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Jim Jordan:
Welcome to the Chalk Talk Jim Podcast, where we explore insights into healthcare that help uncover new opportunities for growth and success. I’m your host, Jim Jordan.

Jim Jordan:
Our guest today is Jessica Gibson. Jessica is CEO of Ariel Precision. Welcome, Jessica. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jessica Gibson:
So I’m Jessica Gibson. I am CEO and co-founder of Ariel Precision Medicine and essentially got started in the healthcare space with my undergraduate degree, University of Pittsburgh, where I studied emergency medicine. I was in gastroenterology research for a couple of years and then jokingly say, I realized I don’t want anything to die when I go to work, and I have this degree in emergency medicine. I became a paramedic and had a friend that said, you have an incredible background, you can carry on a decent conversation, come to California and we’ll get you set up with a job in industry, in DNA sequencing services. And moved to California right after college, started working with a company called Genewiz that was acquired by Brooks Life Sciences and then quickly recruited in the pharmaceutical industry and built up a really successful career there, we call it the Golden Handcuffs for a reason, but probably about 10 or 15 years into my career wanted to do something different. So I founded Ariel with Dr. David Whitcomb, who is chief of Gastroenterology and Nutrition at UPMC for almost 18 years, because we really aligned with the vision of all of the pieces that would be necessary to support this whole concept of precision medicine and have been doing that for about seven years now.

Jim Jordan:
So our audience is covering all of healthcare. So not everyone knows exactly what precision medicine, I know a lot of people probably heard the term. Could you define it for us?

Jessica Gibson:
From a high level, precision medicine is the right treatment for the right patient, for the right disease at the right time. At its forefront, precision medicine was really focusing on the medications. How does a patient break down different medications into its useful forms? What dose do they need? Because all medications usually develop to an average. What we found is that a lot of patients aren’t actually being treated for the right condition, particularly in metabolic disease and gastrointestinal diseases, the spaces we work in, symptoms present very similarly. You have abdominal pain or you develop elevated blood sugar. We have failed to identify the why that’s happening in individual patients and that’s really where the piece of precision medicine that we’re focused on has been developed. We really need all of the components, making sure we get an early diagnosis for the right condition and then align the right treatment at the right dose for that patient as soon as possible.

Jim Jordan:
So the disease that you’re focused on with your business model is pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer or both?

Jessica Gibson:
So pancreatitis is this kind of chronic injury and inflammation to the pancreas, which you need every minute of every day to regulate your blood sugar and to digest food and make it useful. There is a group of people that get this chronic injury to the organ. It is one of the worst quality of life, if you develop chronic pancreatitis, which is this chronic inflammatory process, you can go on to develop pancreatic cancer, it’s a high-risk factor, and previously we didn’t know what caused it. We didn’t know why it was happening in a lot of patients and there’s no treatment. And over the course of our work in the past seven years, we’ve completely mapped that out. We can put these patients on different nodes and see how patients like this have progressed and why and what treatments are going to stop that process, that pathobiology, and essentially restore the patient to health or stop that damage process. But it’s a challenging disease and that’s unacceptable.

Jim Jordan:
So when you started this about a decade ago, the model was really more genomic prescription based, but now we have artificial intelligence, which wasn’t something back when you started this. And so with its evolution, are you now able to gather data and create prognostic insights?

Jessica Gibson:
Yeah, I think one of the things that we’re benefiting from is a significant amount of data that has been generated over the past 20 years since the Human Genome Project was completed. We mapped out the entire genome, we now know what most of the genetic mutations or genetic variants do.

Jim Jordan:
So what has the availability of large data sets and artificial intelligence-enabled?

Jessica Gibson:
We’ve been able to learn from large data sets around, like the UK Biobank, or from our own data. I think the diagnostic piece is still evolving. Things like augmented intelligence or machine learning have really come into play much more recently. How do we start recognizing these patterns across very large data sets? And what do those patterns tell us about how frequently this kind of combination of mutations or these environmental or lifestyle factors, how often do they occur in the same person, and are there similar people like that? So I think artificial intelligence is a term that’s kind of thrown around a lot, and how do we look at these types of tools, be it supervised learning, mathematical models, structured learning, unstructured learning, what is the artificial component of it? It’s really just a toolbox, and for each question, we want to make sure that we’re applying the appropriate tools and that we’re really cognizant to make sure that the quality of the data is maintained. Because in a learning system, garbage in, garbage out. So if you have flawed data or faulty data or really incomplete data, it doesn’t lead you to the insights that you ultimately would hope to accomplish, and that’s where I think the data quality has gotten a lot better in the past couple of years. These artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence tools have become much more sophisticated based on that.

