Empowered Patient Podcast

Chris Hart, Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Creyon Bio, is focused on engineering drugs rather than just discovering them through serendipity and traditional methods. Creyon is developing oligonucleotide medicines for rare and common diseases by applying AI and big data models of the molecular and genetic basis of diseases to develop safe and effective drugs more quickly.

Chris elaborates, "When we think about drug engineering versus drug discovery, we're thinking about how we take this process that currently requires us to do trial-and-error identification of molecules that may be beneficial in the clinic to a place where we can say, can I build the right machinery, the right data, the right models, the right processes to go in and understand if I want to make this modulation within a cell, here's the molecule that will do it and I can have confidence that it will be safe."

"In terms of drug engineering and the type of drug engineering that Creyon does, what made starting Creyon the right thing to do and why it's the right time and the right time to do it is that the computing power does exist to crunch large numbers and do the analysis we need to do to build the right models. But what didn't exist for us, and I don't think it exists broadly in the industry, is the right data. So a major focus of what Creyon has been doing for the last four years has been on how we create the right data in an efficient way such that we can engineer drugs to have the properties we need them to have as drugs, which is to say safe and effective and not just bioactive."

"Our focus is oligonucleotide medicines, which generally are antisense oligos, siRNAs, and aptamers. This is a super-modality we often think about. What characterizes them is their polymeric nucleic acids that are chemically synthesized, and that's our primary focus. The indications we're going after are the upside of the medicines we make: they don't constrain themselves naturally to a therapeutic area. We can think broadly about whether or not it's an immunological disease or a neurological disease. We can use these medicines for any type of disease, and we can use them across the board regardless of whether it's a rare or a common disease."

#CreyonBio #AIinHealthcare #BiotechInnovation #DrugDiscovery #DrugDevelopment #DrugEngineering #PersonalizedMedicine #PrecisionMedicine #RareDiseases

creyonbio.com

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Chris Hart, Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Creyon Bio, is focused on engineering drugs rather than just discovering them through serendipity and traditional methods. Creyon is developing oligonucleotide medicines for rare and common diseases by applying AI and big data models of the molecular and genetic basis of diseases to develop safe and effective drugs more quickly.

Chris elaborates, "When we think about drug engineering versus drug discovery, we're thinking about how we take this process that currently requires us to do trial-and-error identification of molecules that may be beneficial in the clinic to a place where we can say, can I build the right machinery, the right data, the right models, the right processes to go in and understand if I want to make this modulation within a cell, here's the molecule that will do it and I can have confidence that it will be safe."

"In terms of drug engineering and the type of drug engineering that Creyon does, what made starting Creyon the right thing to do and why it's the right time and the right time to do it is that the computing power does exist to crunch large numbers and do the analysis we need to do to build the right models. But what didn't exist for us, and I don't think it exists broadly in the industry, is the right data. So a major focus of what Creyon has been doing for the last four years has been on how we create the right data in an efficient way such that we can engineer drugs to have the properties we need them to have as drugs, which is to say safe and effective and not just bioactive."

"Our focus is oligonucleotide medicines, which generally are antisense oligos, siRNAs, and aptamers. This is a super-modality we often think about. What characterizes them is their polymeric nucleic acids that are chemically synthesized, and that's our primary focus. The indications we're going after are the upside of the medicines we make: they don't constrain themselves naturally to a therapeutic area. We can think broadly about whether or not it's an immunological disease or a neurological disease. We can use these medicines for any type of disease, and we can use them across the board regardless of whether it's a rare or a common disease."

#CreyonBio #AIinHealthcare #BiotechInnovation #DrugDiscovery #DrugDevelopment #DrugEngineering #PersonalizedMedicine #PrecisionMedicine #RareDiseases

creyonbio.com

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Krystyna Houser is the Founder of mBIOTA Labs, a company that develops effective and tolerable elemental diets and medical foods for treating gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, IBD, SIBO, IMO, and Crohn's disease. While short-term liquid elemental diets have been used in the past to treat GI conditions, the formulation has been very unpalatable, resulting in high patient non-compliance. The mBIOTA clinical trials have shown the elemental diet to be more effective than antibiotics in allowing the gut to recover.

