Fixing Gene Therapy Access With AI | How Genoplex Is Helping Patients Get Treated Faster

Fixing Gene Therapy Access With AI | How Genoplex Is Helping Patients Get Treated Faster #genetherapy #biotech #healthcareai

What if gene therapy could cure your disease, but you never made it to the treatment center in time? In this episode of Biotech Bytes, we dive into that real and urgent problem with Christopher Leidli, CEO of Genoplex.ai. Chris shares how his company uses AI to match patients with advanced therapies and treatment centers faster than ever before. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

We talk about the logistics, the outdated systems, and the patient pain points that make accessing cutting-edge gene and cell therapies so difficult. From working at biotech giants like Amgen and J&J to launching a startup to bridge the access gap, Chris has seen every side of this challenge.

You'll learn the difference between gene therapy, cell therapy, and T-cell therapy, the current FDA-approved treatments, and why health equity is still a major barrier. We also get into how Genoplex’s platform works and why AI could be the key to helping patients get lifesaving care when it matters most.

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🔎 Related Phrases:

Fixing Gene Therapy Access With AI, How Genoplex Is Helping Patients Get Treated Faster, How Genoplex Helps Patients Find Treatment, Gene And Cell Therapy Explained, Difference Between Gene And Cell Therapy, Why Patients Can't Access Gene Therapy, How Ai Is Transforming Healthcare Access, Fda Approved Gene Therapy Drugs 2025, Using Ai For Medical Referrals, Health Equity In Biotech, Gene Therapy For Sickle Cell Disease

#genetherapy #biotech #

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:20 About Christopher Leidli
• 3:39 What’s the difference between gene and cell therapy?
• 5:23 How many therapies are FDA approved?
• 7:50 Global access issues and health equity
• 10:21 Why patients aren’t reaching treatment centers
• 12:25 What Genoplex.ai actually does
• 16:10 Improving provider workflows and referrals
• 18:18 Expanding treatment indications beyond blood cancer
• 25:02 Why clinical trial matching isn’t enough
• 29:38 The administrative burden at treatment centers
• 31:31 How the treatment center qualification process works

Transcript

Christopher Leidli [00:00:00]:
There's a need out there to really, to help bring awareness of the therapies, help improve access by making patients more aware. And our platform brings patients into our platform and helps them through our AI algorithm, match them to a treatment center and specialists closest to them. And it cuts that time down from weeks down to hours.

Steve Swan [00:00:22]:
Welcome to Biotech Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Swan, where we chat with leaders in the biotech industry. Coming up, join me for a spirited discussion with Chris Leidli, CEO and founder of Genoplex.ai, a technology company helping patients understand what gene therapies are available for the particular ailments that they have. Great conversation. Hope to see you there, Chris. Thanks for joining us. How are you today, Steve?

Christopher Leidli [00:00:49]:
I'm awesome, my friend. Excited to be on your show and, and, and speak with you here today. Thank you for inviting me.

Steve Swan [00:00:55]:
Sure thing. Yeah. No, so I think first what I usually like doing with guests is just getting a kind of an overview of their background, how they got to where they are so, and then kind of leading into, you know, their organization and what their, what their group does and what their organization does. So why don't you give me a little background leading up to Genoplex AI and kind of go from there.

Christopher Leidli [00:01:18]:
Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Yeah, it's interesting. I actually started early career as, as a molecular biologist in the labs at Amgen. It was my first job out of graduate school where I was working already on many of the precision medicines and advanced therapies. I've sort of come full circle in my career back to that. So let me explain. I, I sort of worked my way through advanced therapies and molecular biology at Amgen, where a lot of the tools back then of recombinant DNA technology and cloning genes and making new proteins in things for human, to alleviate human suffering.

Christopher Leidli [00:01:50]:
We were, that was the beginning of, of, of the revolution for true advanced therapies. And I would say through the years I've worked in various research, development and then commercialization roles at leading companies like J and J, Bayer and Sanofi. And six years ago, I, I, I, I saw the future potential of, of advanced therapies. And let me be define that for the audience. I mean, that's, these are things like cell therapies, gene therapies, other types of biologics, where oftentimes the starting material for the therapy is the patient's own cells. And we'll get more into that. But I think the beauty of this is that we now have the tools, the technology many years later. So I Would say seven or eight years ago the first cell therapies were approved and I started a marketing agency, a really a boutique agency that was focused exclusively on these advanced therapies.

Christopher Leidli [00:02:45]:
It was through that process of working with many of the leaders in this space, like Kite Therapeutics, Legend Bio Janssen and others, and Iovance, that I learned that there's an opportunity here to bring technology in to help solve some of the biggest commercialization challenges. And that's what led me to start up Genoplex.

Steve Swan [00:03:04]:
Very cool, very cool. Now, so I guess to give us a foundation, let's assume somebody doesn't know, right? They're watching this and like, huh, that sounds kind of cool. But what is the difference? Is there a high level difference that we can talk about between cell therapy, gene therapy, T cells? Right. Because we hear all three of those. Is there a difference between all three of those? I'm sure the marketing and such might be the same. I don't know. Maybe I'll leave that open to you. I don't know.

