Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Ira Pastor
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Science
  • Updated Semiweekly

Interviews and Discussions With Fascinating People Who are Creating A Better Tomorrow For All Of Us - Host - Ira S. Pastor

  1. 21h ago

    CMV - The Virus Lurking Inside Us That Can Threaten Transplant Patients | Dr. Neil Inhaber, MD - Head, Marketed Products and Neuroscience, Global Medical Affairs, Takeda

    Send us Fan Mail Every year, hundreds of thousands of people around the world receive life-saving organ transplants - new hearts, kidneys, lungs, and livers that offer patients a second chance at life. But transplantation is only the beginning of the journey. Because preventing organ rejection requires suppressing the immune system, transplant recipients become vulnerable to infections that most healthy people never even notice. One of the most important - and least understood - is cytomegalovirus, or CMV. More than half of adults worldwide carry this virus, often for life, without ever knowing it. Yet in patients who have undergone organ transplantation, CMV can reactivate and become one of the leading infectious complications, threatening not only a patient's health, but also the long-term success of the transplanted organ itself. Fortunately, advances in virology, immunology, and antiviral drug development are opening new possibilities for managing this complex disease. My guest today is Dr. Neil Inhaber, MD - Head, Marketed Products and Neuroscience, Global Medical Affairs at Takeda ( https://www.takeda.com/ ). Dr. Inhaber is a physician specializing in pulmonary and critical care medicine whose career uniquely bridges frontline patient care with the development of innovative therapies. Over the past three decades, he has held senior medical leadership positions at Takeda, Shire, Boston Scientific, Baxter, Novartis, and other leading healthcare organizations, guiding clinical development, global medical strategy, and life-cycle management across rare diseases, respiratory medicine, immunology, oncology, and transplantation. Today, he helps shape Takeda's global medical strategy for some of medicine's most challenging diseases, working closely with clinicians, researchers, and regulatory agencies around the world. Today we'll discuss why cytomegalovirus remains one of the greatest infectious threats facing organ transplant recipients, what we've learned from the latest research presented at the American Transplant Congress, how new antiviral therapies are changing the treatment landscape for patients with resistant or refractory CMV, and where the future of transplant medicine and infectious disease management is headed next. Important Episode Link -  LIVTENCITY® (maribavir) for Healthcare Professionals https://www.livtencity.com/ #CMV #Cytomegalovirus #OrganTransplant #TransplantMedicine #Transplantation #Immunology #Virology #InfectiousDisease #Antiviral #DrugResistance #RareDisease #Biotechnology #Biotech #Pharmaceuticals #DrugDevelopment #PrecisionMedicine #MedicalInnovation #HealthcareInnovation #LifeSciences #MedicalResearch #AmericanTransplantCongress #ATC2026 #Maribavir #Takeda #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

  2. 1d ago

    The New Era Of SMA - From Gene Therapy to Living Without Limits | Dr. Tracey Dawson , Ph.D. - Senior Vice President and U.S. Therapeutic Area Head of Neuroscience, Novartis

    Send us Fan Mail Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has undergone one of the most remarkable transformations in modern medicine. A disease that once carried devastating consequences, particularly in its most severe forms, can now be treated with therapies designed to dramatically alter its course - especially when treatment begins early. But medical progress creates a fascinating new question. What happens when you don't just change the disease - you change what's possible for the person living with it? Because today's SMA community includes children treated before symptoms emerge, young adults who have grown up in this new treatment era, and adults who have lived with SMA for decades and carry the consequences of disease that occurred before these therapies existed. And that's where our conversation today gets particularly interesting. Because the next challenge may not simply be developing better medicines. It may be helping people take full advantage of the lives those medicines make possible. My guest is Dr. Tracey Dawson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and U.S. Therapeutic Area Head of Neuroscience at Novartis ( https://www.novartis.com/ ).  Dr. Dawson brings more than 25 years of experience across neuroscience, rare diseases, biotechnology and pharmaceutical leadership - and today we're going to talk about the changing face of SMA, the evolution of the SMAshing My Limits initiative ( https://www.smashingmylimits.com/ ), and why Novartis is now turning its attention to something that might seem very different from drug development: helping people with SMA actually get out into the world. #SMA #SpinalMuscularAtrophy #SMAAwareness #SMAshingMyLimits #GeneTherapy #GeneTherapyRevolution #Neuroscience #RareDisease #RareDiseases #NeuromuscularDisease #Biotechnology #Biotech #Pharma #LifeSciences #PatientAdvocacy #AccessibleTravel #DisabilityInclusion #MedicalInnovation #HealthcareInnovation #Novartis #SMAResearch #FutureOfMedicine #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

