Personalized Medicine at Your Fingertips with Dr. Rob Fraser, Chief Scientific Officer, President, and co-founder of Molecular YOU Corporation

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket Podcast. So excited to have you here

[00:00:07] live from the Vive event in Los Angeles, California. Today I have the privilege of hosting Dr. Rob

[00:00:14] Frazier. He's the Chief Scientific Officer, President and Co-Founder of Molecular U Corporation.

[00:00:23] Molecular U was spun out of the Personalized Medicine Initiative which Rob co-founded with

[00:00:28] leading scientists and clinicians in Canada to develop the framework and technologies to bring

[00:00:33] personalized medicine into healthcare practice. Such a pleasure to have you here Rob, thanks for joining

[00:00:38] us. Thank you, Saul. Really pleased to be here. Yeah. Before we get started, tell us a little bit

[00:00:42] about Molecular U. What do you guys do and how do you offer value to the ecosystem? Yeah, it's very

[00:00:48] self-descriptive Molecular U. So basically we're looking at individuals on a molecular level. And so we

[00:00:54] start with a blood draw and we look at over 250 blood markers. And those blood markers are all

[00:01:00] involved at some level in the mechanisms of disease. And so we take very great care and getting

[00:01:06] very accurate value. So we run them on a platform with some mass spectrometer which gives us absolute

[00:01:11] quantitation of everything that we measure. And we can multiplex it so everything's done at the

[00:01:16] same time and we only do single draw blood, so it's actually quite convenient. And then that with

[00:01:21] data that we get from the mass spectrometer is we run it through our algorithms and the algorithms

[00:01:25] give us a very clear idea with accuracy is ranging from 90 to 98% or even 99% of whether an

[00:01:32] individual is training towards a disease who actually has a particular condition. We're not

[00:01:37] truly diagnostics, so we're looking at risk. And so our role in the health ecosystem is to give

[00:01:43] transparency into where individuals and where populations are so we can plan better make better

[00:01:49] decisions and have earlier interventions. Very fascinating Rob, thank you for that. How do you see

[00:01:55] digital transformation reshaping care delivery in 2024? And what are the main challenges and

[00:02:01] opportunities this presents? Yeah I think digital transformation the biggest challenge is really

[00:02:06] getting the providers to play along because they've got some really hardcore practices that they've

[00:02:12] been running forever. Hopefully the new generation of practitioners are going to be more engaged in

[00:02:17] the space because I think it really just enables them to do a much better job. I see the biggest

[00:02:23] opportunity though is really getting patients more participant. We've had the sense that all of the

[00:02:28] information that lies within our health system resides in the practitioners and the experts,

[00:02:33] and so we rely almost entirely on their expertise. And often once we leave the consultancy you've

[00:02:40] forgotten what was said to you and so you're struggling around that go to Web MD and they try

[00:02:45] to figure out what should I be doing now. But what we see is empowering these individuals their own

[00:02:50] information and so they have that in their hand and they can check in on at any time and they become

[00:02:55] fully participant in their health journey. And then they're equipped to ask good questions when they

[00:03:00] are dealing with a practitioner. So I think digital is democratizing health and making it more

[00:03:06] available to more people. Yeah for sure, it's definitely something that we are all benefiting from.

[00:03:13] And can you share some of the most exciting technological innovations you believe will significantly

[00:03:19] improve patient care and outcomes. I think we're playing in that field. There's been a lot of

[00:03:23] excitement around looking at individuals genetic background and that's quite useful. You can get an

[00:03:29] idea of where what sort of variance you might have that could affect your health, but it doesn't

[00:03:35] really tell you when or where that could happen like which cells or which organs might be directly

[00:03:40] affected. So I think the real the really exciting thing is what's going on now and so we've

[00:03:46] narrowed it down into those factors that are actually very dynamic and so they respond to

[00:03:52] environment, they respond to what your nutrition is if you're exercising and you can really get

[00:03:59] control of those whereas your genetics, you're pretty much stuck with what you're born with right

[00:04:04] and we're not really great at modifying genes just yet. Just yet. Yeah let's hope for that day.

[00:04:09] For certain cases I think there's some amazing opportunities that we seem to sickle cell disease

[00:04:13] and stuff like that. It's really exciting, but I think for the most part dealing with that dynamic

[00:04:18] part of our health is a really huge opportunity. And we see that too with monitoring systems,

[00:04:22] people that have the wearables and they can get a clear idea how their heart rates are blood pressures

[00:04:27] now, oxygenation you name it and that's telling you in real time what's going on. And I think

[00:04:32] that becomes a much more practical tool going forward and that's that's where a lot of the big

[00:04:37] opportunities I think are coming in this space. Got it and so let's zoom in a little bit

[00:04:41] with specific to molecular you, how does the technology you have impact the lives of patients

[00:04:48] with serious illnesses? That's a great question. So we're fairly solid on the neurological space

[00:04:54] and so because all disease is progressive, you can detect how changes are occurring prior

[00:05:01] prior to symptoms appearing and so it takes like all cymas disease and everybody's

[00:05:05] it's a big fear of Alzheimer's disease. You get Alzheimer's disease. I'm done. There's nothing