Christopher Leidli [00:03:31]:
Yeah, well, let's break it down. So like let's, let's maybe start with this, Steve, and say that, you know, most of us are familiar with the healthcare system that was really built over many decades, right. That was really buil pills and treating symptoms and taking prescriptions and going to a pharmacy. Right. Sometimes you might get injections, right. Things like that. That's kind of what I call pharmaceuticals 1.0. We're now on pharmaceuticals like 2.0, 3.0, with advanced therapies.

Christopher Leidli [00:04:00]:
Because what's different about them is when we talk about cell and gene therapies many times to start the manufacturing process, your cells are your own drug, that's the beauty of it. But that often requires now patients to go through a procedure called apheresis or tumor procurement where your cells need to be harvested through a, through a minor procedure to get the cells, it goes to a manufacturer where those cells are prepared and sometimes genetically modified, sometimes not. And then they're amplified and grown in nutrients that kind of can be re infused back to the patient. And what's beautiful about these, Steve, is they're oftentimes, one time treatments, oftentimes with long, very long cures. So that's some of the difference when we think about cell therapies and gene therapies. T cells are often one of the sources, the starting materials that you mentioned. But it can be other types of cells as well. Any, any cell type from your body could generally be used as what we call starting material for the drug.

Steve Swan [00:04:59]:
Okay, okay.

Christopher Leidli [00:05:00]:
And.

Steve Swan [00:05:01]:
And in the US today granted approval by the fda. How many different therapies are there? How many different drugs are there that are already approved and on the market? You know, gene, gene therapy drugs. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:05:15]:
So combination of gene therapies and cell therapies. I would say if we just look at those, and I'm not even talking about some of the other biologics and other things that we, that we focus on, but there's over 30 products approved since eight years ago when the first ones were, were approved. And boy, we've got amazing cell therapies. And let's talk about a gene therapy. For example. CAS Jetty is a product, there's two therapies have been approved for, for sickle cell disease. So this is a much larger prevalent indication. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:05:46]:
Affecting a lot of people, especially people of color. And so there's a global worldwide health burden with sickle cell disease. And so amazing to see that we're seeing these one time treatments that are actually curing and repairing that defective hemoglobin gene that's making the red blood cells normal against it. So tremendous. That's just one example of many that I could share around the truly innovative impact that we have with these new therapies.

Steve Swan [00:06:13]:
Now this is awesome technology and this is great stuff that's going to help like you said, millions and millions of people. My brain instantly went to when you just said that it's global, right? So if there's a global need for something again, this is now all the way down at the, the lowest level and where, where knucklehead like me like think about this. How are you going to manufacture that halfway around the world or get it halfway around the world? Does it have to be refrigerated? Does it have to be the final mixation done locally? I mean, how does that all. There's a huge supply chain thing going on there, correct?

Christopher Leidli [00:06:46]:
Oh, Steve, you're you, you hit it on the head. I mean the supply chain is already complicated enough even in, I would say a high resource country like the U.S. but when you think about, you know, like I interviewed a, someone on my podcast with sickle cell disease recently. That which he's from Nigeria and he said, you know, in African countries where sickle cell disease is prevalent, it's evolved as a way for the body to, to defend against malaria, by the way. So it's interesting how, how that sickling actually was a, was an evolution, evolutionary process to help protect us, but in, in doing so is harmful. But those countries are More low resource. Those patients don't have access to many of these therapies right now there are no centers in Africa that I'm aware of where patients can go and get these therapies. So they often have to travel to Europe or the US for now hope that's part of the global challenge of how we try and improve access globally to these life saving therapies.

Steve Swan [00:07:42]:
So now we got an issue of the haves and the have nots. Right?

Christopher Leidli [00:07:45]:
Well yeah, I mean that's regrettably, that's just a health equity issue or, or you know that, that, that, that the entire healthcare system faces around the world.

Steve Swan [00:07:55]:
Right, sure, yeah. That's tough. You know, I mean there's a lot of different inputs that go into that. Right. And to get to everybody that needs it, that's tough. You know I, I, I had a conversation with somebody in the past about you know, the whole organ donation business and they, they're, they're growing some animal organs where they can and they've been transplanting them into humans. You know again it's just a matter of, of, of getting things there. It's that supply chain is how is it going to work.

Steve Swan [00:08:25]:
You know and I think with all these things it's, it's, it's a huge challenge I'm sure. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:08:30]:
Well imagine it's, it's complicated enough. I know a lot of like the Bill Gates foundation, others, they, they buy vaccines and ship them to low resource countries around the world. And see that's, that also requires some complex supply chain because many of those need to be refrigerated or frozen. But even just simple medicines, pills, you know what those are getting to countries that in need. But you know these, because again the starting material is patient's own cells. You can't just make them in, in the US somewhere and just bulk distribute them to, you know patients actually have to go to a treatment center somewhere and that's, that's kind of the nuance of the supply chain that makes it makes access so difficult.

Steve Swan [00:09:09]:
Well they've got to go to the center and, and I mean it doesn't happen overnight. Right. They've got to get their cells, they gotta manufacture, grow whatever they gotta do to get the dosage to where it needs to be. Right. So they've got to hang around, you know, get it to get it to where it needs to be.

