Punit Dhillon, Chairman and CEO of Skye Bioscience, focuses on anti-obesity and developing a drug that targets the cannabinoid receptor 1, which plays a role in signaling the body to store fat. The next generation of CB1 inhibition moves from a centrally mediated pathway to targeting CB1 receptors outside the brain. Deploying the endocannabinoid system, their lead drug candidate targets the major organs where CB1 receptors reside in fat tissue to increase mitochondrial activity and burn more fat.

Punit explains, "Skye is focused on exploring research modulating different therapeutic targets via the endocannabinoid system. Our research has narrowed in on the CB1 receptor, where we’re modulating it by focusing on this pathway of inhibition. There’s a big body of evidence, actually existing validation of this cannabinoid receptor 1 being a really important target to reduce caloric food intake and increase energy expenditure. It’s been a really important target for weight loss because of its particular relevance in that therapeutic area. So we’re advancing in a very interesting clinical pipeline and immediately a Phase 2 study that will look at that particular target. We hope that we will be able to show its relevance in the anti-obesity medication landscape."

"I feel like the current landscape of drugs that have been getting the most attention has been focused on caloric restriction. Weight loss is driven by that particular pathway of restricting the amount you eat. We are trying to shift that paradigm to the opportunity to address the underlying issues relating to weight loss so you can essentially have this aspect of targeting fat and being able to address fat metabolism. That comes back to this link to the exercise comment you made because it’s driving the underlying mitochondrial activity, which is helping to improve the thermogenesis and the conversion of that fat into thermogenic energy."

#SkyeBioscience #Obesity #EndocannabinoidSystem #WeightLossDrug #CB1Receptor #GLP1

skyebioscience.com

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Joe Ferra, CEO of Elevation Oncology, highlights the unmet needs in gastric cancer and the potential of targeting Claudins, proteins involved in cell adhesion. The current competitive landscape of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) confirms the promise of a targeted therapy that delivers a cytotoxic drug directly to cancer cells. Targeting Claudin 18.2 with an ADC approach offers an opportunity to treat a broader range of tumors expressing a lower level of Claudin 18.2 than those currently treated by CAR-T therapy. This approach is being investigated as a single-agent drug with promise for use in combination for gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer and esophageal cancer.

Joe explains, "As you likely know, in the continuum of cancer drugs, you have chemotherapy on one end that indiscriminately kills everything it touches. On the other end, you have uber-targeted therapies looking at specific drivers of what’s driving that specific tumor. In our case at Elevation Oncology, we’re focused on what we like to call selected targeted oncology drugs so that we are using the unique characteristics of the tumor to target and meet in a targeted way attempt to kill the tumor for a better outcome for the patient."

"Gastric cancer in and of itself was an area where Claudin 18.2 is known to be highly expressed, but for gastric cancer, to your point, there’s a huge unmet need. For most patients, once they’re in second line or third line, the opportunity for drugs that are available to them today is, unfortunately for all of us, very dismal. We think there’s a significant opportunity to utilize a Claudin 18.2 antibiotic drug conjugate for overall better outcomes for patients living with gastric cancer."

"We quickly saw an ADC approach as an opportunity to treat a broader range of Claudin 18.2 expression. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, in any target in any tumor, there’s always a range of expression for Claudin 18.2. In gastric cancer, it’s known that as much as 80% of gastric cancer expressed Claudin 18.2 at some level. With that expression, we think an ADC approach will be able to treat a broader range of expression."

#ElevationOncology #ADC #AntibodyDrugConjugate #SolidTumors #Claudin182 #Claudins #Cancer

ElevationOncology.com

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Dr. Steve Goldberg, physician and Senior Clinical Advisor at DecisionRx, and Dr. Jamie Wilkey, pharmacist and expert on medication therapy optimization, explain that medications are the fourth leading cause of death in the country. They emphasize the need to consider genetic information and pharmacogenomics to design personalized medication plans to improve health outcomes. The DecisionRx solution is integrated into the pharmacist's workflow to improve medication safety, reduce avoidable costs, and enhance communication with providers, pharmacists, and patients.

Steven explains, "Our goal is to help people get more benefits from the medications that they use. A couple of starting facts. The US spends about $500 billion-plus a year on medication, and sadly, there are hundreds of thousands of ER visits, hospitalizations, and deaths that occur to people attributable to medications. There are a number of reasons for it, but relative to what we do, it is often triggered by people having genetics that make them not do well with particular medication. It’s often the regimen that they’re on has too many drugs, and that creates a problem. Finally, and potentially most importantly, they’re not taking the time or not given the time to have their medication regimen carefully reviewed by a well-trained pharmacist to help organize things for the best outcomes. And best outcomes, reduce health risks, control chronic disease, and provide treatment."