[00:05:09] I do about it. Truth is, even people that are getting diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and they

[00:05:14] do a lot around their lifestyle just changing those factors, they can actually they have better

[00:05:20] outcomes in most of the therapies right now. Is that right? And being able to get even earlier

[00:05:24] means it's a much easier thing to fix. And so the beta-amolate plaque formation isn't something

[00:05:29] that just happens. Our brains respond to assaults like inflammation, either like insulin resistance

[00:05:36] and so these become really major players. And so if we can get into those precursors and see

[00:05:40] that happening before you get the symptoms before even the beta-amolate plaques,

[00:05:45] that's a big win. And so that's an area that we're getting a lot of uppicking working with neurologists

[00:05:50] and super excited about some of the opportunities we're seeing there. The other area that's been

[00:05:56] well I'll give you one more chronology example and autism. And there's an example of a condition

[00:06:00] that's considered to be a genetically inherited condition. And there's been a lot of work to

[00:06:05] identify what those genes are. And there's been some breakthroughs, but nothing that really pin

[00:06:10] points how this is occurring with the real functional background. And so we've been doing some work

[00:06:14] in that space as well. And we actually came up with an analysis using our multi-omic test that

[00:06:21] gives us 99% predictive values of with three year olds whether they have autism. So it's quite

[00:06:26] objective. And more than that, because we're looking at so many different variables, we can also see

[00:06:32] what else is going on. So there's autism. Because of their diets, are they heading towards diabetes?

[00:06:37] And so you have this very heterogeneous population that is very serious. These poor individuals actually

[00:06:44] have life expectancies in the 40s. I mean, it's not great. So managing that upfront, helping, and

[00:06:49] we actually think, and we have to prove this. And we're going to we're working hard to do that

[00:06:54] to demonstrate that these interventions could actually be life changing and get in front of some of

[00:06:59] the neurological changes that occur at such an early stage that they become hard to fix later on.

[00:07:05] So if you can catch it at that age three or even earlier, make those changes and see if we can

[00:07:10] actually prevent autism in its full manifestation from occurring. Now I'll give you one more example

[00:07:17] where we're really excited in the sense of longitudinal monitoring of individuals. What we do in

[00:07:22] Canada, we have a direct to consumer model and as we're coming to the US, we're really focused

[00:07:27] working with clinicians and potentially pharmacies. With this direct to consumer, we have a few

[00:07:32] customers that have been taking it for annually as a sort of a checkup. And one of our most famous

[00:07:38] examples was a woman in her 60s, we're really very healthy, kind of symptom-free, but she had a few

[00:07:44] chronic conditions that were managing with her. Coming out of COVID, though, and it was her fourth

[00:07:48] assessment, we identified that she was very high risk for pancreatic cancer. And so we're not

[00:07:53] practitioners, so we notified her practitioner. The practitioner looked at the evidence that we shared

[00:07:58] and pushed it into the clinical route and they did some imaging and they identified these small

[00:08:03] lesions that were on her pancreas that had needle biopsies and it determined that she was stage one

[00:08:07] pancreatic cancer. Eligible for surgery, she's had the surgery, we've retested her, all those values

[00:08:13] gone back to normal ranges. So it just shows you how powerful that early detection is and that

[00:08:19] idea of just monitor over time because life happens. We don't really know why the pancreatic cancer

[00:08:27] occurred, we have some evidence now that we can actually look back and try and figure that out.

[00:08:31] But we do know that if you get it early, you have a much better chance to survive

[00:08:35] all than if you get it late and it's a very aggressive cancer, so you want to get that one early.

[00:08:40] Yeah, especially with pancreatic cancer. Are you guys thinking including this?

[00:08:45] So what test is it? Like what are they taking? Is it a blood sample?

[00:08:48] A blood sample. Yeah, so we work with phleboin amests and as I say, it's a single tube. We only

[00:08:53] use about 250 microliters of the plasma and then we run that through our mass-spec systems which are

[00:08:58] super sensitive and they don't require a lot of material. And so that's quite convenient for everybody

[00:09:02] and it's not too emotionally draining. We're looking at other collecting methods to simplify

[00:09:07] that process but so far that's been the most reliable and really pride ourselves on the high quality

[00:09:12] of what we're producing. So home collection can be done but not everybody's, you're not going to

[00:09:18] get the same sort of regular collection process that you would in a clinical situation.

[00:09:23] And are you thinking of just a good idea is to do this once a year?

[00:09:27] Yeah, I think what we recommend is do it once, see where you're at if you've got some things

[00:09:32] you need to work on them. Get tested again, see if that's helping whether it's a clinical intervention

[00:09:37] or just lifestyle changes and if it's helping then you probably just do an annual check-up

[00:09:42] and just make sure that we pick up those big changes that might happen for whatever reason

[00:09:48] when we're still learning why. Love it. Thank you for that. And so topics coming up here,

[00:09:53] the buzzwords AI and machine learning. They're big in healthcare, they're big here at the meeting.