Jim Jordan:
So a piece of your background that you didn’t mention that I think sort of ties into this a little bit is you did both sales and marketing positions in a couple of different pharmaceutical companies. So obviously highly trained on drug sales data analysis. So what led you to decide to leave the larger companies and do a startup?

Jessica Gibson:
Did medical marketing, bunch of new product launches, and really became familiar with gaps that I discussed earlier. Are we even treating the right thing or are we just managing symptoms? And it’s kind of frustrated by the same paradigm of, throw more and more medication at it and the patient may be not doing better. So I think from a place of discontent, I don’t accept that this is just the way it is. I really wanted to see something different. At the time, my co-founder, Dr. Whitcomb, was teaching a class at Carnegie Mellon called Precision Medicine for Biomedical Engineers, and had been really immersing himself in genetics and these different technologies that can accelerate the insights from different types of data. And as I learned about that through him, really saw an opportunity to converge all of these different tools, essentially under a platform or under one umbrella.

Jim Jordan:
So you had a great paying job at a stable company. Were you married with children at this point?

Jessica Gibson:
I was, yes. I was married with children.

Jim Jordan:
Then you say to your husband, I’d love to do a startup. And here’s the exciting part, I’m going to get non-paid and I’m going to work really, really hard. How did you and your husband decide to take that leap and start a new venture? And given this kind of endeavor, often comes with risks, sacrifices, and unexpected outcomes, how did you two come together to make this decision, and what was that conversation like?

Jessica Gibson:
I might have tapped into some of my arsenal of sales skills heavily for that one. I was also in an MBA program at the time, so after I had our first child, I kind of came to this realization where I was like, I want to build a world I want my son to grow up in. So I went back to school, started getting my MBA, and looking at business models and ways that I could use those skills in something like starting a company like Ariel. I think when I initially presented it to my husband, I talked about kind of what I wanted from my life, what I wanted it to do, what I wanted it to mean. And he knew I’d been kind of unhappy in the kind of traditional pharma world where it was a wash-rinse-repeat model. Attempt to change it from within was really limited, and didn’t want to wait 20 years to see something change in one small microcosm. I really felt like the need was to step outside of that infrastructure and do something different where you can’t do the same thing and expect different results. So I just talked to him about what I would need in partner, and fortunately, he has a very stable job and was like, okay, maybe that’s what you need, then we’ll figure it out.

Jim Jordan:
For our audience who hasn’t done a startup, the great news is your CEO of a company, the bad news is you have no cash. How do you start that? Where do you go and what are the first steps that you’ve taken?

Jessica Gibson:
So I wasn’t the original CEO, I was chief commercial officer, really focusing on building the commercial products, getting the lab set up, getting our credentialing, getting the team together, and probably about 18 months into the company, so 2017, I just had our second child and the direction of the company wasn’t really heading the way that we would have hoped. And the board and some of our C-suite team asked if I would step in and be CEO temporarily. And I was like, I do not want to be boss of the company, I don’t want to have that burden. And somebody had said, that’s exactly why you’re a good fit for this, is you’re not taking the power, but you’re competent and you’re capable and you know this better than anyone else. So it’s been, since the end of 2017 when I became CEO, and it is, I, jokingly, like I’ve told other founders of companies where I was like, it’s kind of bipolar. Like some days you’re on top of the world, you secure a contract, your data looks amazing. You just got a big tranche of funding, you have the capabilities to do things, and then other days you’re going to make payroll, funding fell through, or your data doesn’t look the way that it’s supposed to, or your sales numbers aren’t coming in and something’s happening. I think you have to have a measure of temperance to not get caught up in all of the range of potential experiences in a startup, but I’m definitely never bored.