Jamie elaborates, "We also consider the genetics of people taking their medication, which has been overlooked significantly in the past. Specifically, the way our body metabolizes medication is so different based on ethnicity, background, and gender, and you can’t just tell by looking at a person how they’ll metabolize medication. We can finally understand what medication is likely to work for a person, which is unlikely to work, and what is probably going to give them a lot of terrible adverse reactions before the patient has to go home and try it."

#DecisionRx #Healthcare #MedicationTherapyOptimization #PrecisionMedicine #Pharmacogenomics #HealthcareInnovation

decisionrx.com

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Ryne Natzke is the Chief Revenue Officer for TrustCommerce, a Sphere company that facilitates electronic payments in the healthcare industry, helping ensure security and compliance in transactions between patients and providers. Healthcare payments present unique challenges, as patients have varying preferences and are impacted by economic factors on their ability to make healthcare payments. TrustCommerce aims to make the payment process easier for patients by integrating with electronic health record systems and patient billing systems, reducing friction in healthcare payments and providing patients with more options and transparency in pricing.

Ryne explains, "Some people like paying online, and some people pay in person. There are payment plans. So what we do with our technology and our partnerships with EHRs like Epic and patient billing systems is help make sure that they can facilitate those patient financial experiences across the board and have that happen within systems they’re already using. So within MyChart, for example, or just while the patient’s checking in at the front desk. We help take that PCI compliance and security piece off the shoulders of our partners and our healthcare systems using our technology."

"Nobody really plans to have a disease like cancer, and all of a sudden, you have a whole bunch of oncology appointments or plans on getting into a car accident and showing up in the emergency room. So it’s not really a budgetable expense the same way as I’m going to save up for a Peloton or a new TV or whatever it is. So you’re kind of balancing this unknown of what the balance is and being able to line up what that patient might be able to do. Somebody might be able to pay a $2,000 bill when they receive it, and a lot of people can’t. So how can we put them on a payment plan and be empathetic of where they are within their situations while also still having all of the compliance and security pieces that come with the transactions?"

#TrustCommerce #TransparencyinPricing #HealthcareCosts #HealthcarePayments

trustcommerce.com

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Dr. Andrew Dold, Co-Founder of RevMed, a B2B marketplace for hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to address the problem of slow-moving or expiring inventory. This medical marketplace allows facilities to recoup lost revenue by listing medical devices for sale and offers purchasing options for smaller facilities. RevMed serves as a middleman, facilitating the interaction between facilities without taking custody of any items. The marketplace has an extensive database of millions of different SKUs and items, which are updated weekly. The goal of RevMed is to decrease the price of healthcare by getting as many facilities as possible to adopt the platform.

Andrew elaborates, "So, full disclosure, this problem came into light during my fellowship at NYU. I did a sports medicine fellowship a few years ago in New York City, and it simply started with me interacting with one of the representatives, the orthopedic representatives at my hospital. I wanted to get a few suture anchors to practice tying knots in my apartment in New York City. And he simply took me into the back supply room. On one of the shelves, he grabbed a number of different boxes, just flipped them over, looked at the expiration date, and I think they were all expired. And he handed me ten of these boxes and said, here you go. You can practice on these."

"There were brand-new implants that had simply expired on the shelf of the surgery center where I was operating in New York City. It shocked me at the time because of simply the cost of these implants. One of these boxes was in the vicinity of $800 to $1,000, and he handed me 10 of them to take home because they had expired. They were now worthless. They couldn’t be used on a patient. From that point forward, I became more aware of the problem of stale, slow-moving, and expiring inventory and the surplus of medical and surgical supplies on the shelves of hospitals and ASCs. And what a massive problem it is."

#RevMed #supplychain #healthcare #medicalequipment #healthcaresupplychain #revolutionizeprocurement #medtechmarketplace #transparenttransactions #sustainablesourcing #healthcareinnovation #medicaldevicemarketplace

revmedconnect.com

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Ed Esquenazi, Founder and CEO of Sirenas, is exploring the chemistry of marine organisms to accelerate drug discovery. Marine-based scientific elements are still poorly understood but have the potential to produce unique and useful compounds for drug development. There are stark differences between land-based organisms and marine-based organisms, which have evolved for much longer and, therefore, offer more diverse and complex chemistry. Using AI and machine learning, Sirenas has identified cancer-killing agents, anti-infective agents, and anti-inflammatory compounds from marine organisms and is developing marine-based personal care products.

