those are the sorts of things we're talking about with these minor cannabinoids and the different targeted use that they can have. That's a little bit different from when people think about traditional cannabis products."

@Curaleaf_Inc #Curaleaf #Cannabis #CannabisMedicine #HolisticMedicine #CannabisWithConfidence #CannabisGummies

curaleaf.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Stacia Woodcock is Clinical Cannabis Pharmacist at Curaleaf, which is bringing medical and adult use of cannabis to several states throughout the country. Their model is to include a pharmacist in their dispensaries to educate practitioners and patients on the ways to use and manage cannabis products to address their concerns. Curaleaf is also developing products that take a more nuanced view of the elements of the plant to explore how the use of minor cannabinoids can support everyday wellness and pain management without undesirable effects.

Stacia explains, "So the Plant Precision line is five different formulations of the minor cannabinoids. The first one is CBG, which is cannabigerol, and CBG is a soothing anti-inflammatory. It can be really beneficial for people that have stomach issues, gut issues, and people that work out and want faster recovery from working out. It can help soothe all of that inflammation. It's for the active, involved person or someone who maybe has some stomach troubles, which we all do nowadays. Along with like a probiotic, it can be really beneficial for just soothing."

"CBN gets a lot of attention. It's actually what happens to THC over time. It degrades into CBN. So that cannabinoid is really relaxing. It's associated with sleep and not in a way that leaves you hungover the next morning or gives you lower quality sleep. It helps you have a really nice restful sleep without, again, that intoxicating effect. So those are the sorts of things we're talking about with these minor cannabinoids and the different targeted use that they can have. That's a little bit different from when people think about traditional cannabis products."

@Curaleaf_Inc #Curaleaf #Cannabis #CannabisMedicine #HolisticMedicine #CannabisWithConfidence #CannabisGummies

curaleaf.com

Download the transcript here

Tom Gibbs is the Director of Debiopharm's Innovation Fund, which is focused on in-licensing early-stage assets to help innovators bridge the gap between invention and bringing solutions to market. Investments are being made in technology that might help in drug development and digital technology that is enhancing the patient treatment pathway.

Tom elaborates, "Debiopharm is actually a quite successful pharma company that most people haven't heard of. And this is really down to the business model. We were set up more than 40 years ago with the idea of taking molecules that have been dropped in development, bringing them into the clinic, proving that they really worked, and then getting them out to as many patients as possible. And so, the business model then is an in-licensing model where we go around the world looking for new compounds, typically at a pre-clinical stage, then we in-license them and develop them with our own money."

"We invested in a company based out of California called VeriSIM Life, and they're modeling exactly this translational stage, and they've modeled six different species. So you can see what might happen in a mouse and see how that translates to a human. This is super important because we all start our studies in mice and rats and dogs and monkeys. Then we try and move them into humans, and often the results don't correlate so well because humans aren't monkeys and monkeys aren't rats and so on and so forth. So that I think is coming, but also has not been greatly exploited up to this date."

"Another aspect is about psycho-oncology. We recently invested in a German company called Fosanis that has a platform called Mika, and that's all about supporting cancer patients. In fact, they don't even have a provider-facing component. It really is direct to patients and it gives cancer patients psychological support. This is information, training, and coaching tools that can help them get over the psychological effects of having a cancer diagnosis and being in treatment, which is super important, as I think we all know."

@DebiopharmFund #DebiopharmInnovationFund #DigitalHealth #DrugDevelopment #Oncology #Pharma #ClinicalTrials #Biopharma #ClinicalResearch #DigitalBiomarkers #DigitalTherapeutics

debiopharm.com

Listen to the podcast here