  3. 4d ago

    Can a Virus Turn Cancer Against Itself? The Next Era of Cancer Immunotherapy | Jared Kelly - Chief Executive Officer, Oncolytics Biotech

    Send us Fan Mail What if one of the biggest problems in cancer isn't that we don't have enough drugs to kill cancer cells - it's that the immune system sometimes can't see the cancer in the first place? There's a fascinating new strategy trying to change that: using a virus to make tumors more visible to the immune system. Today we're going to explore a fascinating and potentially transformative area of cancer medicine: oncolytic immunotherapy - using viruses or other immune-stimulating mechanisms to turn tumors from immunologically "cold" environments into tumors that the immune system can actually recognize and attack. Jared Kelly is the Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Oncolytics Biotech ( https://oncolyticsbiotech.com/ ), a company developing pelareorep, an investigational, intravenously delivered double-stranded RNA immunotherapy designed to activate the immune system and remodel the tumor microenvironment. Unlike many targeted cancer therapies that depend upon finding a particular mutation or surface antigen, pelareorep is designed to exploit a different vulnerability - using double-stranded RNA to trigger an inflammatory response, generate and activate tumor-reactive immune cells, and help those cells penetrate the tumor. The company's goal is ultimately to make the tumor more receptive to multiple other therapies. And Jared brings a rather unusual perspective to this story.  He's not a traditional biotech CEO who came up exclusively through drug discovery. He's an attorney and corporate strategist who spent years advising public companies and biotech companies on capital markets, M&A and corporate transactions before moving into biotech leadership. Previously at Ambrx, Jared served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary and played a central role in the company's transformation, financing, licensing activities and eventual $2 billion acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. He subsequently became CEO of Oncolytics in June 2025. Today we're going to talk about the science of oncolytic immunotherapy, why the field may finally be reaching an inflection point, how pelareorep works, why the tumor microenvironment is so important, and perhaps most importantly - whether oncolytic immunotherapy could become the next major platform technology in oncology, in the same way that antibody-drug conjugates have rapidly moved from niche technology to mainstream cancer treatment. #Cancer #CancerResearch #CancerTreatment #CancerImmunotherapy #Immunotherapy #Oncology #OncolyticVirus #OncolyticViruses #Pelareorep #OncolyticsBiotech #Biotech #Biotechnology #DrugDevelopment #Pharma #PrecisionMedicine #TumorMicroenvironment #ImmunoOncology #KRAS #KRASCancer #ClinicalTrials #CancerScience #MedicalResearch #HealthcareInnovation #Science #Innovation #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities #PPP Support the show

  4. 4d ago

    From Old Drug to New Medicine: The Science of Repurposing Ibudilast | Dr. David Crean, Ph.D. - Chief Business Officer, MediciNova

    Send us Fan Mail In biotech, discovering a drug is only half the battle. You have to understand the science, raise the capital, design the right clinical trials and convince the world that your hypothesis is worth pursuing. Today I'm joined by someone who has spent more than three decades at the intersection of science, medicine, business, and capital markets. Dr. David Crean, Ph.D. is the Chief Business Officer of MediciNova ( https://medicinova.com/ ), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule therapies for neurodegenerative, inflammatory, fibrotic and other difficult-to-treat diseases.  At MediciNova, Dr. Crean leads corporate development, partnering, investor relations and capital-markets strategy, and he has played a central role in communicating the company's scientific and strategic vision to investors and the broader life-sciences community. And Dr. Crean brings a pretty unusual perspective to that job.  He's not simply a business executive who entered biotech from the financial world. He holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics, began his career doing biomedical research, spent years involved in drug development and portfolio management, and then moved into corporate development and strategic transactions. At Allergan, Dr. Crean spent more than a decade working across neurology, medical aesthetics, dermatology, ophthalmology and other therapeutic areas, ultimately negotiating and closing more than 30 strategic transactions involving acquisitions, licensing, partnerships and equity investments. Since then, Dr. Crean has advised more than 250 life-science and healthcare companies and been involved in more than 50 transactions representing more than a billion dollars in aggregate value. But what is particularly fascinating about Dr. Crean's career is that he's repeatedly occupied the space between science and capital - helping scientists and entrepreneurs translate great science into something that can actually be financed, developed, partnered, commercialized and delivered to patients. And that brings us to MediciNova. The company's lead program is MN-166, or ibudilast, an orally available small molecule with anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties that is being developed across several neurological diseases, including ALS, progressive multiple sclerosis and degenerative cervical myelopathy, with additional investigations in areas including glioblastoma, Long COVID and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. The ALS program is especially interesting because MediciNova has now completed enrollment in its Phase 2b/3 COMBAT-ALS study, while a separate NIH-supported expanded-access study, SEANOBI-ALS, reached its target enrollment of 200 patients this summer. And Dr. Crean has another fascinating project underway: his forthcoming book, Dual Fluency: How Life Sciences Leaders Master the Language of Science and Capital ( https://dual-fluency.com/ ), which explores the idea that leaders in biotech need to be fluent in both the language of scientific discovery and the language of investors, partners and business. So today we're going to talk about ALS and the science behind MediciNova - but also about something much bigger: What does it actually take to turn scientific potential into a successful medicine and a successful company? #ALS #AmyotrophicLateralSclerosis #Ibudilast #MediciNova #NeurodegenerativeDisease #Neuroscience #Neuroinflammation #Microglia #DrugRepurposing #Biotechnology #Biotech #Pharmaceuticals #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #Neurology #MotorNeurons #BrainHealth #MedicalResearch #Science #Innovation #LifeSciences #Healthcare #Pharma #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