Christopher Leidli [00:09:26]:
So that's right that patients do often have to wait several weeks. They have to be close to the treatment center for the follow up care for the infusion to help manage any potential side effects of which there oftentimes aren't many side effects with these therapies. But without getting too much into detail, sometimes there are sort of bridging therapies that are used that do introduce some toxicities that do have to be managed during part of the overall regimental.

Steve Swan [00:09:52]:
Sure, yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And so there's 30 plus right. Of these therapies out there. And so where does. So Chris saw a gap. Chris was involved with these companies.

Steve Swan [00:10:07]:
What's the gap you saw and what's the gap that you're working on with your organization, with your company?

Christopher Leidli [00:10:13]:
The gap that we're trying to fix, the pain points are this in the eight years since these products have been introduced and by the way, this market's expected to double in size in the next before end of the decade. What we're, what we're finding, what I learned is that only about 1 or 2 out of 10 patients actually gets to a treatment center. So all of those patients who could benefit from these therapies, that's really not very many of them, many, not many of them are actually getting to the treatment centers. There's a lot of reasons for it. On the health. So in the US most of the care in the country is given out in community settings. Not everybody goes to Memorial Sloan Kettering or Moffitt Cancer center for their treatments. They're out in communities.

Christopher Leidli [00:10:53]:
You know, I live in a rural part of Colorado, so it depends on a referral from your provider to one of these 100 or 200 treatment centers around the country who are qualified. It's a very rigorous regulatory process to be qualified, to be able to treat patients with these therapies. And so what we learn is that more than half of healthcare providers around the country just say that the intake process, the referral process is too cumbersome, the logistics are too complicated and it takes too long. The intake process is too long at the hospitals. So when on the hospital side, they're still using faxes, you know, voicemails, emails, you know, for the patient follow up. So if anyone's ever tried to schedule an appointment with a specialist at one of these centers, it can take weeks, right? So but if you've got cancer, let's say, you know, every day you're waiting, your disease is progressing, right? What happens is that even the patients that sometimes get to the treatment center, their disease has now progressed and they're no longer even eligible for these treatments. So there, there's A need out there to really. To help bring awareness of the therapies, help improve, you know, access by making patients more aware.

Christopher Leidli [00:12:04]:
And our platform brings patients into our platform and helps them, through our AI algorithm, match them to a treatment center and specialist closest to them, and it cuts that time down from weeks down to hours.

Steve Swan [00:12:17]:
Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Yeah. Because I, when I do my, you know, you know, I'm an executive recruiter. Technology within the biotechs and farmers. Right. And. And there's a lot of the companies all the way along the process who I've helped to create patient and provider and payer.

Steve Swan [00:12:37]:
Right. And someone's got to pay eventually, but create those portals and there's a lot of data that flows in and out of those things. And, and to your point, you know. Well, there's also got to be a lot of security. Again, I'm thinking about all the technology around because there's a lot of data.

Christopher Leidli [00:12:49]:
You're right. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:12:50]:
You know, there's a lot of data that flows in and out of there, and there's a lot of people that are involved with each part of that process. You know, whether it's, again, the doctor or the patient or the payer or the manufacturing folks. Slash scientists. Right. Doing all that work. So there's a lot of stuff going on just around that one person's dosage. Right. Because each one's individualized.

Steve Swan [00:13:12]:
We're not just punching out pills. We're. We're doing one dose. One person's taking one manufacturing person's taking one dose from end zone to end zone. And then once that's done, they're getting the next one going, you know, that kind of thing. Right. So it's pretty very individualized, you know.

Christopher Leidli [00:13:26]:
So it's very individualized, you're right. And, you know, the American College of Physicians has, has put out white papers about the need for primary care specialists to make referrals to specialists and be more aggressive, I guess is the word, to sort of be more proactive and aggressive in making those referrals to specialists. Because we have so many of these therapies that can only be administered in these special academic centers around the country. You would think that, you know, everybody knows who to refer to, but, you know, there's so many new products, so many indications, these, a lot of these relationships aren't in place. Like if I'm a physician out in some part of the country trying to, I don't know, people at, you know, in the treatment center that I need to Refer to. So this is a resource for referring physicians to help them get patients in because it's, it's, it seems easy, but that the process is not streamlined.

Steve Swan [00:14:18]:
It sounds like it's not. So, so then what, what you're doing is you're, you're, you're taking that data, you're figuring out or, you know, or somehow who's been diagnosed or potentially diagnosed with X, Y and Z, and then what treatment centers and organizations have those, you know, cell therapies that are approved for that particular ailment. And then you're trying to get more folks involved with that therapy so they're better, they, they get, they get, you know, better treatment. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:14:52]:
We're forecasting that we're, you know, that we'll have a few thousand users in our platform by end of the, end of the year. And these are high value patients because these are, these are expensive therapies. Um, they're motivated to find treatments. It's all about timeliness. Um, we know that reducing the time from, from being symptom aware to diagnosis to treatment, if you can compress that time, we already know there's already data that shows that you improve health outcomes, you improve patients clinical outcomes if you can just get them the treatments they need faster. And that's ultimately the ultimate metric that we want to try to deliver on is getting patients to these therapies faster.

