Welcome to the Empowered Patient Podcast with Karen Jagoda. This show is a window into the latest innovations in applying generative AI, novel therapeutics and vaccines, and the changing dynamics in the medical and healthcare environment. One focus is on how providers, pharmaceutical companies, and payers are empowering patients. In addition, conversations are often about how providers, care facilities, pharmaceutical companies, and payers are being empowered by technology to improve patient outcomes and reduce friction across the healthcare landscape.
Popular Topics
- Virtual and digital health
- Use of AI, ML, and LLM in healthcare and drug discovery, development, trials
- Value-based healthcare
- Precision and stratified medicine
- Integration of digital technology into existing workflow and procedures
- Next-generation immuno, cell, and gene therapies
- Vaccines
- Biomarkers, sequencing, and imaging
- Rare diseases
- MedTech and medical devices
- Clinical trials
- Addressing Social Determinants of Health
- Treating chronic conditions like obesity and pain
- Clinician and staff burnout
The audience includes life science leaders, researchers, medical professionals, patient advocates, digital health entrepreneurs, patients, caregivers, healthcare solution providers, students, journalists, and investors.
Check out our new EmpoweredPatient.Solutions site where you can quickly search all of the Empowered Patient Podcast interviews by any word or phrase to identify useful resources, potential partners, and insights about the life sciences landscape.
Jul 5, 2023
Chris Hoyt, CEO of KeifeRx, talks about the oral medication being developed that uses tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and autophagy to remove unwanted proteins. Research done by Georgetown University on leukemia, led by Dr. Charbel Moussa, found that lower doses of drugs like nilotinib and bosutinib could cross the blood-brain barrier and remove toxic proteins on an intracellular basis. This research has been used to develop treatments for neurodegenerative conditions with promising results in reducing cognitive decline.
Chris explains, "Essentially, the way TKIs work in the body, and particularly in the case of the neurodegenerative conditions that we're using them to treat at KeifeRx, is they trigger a mechanism called autophagy, which essentially is the cell's garbage disposal mechanism. What we're doing with TKIs is using that mechanism to remove toxic proteins. TKIs have mostly been used historically in cancer, and particularly in leukemia. The classic use would be in cancer to try to remove as much of the tumors as you can in leukemia. In that environment, use a fairly high dose of TKIs to trigger that effect. What KeifeRx has done through work at Georgetown University is find ways to utilize that same mechanism of action in the brain."
"So over the course of a few years of initial work, we came to the conclusion that these drugs, in the case of specifically nilotinib and bosutinib, which are the two drugs where we have the use patent in neurodegeneration, that at much lower doses than what you see in cancer, these drugs can cross the blood-brain barrier and look to remove toxic proteins on an intracellular basis. So, it was a classic hunch, for lack of a better term, that Dr. Moussa had that he then carried out rigorous work over three years to first prove in animal models and then eventually through a series of small phase I and phase II trials at Georgetown."
@KeifeRx_Thera #KeifeRx #Alzheimers #TKI #Autophagy #ALS #LewyBodyDementia
