Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Brian Roberts is a Senior VP and Head of Clinical Development at Rezolute which is developing first in class therapies in the treatment of metabolic diseases. In addition to working on a therapeutic for congenital hyperinsulinism, a rare disease, Rezolute is also in clinical trials with RZ402, an oral small molecule to treat diabetic macular edema which is showing an increase in prevalence due to the increase in the number of people suffering from diabetes.

Brian explains, "DME or diabetic macular edema is a complication of diabetes. It's a subset of diabetic retinopathy. And like other complications of diabetes, the blood vessels in the eye become injured or corrupted. And this leads to inflammation in the leakage of fluid across the blood vessel into the eye. And in this case, into the macula of the retina, which is responsible for high-resolution vision. If that continues, it can result in progressive visual loss and even blindness."

"Another problem with these therapies is that in some patients, they simply don't work. So the disease is not driven by vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF. And so there really is a need for therapies that address a different mechanism and that allow the earlier treatment of disease before the disease gets difficult to control. And that's where our oral therapeutic with a different mechanism of action comes into play."

"First and foremost, it represents a different mechanism, or a different way, to target the disease. RZ402 is a plasma kallikrein inhibitor. The kallikrein system is involved in the promotion of inflammation and vascular leakage. And it's part of normal physiology around the body to really promote the fight against infection or injury."

@RezoluteBio #RezoluteBio #Biotech #DME #Medicines #Innovation #RareDisease #MetabolicDiseases #DiabeticMacularEdema #DiabeticRetinopathy

RezoluteBio.com

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Dr. Brian Roberts is a Senior VP and Head of Clinical Development at Rezolute which is developing first in class therapies in the treatment of metabolic diseases. In addition to working on a therapeutic for congenital hyperinsulinism, a rare disease, Rezolute is also in clinical trials with RZ402, an oral small molecule to treat diabetic macular edema which is showing an increase in prevalence due to the increase in the number of people suffering from diabetes.

Brian explains, "DME or diabetic macular edema is a complication of diabetes. It's a subset of diabetic retinopathy. And like other complications of diabetes, the blood vessels in the eye become injured or corrupted. And this leads to inflammation in the leakage of fluid across the blood vessel into the eye. And in this case, into the macula of the retina, which is responsible for high-resolution vision. If that continues, it can result in progressive visual loss and even blindness."

"Another problem with these therapies is that in some patients, they simply don't work. So the disease is not driven by vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF. And so there really is a need for therapies that address a different mechanism and that allow the earlier treatment of disease before the disease gets difficult to control. And that's where our oral therapeutic with a different mechanism of action comes into play."

"First and foremost, it represents a different mechanism, or a different way, to target the disease. RZ402 is a plasma kallikrein inhibitor. The kallikrein system is involved in the promotion of inflammation and vascular leakage. And it's part of normal physiology around the body to really promote the fight against infection or injury."

@RezoluteBio #RezoluteBio #Biotech #DME #Medicines #Innovation #RareDisease #MetabolicDiseases #DiabeticMacularEdema #DiabeticRetinopathy

RezoluteBio.com

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Paul Cataford is the Interim CEO and President of Titan Medical Inc. which is bringing advancements to single-port or single incision robotic-assisted surgery. This differs from multiple ports where a number of incisions are made, and different tools are inserted into the different ports. Titan is moving all of the tools like the camera, a needle driver, grasper, and shearers through a single access point thanks to innovations in robotics, miniaturization, computing power, and visualization techniques.

Paul elaborates, "Well, as you can well imagine, what multiport means, you have multiple incisions around the abdomen or around the surgical work area. Every time you create a new point of entry, you create a new opportunity for infection. So, you have a new wound that needs to heal. You have a new scar, there's further risk of hitting something without intention, as you have multiple incisions. Less sites mean less pain, so a single incision has big benefits to the patient."

"So the patient is the real beneficiary of single incision. It's, as I mentioned earlier, faster healing, fewer pain meds, your hospital stay is a lot shorter. The reason why the surgeons like it is it can be quite tiring to do multiple surgeries stacked back-to-back-to-back. Whereas with robotic-assisted surgery, they don't fatigue as quickly. They're not bending over a patient. The fine motor skills that are required with these surgeons, it's not as tiring when you're working with tools and hand controllers and foot pedals."

@Titan_Medical #RoboticSurgery #Robotics #Gynecology #MinimallyInvasiveSurgery #Hysterectomy

titanmedicalinc.com

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Paul Cataford is the Interim CEO and President of Titan Medical Inc. which is bringing advancements to single-port or single incision robotic-assisted surgery. This differs from multiple ports where a number of incisions are made, and different tools are inserted into the different ports. Titan is moving all of the tools like the camera, a needle driver, grasper, and shearers through a single access point thanks to innovations in robotics, miniaturization, computing power, and visualization techniques.

