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Dr. Corry's Bio: David B. Corry is Professor of Pathology & Immunology and Medicine; Vice Chair for Immunology, Department of Pathology & Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dr. Corry further holds the Fulbright Endowed Chair in Pathology. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and after residency training in Internal Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, he completed his clinical training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. In 1992, he joined the immunology laboratory of Dr. Richard Locksley to study mechanisms of T cell differentiation and immune injury. He then joined the faculty at San Francisco General Hospital as Adjunct Assistant Professor and in 1999 joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine.
The primary objectives of Dr. Corry's research are to discover the fundamental immune and environmental causes of chronic human inflammatory diseases to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of these often profoundly disabling conditions. Dr. Corry's laboratory discovered the seminal importance of the of the IL-4/IL-13 signaling pathway in asthma; the fundamental role that environmental and endogenous proteinases play in the pathogenesis of TH2-dependent allergic inflammation; the fibrinogen-Toll like receptor 4 interaction in the control of antifungal immunity and allergic inflammation; and the fungal infectious basis of allergic airway disease of humans, including chronic rhinosinusitis and asthma. In collaboration with Dr. Farrah Kheradmand, the Corry laboratory discovered the critical role that matrix metalloproteinases play in orchestrating allergic inflammation; first demonstrated the autoimmune TH1/TH17 basis of human emphysema; the critical roles that peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (PPAR-g) and osteopontin play in emphysema; and that the primary disease-causing factor in tobacco smoke-related emphysema is nanoparticulate carbon black. Dr. Corry's laboratory further pioneered the study of microRNAs (miRs) in pulmonary disease and discovered the pro-inflammatory role of let-7 miRs in experimental asthma and the critical role that miR-22 and histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4) play in organizing pathologic TH17 responses in experimental emphysema. Most recently, Dr. Corry's laboratory has discovered that low-grade fungal sepsis due to the yeast Candida albicans produces a durable cerebritis with features resembling Alzheimer's Disease. Current research in the Corry laboratory is directed at translating these discoveries into improved diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for human allergic, smoking-related, and degenerative central nervous system diseases.
Dr. David Corry is a physician and professor at Baylor College of Medicine who joins the show to discuss allergies, fungal infections, immunology, and so much more. In this episode, you will discover:
Ever since the early days of his training as a physician, Dr. David Corry gravitated toward a strong clinical interest in diseases of the lungs, and discovered one of the major problems facing pulmonologists today: textbook and even the most advanced treatments don't always work on some of the most common illnesses, including chronic sinusitis and asthma. Further, the more severe the disease, the less likely it is that treatment will work. This sparked Dr. Corry's interest and compelled him to examine what is really going on with these conditions and how diagnoses and treatments for them might be improved.
Dr. Corry's clinic focuses on treating advanced, potentially life-threatening inflammatory airway diseases, as well as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or emphysema that are complicated by sensitization to pollens or molds, which in turn leads to a particular pattern of inflammation called eosinophilic bronchitis. By using techniques that have been developed over the course of ten years' worth of research using mouse models, Dr. Corry and his team have been targeting the core problem that underlies these different conditions.
What might that problem be? This question leads him to explain one of the most important discoveries uncovered through his research, which is that in addition to continual exposure to an allergen such as pollen or cedar or mold, there is a factor that drives these allergies: airway mycosis, or the growth of mold in the airway.
Dr. Corry explains what is really meant by the broad term "allergies" and the many different forms it can take in different people, how airway mycosis not only worsens but can also cause the symptoms of allergies, and how he treats his patients having been equipped with this knowledge. He also discusses the difficulty in prescribing antifungal medication, the presence of mycobiomes in the human body, and some of the most common sources of mold growth that you might not think of (and what to do about them).
He shares the specifics of the research he and his team are currently conducting, which aims to determine why only a small percentage of people develop serious disorders related to airway mycosis. He explains his two-fold hypothesis and when they expect to have sufficient data on the matter.
Tune in for all the details and visit https://www.bcm.edu/people-search/david-corry-19841 to learn more.
Integrative medical doctor Dana Cohen talks about the importance of hydration as well as some surprising nuances as discussed in her book Quench, which she coauthored with Gina Bria. She describes for listeners
Dr. Dana Cohan is a nationally-renowned integrative medical doctor with a multidisciplinary approach to her practice. She trained under Dr. Atkins and has been practicing for more than twenty years. She begins the podcast by recounting how few of her patients come in to her office feeling as if they hydrate enough. She feels that proper hydration is the single most important thing one can do to treat and prevent chronic illness. This along with Dr. Gerald Pollock's findings of a "fourth phase of water," were the impetus behind writing the book.