  5. 5d ago

    Can We REVERSE Cancer Drug Resistance? The New Science of Fighting Cancer | Dr. John Yu, MD - Founder and CEO, Kairos Pharma - Professor and Clinical Chief of Neurosurgery, Cedars-Sinai

    Send us Fan Mail Cancer doesn't just sit there while we attack it. It evolves. We give a patient a powerful drug. The tumor shrinks. It looks like we've won. But somewhere inside that tumor may be a small population of cells that figured out how to survive. Those cells can eventually multiply, the cancer returns, and the drug that once worked no longer works. So what if, instead of continually chasing cancer with newer and newer drugs, we could turn off the biological escape routes that allow cancer to become resistant in the first place? Dr. John Yu, MD is the Founder and CEO of Kairos Pharma ( https://kairospharma.com/ ), a clinical-stage oncology company spun out of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that is developing therapies designed to overcome cancer drug resistance and immune suppression. Dr. Yu is also Professor and Clinical Chief of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai and Director of Surgical Neuro-Oncology ( https://www.cedars-sinai.org/provider/john-yu-2181236.html ). His career sits at a fascinating intersection of neurosurgery, immunology and cancer biology. Dr. Yu earned undergraduate degrees in biology and French from Stanford University, his MD from Harvard Medical School through the Harvard-MIT program, completed his neurosurgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and pursued immunology research at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Over the course of his career, Dr. Yu has developed eight FDA investigational drugs and holds multiple patents spanning immunotherapy and nanotechnology. At Kairos, that scientific journey has led to a particularly interesting strategy: targeting CD105, also known as endoglin, a protein that appears to become elevated as tumors develop resistance to certain cancer therapies. The company's lead candidate, ENV105, is an antibody designed to inhibit CD105 and potentially re-sensitize resistant tumors to therapies that had stopped working. Kairos is currently evaluating ENV105 in Phase 2 prostate cancer and Phase 1 lung cancer studies. On this episode we talk about one of the great challenges in modern oncology - why cancer becomes resistant, whether that resistance can actually be reversed, and whether we can turn some of our existing cancer drugs back into powerful weapons against the disease. #Cancer #CancerResearch #CancerTreatment #CancerDrugResistance #Oncology #Immunotherapy #PrecisionMedicine #Biotechnology #Biotech #DrugDevelopment #CancerTherapy #ProstateCancer #LungCancer #LungCancerResearch #ProstateCancerResearch #ImmunoOncology #TargetedTherapy #DrugResistance #CancerBiology #CD105 #Endoglin #ENV105 #KairosPharma #JohnYu #MedicalResearch #Pharma #HealthcareInnovation #CancerScience #ClinicalTrials #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

  6. 6d ago

    Can AI Help Detect Disease Before Your Pet Gets Sick? | Dr. Ragen McGowan, Ph.D - Director of Global Digital & AI Product Development - Nestlé Purina

    Send us Fan Mail What if your dog or cat could tell you how they're feeling? Today, artificial intelligence may be giving us a new way to listen. By continuously monitoring things like activity, eating, sleep, elimination and other behaviors, AI can begin to establish what's normal for an individual animal - and potentially detect subtle changes that humans would never notice. Dr. Ragen McGowan, Ph.D. is Director of Global Digital & AI Product Development at Nestlé Purina ( https://www.purina.com/pet-experts/rm-pet-expert ). Dr. McGowan has spent more than twenty-five years studying animal behavior and cognition, including research ranging from grizzly bears and laying hens to dogs and cats. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Ethology from Washington State University before conducting postdoctoral research in Sweden focused on measuring positive emotional states in dogs. Today Dr. McGowan leads Purina's Global Digital and AI Product Development organization, where her team combines artificial intelligence, connected sensors, behavioral science, physiology and nutrition to better understand what pets are experiencing - and ultimately to give pets something they've never truly had before: a voice ( https://www.petivity.com/ ). Dr. McGowan's work spans smart pet technologies, digital biomarkers, predictive AI models capable of detecting disease before clinical symptoms appear, and pioneering research into the gut-brain axis and animal emotional health. Today we'll explore how artificial intelligence is transforming veterinary medicine, how connected devices are changing the future of pet care, and what studying animal cognition may teach us about intelligence, emotion and even ourselves. #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #AnimalBehavior #PetHealth #DigitalPhenotyping #PetTech #IoT #AnimalCognition #VeterinaryMedicine #PredictiveHealth #GutBrainAxis #Petivity #Cats #Dogs #AnimalScience #MachineLearning #PrecisionMedicine #Biotech #Science #Technology #Innovation #FutureOfHealth #PetCare #NestlePurina Support the show

