Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

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We normally think of a CT scan as a picture that a doctor looks at. But what if that picture is actually an enormous dataset containing thousands of quantitative measurements about what's happening inside your body? And what if AI could extract information from those images that humans simply can't measure by looking at them? Today we're going to explore how that could change not only how we diagnose disease, but how we develop new drugs.

Dr. Susan Wood, Ph.D. ( https://vidalung.ai/ ) is President and CEO of VIDA Intelligence, a company focused on AI and quantitative imaging for pulmonary disease and clinical drug development.

Dr. Wood has spent more than 25 years bringing innovative clinical technologies from concept to commercialization. But her connection to this field goes all the way back to her doctoral research at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, where she combined measurements of three-dimensional lung structure with changes in lung function using high-resolution CT imaging.

Dr. Wood holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, and a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Before founding and leading VIDA, Dr. Wood held senior leadership positions at companies including R2 Technology and Vital Images, and she has served on the boards of several companies working at the intersection of medical imaging, AI and healthcare technology.

At VIDA, Dr. Wood has spent more than a decade working to transform imaging into quantitative, clinically meaningful data that can be used in research and clinical trials.

So today we're going to talk about a pretty fundamental question:

What happens when we stop thinking of a CT or MRI as simply an image - and start thinking of it as a biological dataset?

And perhaps even more importantly, could AI-powered imaging ultimately change how we discover, test and develop new drugs?

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MedicalAI #MedicalImaging #CTScan #LungDisease #COPD #Pulmonology #DigitalBiomarkers #Biomarkers #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionMedicine #HealthcareInnovation #HealthTech #Radiology #LungHealth #Pharma #AIMedicine #VIDAIntelligence
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What if one of the biggest assumptions in modern drug development is wrong?

For decades, we've tried to find the one molecule responsible for a medicine's effects, purify it, manufacture it and throw away everything else.

But what if, in some cases, the complexity is actually the medicine?

Today we're exploring a very different approach to drug development - one that takes complex botanical mixtures and tries to turn them into reproducible, FDA-approved pharmaceuticals.

Joel Stanley is CEO of AJNA BioSciences ( https://ajnabiosciences.com/ ) and one of the people who helped launch the modern CBD movement.

Joel is one of the Stanley brothers behind Charlotte’s Web ( https://www.charlottesweb.com/ ), the company that helped bring CBD into the mainstream after the remarkable story of Charlotte Figi and the use of cannabis-derived preparations in severe epilepsy.

But Joel's journey has now moved into a very different phase.

At AJNA BioSciences, he is pursuing something that sits at the intersection of natural medicine and highly regulated pharmaceutical development: FDA-approved botanical drugs.

And that distinction is important.

Rather than necessarily isolating a single active molecule, AJNA is developing standardized, full-spectrum botanical formulations - using modern chemistry, manufacturing and controls, clinical trials and FDA regulatory science to try to turn complex plant and fungal preparations into reproducible pharmaceutical products.

The company currently has programs spanning cannabinoids and tryptamines, with targets including autism-spectrum disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and PTSD. Its pipeline includes a cannabinoid formulation that has completed Phase 1 and is moving toward Phase 2, as well as a full-spectrum psilocybin/tryptamine program.

And here's the really interesting part:

The FDA actually has a specific regulatory framework for botanical drugs ( https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/cder-offices-and-divisions/what-botanical-drug ). The agency acknowledges that these products can contain complex mixtures in which the precise active constituents - and even all of their biological activities - may not be completely known. Instead, developers can establish consistency through a combination of raw-material controls, analytical chemistry, manufacturing controls, biological assays and clinical evidence.

There are currently only four botanical products approved as prescription drugs in the United States, according to the FDA.

So Joel is attempting to navigate a relatively uncommon - and potentially very powerful - pathway toward something that could fundamentally change how we think about plant-based medicines.

#JoelStanley #AJNABioSciences #BotanicalMedicine #BotanicalDrugs #Psychedelics #PsychedelicMedicine #Psilocybin #CBD #Cannabis #Cannabinoids #DrugDevelopment #Pharmaceuticals #FDA #MentalHealth #Neurology #Autism #Anxiety #PTSD #Biotechnology #Biotech #DrugDiscovery #PlantMedicine #NaturalMedicine #FutureOfMedicine #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities
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What if the problem isn't that your immune system can't see the cancer - but that the cancer has effectively reprogrammed the immune cells around it?

Faron Pharmaceuticals is pursuing a very different strategy: using an antibody called bexmarilimab to target Clever-1 on macrophages and potentially change an immunosuppressive tumor environment into one that can support an anti-cancer immune response.

Today we're going inside that strategy - and asking what the clinical evidence actually tells us so far.

Dr. Joab Williamson, Ph.D. is Vice President of Operations at Faron Pharmaceuticals ( https://faron.com/ ), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel immunotherapies designed to address some of the most difficult-to-treat cancers.

Dr. Williamson brings a particularly interesting perspective to this discussion. At Faron, he leads clinical operations, clinical supply and clinical science activities, while helping guide programs from development strategy through execution. His background spans clinical development, program management and pharmaceutical operations, and he has also completed a PhD in Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics focused on how strategic drug-development decisions can affect the value and ultimately the path of a therapeutic program.

Faron’s lead program is bexmarilimab, an investigational antibody targeting Clever-1, a receptor found on immunosuppressive macrophages. The idea is that by targeting Clever-1, these macrophages can be reprogrammed from a tumor-supporting, immunosuppressive state toward an immune-stimulating state - potentially helping the immune system recognize and attack cancer more effectively.