Jim Jordan:
In a startup, it’s not just about meeting the customer’s needs and delivering a product that works, but you also have to think about the people who give the money. Raising funding requires a different type of value proposition than simply meeting the customer requirements. Investors really want to know their money is being well spent and they want to know you have a plan for an exit strategy which is either going public or getting acquired. At any given moment, you can have success in one area and be struggling in another. Does that sound right?

Jessica Gibson:
It’s kind of like having 50 different browser windows open simultaneously, and they all have to get attention and some equal measure because they’re all interrelated. So it has been, I would say the best education I’ve ever had is doing this because I’ve learned every single process of the company, how to position it, how to maximize value for shareholders and customers and our team members, and how to deal with these black swan events like COVID. How do you put yourself in the best position to still be successful despite external challenges?

Jim Jordan:
Jessica, we’ve talked in the past that a CEO can be the loneliest job in the world, particularly in a startup. Your board, your employees, and even your spouse don’t want to hear your worries or concerns because quite frankly, it scares them. So where can entrepreneurs turn when they’re struggling to raise capital and have someone to talk to without relying on the traditional support structures like family and friends? Where do you go? Who do you talk to?

Jessica Gibson:
I’m fortunate to have a few friends. I got connected with a few founders through Women in Bio and a couple of other events, but really just a precious handful of a few CEOs that I can kind of talk to or bounce ideas off of. It can be challenging because every company has its own unique set of challenges, but it can be very lonely to be a CEO. You are really so responsible for so many stakeholders, both your team, your personal life, your family, your investors, your customers. There is this sense of always needing to be on for everyone and then how do you kick back and take a breather and decompress and talk through some of these things with people that have gone through it? You know, fortunate enough to have met really great people that have invited me to these retreats where it’s a couple of days out in nature where we really kind of hash through some of the different challenges across different organizations, and that has been incredibly helpful for me. I look forward to every time I can go to that type of event.

Jim Jordan:
It’s really important to find that network and at the same time, you obviously have boundaries of confidentiality and other things that you’re dealing with. So I always think it’s great to be part of a national network where someone’s at the other end of the country in a different business model and could care less. Now, when you think of your current organization, where does it fit in the healthcare system? How does it plug in?

Jessica Gibson:
I think that’s one of the things that when we initially started the company, we have had to adapt and evolve because the healthcare landscape changes so rapidly. You have to not only understand where your product fits currently, but how are you going to be positioned to the next phase of where healthcare is going.

Jim Jordan:
Can you share your thoughts on where you’re taking the company to meet this new future?

Jessica Gibson:
So right now we offer genetic insights to patients and providers about what are the biologic processes driving their symptoms, what are the best practices or treatments, interventions, or medications that can address that. And that front-end funnel is also enabling us to use that data and those insights to work in drug development. So we’re really now at the capability of partnering with pharma and in drug development activities to use these unique insights that we have from very powerful data set that have helped us discover new things where we took a pancreatic disease that has no treatments. We developed a incredibly powerful understanding of why some patients get sick for different reasons than another patient, and then what are the medications that are going to target that dysfunction.

Jim Jordan:
Sounds like you’re bringing some broad benefits to the healthcare system.

Jessica Gibson:
So that model is designed to essentially serve the healthcare ecosystem. The provider benefits because they’re getting insights that they’ve never had before about patient types that they may have been seeing for 20 or 30 years. So they’re getting equipped with tools that help them to be more efficient in their care of patients supporting earlier diagnosis. Patients are getting insights into themselves, they’re kind of empowered with their own data. We have QR codes where they can have a patient wallet card and share across providers and a couple of other things that are designed to be a value add to patients. Insurers, they’re benefiting because a lot of the traditional diagnostic journey these patients have gone through is bypassed where early on in symptoms we can say, here’s what’s likely driving it, here are the next steps and kind of bypass the 90% of other things that could have been. And then pharma and biotech are really benefiting because we have the ability to enrich patients for clinical trials, do them more efficiently. With this enriched group, you need less patients to get to efficacy endpoints, higher probability of success in a clinical trial, cost less money and less time. So we have essentially a platform that’s designed to have a pull-through across all the critical verticals of healthcare.

