Empowered Patient Podcast

Lauren Walrath is Vice President of Public Affairs in North America, and Susan Thiele is Director of Advocacy and Brand Communications at Kyowa Kirin, a Japan-based global specialty pharmaceutical company known for its cutting-edge scientific discoveries in four therapeutic areas including neurology, nephrology, hematological cancers, and immunology.

Lauren explains their approach to patient-centric discovery, "In advocacy, we're really trying to find where the gaps are and how we can best work with partners to make long-term and sustainable improvements for patients. So that can be in the form of starting new research, funding new grants, addressing disparities, working on developing new education programs. Generally, we're looking for meaningful opportunities to help patients and their families on their journey from diagnosis to treatment. We work closely with the advocates, and we bring all of that understanding back to our teams here at Kyowa Kirin so that we really can engage our cross-functional partners in doing more to help the patients we serve."

Susan elaborates, "And then there is Jim and Jeffrey who have Sézary syndrome, which is a more serious form of CTCL that affects less than 5% of the patients. What we've done is we've captured their journeys in their own voice, the journey to diagnosis, their experience on treatment, and ultimately what they've learned along the way, what really keeps them motivated to not give up. And people can now hear those stories by going to POTELIGEO.com."

#KyowaKirin #KKNA #DrugDevelopment #RareDiseases #Antibodies #immunology #Cancer #CTCL #Neurology #ParkinsonsDisease #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #Nephrology #HematologicalCancers #SezarySyndrome

KyowaKirin.com

Listen to the podcast here

Lauren Walrath is Vice President of Public Affairs in North America, and Susan Thiele is Director of Advocacy and Brand Communications at Kyowa Kirin, a Japan-based global specialty pharmaceutical company known for its cutting-edge scientific discoveries in four therapeutic areas including neurology, nephrology, hematological cancers, and immunology.

Lauren explains their approach to patient-centric discovery, "In advocacy, we're really trying to find where the gaps are and how we can best work with partners to make long-term and sustainable improvements for patients. So that can be in the form of starting new research, funding new grants, addressing disparities, working on developing new education programs. Generally, we're looking for meaningful opportunities to help patients and their families on their journey from diagnosis to treatment. We work closely with the advocates, and we bring all of that understanding back to our teams here at Kyowa Kirin so that we really can engage our cross-functional partners in doing more to help the patients we serve."

Susan elaborates, "And then there is Jim and Jeffrey who have Sézary syndrome, which is a more serious form of CTCL that affects less than 5% of the patients. What we've done is we've captured their journeys in their own voice, the journey to diagnosis, their experience on treatment, and ultimately what they've learned along the way, what really keeps them motivated to not give up. And people can now hear those stories by going to POTELIGEO.com."

#KyowaKirin #KKNA #DrugDevelopment #RareDiseases #Antibodies #immunology #Cancer #CTCL #Neurology #ParkinsonsDisease #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #Nephrology #HematologicalCancers #SezarySyndrome

KyowaKirin.com

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Dr. Colin Banas is the Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst a health IT company that's been around for over 21 years. Started as an e-prescribing platform and developed expertise in medication management.

Colin explains, "What we as a company are hoping to do is empower patients by connecting the dots to help them get on therapy and stay on therapy. And so, one of the core things that we do as a company is around price transparency."

"And when I say price transparency, what I'm really talking about is serving up data to the multiple parties involved in prescribing decisions. When I mention price transparency for a provider, for example, what I'm saying is at the moment of making that decision to write that prescription, ostensibly with the patient in front of me, or the encounter happening, so much of it now is virtual via telehealth. But at the moment of making that prescription decision, I can see what the patient's copay will be, what they're out of pocket will be. And that really lends itself to having a conversation at that moment in time."

@DrFirst #PriceTransparency #Healthcare #Hospitals #HCTransparency #HealthcareCosts

DrFirst.com

Listen to the podcast here.

Dr. Colin Banas is the Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst a health IT company that's been around for over 21 years. Started as an e-prescribing platform and developed expertise in medication management.