Krystyna explains, "After battling my own GI issues and successfully treating them through a combination of an elemental diet and a dietary protocol called low-fermentation eating, I became a believer in the power of functional nutrition and built mBIOTA Labs to bring these solutions along with taste and a pleasant experience to millions of people suffering with GI conditions."

"Elemental diets have been around for over 50 years. And through hundreds of clinical studies, elemental diets have been proven highly effective at managing various GI conditions. But until now, physicians were unable to employ them in treatment for fear of noncompliance due to their horrible taste. mBIOTA Elemental changes the game with its truly palatable formula. An elemental diet is a short-term liquid diet that provides comprehensive nutrition in its purest, most elemental form. It's composed of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates."

"Our formula is designed as a two- to four-week course of orally ingested therapy. Once ingested, it is easily absorbed into the first two to four feet of the small intestine with almost no digestive effort, which allows the gut to reset, recover, and starve off excess bacteria, causing distress and inflammation. Because the diet is so balanced, it is much easier and safer to follow than a juice cleanse or other diets. And after a few days or so, people feel fantastic on mBIOTA and crave it."

#mBIOTA #SIBO #GIHealth #MedicalFood #ElementalDiets #ClinicalTrial

mbiota.com

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Krystyna Houser is the Founder of mBIOTA Labs, a company that develops effective and tolerable elemental diets and medical foods for treating gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, IBD, SIBO, IMO, and Crohn's disease. While short-term liquid elemental diets have been used in the past to treat GI conditions, the formulation has been very unpalatable, resulting in high patient non-compliance. The mBIOTA clinical trials have shown the elemental diet to be more effective than antibiotics in allowing the gut to recover.

Krystyna explains, "After battling my own GI issues and successfully treating them through a combination of an elemental diet and a dietary protocol called low-fermentation eating, I became a believer in the power of functional nutrition and built mBIOTA Labs to bring these solutions along with taste and a pleasant experience to millions of people suffering with GI conditions."

"Elemental diets have been around for over 50 years. And through hundreds of clinical studies, elemental diets have been proven highly effective at managing various GI conditions. But until now, physicians were unable to employ them in treatment for fear of noncompliance due to their horrible taste. mBIOTA Elemental changes the game with its truly palatable formula. An elemental diet is a short-term liquid diet that provides comprehensive nutrition in its purest, most elemental form. It's composed of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates."

"Our formula is designed as a two- to four-week course of orally ingested therapy. Once ingested, it is easily absorbed into the first two to four feet of the small intestine with almost no digestive effort, which allows the gut to reset, recover, and starve off excess bacteria, causing distress and inflammation. Because the diet is so balanced, it is much easier and safer to follow than a juice cleanse or other diets. And after a few days or so, people feel fantastic on mBIOTA and crave it."

#mBIOTA #SIBO #GIHealth #MedicalFood #ElementalDiets #ClinicalTrial

mbiota.com

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Dr. Ann Beliën, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Rejuvenate Biomed, is addressing the underlying biology of aging including mechanisms like mitochondrial health, cell-cell communication and inflammation in order to promote healthy aging. Taking a combination therapy approach, Rejuvenate is using AI-enable drug discovery to address multiple pathways that are involved in aging. Their lead drug candidate is a treatment for sarcopenia with plans to assess impact on other age-related biomarkers.

Ann explains, "The biology of aging indeed is being defined by 12 hallmarks. These 12 hallmarks are pathways where you see that the functioning is deteriorating. One of them is mitochondrial health. So, the mitochondria are there to create energy in your cells to make sure that they work to an optimal base. That's a very important element that we need to address."

"Another very important one for us is cell-cell communication. So, for instance, in sarcopenia, one of the diseases we study, it's very important that your muscle continues to be strong and that you don't lose too much strength during aging. Now, for the muscle to be able to do that, it's not only important that the muscle has enough energy but that there is also a crosstalk between the neurons that signal to your muscle that it has to contract. So, that cell-cell communication is also very important."

"Within Rejuvenate Biomed, when we develop medication for age-related diseases, we start from the hallmarks of aging. We have an AI-enabled in silico system that can map compounds that have existed for quite a while, for which we have checked if they're safe for an older population and also for chronic application. That information about these compounds, how they exactly work, goes into our system. The system sees if now these compounds theoretically have the ability to have an impact on the hallmarks of aging. If this is the case, the system will predict a combination that can allow you to impact as many different elements as possible. With that combination, we then check in worms, little worms, so C. elegans, to check on health span."