Steve Swan [00:15:28]:
So you are directly in touch with patients or doctors or providers or all.

Christopher Leidli [00:15:33]:
Three, Actually all of, all of them. Because our user flow and our software, you come in as a, you can come in as a referring physician or as a patient. We have two different user flows. So physicians can come in, make a referral. And the beauty of it is they have a referral dashboard. One of the things physicians, when they refer is they don't know what happens to their patient. So we've proactively built in like these dashboards. They can go log in, look at the patients they referred and see where are they in their treatment journey, stat, what's their status in the treatment journey.

Christopher Leidli [00:16:02]:
And, and, and we also provide notifications on when that patient's coming back, when they're done with treatment. So we're closing the loop on those communications so the entire care team is aware of where that patient is throughout their journey.

Steve Swan [00:16:14]:
That's awesome. That's good stuff. That keeps everybody, you know, in the loop. And those doctors, obviously, you know, they're primary care physicians, so they're going to care about their patients and where they're going and what they're doing. So that's awesome stuff. So then the companies. So, so hold on, let me back up here. So 30, 30, 30 different therapies, plus or minus, right.

Steve Swan [00:16:37]:
In the country. What, what ailments, what sort of indications are the 30 or 33 for? Are they all for different things or they. For.

Christopher Leidli [00:16:46]:
They're all for different things. So it started out. It's. It started. The first therapies were approved in blood cancers, things like lymphoma, leukemia, myeloma, where, by the way, the response rates are almost 100%, which means nearly every patient who gets this therapy has a response. And then it's just a question of is it, you know, how, how durable, how long is the response. But many of these responses are going out years. And these are, these are in patients that maybe had very poor prognoses, Steve.

Christopher Leidli [00:17:15]:
That's where it started. So in those indications we've just seen last year, our first approval by Iovance in, in a. In with their product, cell therapy product in melanoma. So the excitement in the. That we're starting to move into other sort of solid tumor types, moving out of blood cancers into solid tumors, you know, things like melanoma, lung cancer. And now we're starting to see a lot of ex. Excitement and activity in autoimmune diseases. So, so things like, like lupus and you know, other sort of immune activation, because a lot of those are blood cell activated, sort of hyperactivated cells that cause these autoimmune diseases.

Christopher Leidli [00:17:49]:
So there's a lot of excitement and hope. There's. And as I mentioned, we're going into much larger patient populations with things like one of the approved. There's two approved therapies for sickle cell disease and even some for hemophilia as well. And so those are reaching different patient populations at much bigger, more prevalent indications.

Steve Swan [00:18:10]:
This is completely, you know, just self. This is. Do we have anything coming or anything around for GBM glioblastoma or, or, or have we not gotten to that yet? We can't get the blood brain barrier from what I understand is the big hindrance there, you know.

Christopher Leidli [00:18:27]:
So I just interviewed the chief. Well, it's actually the president at Diaconos Oncology who, who's actually. They're developing a type of, of dendritic cell therapy. So that's at the dendritic cells. Steve, you asked earlier about the different, like T cells and all that dendritic cells. They're, they're a type of T cell or white blood cell that people may have heard of or that they're using, they're engineering it so that it, it can actually get into the blood brain barrier. And they've shown some preliminary data in pancreas cancer, for example, and glioblastoma. Those are two of the hardest cancers to treat.

Christopher Leidli [00:19:05]:
So there's a lot of excitement.

Steve Swan [00:19:06]:
Of all maladies. Yes.

Christopher Leidli [00:19:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there, there, there is exploration in that area, but nothing yet approved.

Steve Swan [00:19:13]:
Really? That's very cool. I'm fingers crossed. I, I lost a brother. Yeah, I lost a brother to GBM in 2023. He made it 10 plus years, which is huge. Long time. But you know, it's, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're running as fast as you can for as long as you can, you know, so.

Christopher Leidli [00:19:34]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:19:34]:
Something like this, like you said, it sounds like the response rates on these things once someone gets involved is very, very high.

Christopher Leidli [00:19:42]:
You know, once that, that's definitely been the promise. Now, like, you know, in a solid tumor space, the response rates have been a little bit lower. But, but, but those that do respond, they have very long durable responses. So you know, when you think like in the melanoma space, metastatic melanoma, I'm talking about, not the sort of basal cell stuff, you know, it used to be patients only had about a six month prognosis. Now they're living five years, you know, so like it's, it's incredible difference and how durable these responses can be.

Steve Swan [00:20:12]:
Now, metastatic melanoma is what Jimmy Buffett died of, correct?

Christopher Leidli [00:20:18]:
I believe so. I don't know his, his entire story in full disclosure, but yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, it's, you know, a lot of these diseases, as you mentioned, are kind of, they're considered rare diseases. Right. You know, you know, there's about 5,000 new metastatic melanoma patients a year in the U.S. but there's many more patients to be higher. Well, the earlier stages, some people have like, you know, you know, that's stage four, but stage one, two, three, there's a lot more of those patients, but that, that can be effectively treated with other types of interventions.

Steve Swan [00:20:47]:
Yeah, with Mohs, they can dig them out and stuff. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:20:50]:
Moses Mohs is one of them. And there's even now some immunotherapies that are very powerful too, that are, I would also consider their types of advanced therapies because they're harnessing the immune system to kind of fight, fight the cancer.