Colin explains, "What we as a company are hoping to do is empower patients by connecting the dots to help them get on therapy and stay on therapy. And so, one of the core things that we do as a company is around price transparency."

"And when I say price transparency, what I'm really talking about is serving up data to the multiple parties involved in prescribing decisions. When I mention price transparency for a provider, for example, what I'm saying is at the moment of making that decision to write that prescription, ostensibly with the patient in front of me, or the encounter happening, so much of it now is virtual via telehealth. But at the moment of making that prescription decision, I can see what the patient's copay will be, what they're out of pocket will be. And that really lends itself to having a conversation at that moment in time."

@DrFirst #PriceTransparency #Healthcare #Hospitals #HCTransparency #HealthcareCosts

DrFirst.com

Download the transcript here.

Bob Connelly is the CEO of Elicio Therapeutics which has figured out how to deliver immunotherapies from vaccines into the lymph nodes where they are activated to defeat cancer and infectious diseases.

Bob says, "Our overall mission is to treat many different types of cancers primarily, but even to bring our technology into other areas like infectious diseases by engaging the lymph nodes, which are really the command center for the immune response in our body."

"And to date, they really have not been a part of the cancer immunotherapy revolution that's really started over the last ten years and is very exciting. We're using a technology that initially is focused on KRAS mutation-driven cancers, which comprise 25% of all solid tumors. So we're in a trial right now where we have colorectal cancer patients, we have pancreatic cancer patients, but our lead program can apply in lung cancer, ovarian cancer, bile duct cancer."

"In our bodies, albumin is a very large protein that is constantly circulating throughout the body from lymph node to lymph node. We basically hitchhike on that albumin. We've developed a technology that allows us to hitchhike on that albumin to the lymph nodes, and then hop off into the lymph node, be taken up into the lymph node where all the various aspects of the lymph node can then be brought to bear, to activate the therapeutic, expand it, and send it out on its mission."

@ElicioTX #CancerVaccine #PancreaticCancer #Immunotherapy #lymphnodetargeting #Vaccines #KRASMutation

Elicio.com

Listen to the podcast here

Bob Connelly is the CEO of Elicio Therapeutics which has figured out how to deliver immunotherapies from vaccines into the lymph nodes where they are activated to defeat cancer and infectious diseases.

Bob says, "Our overall mission is to treat many different types of cancers primarily, but even to bring our technology into other areas like infectious diseases by engaging the lymph nodes, which are really the command center for the immune response in our body."

"And to date, they really have not been a part of the cancer immunotherapy revolution that's really started over the last ten years and is very exciting. We're using a technology that initially is focused on KRAS mutation-driven cancers, which comprise 25% of all solid tumors. So we're in a trial right now where we have colorectal cancer patients, we have pancreatic cancer patients, but our lead program can apply in lung cancer, ovarian cancer, bile duct cancer."

"In our bodies, albumin is a very large protein that is constantly circulating throughout the body from lymph node to lymph node. We basically hitchhike on that albumin. We've developed a technology that allows us to hitchhike on that albumin to the lymph nodes, and then hop off into the lymph node, be taken up into the lymph node where all the various aspects of the lymph node can then be brought to bear, to activate the therapeutic, expand it, and send it out on its mission."

@ElicioTX #CancerVaccine #PancreaticCancer #Immunotherapy #lymphnodetargeting #Vaccines #KRASMutation

Elicio.com

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Dr. Peter Altman is the President and CEO of BioCardia and emphasizes that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world. BioCardia is developing technologies to treat cardiovascular diseases with cell and cell-derived therapies which allow for precise cell delivery in the heart and technologies associated with optimizing the selection of patients to find those most likely to respond to the therapy.

Peter explains, "In this setting, I think what's unique is there's a technology around that cell processing and around the cell delivery. I think what's most unique is these are autologous cells, as we've said, and because of how we're doing this, we can achieve, in appropriate patients with this point-of-care processing and the efficient delivery, we can deliver and create dosage forms that are not only more significant than others historically but are very inexpensive to provide for the patients. And that means it can have a real boon to the healthcare system."