#DrugDiscovery #Aging #AgeRelatedDiseases #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #HealthyAging #Longevity

rejuvenatebiomed.com

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Dr. Ann Beliën, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Rejuvenate Biomed, is addressing the underlying biology of aging including mechanisms like mitochondrial health, cell-cell communication and inflammation in order to promote healthy aging. Taking a combination therapy approach, Rejuvenate is using AI-enable drug discovery to address multiple pathways that are involved in aging. Their lead drug candidate is a treatment for sarcopenia with plans to assess impact on other age-related biomarkers.

Ann explains, "The biology of aging indeed is being defined by 12 hallmarks. These 12 hallmarks are pathways where you see that the functioning is deteriorating. One of them is mitochondrial health. So, the mitochondria are there to create energy in your cells to make sure that they work to an optimal base. That's a very important element that we need to address."

"Another very important one for us is cell-cell communication. So, for instance, in sarcopenia, one of the diseases we study, it's very important that your muscle continues to be strong and that you don't lose too much strength during aging. Now, for the muscle to be able to do that, it's not only important that the muscle has enough energy but that there is also a crosstalk between the neurons that signal to your muscle that it has to contract. So, that cell-cell communication is also very important."

"Within Rejuvenate Biomed, when we develop medication for age-related diseases, we start from the hallmarks of aging. We have an AI-enabled in silico system that can map compounds that have existed for quite a while, for which we have checked if they're safe for an older population and also for chronic application. That information about these compounds, how they exactly work, goes into our system. The system sees if now these compounds theoretically have the ability to have an impact on the hallmarks of aging. If this is the case, the system will predict a combination that can allow you to impact as many different elements as possible. With that combination, we then check in worms, little worms, so C. elegans, to check on health span."

#DrugDiscovery #Aging #AgeRelatedDiseases #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #HealthyAging #Longevity

rejuvenatebiomed.com

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Eric Olson, COO and Founder of BetterWay™ by Babson Diagnostics™, reports that traditional blood testing is often seen as inconvenient and unpleasant, causing 40% of people to avoid needed blood tests. Babson has developed a more patient-friendly approach to blood collection using a device that fits on the finger and requires a minimum amount of blood. The BetterWay service allows patients or doctors to order tests where blood is drawn at a local pharmacy and samples analyzed at a central lab, providing a quick turnaround with understandable test results.

Eric explains, "Blood testing is something that most people are very familiar with. It's a routine part of medical care. Every time you go in for your annual visit or if you're monitoring a disease, maybe a chronic disease, you might get tested more frequently than once a year. The experience is something that a lot of people go through, which consists of having an appointment, going into some sort of patient service center, and getting blood drawn by a professional phlebotomist. They put a needle in your vein and use tubes to pull the blood out of the vein. They fill up multiple tubes of blood that get sent to a high-throughput laboratory that looks a bit like a factory for testing."

"If you go to BetterWay.com, you can see the full menu and the prices of all the tests on that menu, so there are no surprise bills. Insurance, FSA, and HSA are accepted. However, the cash pay prices are often lower than many people pay, even with insurance, due to copays and deductibles, which are very high for many people."

"So once you've got an order, you go to your local retail pharmacy to get your blood collected. We're available in pharmacies in Austin today, on all sides of Austin, and expanding beyond Austin soon. Once you arrive at the pharmacy, you tell them that you're there for the BetterWay test. They'll collect a pea-sized blood sample from your fingertip after putting your hand on a hand warmer. And that enables them to collect either one or two tubes of blood, depending on the tests you've ordered, instead of large vials of blood from a needle in your vein."

#BetterWay #BabsonDiagnostics #BloodTesting #HealthEcosystem #MedicalDeviceDevelopments

BetterWay.com

Listen to the podcast here

Eric Olson, COO and Founder of BetterWay™ by Babson Diagnostics™, reports that traditional blood testing is often seen as inconvenient and unpleasant, causing 40% of people to avoid needed blood tests. Babson has developed a more patient-friendly approach to blood collection using a device that fits on the finger and requires a minimum amount of blood. The BetterWay service allows patients or doctors to order tests where blood is drawn at a local pharmacy and samples analyzed at a central lab, providing a quick turnaround with understandable test results.