  7. Aug 19

    Is Science Being Hijacked? The Dark Side of Scientific Publishing - Kent Anderson And Joy Moore - Authors, How the Internet Disrupted Science

    Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest threat to scientific integrity isn't bad science - but the system we use to decide what gets called science in the first place? Every year, millions of scientific papers enter the literature. But behind those papers is an increasingly complicated ecosystem of peer review, Open Access, publication fees, citation metrics, academic incentives, paper mills - and now artificial intelligence. And some experts believe we're reaching a point where the scientific literature itself is becoming contaminated with so much questionable material that separating signal from noise is becoming extraordinarily difficult. Joining us today are two people who have spent decades inside the world's scientific publishing ecosystem and who have written a fascinating new book, How the Internet Disrupted Science ( https://www.disruptedscience.com/ ), examining how digital technology, changing business models, artificial intelligence, and perverse incentives have transformed the scientific literature itself. Kent Anderson has spent more than thirty years at the highest levels of scholarly publishing, serving as Publishing Director at the New England Journal of Medicine, Publisher at Science magazine, CEO of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Director of Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics, and founder of two of the publishing industry's most influential publications, The Scholarly Kitchen and The Geyser. Joining him is Joy Moore, whose career spans virtually every major corner of scientific publishing - from Nature Publishing Group, Blackwell, Wiley, the American Medical Association, Silverchair, EBSCO and many more - helping shape how scientific knowledge is created, distributed, discovered and trusted in the digital age. Together they argue that the Internet didn't simply change how science is communicated - it fundamentally changed the incentives behind scientific publishing itself, opening the door to paper mills, fake journals, AI-generated research, and a growing crisis of trust. #Science #ScientificResearch #SciencePublishing #ScientificPublishing #PeerReview #OpenAccess #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ScienceCommunication #ResearchIntegrity #ScientificIntegrity #PaperMills #ResearchFraud #AcademicPublishing #PublishOrPerish #Misinformation #FakeScience #ScienceAndTechnology #Innovation #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfScience #TrustInScience #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

  8. Aug 18

    Your Urine Contains a Fingerprint of Disease. Can AI Read It? | Dejan Nenov - Co-Founder, Luventix

    Send us Fan Mail What if we could take something as simple - and seemingly ordinary - as a urine sample, measure thousands of chemical signals within it, and use artificial intelligence to recognize the metabolic fingerprint of disease? And what if, instead of looking for one specific biomarker, we could train an algorithm to recognize the complex pattern created by an entire disease state? That is the premise behind Luventix ( https://www.luventix.com/ ), a technology company developing AI and machine-learning diagnostic models based on quantitative analysis of urine. Today's guest, Dejan Nenov, comes to this problem from a somewhat unusual direction. He's not a traditional biotech entrepreneur. Dejan is a computer engineer, technology entrepreneur, investor and longtime software executive who has spent more than three decades building companies across fields ranging from telecommunications and cybersecurity to enterprise software, consumer electronics and data architecture. Dejan has been involved with companies that have collectively returned more than $3.5 billion to investors - and he's now turned his attention to one of the most complicated systems imaginable: the human body. At Luventix, the idea is to use gas chromatography to generate a quantitative representation of the metabolic state contained within a urine sample, and then use machine learning to identify patterns associated with disease, treatment response, and potentially treatment-related toxicity. Today on Progress, Potential, and Possibilities, we're going to explore whether the next generation of medical diagnostics may be less about finding a single molecule - and more about teaching machines to recognize the incredibly complex biological patterns hidden in our own chemistry. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #HealthcareAI #MedicalAI #Diagnostics #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #Biotechnology #Biotech #PrecisionMedicine #UrineDiagnostics #DiseaseDetection #MachineLearning #Metabolomics #Biomarkers #MedicalInnovation #FutureOfHealthcare #HealthInnovation #ClinicalDiagnostics #Luventix #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show

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Interviews and Discussions With Fascinating People Who are Creating A Better Tomorrow For All Of Us - Host - Ira S. Pastor

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