Patient Empowerment Program: A Rare Disease Podcast

Liver: Metabolic Magic

The liver has many important and magical metabolic functions. It converts the nutrients in our diets into substances that the body can use and filters toxic substances out from the body. You won't believe the sheer metabolic mayhem that happens behind the scenes!

Bottling Hope

Argonaut Manufacturing Services Inc. CEO, Wayne Woodard, joins the Patient Empowerment Program to detail how Argonaut bottles vials of hope for n-Lorem patients. Argonaut is n-Lorem's provider of Sterile Fill-Finish for an optimal ASO. This means that the lyophilized ASO powder, which was manufactured with good manufacturing practices (GMP), gets formulated and aliquoted into sterile vials. The final product is tested for various attributes to ensure maximal quality. Once assessed and approved, the finished product is then ready to be administered to a nano-rare patient by a qualified research physician at an established institution.

Pursuing Diagnoses and Sequencing

Gay Grossman is the mother of an n-Lorem patient and co-founder of ADCY5.org. She has been active in the rare disease space for 25+ years and continues to fight and advocate for patients every single day by connecting ADCY5 families, speaking at events, and informing the entire rare community. On Wednesday, Gay joins the Patient Empowerment Program podcast to discuss her daughter, Lilly, lessons that she has learned as a rare disease mom and advocate, the difficulty of gathering and sharing medical records before the creation of Ciitizen, and why newborn genomic sequencing should be introduced in the United States today.On This Episode We Discuss:0:00 What is Ciitizen?3:14 The difficulty of sharing medical records before Ciitizen5:55 Gay’s daughter, Lilly, is an n-Lorem patient10:00 Finding an initial pediatrician to help Gay and her family diagnose and understand Lilly’s gene mutation11:45 Lilly’s nightly seizures and wondering what it would take to receive a diagnosis15:05 How caffeine helps Lilly and others with ADCY5 mutations18:35 What Lilly is doing nowadays19:48 How Lilly’s genes were sequenced21:00 Advocating to introduce newborn sequencing into newborn screenings23:30 What was known upon diagnosis and other’s with ADCY5 mutations28:13 Lessons that Gay learned from her 25+ years of rare disease care and advocacy33:19 The progress n-Lorem has made since inception

Lungs: Heavy Breathing — Diseases and Obstructions

Brace yourself for a deep dive into the various categories of lung disease. Obstructed airways and restricted blood flow pose significant risks to your body. So, learn preventive measures to safeguard your respiratory health. From pneumonia to the disruption of pulmonary blood flow, we'll explore the different culprits that block the flow of air and blood! On this episode we discuss:Obstruction of the airways due to smoking, cancer, infectious diseases, etcObstruction of pulmonary blood flowObstruction of gas exchangeInterference with the inflation and deflation of lungs

Lungs: Defending Airways

Let's take a deep breath and fill our lungs with air. Ahh, doesn't that feel good? Our lungs are responsible for taking in oxygen from the air we breathe and distributing it to organs throughout our bodies and then ridding those organs of carbon dioxide. Get ready to dive into a fascinating episode on our lungs and how they protect us against particles, toxins, and infectious organisms in the air we breathe. The tinier the foreign particle, the more harmful they are! Let's explore the superhero-like abilities of these incredible organs, our lungs.

One Year Anniversary: It Takes a Rare Community

May marks a year of podcasting for us, and we’re thankful for all those who have participated and the growing number of people who have listened to the podcasts. We are pleased with the overwhelming support for the podcast and the willingness of our partners and patients to share their stories.We launched our Patient Empowerment Program with the purpose of building a nano-rare community and establishing a forum in which the voices of patients, advocates, and experts can come together focused on the nano-rare patient. We’re happy to report that we believe we have done just that – create a forum for our nano-rare community.To celebrate one year of the Patient Empowerment Program, we compiled clips from previous interviews to form a special podcast episode centered around “community” and it really does take a “rare” community to do what we do.