Eric explains, "Blood testing is something that most people are very familiar with. It's a routine part of medical care. Every time you go in for your annual visit or if you're monitoring a disease, maybe a chronic disease, you might get tested more frequently than once a year. The experience is something that a lot of people go through, which consists of having an appointment, going into some sort of patient service center, and getting blood drawn by a professional phlebotomist. They put a needle in your vein and use tubes to pull the blood out of the vein. They fill up multiple tubes of blood that get sent to a high-throughput laboratory that looks a bit like a factory for testing."

"If you go to BetterWay.com, you can see the full menu and the prices of all the tests on that menu, so there are no surprise bills. Insurance, FSA, and HSA are accepted. However, the cash pay prices are often lower than many people pay, even with insurance, due to copays and deductibles, which are very high for many people."

"So once you've got an order, you go to your local retail pharmacy to get your blood collected. We're available in pharmacies in Austin today, on all sides of Austin, and expanding beyond Austin soon. Once you arrive at the pharmacy, you tell them that you're there for the BetterWay test. They'll collect a pea-sized blood sample from your fingertip after putting your hand on a hand warmer. And that enables them to collect either one or two tubes of blood, depending on the tests you've ordered, instead of large vials of blood from a needle in your vein."

#BetterWay #BabsonDiagnostics #BloodTesting #HealthEcosystem #MedicalDeviceDevelopments

BetterWay.com

Download the transcript here

Marylyn Rigby, President and CEO of Bioceptive, focuses on improving women's health technologies. Bioceptive has developed a cervical suction retractor as an alternative to the 200-year-old cervical tenaculum device used to insert IUDs and perform biopsies and other intrauterine procedures. While current procedures are extremely painful, there has been a lack of innovation in understanding women's pain because women are often described as hysterical, with little clinical data to get to the source of the pain.

Marylyn explains, "I think that also has to do with what modern medicine is based on, which is a man's body and not a woman's body. And because of that, it's kind of interesting to think that a man could ever possibly understand what it would feel like to have their cervix, which they don't even have, be pierced, essentially. It is like having your ears pierced and the traumatic experience that it causes because this is done again without any type of anesthetic. So, one of the biggest issues that we see right now, regardless of what your political stance on pro-life or pro-choice, is certainly that women need better options for contraception that are more effective."

"Science has indicated that the IUD is the most effective form of contraception and that is because of its efficacy, which is greater than 99%. You're not looking to remember to take a pill. You're not looking, you're not having to have weight gain by having something inserted in your arm. It's a one-stop shop that is incredibly effective and cost-effective. However, the number one reason that women do not get IUDs more often is because of the trauma and the pain that is associated with the tenaculum, which is required to insert the IUD."

#WomensHealth #Gynecology #FemTech #ReproductiveRights #ReproductiveHealth #WomensRights

bioceptive.com

Listen to the podcast here

Marylyn Rigby, President and CEO of Bioceptive, focuses on improving women's health technologies. Bioceptive has developed a cervical suction retractor as an alternative to the 200-year-old cervical tenaculum device used to insert IUDs and perform biopsies and other intrauterine procedures. While current procedures are extremely painful, there has been a lack of innovation in understanding women's pain because women are often described as hysterical, with little clinical data to get to the source of the pain.

Marylyn explains, "I think that also has to do with what modern medicine is based on, which is a man's body and not a woman's body. And because of that, it's kind of interesting to think that a man could ever possibly understand what it would feel like to have their cervix, which they don't even have, be pierced, essentially. It is like having your ears pierced and the traumatic experience that it causes because this is done again without any type of anesthetic. So, one of the biggest issues that we see right now, regardless of what your political stance on pro-life or pro-choice, is certainly that women need better options for contraception that are more effective."

"Science has indicated that the IUD is the most effective form of contraception and that is because of its efficacy, which is greater than 99%. You're not looking to remember to take a pill. You're not looking, you're not having to have weight gain by having something inserted in your arm. It's a one-stop shop that is incredibly effective and cost-effective. However, the number one reason that women do not get IUDs more often is because of the trauma and the pain that is associated with the tenaculum, which is required to insert the IUD."

#WomensHealth #Gynecology #FemTech #ReproductiveRights #ReproductiveHealth #WomensRights

bioceptive.com

Download the transcript here