Jim Jordan:
I’m going to use a Google Maps analogy here. Imagine planning a road trip from Boston to San Francisco. And in this analogy, the various routes that you could take represent the different disease pathways. For diseases with specific diagnostics, these act like GPS signals pinpointing exactly where you are on the map. However, there are a number of diseases such as ALS or fibromyalgia or Parkinson’s disease, and many others that are actually deduced rather than diagnosed. And so in these cases, the symptoms offer crucial guidance for determining your location on the disease pathway. This method saves time, and it minimizes the discomfort of undergoing a series of deductive diagnostic tests. So just as Google Maps uses continuously update information like road construction and better routes, precision medicine constantly gathers new data, enabling the refinement of disease models and maps for everyone, as well as updating each individual’s position on the map. Similar to how Google Maps assist in navigating potential obstacles and detours during a road trip, precision medicine allows healthcare providers to identify upcoming challenges and proactively address them. By comprehending a patient’s location on the disease map, these healthcare providers can more effectively tailor treatments and interventions to each person’s unique needs. Did I get that right? Is that analogy appropriate here?

Jessica Gibson:
That’s absolutely correct. And I think that was the piece that had always been missing in my exposure in the pharmaceutical industry is you have very narrow inclusion-exclusion criteria where everyone essentially looks the same on the surface and you have responders, you have non-responders, you have people that have adverse events. We are really cleaning that up where it’s more sophisticated in the way that we identify who should be on which medications for drug development to prove that there’s efficacy. And it also de-risks them from being put into wrong patient and potentially risking a clinical trial where if the right patients have been selected based on their mechanism, that drug may have been able to be successful. So I think the Google map you’re talking about, you know, we have developed this incredibly sophisticated map. And one of the things that really became apparent probably about 3 or 4 years ago is, great, you can have the best map in the world if nobody has a car or a vehicle to get from point A to point B, it doesn’t matter. And that’s one of the big challenges, I think, in diagnostics, particularly for some of these challenging diseases. If there’s no treatment, it doesn’t matter. From an insurance perspective, there aren’t sophisticated tools to intervene, it really is stuck. So in order to change that paradigm, we recognize we needed a vehicle to actually change that trajectory for patients depending on what was driving their conditions, and that’s treatments or surgical interventions. But therapeutics is really the medicine part of precision medicine.

Jim Jordan:
So your customers today, are they tending to be the larger healthcare institutions?

Jessica Gibson:
They are, yeah, and we’ve been fortunate enough through our medical advisors, these are really leaders in the world. They are often MD PhDs, they run large academic centers, and that’s been essentially how we essentially started by working with the national leaders. And fortunately, over the past couple of years, we’ve been able to start working with doctors that see patients earlier on in their disease journey. So ones that may have traditionally referred to that specialist, maybe a more general gastroenterologist or an internist. So we have the ability to meet patients early on in their journey versus, you know, ten years after they’ve gone to every provider in the system, starting to work our way down towards those more first encounter providers.

Jim Jordan:
So today you’re in the biggest hospital systems in this country. What do you anticipate are the challenges in scaling precision medicine technologies?

Jessica Gibson:
I think interoperability is one of the biggest challenges that scaling technology, like what we’ve developed and other types of technology, has really stood out as one of the biggest barriers. So, fortunately, we have electronic medical records. It creates an infrastructure for providers to quickly access information. Unfortunately, due to the unique nature, every single practice or every single institution has their own version of electronic medical records. So in order to hit scale, we had to create essentially a universal adapter that could be adjusted to each different site. And then from outside of a technical capability, I think most community providers are seeing everything under the sun. They have to be a jack of all trades, they have to know everything from head to toe what it could be. And they don’t have the bandwidth or the time to really go into all of the detail that would be necessary for some medically complex patients. And that’s where we have designed a new product called SNaP-SHOT. We’ve designed these genetic insights as a tool where a doctor doesn’t have to be an expert in genetics, they don’t have to be an expert in all of these complicated diseases. It essentially creates a simple tool that identifies, here’s what’s going on with this patient, here’s how specialists are experts manage them, here’s the best practices or key opinion leader publications in a curated way, so it takes the heavy lifting off the doctor. So it’s not daunting or intimidating for them to try to get this massive genetic report that they have to try to figure out and understand. We’ve really tried to design this SNaP-SHOT, so it gives them some quick early insights into here’s where your patient is, here’s how they’re doing compared to other patients, here’s the things that you can do with it. And that has been completely different, I think, than the way that providers have traditionally engaged with this type of information.