She describes some of the ways just focusing on drinking lots of water leaves an individual behind in hydration, and believes many of us function in a place of low-grade dehydration. She says that one of first signs to look for is fatigue because hydration is a source of energy in the body. Hydration provides electrical energy and helps us store our energy better. But if we only focus on water, we can dilute our electrolytes and minerals. She explains ways to avoid this, including a daily regime that includes front-loading our water intake first thing as well as filling ourselves with water from foods like vegetables and fruit. She gets into more detail about what this looks like and other handy ways to hydrate, including certain movements.
For more, her book Quench is available from multiple retailers.
Dr. Shepherd has worked in key areas like Botswana to address infectious diseases. He shares with listeners
Dr. James Shepherd is an infectious disease physician at Yale, New Haven hospital. For the past 20 years, he has advised and worked in TB and HIV global treatment programs. For example, he worked in Nigeria to roll out HIV treatment programs through the US-funded President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. He also ran the CDC's TB and HIV research program in Botswana to address HIV symptoms and curtail TB spread, which has one of the most severe TB and HIV co-epidemics in the world, and worked with the CDC WHO contingent in India, advising on their national TB program.
He describes his work with governments and health issues in smaller countries, which have a lot more challenges. He comments that one has to get creative, adapt, and work around issues and prioritize because there isn't the luxury of picking and choosing. He adds that there's a lot of pragmatism: these parts of the world are limited by funds so they have to make very hard choices for their people.
He also tells listeners about the covid-19 shutdown's effects on some of these programs, how the lack of PPE, resources, and the "cold chain" supply of vaccines and medicines are no longer reaching places like Botswana. He adds how they handled the covid-19 precautions very well from the start and have very limited cases, but are suffering from this lack of other needs met. Therefore, Dr. Shepherd expresses his concern for the near future of TB and HIV symptoms relief, prevention, and treatments as well as the lack of vaccines like measles.
For more information on infectious diseases from a global perspective, he suggests seeing web pages from philanthropic organizations like the global health section of the Gates Foundation and the UK's Wellcome Foundation.
Dr. Mya Breitbart, Professor of Biological Oceanography at the University of South Florida, College of Marine Science, discusses marine microbes—microbes in the ocean, wastewater treatment, viruses, and her lab's current and past work. Breitbart earned her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology at San Diego State University and a BS in Biological Sciences from Florida Institute of Technology.
Podcast Points:
Dr. Breitbart discusses her lab's focus and objectives. As she explains, they use sequencing techniques to explore the diversity of viruses and bacteria. Specifically, Dr. Breitbart's lab's molecular techniques can be utilized to study the distribution, and ecological roles, of viruses and bacteria in a diverse range of varied environments. Her studies cover seawater, plants, animals, insects, coral reefs, zooplankton, stromatolites, reclaimed water, and more. While there is certainly a lot of interest in the larger species, etc. that inhabit our oceans, Dr. Breitbart and her team are keenly interested in the smaller things. As she explains, in every milliliter of sea water there are about one million bacteria and ten million viruses, so there's a lot to examine and study. She discusses bacteria and viruses' important roles in the carbon and nutrient cycles in the oceans, and explains that there is so much more to learn still, on top of what they already know.
Dr. Breitbart discusses how bacteria adapt to different habitats. And she provides an overview of sampling procedures that oceanographers utilize, discussing the processes in detail. She explains how they can get specific with depths, capturing water samples at precisely the depth they want to study. She explains why viruses are harder to look at, one reason being is that they have such different types of genomes. And she expands upon how they can look at viruses in regard to pollution in the marine environment.
Continuing, Dr. Breitbart discusses how their studies can provide insight into diseases that affect sea animals as well. And in regard to sequencing, she talks about single-stranded DNA viruses versus double-stranded, and the methods they've used to discover similarities and differences.
John M. Newsam, author, and CEO of Tioga Research, discusses skin in general, care for skin, and his work at Tioga Research.
Podcast Points:
Newsam has provided his expertise in scientific and strategic consulting to multiple US Fortune500 companies, as well as early-phase biotech and materials companies around the globe, including the US, UK, and Korea. He has worked with notable government institutions such as IFP Energies Nouvelles, and he has been a respected member of many academic advisory committees.
