Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Rafael Amado, President, Head of Global Research and Development at Zai Lab, highlights the renewed interest in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) with advancements in linker technology and payload delivery, leading to improved therapeutic windows and reduced side effects. The Zai Lab lead ADC ZL-1310 has shown promising results in small cell lung cancer and the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to treat brain metastases, a common complication in small cell lung cancer. Combining ADCs with immunotherapy can potentially enhance the immune response.

Rafael elaborates, "ADCs have undergone a bit of a renaissance. In the past, traditional ADCs had many drawbacks. They had what's called a narrow therapeutic window. So the dose that was effective was very close to the dose that was toxic. This was due to many factors. The construction of the antibodies and the chemotherapy, which we call payload, wasn't liberated in the right compartment. Either the tumor microenvironment or the antibody was not well internalized and didn't go into the cancer cell."

"There are now new generations of antibody-drug conjugates, and ZL-1310 is one of them. It uses a technology called TMALIN. The advantage of this is that the linker is quite specific and the antibody internalizes, it can release the payload, which is a different chemotherapy, than a classic ADC. Also, it can be digested in the tumor microenvironment, and the chemotherapy can penetrate cells that don't have the target just by influx into the cell. So that's called the bystander effect."

#ZaiLaboratory #innovation #Cancer #ADC #Antibodydrug #Biotech #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #LifeSciences #Healthcare

zailaboratory.com

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Dr. Rafael Amado, President, Head of Global Research and Development at Zai Lab, highlights the renewed interest in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) with advancements in linker technology and payload delivery, leading to improved therapeutic windows and reduced side effects. The Zai Lab lead ADC ZL-1310 has shown promising results in small cell lung cancer and the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to treat brain metastases, a common complication in small cell lung cancer. Combining ADCs with immunotherapy can potentially enhance the immune response.

Rafael elaborates, "ADCs have undergone a bit of a renaissance. In the past, traditional ADCs had many drawbacks. They had what's called a narrow therapeutic window. So the dose that was effective was very close to the dose that was toxic. This was due to many factors. The construction of the antibodies and the chemotherapy, which we call payload, wasn't liberated in the right compartment. Either the tumor microenvironment or the antibody was not well internalized and didn't go into the cancer cell."

"There are now new generations of antibody-drug conjugates, and ZL-1310 is one of them. It uses a technology called TMALIN. The advantage of this is that the linker is quite specific and the antibody internalizes, it can release the payload, which is a different chemotherapy, than a classic ADC. Also, it can be digested in the tumor microenvironment, and the chemotherapy can penetrate cells that don't have the target just by influx into the cell. So that's called the bystander effect."

#ZaiLaboratory #innovation #Cancer #ADC #Antibodydrug #Biotech #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #LifeSciences #Healthcare

zailaboratory.com

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Dr. Halinder Mangat, Director of Research at the Brain Trauma Foundation, has developed evidence-based guidelines for treating severe traumatic brain injuries, which have been shown to improve outcomes significantly. The Foundation is conducting research in collaboration with the US Defense Department and Veterans Administration, including a clinical trial on the use of lumbar drainage to reduce intracranial pressure from a brain injury. While the brain was once thought incapable of healing, research shows early intervention from injuries can result in the regeneration of cells and formation of new neural circuits.

Halinder explains, "The initial focus of the Brain Trauma Foundation's mission was treatment. The Brain Trauma Foundation in 1997 became the first surgical organization and first professional body to produce evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of severe head injury. That means looking at the comprehensive literature body, finding out what robust research is, and compiling it all. Some studies may have contradictory results. We compile it all in a very objective, systematic way to then frame recommendations as to the best practice, and these fall under the umbrella of evidence-based medicine. In 1997, the first edition was published. Over the years, multiple studies have shown that this set of guidelines has improved good outcomes or decreased poor outcomes by 50%, which is the most remarkable intervention, perhaps short of vaccines or antibiotics. But in the surgical field, it is probably the most impactful intervention."

