INTERVIEWS

Sara Thomas, PhD, RD, registered dietician and research scientist at Abbott, discusses a new study from Abbott and The Ohio State University that was published in “Nutrients” that showed that adults with diabetes with low protein leads to physical limitations, lower overall diet quality, poorer nutrition density and more carbohydrates consumed. 

Rami Levin, President and CEO of Saniona discusses Tesomet, the first and only investigational treatment for Hypothalamic Obesity (HO) to receive orphan drug designation. This marks a major milestone for the patient community as there are currently no medications specifically approved for HO. Patients living with this disease experience uncontrollable hunger and intractable weight gain, which is often complicated by depression, impulse control issues and increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. This milestone builds on the orphan drug designation granted by the FDA earlier this year to Tesomet for the treatment of Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) and Saniona is preparing to initiate Phase 2b studies of Tesomet in HO and PWS in the second half of this year.​ 

Dr. Bruce Bender, PhD, lead researcher and co-director of the Center for Health Promotion at National Jewish Health discusses recent research published in “The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice” about The Asthma Toolkit Bootcamp, a program that improved physician adherence to current guidelines, leading to fewer hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and decreased use of oral medications. 

Daniel Shapiro, author of “The Thin Ledge: A Husband’s Memoir of Love, Trauma, and Unexpected Circumstances” shares the reality of the fifteen years he spent living and caring for his wife, who suffered two massive brain hemorrhages and a personality change, while also single handedly raising their three young children. He discusses moving on and growing from trauma, moral issues, the struggle of a caregiver, and his perspective as a male caregiver. This book addresses questions that people living through unspeakable misfortunes may never mention, but almost always ask. ​​

Adam Sachs, co-founder and CEO of Vicarious Surgical, a company backed by Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla, discusses the company’s Fantastic Voyage inspired-surgical robot that uses immersive reality to guide today’s surgeons inside the body with new, groundbreaking technology that sets it apart from competitors. The system has received FDA Breakthrough Device designation.

Hideki Garren, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer at Prothena discusses data from two presentations at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC); PRX012, Prothena’s next generation anti-amyloid beta (Aβ) antibody and the dual Aβ-tau vaccine being developed for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).   He talks about the company’s approach to addressing the AD global healthcare crisis.  

Dr. Cindy Jacobs, PhD, MD, President and Chief Medical Officer at Achieve Life Sciences discusses the grant that was awarded from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the use of cytisinicline as a treatment for the cessation of nicotine e-cigarette use. 

Returning guest, Cathy Kuhn, PharmD, Director, Voice of the Customer at Updox, a complete healthcare communication platform for in-person and virtual care, discusses their recently released “Paperless Practice Playbook” with tips for providers on how to increase productivity, improve patient engagement and reduce burnout. She talks about why providers must eliminate paper in order to reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks for both provider and patients and how one practice saved more than 500 hours a year on administrative tasks by leveraging a paperless practice. 

Derek Wallace, Vice President and Dengue Global Program Lead at Takeda, discusses the first public presentation of long-term safety and efficacy results from the ongoing pivotal Phase 3 Tetravalent Immunization against Dengue Efficacy Study (TIDES) trial of its dengue vaccine candidate, TAK-003, and the launch of the company’s global HCP dengue education platform, Dengue Academy. 

Mike Rea, is founder of Protodigm, a contract skunkworks lab specializing in minimizing the risk of drug development by avoiding bias, premature specialization, and providing clients a universe of possibilities in which a drug could be brought  to market.   He talks about how the use of the skunkworks concept common in tech and engineering can innovate drug development.