Steve Swan [00:21:02]:
So I think that's just awesome. Immunology is just, it's, it Just blows my mind in a great way, you know. And that's, that's using here. That's.

Christopher Leidli [00:21:13]:
Yeah, it's using the power of, of our host directed defenses or like our immune system was, was. We've come through evolution with our host directed interventions to sort of surveil the body and anytime there's a foreign intruder to fight it off. That's kind of what's being done with immunotherapies. Up to now, therapies have mostly relied on sort of chemical warfare. A lot of these agents for cancer literally were developed from, from many of the types of, you know, toxins used, you know, in, in the 60s and 70s during warfare. Like they sort of evolved into therapies, chemotherapies for, for. And that just has like a, a very broad approach. It just kills all the actively dividing cells in your body.

Christopher Leidli [00:21:50]:
We're being much more precise now and that's why we're talking about precision medicine, personalized medicines now to really distinguish these much older therapies that we were. That are kind of going out of vogue now.

Steve Swan [00:22:03]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's. Yeah. The older therapies kind of like you said, just kind of go after the entire landscape, tear that down and then we build it up. Right, and.

Christopher Leidli [00:22:13]:
Right. That's right.

Steve Swan [00:22:14]:
Hope we got rid of the bad ones and now we build up. That's right.

Christopher Leidli [00:22:17]:
That's a good way to put it.

Steve Swan [00:22:19]:
Yeah. That's the best we can do. Right Eric? We were doing. This is awesome stuff. So now when you interact, when you go after. So you're going, you're, you're talking to and working with patients and doctors. Okay, so that's good. And, and I bet that the, the doctors really do love what you're doing and the patients, once they figure it out, probably real excited about it, but they didn't know probably anything about any of these therapies because when my.

Steve Swan [00:22:44]:
Well, I just mentioned that I, my brother passed away of GBM, I was responsible for the whole ClinicalTrial.gov thing, trying to find clinical trials and stuff. And I bet that's, I'm just assuming that's where a lot of other folks would probably go to get their information, you know, and I would think that maybe your group or you somehow plugs into that. Right. To get folks to, to into some of this, you know, these organizations or drugs. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:23:11]:
I'm glad you mentioned that, Steve, because what we're seeing is there's a lot of investment in new health tech companies spawning around trying to help match patients to clinical trials. And the pharmaceutical companies, of course they want that because they want to accelerate their clinical development programs to get to market. I really see it as a very crowded space right now, and I don't necessarily know that it's solving the. I don't know if technology is going to solve that problem all the way because I don't know if that's addressing the real problem. Why we don't see more patients in trials. You got to ask yourself, why don't more patients? It's interesting, you. A lot of what happens is caregivers, like you mentioned, you're, you're a caregiver, you're a family member, you went out there, you know, you're savvy, you're educated, you know how to go find it. I don't think everybody knows how to go to ClinicalTrials.gov and find a trial.

Christopher Leidli [00:23:55]:
It's very difficult to navigate, hard to find.

Steve Swan [00:23:57]:
I didn't know what to do, man. I was grasping, you know.

Christopher Leidli [00:24:03]:
That's an interesting part, though. Think about. So when you think about a family's treatment journey or a patient's treatment journey, right. A lot of patients are in the same boat you were, Steve. They don't know what to do. But they're desperate, they're looking, they're searching. Some of them come across good information, some of them don't. So that road to getting, you know, as I mentioned earlier, becoming.

Christopher Leidli [00:24:20]:
So first you're symptom aware, then. Then you, then you kind of become diagnosis aware. Once maybe you receive a diagnosis, like, okay, now I have, you know, I have, you know, I have melanoma, then you start the search process and now you're looking for treatments. Are patients looking for trials at that time? No, they're probably looking for treatments, you know, because you know that that's kind of how you're wired. Like, I want to find what's what, what treatment should I go on, right. And then, and then kind of through their journey, maybe things evolve. Then they start, you know, as they get deeper and deeper into their journey over years, maybe they're starting to look at trials and other things. But our software kind of looks at that as well.

Christopher Leidli [00:24:54]:
But we're not primarily a clinical trials matching. We're. We're focusing on the problem sort of once a patient, you know, once a product's approved and out in the market, how do we democratize access for patients, make it more available to patients, make them more aware of the treatments that are commercially available that may benefit them before they consider like Going to trials.

Steve Swan [00:25:14]:
Yeah, yeah. And to get that kind of data, there's probably a lot of HIPAA around that as well. For you, you know, for. To.

Christopher Leidli [00:25:22]:
Yeah, of course. No, we, we're, we're cloud based computing, but we have, you know, we work in an AWS secure environment following SOC 2 and HIPAA standards in terms of how we protect the data and.

Steve Swan [00:25:34]:
Sure.

Christopher Leidli [00:25:34]:
You know, cybersecurity is a thing you always have to be, you know, concerned about. And we're, we're investing a lot early. Even though we're a startup, we're investing a lot there. We're not taking that, I mean, we're taking it very seriously, as every health tech company should.

