This Startup is on a Mission to Decentralize Cell and Gene Therapy Clinical Trials – BioBuzz

For the cell and gene therapy revolution to be fullyrealized, physicians, research scientists, biomanufacturing experts, advocacygroups, regulatory bodies like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) andother key stakeholders have to Think Different, as Apple famously encouraged.

The vein-to-vein, one batch to one patientformula of personalized medicine is radically and rapidly forcing changes onbiomanufacturing where cell and gene therapy best practices are not yetcalcified and are changing as we speak. Personalized medicine supply chainchallenges are emerging and still being worked through and the high cost ofthese therapies remains a daunting challenge for life science companies andpatients.

Cell and gene therapy challenges across R&D, manufacturing, commercialization, and supply chain as well as bioethical challenges yet to be fully confronted or resolved have been well documented and discussed by experts across the BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR).

One company Jeeva InformaticsSolutions, Inc. (Jeeva) in Herndon, Virginia is developing BigData solutions for a less publicized but equally urgent cell and gene therapychallenge: How to manage a radically new form of clinical trial that could spandecades. Founder and CEO of Jeeva, Harsha K. Rajasimha, is building a companythat leverages Big Data, AI and mobile tech to decentralize clinical trials.Jeevas goal is to make it easier for biotech companies to collect, aggregate,analyze and report required clinical trial data while helping patients stayenrolled and compliant over longer periods of time with little travel from theconvenience of their homes.

The FDA recently passed newindustry guidelines requiring long-term follow up (LTFU) periods ofup to 15 years for gene and cell therapies, representing a sea change for howclinical trials will operate in the future.

The cell and gene therapy space provides significant hope for cures that can reverse genetic mutations. This space is growing. There are more than 900 clinical trials ongoing. Hundreds if not thousands of genetic diseases are likely to have therapies for the first time in our lifetime, stated Rajasimha.

At Jeeva, we are trying to solve a number ofissues but have focused on one particular problem that needs to be addressed ifthese cell and gene therapies are going to be delivered to patients: No oneknows the long term implications of these therapies because they are a one anddone type treatment. If a patient receives therapy today, they are done, and sothe FDA has mandated that recipients need to be monitored for up to 15 years.We are looking to address this issue with digital health technologies and AI,he added.

Jeeva believes that these long-term monitoringchallenges can be managed by making clinical trial participation easier viamobile applications, video conferencing consultations and centralizedscheduling, to name just a few of Jeevas product features. Leveraging digitalhealth tech can reduce the need for travel and eliminate inconveniences thatmight cause a patient to become non-compliant or, worse, drop out of a trialaltogether.

Decentralized clinical trials eliminate the heavy burden of patient travel and makes the process simpler and more efficient. Utilizing a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) approach and an eVisit consultation model to create decentralized trials can reduce brick and mortar visits by 20% to 80%, according to Jeeva.

Thenew FDA guidelines is the latest attempt to grapple with unchartedsafety protocols for cell and gene therapies. Clinical trial challenges are notnew to the biotechnology industry, however; rather, the approach to clinicaltrials has been inefficient and static for decades, leading to industry-wideproblems with clinical trial enrollment and recruitment that has a dominoeffect that lengthens the commercialization process and increases drugdevelopment costs.

We want to be a catalyst for accelerating thedrug development and delivery process. Patient recruitment is a huge barrierand has made the biopharmaceutical industry unsustainable. The average cost ofbringing a drug to market is $2.5B and takes 10-15 years to get to market. Wefeel that by educating and informing the global community about clinical trialsand enrollment opportunities using AI and digital health tech, we can help allstakeholders in getting people earlier access to treatments and getting thetreatments to markets faster, Rajasimha said.

Jeeva not only can help small to midsize biotechs improve trial recruitment and longer-term safety monitoring, but the company uses AI to improve clinical trial operations. By using AI and high tech tools, biotech companies can leverage historical trial data to shape new trials while empowering real-time adjustments to trials based on real-time monitoring to improve overall success rates.

Rajasimha continued, We have been building AItools to solve our customers specific needs, not just for AIs sake. Wesurveyed our customers last year and they told us Every single clinical trialseems like the first trial ever conducted by mankind. Even companies likePfizer and Novartis, which have been conducting hundreds of trials for decades,feel that when they launch a new trialit is no more efficient than theprevious trial.

So, we have been building an AI assistant that learns from past clinical trials data to make the next trial more efficient, he added. Rajasimha quickly reinforced patient centricity by saying it is not something you fix with an all technology solution, unless the robustly tested technology solution is combined with the human elements and focus on patients perspectives. Having been a global patient advocate in the U.S. over the past six years has given me a unique perspective on how to integrate technology in the lives of patients and caregivers. Moreover, a growing number of trials are recruiting patients from multiple countries and reducing international travel burden on patients over extended durations will be critical to achieve enrollment.

While the concept of virtual clinical trialsmight seem futuristic, Rajasimha and the Jeeva team believe the market is readyfor change.

A number of pilot projects or proof of concept clinical trials, about 20 of them, have been published where patients didnt go to the clinic at all. The feasibility of conducting such remote patients studies has been validated multiple times by the industry now. The tipping point has arrived. One of the key barriers for widespread adoption of decentralized clinical trials was a lack of FDA guidelines. Now the FDA has clarified its expectations about how the industry and stakeholders can share the responsibility to reduce the burden on patients. Enough validation and regulatory guidelines have put us in a position to give our customers what they need, stated Rajasimha.

Rajasimha sees partnering with smaller to midsize biotechs early on in the drug development process meaning well before the start of Phase II or III trials as an inflection point where it can deliver the greatest impact. In addition, we are seeing some initial interest from the Medical Cannabis industry, opioid crisis intervention for chronic pain management, and patient advocacy groups, where patients often live in remote, rural areas, can also benefit from decentralized, hybrid virtual clinical trials. Finally, real-world evidence studies, or longitudinal cohort studies, is also a growing market because companies need to collect and manage patients across longer time horizons, which is Jeevas sweet spot.

Rajasimha and Jeeva are starting to see this growing market interest manifest itself in new funding partnerships. Jeeva recently announced that CIT GAP Funds had invested in the company. Jeeva is currently in an early-stage investment round and the company is in active product development with a validated prototype. Jeeva is seeking new customer pilot projects to add to its ongoing pilots, which include chronic pain, medical cannabis, oncology and cell, and gene therapy products. Later this year, the company plans to complete multiple pilot projects and have validation in Good Clinical Practices (GCP) settings.

Rajasimha and his Jeeva team are certainlyembracing a think different approach to the future of clinical trials. Jeevaand its AI-driven, virtual clinical trial model is poised to help biotechcompanies thrive and meet the unmet medical needs of more patients across theglobe.

You can listen to Rajasimhas interviewwith podcast host Daniel Levine earlier this month on iheart radio here.

Team Jeeva is seeking customer pilot projectsand strategic partners to join the journey and will be exhibiting at the NationalInstitutes of Health Rare Disease Day event on Feb 28, 2020.Rajasimha will also be delivering a keynote speech on AI in rare diseases atthe BIO-IT World West Conference at San Franciscoon March 3rd, 2020.

Steve has over 20 years experience in copywriting, developing brand messaging and creating marketing strategies across a wide range of industries, including the biopharmaceutical, senior living, commercial real estate, IT and renewable energy sectors, among others. He is currently the Principal/Owner of StoryCore, a Frederick, Maryland-based content creation and execution consultancy focused on telling the unique stories of Maryland organizations.

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This Startup is on a Mission to Decentralize Cell and Gene Therapy Clinical Trials - BioBuzz