"Most autologous therapies they talk about are enormously expensive because it requires the cells to be shipped to a centralized laboratory and manipulated and processed and handled. And that impacts, really, the quality of the cells and can impact the safety because they're exposed to laboratories where many other cells are involved."

"By processing them at point-of-care in, really, an almost closed system that's disposable, the patient's cells never leave the cardiac suite in which the procedure is performed, and the disposable cartridge in which they're processed is discarded. So they'll never be in an environment where they would be exposed to any other patient's cells."

#BioCardia $BCDA #CardiAMP #HeartFailure #CellTherapy

BioCardia.com

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Peter Altman is the President and CEO of BioCardia and emphasizes that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world. BioCardia is developing technologies to treat cardiovascular diseases with cell and cell-derived therapies which allow for precise cell delivery in the heart and technologies associated with optimizing the selection of patients to find those most likely to respond to the therapy.

Peter explains, "In this setting, I think what's unique is there's a technology around that cell processing and around the cell delivery. I think what's most unique is these are autologous cells, as we've said, and because of how we're doing this, we can achieve, in appropriate patients with this point-of-care processing and the efficient delivery, we can deliver and create dosage forms that are not only more significant than others historically but are very inexpensive to provide for the patients. And that means it can have a real boon to the healthcare system."

"Most autologous therapies they talk about are enormously expensive because it requires the cells to be shipped to a centralized laboratory and manipulated and processed and handled. And that impacts, really, the quality of the cells and can impact the safety because they're exposed to laboratories where many other cells are involved."

"By processing them at point-of-care in, really, an almost closed system that's disposable, the patient's cells never leave the cardiac suite in which the procedure is performed, and the disposable cartridge in which they're processed is discarded. So they'll never be in an environment where they would be exposed to any other patient's cells."

#BioCardia $BCDA #CardiAMP #HeartFailure #CellTherapy

BioCardia.com

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Walter Wolf is the author of The Right Rehab: A Guide to Addiction and Mental Illness Recovery When Crisis Hits Your Family and also an interventionist. He has written this book to highlight options for those with addictions and family members and friends who want to help find an effective treatment.

Walter explains, "There are lots of books about addiction, about the clinical aspect of it, but there were no books whatsoever, there were no guides about how you get the right treatment for the right individual. So a few years go by, and ironically I'm now an interventionist and a treatment placement specialist. People come to me not only to intervene with loved ones because they need to go to treatment but also I match people up with the right treatment facility for them."

"Until just recently, the conventional wisdom was that if somebody had an addiction, well, that was because that was a choice on that individual's part, and that choice meant that person had very low morals, had very low character. But in fact, we know now that addiction is actually a disease, and it's not something that people choose to do. In fact, it has very similar relapse rates, for example, diabetes or asthma or hypertension."

#WalterWolf #Rehab #Addiction #Intervention #Interventionist #Recovery #RecoveryJourney #DrugAddiction #Opioids #ProcessAddiction #SubstanceAbuse

The Right Rehab

Listen to the podcast here

Walter Wolf is the author of The Right Rehab: A Guide to Addiction and Mental Illness Recovery When Crisis Hits Your Family and also an interventionist. He has written this book to highlight options for those with addictions and family members and friends who want to help find an effective treatment.

Walter explains, "There are lots of books about addiction, about the clinical aspect of it, but there were no books whatsoever, there were no guides about how you get the right treatment for the right individual. So a few years go by, and ironically I'm now an interventionist and a treatment placement specialist. People come to me not only to intervene with loved ones because they need to go to treatment but also I match people up with the right treatment facility for them."

"Until just recently, the conventional wisdom was that if somebody had an addiction, well, that was because that was a choice on that individual's part, and that choice meant that person had very low morals, had very low character. But in fact, we know now that addiction is actually a disease, and it's not something that people choose to do. In fact, it has very similar relapse rates, for example, diabetes or asthma or hypertension."

#WalterWolf #Rehab #Addiction #Intervention #Interventionist #Recovery #RecoveryJourney #DrugAddiction #Opioids #ProcessAddiction #SubstanceAbuse

The Right Rehab

Download the transcript here