Steve Swan [00:25:47]:
Yeah, well. And I think that again, going back to some of the companies that I work with, right. That are doing this kind of work, they sort of have two layers of security. One like a normal company would have around their corporate structure, right. Their whole gna, their hr, legal, finance, but then a whole nother really. I don't want to call it another set of security, but close to it, around that whole manufacturing process, right. Where they take in the patient DNA and where they're doing all that stuff, that's, that's the holy grail. They got to hold on that, like you're saying, you know, that's, that's real sensitive stuff.

Christopher Leidli [00:26:21]:
You know, that stuff all goes into a database somewhere, whether it's on a local server or in a cloud. I mean, it has to be secured and you know, no database is impenetrable. So you really just have to have a series of layers of security and then have protocols to, active protocols for surveillance and knowing, you know, how to address various risks there.

Steve Swan [00:26:44]:
So. Right. Yeah. And all my companies go through that and they talk to me about it and got to work on it. You know, it's just, it is, it's part of what they got to do. You know, it's part of doing business. And again, it, you know, nobody, you, me, the folks that are, that are ill, they don't want their information out there as much as they can protect it, you know, so anyway, so what else and anything else we should, you know, know about what you're doing in this whole industry, tell me, you know, if there's anything more that we need to hit on there. Because I always have, I always have one last question I asked my guests, which is kind of the surprise question at the end.

Steve Swan [00:27:19]:
So if you've watched any of my podcasts all the way through, you may know.

Christopher Leidli [00:27:23]:
Yeah, I mean, I Think, you know, one of the things that, you know, we talk a lot about the patients and also the referring physicians. But I have to say, one of the things, you know, coming out of the big health conference last October in Las Vegas, we're, you know, heard, listen to physician leaders, right, and the physicians and healthcare providers at these treatment centers now, these are the centers that are actually treating the patients with these advanced therapies. Steve, the other thing that we're trying to solve on the other end of this algorithm here, treatment algorithm, is the patient intake process. I mentioned that the process is too slow. So let's say once the patient comes in, we need to accelerate that because in our customer discovery calls, when we talk to these treatment center, the service line administrators who are actually administering this, they said they're working on Excel spreadsheets. Each manufacturer has their own portal. It's, it's too much like there's 30 medicines. There's this, it's going to be 50, 60, 70 by the end of the decade.

Christopher Leidli [00:28:23]:
Each of them has different requirements. There's, there's a, an, an effort going on in the industry to standardize the workflows and, and reduce the number of electronic interfaces. So that's the part I, I just want to leave your audience with, around. Everyone's talking about reducing healthcare provider administrative burden. And it's kind of a catchphrase that you hear at conferences. And what that really means is freeing up physicians and healthcare providers times to do more care in the clinic, more patient care and doing less work, charting, following up the patient, you know, phone calls back and forth. So like scheduling, you know, integrating scheduling, integrating, you know, accelerating those workflows. You know, let's, let's.

Christopher Leidli [00:29:02]:
It's hard to believe that most treatment centers, Steve, I talk to, they're still using faxes, voicemails, emails and Excel spreadsheets to manage all the different patients coming in and then dealing with all of these different provider manufacturing portals. It's, they're, they're just like, they're just, they're fed up. They're like, this can't, this is not sustainable. It's taking too much of my time. So that's something our software is trying to solve on the provider side, on the treatment center side by integrating our software and with those treatment centers.

Steve Swan [00:29:30]:
Very cool. You know, I mean, it's gotta be done. You know, to your point, it's, you know, faxes and phone calls can only really get you so far. You know, so we've all been there, Steve.

Christopher Leidli [00:29:44]:
Right? I mean, call and make an appointment. It's not, not like you're gonna get in tomorrow. Right? It's, it's a, it's a long process of back and forth.

Steve Swan [00:29:52]:
So if I'm, if, if I'm, I, I, this is another question that just came to mind. If I'm a patient that just got prescribed one of these, you know, gene therapies. Right. And I don't know, make it up. The company that is making the, the biotech that's making my therapy is in Seattle. I don't know, just throwing that out. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:30:10]:
Okay.

Steve Swan [00:30:11]:
Do I have to go to a treatment center in, in Seattle, is that ideal? Or do I, can I do it in LA if I live in la?

Christopher Leidli [00:30:18]:
So if you live in la, you're lucky. You're likely to have a few treatment centers down there because. So, so, no, let me address your question. So first of all, if a manufacturer, you don't have to go to the location where, where they physically reside. So in this case, Seattle, you don't have to go to Seattle. What these manufacturers do, like as part of their launch, commercial launch, they have to go and certify or qualify every treatment center they have to onboard all these treatment centers around the country. So when a product's first approved, Steve, you can't go to 200 treatment centers around the U.S. there might be 30 or 40 around the country that you can go to in the first year.

Christopher Leidli [00:30:55]:
And then they, what they do is over time, it's very resource intensive for the company and for the treatment centers. So it's, It's a long 6 to 12 month process and so it takes several years to, to expand your network of qualified treatment centers. If you're in one of the big urban areas, you're, you'll likely have a treatment center close to you. But as you know, in the U.S. steve, there's, we have huge frontier spaces where, wide open spaces where there may not be a treatment center for several hundred miles.