Coming Together for the Nano-rare Patient

This episode is proudly sponsored by our partner, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the leading RNAi therapeutics company. When Stan Crooke ran Ionis and John Maraganore ran Alnylam, they were partners that turned into rivals — and not always friendly ones — as they persevered to pursue an entirely new therapeutic space; RNA-targeted drug discovery and development. Now, the pair of drug discovery titans have united once again in support of Dr. Crooke’s n-Lorem Foundation—working to provide personalized medicines to the rarest of rare disease patients (nano-rare) using the antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) technology Stan led the creation of at Ionis. In this episode, Stan has a conversation with Dr. John Maraganore about John’s past, their former rivalry, and the optimism shared between the two with respect to a better future for nano-rare patients.On This Episode We Discuss:- Being a dream merchant and driving a dream into a real therapeutic platform- Founding of Regulus and the synergy between Ionis and Alnylam throughout the years- What happens when two very competitive CEO-scientists have competing drugs- Overcoming their differences- Giving hope to a patient and their family with nano-rare diseases is powerful- Saving the world one life at a time- Bringing ASO and RNAi technologies together to collaboratively help nano-rare patients- A sustainable non-profit model?- Hope – a powerful thing to lose and an important thing to recover

Q&A #1 with Patient Families

Amber Freed and Shanna Tolbert join n-Lorem founder and CEO, Stan Crooke, for the first ever Patient Empowerment Program Q&A episode. Amber and Shanna are two nano-rare patient mothers and rare disease advocates who have experience with the n-Lorem pathway to treatment as caregivers. Through their experiences, and by canvasing others in the nano-rare community, they’ve compiled questions aimed to help current and potential n-Lorem patients and their families become more knowledgeable about the process, receive advice, understand side effects, and more! Stan sits down with these patient families to have a conversation and together address questions from the nano-rare community. Question Bank:- How do you apply to be an n-Lorem patient and who do you need on your team to help? 05:26 - How does the Foundation assess cases? 05:26- Once a patient is accepted, what is the best way to track the progress of the ASO program? 12:45- Any advice for when seeking information from a research physician who isn’t communicative? 14:05- How often should a patient expect to hear communication from a research physician? 15:50- What is hydrocephalus, and should patients be concerned about the side effect? 19:30- If side effects occur in treated patients, will subsequent patients be notified in real time? 30:55- What is the difference between an ASO and gene therapy? 33:55- How is n-Lorem defining an “optimal ASO”? 37:20- Can n-Lorem help patients who are severely advanced in their disease? 44:10- How can treating one person can lead to breakthroughs for many more? 39:40- What is Stan’s favorite success story from his career? 46:20

Bits and Bytes Help Streamline Bench to Bedside

The creation of a drug consists of a copious and complicated series of projects that are all intertwined. Andy Mehrotra, CEO of Unipr, joins the Patient Empowerment Program to discuss how Unipr’s AI based cloud program, project, and portfolio management platforms allow organizations like n-Lorem to quickly analyze data to inform program management. Today, n-Lorem effectively manages more than 90 accepted patient programs thanks to help from Unipr. Discovering locations where productivity can be increased while maintaining quality in every step is critical to treating as many nano-rare patients as possible. On This Episode We Discuss:Andy’s upbringing among physicians and pharmaceutical entrepreneurs Traveling the world to launch Humera Baring the frigid Boston winters at MIT Inspiration to found Unipr How biotech and pharmaceutical organizations can use Unipr to increase efficiency The partnership between Unipr and n-Lorem Unipr’s focus areas: Increasing the probability of success, decreasing the operational costs, and decreasing the cycle time for drug development Why Andy would donate himself to help n-Lorem

Fostering Collaboration to Fight ALS

Manish Raisinghani joins the Patient Empowerment Program to discuss how Target ALS fosters collaboration between academia and industry to research and accelerate the fight against ALS. Target ALS has funded over 50 collaborative projects. Greater than 50% of which have had an industry partner and over 60% have resulted in an ongoing drug discovery program. From their Innovative Ecosystem, 6 clinical trials have emerged. Target ALS’ commitment to fight all forms of ALS, no matter how rare, is evident in their founding support of Silence ALS, an initiative that aligns Columbia University and n-Lorem to offer an integrated solution to identify, support and potentially treat nano-rare ALS patients. Target ALS hopes that one day, no patient, no matter how rare their form of ALS, is left behind. On This Episode We Discuss: Target ALS’ innovative model Accelerating ALS research through collaboration How a single nano-rare study can inform the ALS research landscapeThe importance of understanding the fundamental biology behind ALS Committing to fight all forms of ALSTarget AlS’ support for n-Lorem and Columbia University’s Silence ALS Initiative