"So the first impact of the injury causes X amount of damage, and then following that, there is a cascade of it like dominoes falling. The whole focus has been to prevent downstream dominoes from falling by early intervention. And after the first injury when a few dominoes, for example, have fallen, the goal of the guidelines has been to as early and as intensively as possible to minimize downstream dominos falling, which means secondary injury, which in itself has its own legacy of influencing outcome. Over a period of time, there's been a lot of trials to try neuroprotective drugs, which would, in the first instance, mitigate the secondary injury."

#BrainTraumaFoundation #BTF #Neurology #Neurologist #TraumaticBrainInjury #TBI #BrainTrauma

braintrauma.org

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Dr. Halinder Mangat, Director of Research at the Brain Trauma Foundation, has developed evidence-based guidelines for treating severe traumatic brain injuries, which have been shown to improve outcomes significantly. The Foundation is conducting research in collaboration with the US Defense Department and Veterans Administration, including a clinical trial on the use of lumbar drainage to reduce intracranial pressure from a brain injury. While the brain was once thought incapable of healing, research shows early intervention from injuries can result in the regeneration of cells and formation of new neural circuits.

Halinder explains, "The initial focus of the Brain Trauma Foundation's mission was treatment. The Brain Trauma Foundation in 1997 became the first surgical organization and first professional body to produce evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of severe head injury. That means looking at the comprehensive literature body, finding out what robust research is, and compiling it all. Some studies may have contradictory results. We compile it all in a very objective, systematic way to then frame recommendations as to the best practice, and these fall under the umbrella of evidence-based medicine. In 1997, the first edition was published. Over the years, multiple studies have shown that this set of guidelines has improved good outcomes or decreased poor outcomes by 50%, which is the most remarkable intervention, perhaps short of vaccines or antibiotics. But in the surgical field, it is probably the most impactful intervention."

"So the first impact of the injury causes X amount of damage, and then following that, there is a cascade of it like dominoes falling. The whole focus has been to prevent downstream dominoes from falling by early intervention. And after the first injury when a few dominoes, for example, have fallen, the goal of the guidelines has been to as early and as intensively as possible to minimize downstream dominos falling, which means secondary injury, which in itself has its own legacy of influencing outcome. Over a period of time, there's been a lot of trials to try neuroprotective drugs, which would, in the first instance, mitigate the secondary injury."

#BrainTraumaFoundation #BTF #Neurology #Neurologist #TraumaticBrainInjury #TBI #BrainTrauma

braintrauma.org

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Jeffrey Meckler, CEO of Indaptus Therapeutics, is focused on using their decoy platform to activate the immune system to fight cancer and infections. This approach activates the innate and adaptive pathways in a controlled manner using a short-term pulsed dosing regimen and helps avoid the toxicity issues seen in other immunotherapies. The therapy is cleared from the system quickly, allowing the immune system to be modulated and potentially used with other cancer treatments.

Jeffrey explains, "It's a very uncommon approach because we have, over the last several decades, really had a paradigm for treating cancer in immunotherapy, and that paradigm is turning one or a couple switches in the immune system to help fight the cancer. Again, as I mentioned before, the concept of doing too much, activating too much comes from this idea that you'll hit toxicities and, like I said, cytokine storm or whatever. What we do is go about it in a way that people are coming to. The big talk right now are these VEGF PD-1 bispecific antibodies and what they're actually doing. Part of this is that the VEGF activates innate immune pathways. The PD-1 activates adaptive immune pathways."

"So there's a lot of talk about what's been going on with Summit Therapeutics, and everybody now is doing these VEGF PD-1. We're even broader than that. And more importantly, we're also in a short burst. We call our therapy pulse prime, but it's cleared in the system within a couple of hours. So it does this activation, but instead of keeping the foot on the accelerator the entire time, it lets up. And what we started doing is giving it weekly, and our preclinical models show that weekly administration in combination with other therapies is the most potent approach for us."

#IndaptusTherapeutics #Decoy20 #Biotech #Cancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #LungCancer #BladderCancer #LiverCancer #PancreaticCancer #ColonCancer

indaptusrx.com

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Jeffrey Meckler, CEO of Indaptus Therapeutics, is focused on using their decoy platform to activate the immune system to fight cancer and infections. This approach activates the innate and adaptive pathways in a controlled manner using a short-term pulsed dosing regimen and helps avoid the toxicity issues seen in other immunotherapies. The therapy is cleared from the system quickly, allowing the immune system to be modulated and potentially used with other cancer treatments.