Steve Swan [00:31:23]:
Right, right.

Christopher Leidli [00:31:24]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:31:25]:
But as long as you're near a big city, chances have it. You know, it reminds me of Chris. It reminds me of. I know I keep drawing on this, but it reminds me of when I was going through clinicaltrial.gov for my brother and there were two clinical trials we wanted to get him on. But unfortunately, and we didn't know at the time, we didn't have his tumor resected at a participating institution. So they didn't have a slice of his tumor. And so we couldn't take a slice from the place and get it to the, you know, and so, you know, we didn't, we just didn't have. It just was in the.

Steve Swan [00:31:57]:
We were in the wrong place, you know, we didn't know, you know, but it sounds like, you know, like you said, they have to approve the center and they've got to be right on. The one we went to wasn't far away. It was within 50 miles. But we just didn't, you know, whatever. What did we know? We didn't know anything at the time. You learn this stuff quick, unfortunately, but at that point we didn't know it. So anyway, good example.

Christopher Leidli [00:32:19]:
I mean, that happens all the time.

Steve Swan [00:32:20]:
Yeah, I bet it does. Bet it does. We, we just, you know, we didn't know. Read about it all on clinicaltrial.gov and I was like, ah, okay. So, all right, well, cool. Thank you very much for that. So, anything else you wanted before I ask my last question?

Christopher Leidli [00:32:34]:
No, that's fire. Let's hear the last question. You've piqued my interest here. It built me up around it. Let's see what you've got.

Steve Swan [00:32:40]:
So I'm a mu. I love music. I love going to see live bands. Right.

Christopher Leidli [00:32:44]:
Okay.

Steve Swan [00:32:45]:
And so what I always like asking my. My guests is if you had to think about live music that you've seen throughout your life, what would have been the best concert, the best show? I, I have a feeling you're about to show me a poster or something because you're moving your camera of, of. Of trying to get.

Christopher Leidli [00:33:05]:
Go ahead of.

Steve Swan [00:33:06]:
Of any band that you would say has been your. Or, or. Or maybe there's several. But what would you say has been if. And if you don't go to live shows or don't like them, that's fine too. But I just like asking that because I go to a bunch of live shows all the time and never been to Red Rocks, by the way, but I'd love to go and see something there. But anyway, I'm going to give you.

Christopher Leidli [00:33:25]:
I have to. You'll, you'll, you'll. You'll see why. Yeah, you know, I have a lot of friends in the Boulder area who love going to concerts and shows, and we do have Red Rocks down the road and I've seen many shows there. Yeah, highly recommend your audience. Anyone who hasn't seen their favorite artists or band there, even if they're not your favorite, go see a show at Red Rocks. Absolutely unbelievable. I had the privilege of going with some friends to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers a couple of years ago.

Christopher Leidli [00:33:50]:
At Red Rocks. I would say that was my best live show. Amazing music venue. And it was also, we saw him just six months before Tom Petty died, so it was kind of like one of the last shows he did. So that had a lot of memory for me. And then there was another show that meant a lot to me. You know, we were up in the mountains a lot in the summer, and maybe you may not be familiar, but there's a beautiful outdoor amphitheater in Dillon up in Summit county, up in the mountains, right off Lake Dillon. It's a small outdoor theater, but we saw Brothers Osborne there.

Christopher Leidli [00:34:30]:
And what was beautiful about it, it was during COVID So if you remember, during COVID there were no concerts, there were no indoor things for a long time. And the fact that like the Life was shut down for a year, and then some of the artists started going to outdoor venues. So after a year of lockdown, being able to go out to the Dylan Amphitheater and seeing the Brothers Osborne, sort of a very, you know, energetic, happy music outdoors in the. Beautiful outdoors in the mountains was, Was pretty spiritual for me. So those two stand out to me. Steve.

Steve Swan [00:35:01]:
Oh, that's great. That's a good story. I like that. Tom Petty never. Well, I was at Live Aid, he was at Live Aid, but I don't consider that that was, you know, 30 minute acts and then they moved on. So I never saw him. I wish I had. And, and, and also at the end of COVID I went and saw a band up in, up in northern New Jersey.

Steve Swan [00:35:17]:
It was springtime, it was a little chilly out, and it was one of those days that was probably like, I don't know, 30 mile an hour winds. But we're all standing outside. It's, it's as dirt field with a stage up there, you know, because we're up in the mountains up in, up in northern New Jersey. It was up in Sussex County, I think, Fairgrounds or something. It was. But anyway, I, I'll never forget that. You know, it was just, it was the end of COVID Everybody was there, nobody's in seats, everybody has their cars kind of nearby, but everybody's still staying their distance. You know what I mean? So.

Christopher Leidli [00:35:47]:
Right, right. Well, so similar, Similar story, right? I mean, that was memorable to you because again, it just sort of represented kind of the opening up of society again, being able to go out and do the things you love doing and. Yeah, that's a great question. And so who's, what's, what's been your favorite concert? Just, just so that I hear.