Jim Jordan:
So when you look at the rapid changes that are happening in this space, how do you keep up to date on all this?

Jessica Gibson:
I’m actually much to my husband’s chagrin, there’s like a part of my brain that needs new information and needs to be challenged and grow. So during COVID, I went to Harvard Business School and got certified in disruptive strategy. I am now finishing my capstone project at Stanford Medical School on artificial intelligence and healthcare applications, which I am learning from other organizations and case studies how different technologies are being deployed. And it kind of starts a creative process. I’m like, okay, here’s what we have. Here’s a similar way in which we can overcome this challenge with a validated model or this other type of tool. And I read a lot, I don’t watch TV, so I keep up to date on stuff and keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on.

Jim Jordan:
So what are some of the resources that you follow?

Jessica Gibson:
So from a business perspective, I look at like Crunchbase and what’s going on in the funding world. On LinkedIn, there’s a couple people that I track and kind of see what’s happening, medical conferences or announcements for what companies that have a similar or parallel business model are doing. I get precision medicine magazines and biotechnology magazines. We’re really trying to take a sampling of the universe, but I will admit I am always aware there’s things that I don’t know.

Jim Jordan:
With a few people that you follow?

Jessica Gibson:
I guess, it depends. I think I mentioned from like a global perspective, I was one of five female founders for Microsoft Mayfield and Melinda Gates’ Venture Fund. There’s ten women globally, and I was one of five in deep tech that was selected to present what we were doing. This happened right at the beginning, second quarter of 2020, but following what’s going on in the technology space through people like that who are looking at applications and technology for the greater good. I have also followed Clayton Christensen, who was the professor who did the program. Unfortunately, he passed away, but he had a lot of really fascinating articles and insights into the challenges in healthcare between diagnostics and drug development and what are the barriers that, actually University of Pittsburgh has these monthly webinars with precision medicine, where I can look at oncology and infectious disease or other verticals where I can sit in on an hour-long webinar. As I said, Crunchbase kind of gives me a daily recap. Genomeweb, I get some daily recap. If you saw my inbox of the things I haven’t been able to get to that would probably tell you more of who I’d like to follow.

Jim Jordan:
Well, I think having a thoughtful personal knowledge management system is critically important, particularly when you’re doing technology. So on your journey thus far, what is the biggest lesson that you learned?

Jessica Gibson:
I think I have been the beneficiary of a lot of people that have gone before me, people that have incredible experience in various aspects of healthcare and regulatory affairs, in pharma and diagnostics and technology. And I think having the humility to listen and take their insight, understand and learn their perspective and grow from that, balanced with what information to take in and integrate and what information is not relevant.

Jim Jordan:
There is so much rejection in fundraising.

Jessica Gibson:
It is!

Jim Jordan:
It is like, it is just a daunting thing.

Jessica Gibson:
I think one of the challenges that I have become more aware of is the disparity in female-funded companies, especially the past year we had, it was very difficult for fundraising. Less than 2% of capital was going to women-led companies, 2%. That is abysmal. So there is this sense of I am not going to allow this type of disparity or injustice to compromise all of the value that has been built into this company. I’m not going to roll over and be like, oh, well, it’s just harder. It kind of puts a fire in my belly. But also to stay motivated, I have to have that human element. So I was fortunate enough to be invited to become a board member of the National Pancreas Foundation last year, and they have these patient stories or these patient interviews to talk about it, and that is my anchor in a lot of ways. I’m like, why am I here every day? Why am I putting in all of these hours and this daily grind? And there are people that don’t have the luxury of waking up not in pain, or they watch their child suffer every day. I am so fortunate to do what I do. It keeps me humble and it keeps me motivated.