Jeffrey explains, "It's a very uncommon approach because we have, over the last several decades, really had a paradigm for treating cancer in immunotherapy, and that paradigm is turning one or a couple switches in the immune system to help fight the cancer. Again, as I mentioned before, the concept of doing too much, activating too much comes from this idea that you'll hit toxicities and, like I said, cytokine storm or whatever. What we do is go about it in a way that people are coming to. The big talk right now are these VEGF PD-1 bispecific antibodies and what they're actually doing. Part of this is that the VEGF activates innate immune pathways. The PD-1 activates adaptive immune pathways."

"So there's a lot of talk about what's been going on with Summit Therapeutics, and everybody now is doing these VEGF PD-1. We're even broader than that. And more importantly, we're also in a short burst. We call our therapy pulse prime, but it's cleared in the system within a couple of hours. So it does this activation, but instead of keeping the foot on the accelerator the entire time, it lets up. And what we started doing is giving it weekly, and our preclinical models show that weekly administration in combination with other therapies is the most potent approach for us."

#IndaptusTherapeutics #Decoy20 #Biotech #Cancer #CancerResearch #Immunotherapy #LungCancer #BladderCancer #LiverCancer #PancreaticCancer #ColonCancer

indaptusrx.com

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Dr. Charles Bridges, the CSO at CorVista Health, has developed a cardiovascular diagnostic platform that uses a simple device to collect various heart signals. The platform then sends that data to the cloud for fast machine learning-based analytics, which can detect conditions like pulmonary hypertension and coronary artery diseases. This test can be given at the point of care and is significant, as these conditions are frequently under-diagnosed due to a lack of accessible testing.

Charles explains, "It's really an amazing breakthrough. Yes, it's a very simple device from the point of view that it's about the size of an iPad. It requires that you connect seven electrodes to the patient. An electrode is identical to what they put on your chest when you get an electrocardiogram, an EKG, and a PPG sensor on the finger. Those of us who made it through COVID-19 probably learned a little about PPG sensors because those we use to measure your arterial oxygen saturation and the most severe cases of COVID-19 were associated with a reduction in that. So it's always reassuring to see that yours was 98%, for example, which would be normal, but we're not using that sensor to measure oxygen saturation. We're measuring the raw light signals, the red and infrared light signals."

"As we do for the electrical signals we measure, we apply very sophisticated mathematics to those 10 million data points we derive. And we get that all in about three minutes and we send those in a very secure fashion to the cloud."

"To summarize that, the CorVista device, while the patient is still in the office, gives the doctor a report in about 15 minutes, both about pulmonary hypertension and about coronary artery disease, which are comparable and, in some cases, arguably more accurate than the standard of care for those two diseases."

#CorVistaSystem #CorVistaHealth #CardiovascularCare #Cardiology #CardioDiagnostics #HeartHealthInnovation #NonInvasiveDiagnosis #MedicalDevice #MedTech #Diagnostics #PointOfCareSolutions #ML #DigitalCardiology #HealthEquity #HealthcareAccess #CardiologyDesert #PulmonaryHypertension #CoronaryArteryDisease #CardiovascularDisease

corvista.com

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Dr. Charles Bridges, the CSO at CorVista Health, has developed a cardiovascular diagnostic platform that uses a simple device to collect various heart signals. The platform then sends that data to the cloud for fast machine learning-based analytics, which can detect conditions like pulmonary hypertension and coronary artery diseases. This test can be given at the point of care and is significant, as these conditions are frequently under-diagnosed due to a lack of accessible testing.

Charles explains, "It's really an amazing breakthrough. Yes, it's a very simple device from the point of view that it's about the size of an iPad. It requires that you connect seven electrodes to the patient. An electrode is identical to what they put on your chest when you get an electrocardiogram, an EKG, and a PPG sensor on the finger. Those of us who made it through COVID-19 probably learned a little about PPG sensors because those we use to measure your arterial oxygen saturation and the most severe cases of COVID-19 were associated with a reduction in that. So it's always reassuring to see that yours was 98%, for example, which would be normal, but we're not using that sensor to measure oxygen saturation. We're measuring the raw light signals, the red and infrared light signals."