Steve Swan [00:36:04]:
I would say, you know, it's funny, nobody's asked me that back out of. Out of, you know, 30 plus guests. Now I need to know. I would have to say my. So my favorite one concert. And then I can say my favorite band that I like seeing live. So, okay. My favorite concert in the probably late 90s was the red Hot Chili Peppers in Madison Square Garden.

Steve Swan [00:36:28]:
They just. And MTV was there and the place was going crazy. It was good, it was fun. And I've never seen him before or since. I was like, yeah, I can hang on my spikes now. I think I saw a great concert. My favorite band, though, ever to see live. And I saw them a lot more than I ever want to admit.

Steve Swan [00:36:44]:
I probably saw them 50 plus times with the Allman Brothers. Oh, I really, really like seeing the Almond Brothers. I'm a big fan of the guitars and things like that. You know, nowadays we go and we see. My wife and I go to see Pearl Jam. We see. I saw the Grateful Dad a ton back in the day. I saw Dead and Company out, you know, a lot out there and such and so.

Steve Swan [00:37:05]:
Yeah, but I'd say the Allman Brothers are my favorite band. And then I'd say the best concert I was ever at was the Chili Peppers at msg, without a doubt.

Christopher Leidli [00:37:13]:
Well, you've got, you got a diverse music, musical repertoire and interest. So it's nice to see that people, you know, I love to hear people love different types of genres of music. It really speaks to the soul, doesn't it?

Steve Swan [00:37:26]:
It totally does. And, you know, you and I can be at the same. We can have 30,000 people at the same concert. Every single one of us has an individual experience. You know, it's, you know, it's. I think it's awesome. You know, I like seeing, you know, we go. We're empty nesters now, right? So we go and we see all different kinds of shows and concerts.

Steve Swan [00:37:46]:
I just, I'm a big fan, always have been, of live music. I, I always noticed when even when I was younger that I liked. I gravitated towards a lot of live shows and live recordings. The who at Woodstock was another favorite one. I probably listened to that forever when I was in eighth and ninth grade, you know, but things like just live music. David Bowie did a live. He had a the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust movie that he did, but he did a live album with it. And that live album is one of my favorites.

Steve Swan [00:38:17]:
It's, you know, I don't listen to anything else. David Bowie. It's just when it's real raw, when it's real down to earth, when there's not a lot of no. No mixing and stuff like that. You know, I went and saw this past summer, I went and saw Van Halen with Sammy Hagar and stuff. It just felt like it was mixed on stage, you know, I mean, again, Joe Satriani is awesome. Sammy Hagar is awesome. They're all awesome.

Steve Swan [00:38:38]:
But it just. I don't know, it just on stage, you could just hear it and feel it, you know, that it was mixed. But, you know, I remember seeing Soundgarden back in the day. I went and saw Jerry Cantrell, who was the lead singer of Alison Chains this summer. That was great. You know, anyway, just all sorts of different stuff.

Christopher Leidli [00:38:52]:
So, yeah, I think, like. Like, you're right. I think some artists just, you know, just sound different. Especially some of these older bands when you see them now. A lot of, like, electronic mixing and stuff. I think I did get to see. You mentioned Billy Idol. I got.

Christopher Leidli [00:39:05]:
I got to see Billy Idol at the Boulder Theater that only holds a few hundred people. You know, he didn't have, like, a big setup. It's just him and his voice and. My God, he sounded amazing, just like he did 20, 30 years ago.

Steve Swan [00:39:17]:
Yeah, he does.

Christopher Leidli [00:39:19]:
You know, small into. I love going to these small, intimate venues where you can see some of your favorite artists, you know, up close. So, yeah, I saw him at.

Steve Swan [00:39:27]:
Pete Townsend put together. So the album Quadrophenia by the who. Right. In 2016, he did five shows in the United States for Quadrophenia, but he did them with backups of an orchestra. So he had three shows in Lincoln center and then two shows in la. And I went to one of the ones in Lincoln center, and it was. It was awesome. It was cra.

Steve Swan [00:39:51]:
And Billy. Because Billy Ida was in that movie he was in. He was the bellboy in Quadrophenia. And so he came out and did his part and it was pretty cool and he sounded great. I. He had. He being Pete Townsend, had this guy Alfie. I don't even know Alfie guy's last name, but he was an opera guy.

Steve Swan [00:40:09]:
And he was singing Roger Daltrey's part, you know, because Roger Daltry did most of the album. And quite frankly, Alfie, who was in his late 20s, didn't, in my opinion, sound anywhere near as good as Roger Dalchi when he originally recorded the album back in, I don't know, 73ish. Whatever. Anyway, it was awesome. It was cool. And it was live and it was raw, and you could feel it, you could hear it, you know, and you just see the whole symphony up there doing the thing. It was kind of cool. But anyway, I'm off track again, so I.

Christopher Leidli [00:40:35]:
No, I love it. That. I love that. So your, your last question really got us going. It did love to hear, hear those stories. So, yeah, thanks again, Steve.

Steve Swan [00:40:44]:
Sure. Well, thank you. So this was great. I appreciate it, you know, and thank you for tuning in today to Biotech Bites. If you enjoyed what you saw with this episode, please take a moment and like us, follow us, review us on Spotify, Apple or YouTube podcasts, and definitely tune into Chris's podcast here. Rx for Biotech as well.