Paul elaborates, "Well, as you can well imagine, what multiport means, you have multiple incisions around the abdomen or around the surgical work area. Every time you create a new point of entry, you create a new opportunity for infection. So, you have a new wound that needs to heal. You have a new scar, there's further risk of hitting something without intention, as you have multiple incisions. Less sites mean less pain, so a single incision has big benefits to the patient."

"So the patient is the real beneficiary of single incision. It's, as I mentioned earlier, faster healing, fewer pain meds, your hospital stay is a lot shorter. The reason why the surgeons like it is it can be quite tiring to do multiple surgeries stacked back-to-back-to-back. Whereas with robotic-assisted surgery, they don't fatigue as quickly. They're not bending over a patient. The fine motor skills that are required with these surgeons, it's not as tiring when you're working with tools and hand controllers and foot pedals."

@Titan_Medical #RoboticSurgery #Robotics #Gynecology #MinimallyInvasiveSurgery #Hysterectomy

titanmedicalinc.com

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Sheetal Parmar is the Head of Clinical Services at Natera, a clinical genetic testing company. She draws on her experience as a prenatal genetic counselor to address the need for more accurate and available non-invasive prenatal genetic testing. This kind of information can guide women and their care teams and can also help emotionally prepare families. Sheetal looks forward to seeing more genetic markers being used to identify other types of pregnancy health.

Sheetal explains, "People want to know, what are all the different options of testing? You can want to know as little information as possible or no information, all the way to "I want all the testing that could possibly be available for me or for the pregnancy." I think those are the type of questions that come up. Or "I have this in my family history. Will this test help me with that?" We want to make sure the right test is ordered based on the information that's needed for that patient based on their values and their beliefs, and what they want to know."

"There has been a significant drop in the number of invasive tests that are done. I recall when I was first starting in practice, I worked with an OB geneticist, and we would do like seven of these a day. Now it might be seven a week, maybe less than that in his practice. It's pretty rare because of the screening tests that are available now, non-invasive prenatal testing is such an accurate screening test compared to what was previously available that there are much fewer false positives and false negatives. Much fewer women are pulled out as a high risk that would then need to be offered to be tested."

#Natera #NIPT #NonInvasivePrenatalTesting #GeneticCounselor #GeneticTesting #GeneticScreening #PrenatalCare

Natera.com

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Sheetal Parmar is the Head of Clinical Services at Natera, a clinical genetic testing company. She draws on her experience as a prenatal genetic counselor to address the need for more accurate and available non-invasive prenatal genetic testing. This kind of information can guide women and their care teams and can also help emotionally prepare families. Sheetal looks forward to seeing more genetic markers being used to identify other types of pregnancy health.

Sheetal explains, "People want to know, what are all the different options of testing? You can want to know as little information as possible or no information, all the way to "I want all the testing that could possibly be available for me or for the pregnancy." I think those are the type of questions that come up. Or "I have this in my family history. Will this test help me with that?" We want to make sure the right test is ordered based on the information that's needed for that patient based on their values and their beliefs, and what they want to know."

"There has been a significant drop in the number of invasive tests that are done. I recall when I was first starting in practice, I worked with an OB geneticist, and we would do like seven of these a day. Now it might be seven a week, maybe less than that in his practice. It's pretty rare because of the screening tests that are available now, non-invasive prenatal testing is such an accurate screening test compared to what was previously available that there are much fewer false positives and false negatives. Much fewer women are pulled out as a high risk that would then need to be offered to be tested."

#Natera #NIPT #NonInvasivePrenatalTesting #GeneticCounselor #GeneticTesting #GeneticScreening #PrenatalCare

Natera.com

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Dr. David Dyer is the Chief Retina Specialist for Alimera Sciences, a publicly-traded company specializing in the development and commercialization of prescription ophthalmology treatments for the management of retinal diseases. Having high blood sugar over time can damage the retinal blood vessels that bring nutrients to the retina, creating diabetic retinopathy. Alimera has developed a delivery platform to inject their drug Iluvien into the eye to treat the resulting diabetic macular edema.

David explains, "So with retinal diseases, you're usually talking about diseases within the nerve fiber layer of the retina, the retinal vessels, or in the tissue that is underneath the retina that supports some of the retinal function. And that includes diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, vein occlusions, sometimes you can get detachments of the retina, and there are many other disorders, but those are the most common."