Newsam provides an overview of Tioga Research, their objectives in research, and overall mission. As he states, they are heavily involved in research and early development of formulations applied to the skin, including pharmaceutical (primary) as well as the beauty/skin care area as well. Newsam explains how 'active' ingredients are diffused into the skin in order to achieve the desired therapeutic benefit, and he talks about transdermal delivery of drugs, and why this method can be particularly useful.
The research CEO provides an overview of active and inactive ingredients, and FDA-approved products. As he states, cocktails of molecules tend to work best for delivering the benefits to users. Newsam explains how they have worked to assemble a long list of safe compounds and mixtures, and databases of useful excipients (inactive substances). Continuing, Newsam delivers an overview of what manufacturers can claim regarding their products and the benefits they may provide. As he states, in theory, any claim of benefit should be supported by a scientific study, but the cosmetic industry is so large, with so many products on the market, it can be difficult to police every product that exists.
Additionally, Newsam talks about other drugs, permeability, and how enzymes can degrade proteins. Newsam is a materials chemist by training, and he has authored in excess of 170 scientific publications.
Visit these links to find out more about John M. Newsam:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jnewsam/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Newsam
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1fk9pdIAAAAJ&hl=en
Dr. Bility works with humanized mouse models to investigate infectious viruses like HIV. He explains his microbiology work by sharing with listeners
Moses T. Bility, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the School of Public Health and the University of Pittsburgh. In this conversation he explains how Stephen Hawking's theory of model-dependent realism inspired his approach to studying infectious viruses. In an effort to rethink the paradigm that can explain and predict human disease in a more effective way, he works with rodent models that are humanized. He explains the technique for introducing human organ systems in mice, including the liver, hypothalamus, kidney capsule, skin, and the whole immune system.
This realigns how a microbiology lab can analyze infectious viruses, from HIV to Covid-19. Dr. Bility describes his current investigation, namely in HIV interaction with macrophages and iron. Macrophages are multifunctional cells that play a role in maintaining tissue integrity and initiating an immune response. He describes how they developed a humanized mouse model with a human spleen and studied the model to see what allows the HIV virus to persist and how they could affect the virus. They had an exciting outcome, namely that they were able to control HIV in their mouse model. They now will do some machine learning and other studies to see how they can design a vaccine around their findings in terms of controlling the virus.
For more, see his faculty page at https://publichealth.pitt.edu/home/directory/moses-bility.
Professor Bushman has been studying microbes since the early 80s and was involved in researching HIV pathogenesis, developing in vitro HIV integration that led to integration inhibitors for treatment. He shares interesting details about viruses with readers, such as
Frederic Bushman, Ph.D., is the William Maul Measey Professor and Chair of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He shares with listeners how his own interest in the field developed and then begins by addressing ways we understand viruses as scientists consider efforts like gene therapy. For example, he explains that HIV integrates into the host cell, which is why it is so difficult to get rid of it. However, it does not act on the scale of endogenous retroviruses, which infect germ cells and expand into every bodily cell as we grow. He says that the human genome is composed of 8% viral genes from these viruses.
The conversation then turns to the microbiome, virome, and bacteria phages and he reminds listeners of the vast number of viruses in the world. In fact, he talks of a "dark matter" existence level of viruses that researchers are just beginning to try and investigate. While the public may mainly hear about viruses in terms of pathogenesis and gene therapy, their involvement in our world and evolution is complex and far beyond these issues.
He also talks about his findings about to be published in Nature. He and his team studied the development of a baby's microbiome and found that at birth, a baby is without bacterial colonists. He explains how the microbiome develops alongside integrative prophages. For prospective students wanting to enter the field, he suggests trying to formulate a question that's interesting, important, and answerable.
To find out more, he suggests searching his name and the term "virome." In addition, his faculty page has links to some of his publications: https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g20001500/p2236488
Pooja Khandelwal, MD, Assistant Professor, UC Department of Pediatrics and Member, Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immune Deficiency, discusses bone marrow, gut health, and their work at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Podcast Points:
As a principal investigator at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Dr. Khandelwal has a keen interest in acute graft versus host disease biology, the treatment of steroid refractory acute graft versus host disease, and management of refractory autoimmune cytopenias in the post-transplant setting. Her work is often focused on pediatric bone marrow transplantation and blood diseases.
Dr. Khandelwal discusses acute graft versus host disease that can occur after a transplant. She provides some data on the number of bone marrow transplants, stating that approximately 10,000 patients annually go through the procedure in the United States alone. She explains how it can be a curative modality for diseases that are either hard to treat or that have returned after remission. Dr. Khandelwal provides some detailed information on bone marrow, explaining how it is a fascinating organ. As she states, bone marrow is a living organ in our bones that produces all the cells that make up our blood—white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. From carrying oxygen to the core of our immune system, to other crucial functions, our bone marrow is responsible for originating many important elements that are critical to our body's health.