Jim Jordan:
So I’m getting to see you get glassy-eyed here and you’re making me glassy-eyed too. I think that startups are very personal, and when I talk to doctors and nurses, their motivation is to get up and help people every day. For those of us who have left big companies, we saw through the products how we can help people. But then the startup is where you’re not only delivering a product that can help a bigger population, but as you’re doing your clinical trials and as you’re scaling, you know, these people inside and out, and it’s personal, it’s very personal.

Jessica Gibson:
We have people organically coming to our company website, sharing their stories with us, saying, I’m desperate, my child this or my husband, this has stolen our life. That human element, really, it cuts through all of the kind of perceived barriers or challenges and it keeps you on track. Because if you’re not going to do this, there’s nobody else that’s equipped to be this kind of solution. And I don’t have like, a savior complex, but I have a lot of empathy where I can see myself in their position. What wouldn’t I do for a loved one? What wouldn’t I do to make sure that I would be here for my children? And that’s the reality these people are facing, and I think that that has been a very important human element of why we do this.

Jim Jordan:
What do you do to get your energy up? Do you run? Do you meditate?

Jessica Gibson:
I really learned in the past couple of years to create a safe space of time where this is dedicated to family. I unplug, we travel, we try to go to the mountains or take time away for family. I do bar, which is like ballet. I love that, keep up those good endorphins. And particularly with my husband and my kids, I have learned I have to be more intentional. Here’s when I have free time. This time I’m setting aside for us, and to be communicative with them, that even if I don’t see you for a couple of days, I’m still thinking about you, I love you, you’re on my heart and mind. I think that even if you are busy and your attention is elsewhere, I think planting those little seeds and kind of forging that connection through the busy times is important, and then when it’s not busy, be intentional to invest in those relationships.

Jim Jordan:
Now, what is it that you see as the biggest either opportunity or threat to healthcare in the next several years as you see it?

Jessica Gibson:
I think with the advance of the type of technology we developed here and all of these systems kind of post-COVID essentially evolving from an older model of healthcare, I think we can be more intentional and proactive. I think we can deliver precision medicine to these patients earlier on to be more intentional with our actions and less reactive where we wait until you have this symptom or this disease or this level of damage or destruction to intervene, we have the ability to be more preventative. But it is that balance of how do you motivate people and put up those incentives to be more intentional. A lot of the fee-for-service model or healthcare was built on this, the sicker you are, the more I can do, the more money gets made, but that’s not sustainable. And especially in the United States, we have doubled or tripled the spend of other countries, and yet our health outcomes are not better.

Jim Jordan:
We’re like 11 to 13 in every given year in terms of ranking, right?

Jessica Gibson:
Yeah, so I think that there’s an opportunity to learn from other successful models and use technology to create more efficiencies in the ways that healthcare is distributed and tapping into virtual care and more real-time monitoring of patients’ conditions, empowering patients more with their data, where we can help them navigate some of the consequences that they just didn’t know about in the previous couple of years.

Jim Jordan:
I do think that if there’s any good outcome from COVID, it’s been telehealth, telemedicine, a little better sense of customer service. And I think these tools can see a pattern in how do we bring variants to doctors versus doctors chasing the variants. When I think of your mission, that’s sort of what you’re bringing to the party. I’ve done some physician interviews lately where their job satisfaction is going down due to administration, and I think these technologies have not only helping with the patient, but making the doctor’s job a little more joyous, too.

Jessica Gibson:
Yeah, and I think there’s an element for them of, everything is probability and process where you have your diagnostic, you have your differential diagnosis, you have the decision tree that you work through. Did you miss something in your 15-minute visit? You have your checkboxes, and then it’s on to the next patient. And hopefully, with the types of tools that we’ve developed here, we can allow them to be more efficient with their time and create a little bit more of a buffer for them to engage with patients in a way they haven’t been able to before and mitigate a lot of the checkbox billing codes, or did I cover everything, and that pressure that they’re under. And as most private practices are required and brought into these larger healthcare groups where everything is standardized, it is a time of change for a lot of providers in how do we continue with these incredible people to keep them engaged and motivated and give them the tools they need to be successful and actually enjoy their job.

Jim Jordan:
If I recall when we first met, you also had a model for diabetes type C, which I have never heard about.