"As we do for the electrical signals we measure, we apply very sophisticated mathematics to those 10 million data points we derive. And we get that all in about three minutes and we send those in a very secure fashion to the cloud."

"To summarize that, the CorVista device, while the patient is still in the office, gives the doctor a report in about 15 minutes, both about pulmonary hypertension and about coronary artery disease, which are comparable and, in some cases, arguably more accurate than the standard of care for those two diseases."

#CorVistaSystem #CorVistaHealth #CardiovascularCare #Cardiology #CardioDiagnostics #HeartHealthInnovation #NonInvasiveDiagnosis #MedicalDevice #MedTech #Diagnostics #PointOfCareSolutions #ML #DigitalCardiology #HealthEquity #HealthcareAccess #CardiologyDesert #PulmonaryHypertension #CoronaryArteryDisease #CardiovascularDisease

corvista.com

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Sean Ainsworth, the CEO of Immusoft, is developing novel cell therapies by programming B cells to produce therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, enzymes, signaling proteins, and other protein types. This autologous cell therapy has shown promising results in early clinical trials for enzyme replacement therapies for rare lysosomal storage disorders. Some advantages of this approach are the ability to re-dose patients as necessary and to cross the blood-brain barrier. Initial findings are opening the door to other indications such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Sean explains, "We're developing B cells as modalities for therapeutic protein delivery. B cells have an exceptional ability to produce and release therapeutic proteins into the bloodstream. So naturally, they're producing and releasing antibodies, which are a type of protein. And so we're harnessing that biofactory capability of these B cells, programming them to manufacture our therapeutic protein. The idea is that once we've done that, we deliver the cells back to the patient. They naturally will go to the bone marrow and engraft, and once they've engrafted, they can live for many years, potentially decades. The two key things about the B cell are A, it's a natural biofactory, and B, they naturally engraft in the bone marrow."

"We got started with antibodies that we would programmed initially against HIV. So, it was a natural starting point for B cells, given that they produce antibodies. We were just coaxing them to produce very specific antibodies. And then the idea came about that if they can produce antibodies, we could probably enable them to produce other therapeutic protein types. So we began to experiment with enzymes, signaling proteins, and a number of different protein types. We found that under the right conditions, indeed, we could enable these B cells to produce a broad array of different protein types. But that ultimately means we have applications across a multitude of different therapeutic indications as well."

#Immusoft #CART #CellTherapy #BCells #RareDisease #LysosomalStorageDisorders

immusoft.com

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Sean Ainsworth, the CEO of Immusoft, is developing novel cell therapies by programming B cells to produce therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, enzymes, signaling proteins, and other protein types. This autologous cell therapy has shown promising results in early clinical trials for enzyme replacement therapies for rare lysosomal storage disorders. Some advantages of this approach are the ability to re-dose patients as necessary and to cross the blood-brain barrier. Initial findings are opening the door to other indications such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and obesity.

Sean explains, "We're developing B cells as modalities for therapeutic protein delivery. B cells have an exceptional ability to produce and release therapeutic proteins into the bloodstream. So naturally, they're producing and releasing antibodies, which are a type of protein. And so we're harnessing that biofactory capability of these B cells, programming them to manufacture our therapeutic protein. The idea is that once we've done that, we deliver the cells back to the patient. They naturally will go to the bone marrow and engraft, and once they've engrafted, they can live for many years, potentially decades. The two key things about the B cell are A, it's a natural biofactory, and B, they naturally engraft in the bone marrow."

"We got started with antibodies that we would programmed initially against HIV. So, it was a natural starting point for B cells, given that they produce antibodies. We were just coaxing them to produce very specific antibodies. And then the idea came about that if they can produce antibodies, we could probably enable them to produce other therapeutic protein types. So we began to experiment with enzymes, signaling proteins, and a number of different protein types. We found that under the right conditions, indeed, we could enable these B cells to produce a broad array of different protein types. But that ultimately means we have applications across a multitude of different therapeutic indications as well."

#Immusoft #CART #CellTherapy #BCells #RareDisease #LysosomalStorageDisorders

immusoft.com

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