Dr. Khandelwal discusses matching immune systems, and the factors. She discusses proteins and the matches between recipients and donors. Further, Dr. Khandelwal explains the actual process of how bone marrow transplants work from a technical perspective. She discusses how sophisticated the bone marrow is, and how it knows where it needs to go after transplanting it. The research doctor explains how chemotherapy is often used to eradicate a recipient's current bone marrow to make room for the new, healthy bone marrow.
Continuing, Dr. Khandelwal explains the changes within intestinal microbiome over time, in transplantation. She discusses where disruption happens, and how they can restore the beneficial bacteria to patients' bodies. Additionally, she provides information on how the intestinal microbiome is formed, and how human milk allows for the initial growth of an intestinal microbiome that can allow healthy systems to flourish.
Wrapping up, Dr. Khandelwal discusses the future of transplants, and some of her perspectives on personalized medicine.
Trey Grainger, Chief Algorithms Officer at Lucidworks, author, and speaker, discusses search engines, artificial intelligence, and AI-powered searches.
Podcast Points:
Grainger is an experienced engineering and data science executive with specific expertise in search and information retrieval, as well as recommendation systems, and data analytics spaces. Grainger discusses his background and his work at Lucidworks, the successful San Francisco, California-based enterprise search technology company.
As Grainger explains, Lucidworks provides its expertise in the area of AI-powered search technology to hundreds of Fortune 1000 clients. Accessing data and finding relevant results is the name of the game, and Lucidworks is exceptional in this critical area of business development. He discusses chatbots and analytics use cases, and how companies can benefit. Lucidworks assists their broad base of clients by helping them build intelligent search applications that will allow them to fully expose their products to customers and/or provide internal knowledge to all their existing employees. Grainger goes on to explain how search engines are utilized by nearly every website, but many simply don't get the job done. Lucidworks powers search engine technology that digs deeper and provides relevant results that are useful.
Grainger talks about the importance of 'bringing back' results that best match the intent of the user/searcher. Intelligent search technology must be specific, focusing on the content dimension, and user-understanding dimension, etc. For example, sophisticated search engines should be able to pick up on signals, learning what people want to 'see' in their content, based upon their clicks and behaviors, so the engine can 'tune' itself to find better answers for future user/searchers. He delves into the subject of domain understanding, and discusses how it drills down to what the content is really about. For the engine to understand the nuanced meaning of searches and search words is important. The context of the user is important, for example, if a user searches for the word 'driver' while at the airport, the search engine should be able to discern that they're probably looking for an Uber or taxi driver, and probably not a device driver for their computer's OS. Context is crucial in order to provide the appropriate results.
Continuing, Grainger discusses the specifics of queries, and different experiences that searches can provide. He talks about the direct correlation between improving relevance in searches to increased bottom lines. He talks about commerce use cases versus enterprise use cases, their similarities, and the benefits. Wrapping up, Grainger talks about natural language processing and the future of searches. Click here to get Trey Grainger's book "AI-Powered Search" There is a permanent 40% discount code (good for all products in all formats): podftech19
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Chief Clinical Officer of SyncThink, Scott Anderson, discusses a novel technology capable of identifying eye movements that indicate the presence of certain neurological conditions. In this episode, you'll discover:
Most neurological conditions lack objective diagnostic tools, which means diagnoses are made only by the exclusion of others, and heavily reliant upon the patient's reported experiences or answers on standardized questionnaires. This includes developmental conditions often labeled as learning disabilities in children, and degenerative conditions in late life, such as dementia. Until now, there has been no method for functionally measuring the brain to determine what is actually going on with patients who present with certain signs or symptoms.
For the past 15 years, Stanford neurosurgeon Dr. Ghajar has been capturing, studying, identifying, and classifying eye movements and correlating them with various neurological conditions in partnership with the US Department of Defense. With the help of today's guest, Scott Anderson, the data gathered from this extensive research has been commercialized, and is now available as an unprecedented tool for objectively measuring evidence of neurological impairments and conditions.
The technology utilizes FDA-approved, high-fidelity, research-grade eye tracking infrared cameras and emitters built into virtual reality goggles, and conducts a series of 60-second assessments to capture eye movements.
Anderson explains the specifics of the treatments and exercises used in this field, how to improve the standard and quality care for concussions, the future of eye tracking, and more.
Tune in and visit https://syncthink.com/.
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