"The treatment for diabetic macular edema typically involves injecting medications into the eye. That sounds horrible, but we can actually numb up the eye, usually, with a series of numbing drops, and with a very tiny needle, we can inject medicine into the center of the eye, and that medicine diffuses into the retina."

"Iluvien is a sustained-release steroid. It's a little pellet, like a little tiny piece of rice, and we can inject that into the eye in the office, and it slowly dissolves over a period of three years, and it releases a steroid into the eye. The steroid works specifically on diabetic macular edema or the swelling in the central vision, and it decreases swelling."

@AlimeraSciences $ALIM #Iluvien #NewDayStudy #DMEandME #DiabeticMacularEdema #Ophthamology #Diabetes #Vision

AlimeraSciences.com

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Dr. David Dyer is the Chief Retina Specialist for Alimera Sciences, a publicly-traded company specializing in the development and commercialization of prescription ophthalmology treatments for the management of retinal diseases. Having high blood sugar over time can damage the retinal blood vessels that bring nutrients to the retina, creating diabetic retinopathy. Alimera has developed a delivery platform to inject their drug Iluvien into the eye to treat the resulting diabetic macular edema.

David explains, "So with retinal diseases, you're usually talking about diseases within the nerve fiber layer of the retina, the retinal vessels, or in the tissue that is underneath the retina that supports some of the retinal function. And that includes diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, vein occlusions, sometimes you can get detachments of the retina, and there are many other disorders, but those are the most common."

"The treatment for diabetic macular edema typically involves injecting medications into the eye. That sounds horrible, but we can actually numb up the eye, usually, with a series of numbing drops, and with a very tiny needle, we can inject medicine into the center of the eye, and that medicine diffuses into the retina."

"Iluvien is a sustained-release steroid. It's a little pellet, like a little tiny piece of rice, and we can inject that into the eye in the office, and it slowly dissolves over a period of three years, and it releases a steroid into the eye. The steroid works specifically on diabetic macular edema or the swelling in the central vision, and it decreases swelling."

@AlimeraSciences $ALIM #Iluvien #NewDayStudy #DMEandME #DiabeticMacularEdema #Ophthamology #Diabetes #Vision

AlimeraSciences.com

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Dr. Justin Norden is a Partner at GSR Ventures, a healthcare technology-focused venture fund investing in early-stage companies that are leveraging emerging technology to drive transformative changes in healthcare for all patients.

Justin explains, "Digital health has been, I think, a long journey for companies really trying to find things that we know should work, that we've seen work in other aspects of business where technologies really transformed how we do things. Even though that technology has been possible, it really hasn't touched healthcare until many would argue, very recently."

"Many companies that came in, either starting around 2010 or even through 2015, were a lot of the similar ideas that we're seeing today, there just wasn't the adoption. We didn't see patients being ready to adopt these technologies. Largely, even though some patients tried to adopt them, the providers weren't ready, providers weren't ready to deal with that data or willing to connect or spend time with the patients using these new technologies."

"In terms of how my background fits into how I look at companies today, I think one of the things that's very clear is if you go through medical training with a computer science background, you're continually banging your head against the wall saying why are we doing this repeatable task? Why are we using fax machines?"

#GSRVentures #DigitalHealth #MobileHealth #HealthTech #Healthcare #VirtualHealthcare #VentureCapital #HealthTechDeals

GSRVenturesus.com

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Dr. Justin Norden is a Partner at GSR Ventures, a healthcare technology-focused venture fund investing in early-stage companies that are leveraging emerging technology to drive transformative changes in healthcare for all patients.

Justin explains, "Digital health has been, I think, a long journey for companies really trying to find things that we know should work, that we've seen work in other aspects of business where technologies really transformed how we do things. Even though that technology has been possible, it really hasn't touched healthcare until many would argue, very recently."

"Many companies that came in, either starting around 2010 or even through 2015, were a lot of the similar ideas that we're seeing today, there just wasn't the adoption. We didn't see patients being ready to adopt these technologies. Largely, even though some patients tried to adopt them, the providers weren't ready, providers weren't ready to deal with that data or willing to connect or spend time with the patients using these new technologies."

"In terms of how my background fits into how I look at companies today, I think one of the things that's very clear is if you go through medical training with a computer science background, you're continually banging your head against the wall saying why are we doing this repeatable task? Why are we using fax machines?"

#GSRVentures #DigitalHealth #MobileHealth #HealthTech #Healthcare #VirtualHealthcare #VentureCapital #HealthTechDeals

GSRVenturesus.com

Download the transcript here

Download the transcript here