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Welcome to the Empowered Patient Podcast with Karen Jagoda.  This show offers a glimpse into the latest innovations in applying generative AI, novel therapeutics and vaccines, and the evolving dynamics in the medical and healthcare landscape. One focus is on how providers, pharmaceutical companies, and payers are empowering patients.  In addition, conversations often focus on how technology is empowering providers, care facilities, pharmaceutical companies, and payers to improve patient outcomes and reduce friction across the healthcare landscape.  Popular Topics Include: Virtual and digital health Use of AI, ML, and robots for clinical and administrative purposes  Value-based healthcare  Precision and stratified medicine Next-generation immuno, cell, and gene therapies Vaccines for infectious diseases and oncology Biomarkers and diagnostics Rare diseases MedTech and medical devices Clinical trials  Population health Chronic conditions l Clinician and staff burnout Smart hospitals The audience includes life science leaders, researchers, medical professionals, patient advocates, digital health entrepreneurs, patients, caregivers, healthcare solution providers, students, journalists, and investors.

Jun 19, 2025

Dr. Chuck Link is the Executive Chairman of Syncromune, a company developing a novel immunotherapy approach for solid tumors by delivering the therapy into the tumor and surrounding lymph nodes to stimulate a systemic immune response. Their complex drug has four different components with varying levels of activity that activate the immune system and counteract immune suppression. This in situ immunotherapy technology, SYNC-T, was tested in a phase 1 trial for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, which showed high response rates and a favorable safety profile with low rates of serious side effects and minimal autoimmune toxicity.  

Chuck explains, "So, SYNC-T is a technology in which you put a needle directly into a tumor that can be done by a urologist in the prostate cancer situation, or by an interventional radiologist. That needle then the tip of it freezes, and does a freeze fracture. Think of a Coke bottle rupturing like in the freezer. And what that does is release the antigens from that patient's own specific tumor. So, it's personalized because the tumor proteins and antigens are used to create a vaccine effect that's released directly from the cancer."

"The tumor microenvironment is basically within the tumor itself, and there are immune suppressive mechanisms that the tumor has evolved to protect it from the immune system. I like to think of it as a castle, multiple levels of defense where you have the castle itself, and then you have a castle wall, and then you have a moat, and then an army in front of the wall. So the cancer has multiple immune-suppressive mechanisms that are activated to defeat the immune system, even though cancer has a lot of abnormal, mutated proteins that the immune system should attack and destroy. So what SYNC-T accomplishes is it basically hits solutions for all four of those types of defense simultaneously to make it more difficult for the castle, in this case, the tumor, to protect itself."

#Syncromune #Immunotherapy #MetastaticSolidTumors #Cancer #ProstateCancer

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