[00:09:59] In what ways do you see these technologies making a tangible impact on both healthcare providers

[00:10:04] and patients? So AI is and includes machine learning AI has become such an all-encompassing term

[00:10:12] now that when we say AI it's almost meaningless but I think with the with melodic seminars on

[00:10:18] these generative AI tools which are extremely powerful for the average person to apply artificial

[00:10:24] intelligence and expand on their ability to capture knowledge within a very broad database.

[00:10:30] We use it a great deal, we've been using it forever because how we identify all of our

[00:10:34] factors that we measure is through the peer reviewed literature and so for any individual to do that

[00:10:40] as an impossible task but with these machine learning tools, natural language processing,

[00:10:44] now large language models it is a much more simplified process and basically you're amplifying

[00:10:50] really great brains to with these tools that can do much more, much faster. And so we estimated

[00:10:56] that with what we did with natural language it took 40 bioinformaticians to plow through all the

[00:11:01] world's literature but we can do in afternoons now with large language models so we're super excited

[00:11:06] by that. But there's all kinds of applications I think the first step beyond where we have experts

[00:11:13] using it and I think science is in general have been quite good at employing these tools but

[00:11:18] in the clinical practice like we're physicians I think for scheduling helping them with the sort

[00:11:22] of day-to-day stuff EHR these you can actually speak and capture the information that are written down

[00:11:28] and I think that's an amazing tool for practitioners because they're so time-constrained that

[00:11:34] I think that's great but everybody's time-constraint and with more and more data how do we make sense

[00:11:38] of it? And I think you'll see with this whole democratization of data and information

[00:11:43] more and more people will be a black asset so it becomes a fun thing but the challenge you always have

[00:11:48] is that information that I'm accessing real and the is the result coming back something I can

[00:11:54] actually use and so that's where we put a layer of curation and scientific know-how and clinical

[00:11:59] know-how over top just to make sure that what we're delivering to our clients is real and the

[00:12:05] evidence-based. Yeah that's great Rob thank you so much for that and really appreciate your

[00:12:09] perspective and here just help the healthcare industry could be slow to adopt these new technologies

[00:12:16] as a health tech leader what's the secret to bringing innovation to market and achieving adoption?

[00:12:22] Yeah that's a great question and the something we've been figuring out is we've gone along and I

[00:12:26] think whenever you have something that's very complex you have to bring it down to a level that

[00:12:31] it's accessible so accessibility is the biggest thing making it making it straightforward not only

[00:12:37] to understand but to implement and making it easier not only for the clinician but everybody within

[00:12:43] the clinical ecosystem so it's not the doctor that's going to onboard an individual into a platform

[00:12:50] it's gonna be the nurse or the nurse is assistant or somebody else in the clinic so you really need

[00:12:55] to work at all levels and so making every one of those steps like that big easy button for all

[00:13:02] along the way is absolutely critical and we pride ourselves in really first of all taking very

[00:13:08] complex information and making it accessible even to physicians and then to the patients but then

[00:13:14] how do we get that implementation so that anybody can get onboarded and start to use it

[00:13:19] and that's the power I think of digital in general is to make things more accessible so

[00:13:24] that's been I would say that's one of the biggest things for us and we could love come to conferences

[00:13:28] like this too from a business development perspective get the word out have these conversations

[00:13:33] understand what the needs are and make sure that we're fulfilling those needs because if you're not

[00:13:36] fulfilling a need doesn't matter how good the technology is it's really not going to go anywhere

[00:13:41] yeah well said Rob and some great pointers there for all the entrepreneurs listening on ways to

[00:13:47] get your tech if it's not solving a problem then keep your tech you want it and simplifying there's

[00:13:54] so many complex things in healthcare simplifying them in a way that's digestible accessible is

[00:14:00] phenomenal tip by by Dr. Frazier here on ways to succeed so Rob just as a closing here like what

[00:14:08] called the action would you leave the listeners with today I would hope that the listeners get excited

[00:14:13] about what we're doing and start to take control of their health in a participant manner we're pretty

[00:14:19] proud of the technology and what it can do and we're pretty confident that it has an opportunity

[00:14:24] to change really though we deliver health and let's all work together to get in front of where

[00:14:30] health is and so that we take those actions early along so we don't suffer we don't need to get

[00:14:35] into medicines and we can maybe even stay out of the healthcare system and or even stop we can stop

[00:14:41] calling it what we have today a healthcare system because it's really a sick care system let's

[00:14:46] think about healthcare and and stay on top of our health and be more proactive and I think we're

[00:14:51] after covid there's a lot more people that really are thinking more consciously about their health

[00:14:56] would be more resilient when the next pandemic happens and then they want to be

[00:15:01] both frontlines battling it rather than hiding away so I think that's that's something we all need

[00:15:06] to keep in mind. Love that thank you so much for today this has been a real treat just to hear about

[00:15:12] the proactive work that we can do with molecular you you and the team there are really just doing

[00:15:18] some phenomenal work so thank you so much listeners for everyone listening today make sure you check

[00:15:23] out the show notes will include a summary of today's podcast as well as links to get in touch with

[00:15:29] Dr. Frazier molecular you so check those out and take action on what you heard today Rob thanks

[00:15:36] so much for your time thank you so and thank you to all your listeners I really appreciate the time