The program is particularly advanced in higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes, or HR-MDS, and is also being investigated in acute myeloid leukemia and several solid tumors. Recent data from the BEXMAB program have reported durable responses in HR-MDS, while Faron is now moving toward a randomized Phase 2b study and expanding the investigation of bexmarilimab into additional treatment settings.

And that brings us to an especially interesting point in the program: the transition from promising clinical science to the much harder question of actually executing the trials that can determine whether that science translates into a meaningful new treatment.

#FaronPharmaceuticals #Bexmarilimab #CancerImmunotherapy #Immunotherapy #Leukemia #AML #MDS #MyelodysplasticSyndromes #BloodCancer #Clever1 #Macrophages #TumorMicroenvironment #CancerResearch #ClinicalTrials #Biotechnology #Biotech #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionMedicine #MedicalInnovation #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities
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For centuries, surgeons have learned by watching other surgeons. But what happens when we can record virtually every movement, every instrument, every decision - and then have AI analyze millions of operations?

Could we create a new “language of surgery”? Could AI become a surgical copilot? And as brain-computer interfaces begin generating entirely new forms of neurological data, who ultimately owns the data generated by the human brain?

Dr. Daniel Donoho, MD is a pediatric and adult neurosurgeon at Children's National Hospital ( https://appointments.childrensnational.org/provider/daniel-aharon-donoho/2359746 ) and an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at George Washington University ( https://faculty.smhs.gwu.edu/daniel-donoho ).  He is also Co-Founder of the Foundation for Digital Neurosurgery ( https://www.neurosurgery.foundation/ )

Dr. Donoho specializes in some of the most challenging conditions encountered in neurosurgery, including brain and spinal tumors, hydrocephalus, Chiari malformation, spina bifida, craniocervical disorders and complex skull-base disease. 

Dr. Donoho's training includes neurosurgical residency at USC, fellowship training in skull-base and endoscopic surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and pediatric neurosurgery fellowship training at Texas Children's Hospital.

Dr. Donoho is also the Founder of the Surgical Data Science Collective ( https://www.surgicalvideo.io/ ), a nonprofit organization building a global ecosystem for collecting, sharing and analyzing surgical data - particularly surgical video - and applying artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision to the practice of surgery.

Dr. Donoho is also a Principal Investigator on an NIH K23-funded project studying video analysis of neurosurgical technical performance and adverse events, and his academic work encompasses AI, computer vision and data science in surgery.

There is also a fascinating global-health dimension to Dr. Donoho's work.

Through the Surgical Data Science Collective, he is interested in using shared surgical data and AI to make expertise more accessible across borders and potentially help surgeons in resource-limited environments learn from procedures performed by experts around the world.

On today's show we're going from the operating room, to surgical AI, to brain-computer interfaces, to neural privacy - and ultimately to the question of what technology may be doing to the human brain itself.

#DanielDonoho #Neurosurgery #SurgicalAI #ArtificialIntelligence #SurgicalDataScience #ComputerVision #DigitalSurgery #Neurotechnology #BCI #BrainComputerInterface #Neuralink #MedicalAI #HealthcareAI #SurgicalInnovation #FutureOfMedicine #PediatricNeurosurgery #BrainHealth #AI #Surgery #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities
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What if you could have an infection, already be experiencing symptoms, and yet the diagnostic test could still tell you that you're negative? That's one of the central challenges of Lyme disease - and today we're going inside the biology and technology behind the race to detect it earlier.

Dr. Joseph J. Burrascano Jr., M.D., is a physician and longtime researcher who has spent more than three decades focused on Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.

A graduate of NYU School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine, Dr. Burrascano spent approximately 25 years in primary care before leaving clinical practice and moving into biotechnology and research. He has been deeply involved in the Lyme disease field since the 1980s, is a founding member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, or ILADS ( https://www.ilads.org/ ), and has continued to educate physicians around the world about the diagnosis and management of Lyme and associated infections.

Dr. Burrascano has also been involved in the development and evaluation of diagnostic technologies and currently serves as a consultant and scientific advisor to IGeneX ( https://igenex.com/ ).

And that's particularly relevant to our conversation today.

A recently published study in Microbiology Spectrum evaluated FDA-cleared single-step immunoblot tests developed by IGeneX and compared them with conventional standard two-tier testing.

In one analysis of early-stage Lyme disease, the immunoblot approach detected antibodies in 58.3% of samples compared with 30.0% for standard two-tier testing. The researchers also reported very high specificity and performed additional discrepancy analysis on samples that produced different results between the methods.

So today we're going to step back and ask a fundamental question:

How good are we really at detecting Lyme disease - especially during the window when treatment may be most effective?

We'll talk about what Lyme actually does inside the body, why early diagnosis can be so difficult, what today's tests are actually measuring, what an immunoblot adds to the diagnostic process, how we should interpret sensitivity versus specificity, and where Lyme diagnostics may be headed next.

#LymeDisease #Lyme #LymeDiseaseAwareness #TickBorneDisease #TickBorneIllness #LymeTesting #LymeDiagnostics #Borrelia #InfectiousDisease #MedicalDiagnostics #Biotechnology #Diagnostics #Immunology #PublicHealth #PrecisionMedicine #MedicalResearch #HealthTechnology #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities
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