Jessica Gibson:
So type 3c diabetes, it’s a form of diabetes that’s caused by that chronic injury and inflammation to the pancreas, where pancreas is biologically very simple, so it’s the perfect start point for the type of technology and approach that we’re building. But the islet cells, the cells that make insulin become injured because they’re floating in a sea of these really angry … cells that a patient ends up developing elevated blood sugar, and you have type one, where you have your antibodies and your body’s attacking the islet cells, or type two, and those are the buckets most providers are familiar with. And nested within there, there’s this type 3c diabetes group of patients that have just kind of gotten lost because there wasn’t a way to differentiate why they had elevated blood sugar. And it was kind of a binary, well, if you don’t have type one, then you obviously have type two.

Jim Jordan:
And then, I remember when you pointed that out, I’m like, that’s the thinnest type two person I ever met, and okay.

Jessica Gibson:
And they become brittle diabetics and they actually need a different class of medications. You know, some of the traditional type two diabetic medications can actually make their situation worse, cause flare-ups of pancreatitis. They become brittle diabetics very quickly, so their blood sugar just continues to become challenging to control and they’re thin. So I think developing the tools to differentiate type 3c diabetes is the first step and then how do we tailor different treatment path for those groups of patients, that’s all aligned with what precision medicine should look like.

Jim Jordan:
So when you think about developing new markets, you often need startups because they can micro-focus on a problem. Are there any bigger companies out there yet that are dealing with multiple models and precision medicine?

Jessica Gibson:
I would say the closest space is really in oncology, where you have various capabilities of tumor profiling and developing chemotherapies or medications to that tumor type.

Jim Jordan:
So what are you thinking about next?

Jessica Gibson:
When we think of kind of the next application of our technology, we are looking in liver diseases, and metabolic diseases, and intestinal disorders, because one of the cool things of using kind of the mathematical models that we’ve built is you can look at how that affects the cells of the pancreas and then swap out that same framework and look at the cells of the liver where there might be a few different kind of adjustments, but it can provide similar insights. Who’s going to convert from fatty liver into Nash and why? Those types of things are within our capability right now, we just, they’re resource dependent so, but it’s on the list.

Jim Jordan:
So I think you’re sharing with us too, the kind of the market development that’s necessary for the space. And then at some point in the future, when all these individual models are perfected, you can come together and offer a bigger value proposition to institutions. Do you have a sense of how long you think that’s going to take?

Jessica Gibson:
I mean, I think what’s actually feasible, maybe even within the next five years, is to deploy this at physician network that specializes in these diseases and show how this model not only create better patient outcomes, it saves an incredible amount of time and money. The doctors have access to things that they never had access to before. So digestive and metabolic diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, these kind of physician networks that specialize in that can benefit from having it real-time. You see a patient, here’s where their trajectory is taking them, and here’s what you do to change that. Or they present with symptoms of abdominal pain or others saying, here’s the 10% of things that it’s most likely in this patient, and you can really deprioritize the other 90% of things you would have looked at. That type of approach is feasible with the next five years.

Jim Jordan:
As we draw this podcast to a close, the concept of spillover effects come to mind, and this is a term frequently used in public policy discussions to illustrate how a specific initiative can create positive impacts across various areas. And today’s conversation has undoubtedly highlighted the far-reaching influence of your work. For instance, your data is playing a pivotal role in empowering big pharmaceutical companies to make informed decisions about pursuing new drug development. And by elucidating disease pathways and providing a clear understanding of the market opportunity, you’re addressing concerns that may have deterred them from making that investment. And moreover, as physician payment structures are starting to transition from fee-for-service to being based on overall patient outcomes, there’s a growing need for high-quality system like yours to help manage these complex patients. And your work is also making a significant difference, I think, in the long run, in rural medicine, an area often challenged by limited funding and staffing shortages, and bringing the knowledge and the resources of these large institutions to these underserved communities, I think you’re truly making a difference. And I just want to express my deepest gratitude for your time, your willingness to share your knowledge with us, and your unwavering passion for the work that you do.

Jessica Gibson:
Thanks so much for having me on, Jim. I appreciate it.

Jim Jordan:
Thank you.

Jim Jordan:
Thanks for tuning in to the Chalk Talk Jim Podcast. For resources, show notes, and ways to get in touch, visit us at ChalkTalkJim.com.

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