Ed explains, "We go out into the ocean, collect samples, we bring them back. We understand the different chemistry being produced in these organisms, identify and catalog it very carefully using instrumentation, and then figure out how that chemistry might impact biological systems, all with the goal of accelerating drug discovery. So the goal is to make the chemistry from marine organisms accessible to drug discovery."

"We discovered one of the most powerful antimalarials working with the Gates Foundation. We’ve also identified quite a few anti-inflammatory compounds. These are things that modulate the immune system in ways to dampen inflammation or, in some cases, actually accelerate inflammation. So, we’ve identified some of those with very interesting therapeutic paths."

"I think it’s a matter of diversity. A lot of the elements used in drug discovery traditionally have been based either on plants or bacteria, but land-based or synthetic, and they limit the diversity of the chemistry used in drug discovery. So, if you go into the ocean, you’re opening up a realm of very different components that can help accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics."

#SirenasMD #MarineBasedDrugs #MarineOrganisms #DrugDiscovery #Algae

SirenasMD.com

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Kim Perry, Chief Growth Officer at emtelligent, focuses on using medical AI in the prior authorization process to structure unstructured medical text in patient records, making whole record healthcare possible. AI can be used to extract relevant information from faxed or PDF medical records, saving time and improving efficiency over existing manual processes. For payers, there is potential for medical AI to address other processes such as risk adjustment, care management, quality measures, and payment integrity in an environment still lacking interoperability and reliant on highly trained humans.

Kim explains, "For prior authorization in particular, well over 50% of our prior authorizations here in this country are manual. And that means once a prior authorization is submitted for a request for a procedure or a specialty drug, it's a cue for a clinician to review. And part of that review process is to pull a patient's record."

"Unfortunately, because of the lack of interoperability in the healthcare ecosystem, that record is often a fax and a PDF, which could be hundreds of pages. So, the clinician is tasked to manually read through that PDF to find the clinically relevant information to help them deny or approve the prior authorization. So, what they're doing here is using AI to pull out the relevant information at the time that's needed so the clinician doesn't have to manually read through all hundreds of pages looking for the needle in the haystack, if you will, of the information that they're looking for to solve that problem in that point in time."

"I think people assume that with the adoption of EMRs, everything will be digital. But again, due to the lack of interoperability or the lack of payers, in this case, getting direct access into the EMRs for the clinical data, there has to be a way to transmit the information, the relevant information. And often, as I mentioned, it's fax-based. The health systems or the providers are faxing over medical records to the payers. Today, the payers are forced to do that manual review because they haven't had the tools available to them until now to help them apply technology to that manual review process."

#emtelligent #PriorAuthorization #MedicalAI #ArtificialIntelligence #HealthcareInnovations #CMS #LLM #LargeLanguageModels #ClinicalData #EHR #FutureofHealthcare

emtelligent.com

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Nolan Townsend, CEO of Lexeo Therapeutics, and Jen Farmer, CEO of FARA, the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance, are working together to better understand and treat Friedreich's Ataxia. This rare genetic condition includes cardiomyopathy and scoliosis. Lexeo Therapeutics is studying gene therapy as a potential treatment for the cardiovascular component of the disease. The Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) plays a role in funding research, understanding the natural history of the disease, and advocating for treatments.

Nolan explains, "For most patients in Friedreich’s ataxia, cardiovascular disease becomes a very challenging component of the pathology, and it is what’s called a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy phenocopy. So, it mimics hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is a thickening of the heart wall. And that typically progresses as well, which, for many patients, ends up being the cause of mortality associated with the disease. This pathology does appear to be amenable to treatment approaches like gene therapy, and it’s one that we’re working on here at Lexeo."

Jen elaborates, "As Nolan mentioned, it’s caused by mutations in a gene called FXN, and the mutation in the gene causes a silencing of the gene. So, individuals with FA have what we call frataxin deficiency. And frataxin is a highly conserved protein that is important in lots of different cells, which is why the disease affects multiple organ systems. So, while it’s a genetic disease, it’s this protein deficiency that causes the pathology within the cell. The cells just don’t make enough energy and don’t function properly, and that’s what contributes to the underlying cause of the disease."

#FriedreichsAtaxia #CureFA #FAAwarenessMonth #FAAwarenessDay #RareDiseases

LexeoTX.com

CureFA.org

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