Healthcare Unfiltered

Lee Shapiro, co-founder and managing partner at 7wireVentures, joins the show to discuss his unique journey through healthcare, entrepreneurship, and more. He begins by addressing broken business processes in healthcare as part of his early investment strategy, what he looks for in potential investment opportunities, how he forecasts investment in health technology in the coming years, past invest...

In this lively debate pertaining to all things multiple myeloma, Chadi hosts three guests with varying positions and viewpoints: Vincent Rajkumar, MD, Mayo Clinic; Manni Mohyuddin, MD, Huntsman Cancer Institute; and Cindy Chmielewski (@myelomateacher), patient research advocate. The group discuss the burning unanswered questions in multiple myeloma research and treatment – including problems relat...

Katie Coleman, a software engineer, joins the show to share her inspiring story of being diagnosed with a rare stage 4 kidney cancer at the end of 2020 and her journey through survivorship to the present day. Katie highlights the anxiety and guilt she experienced when moving through urgent care and the ER during the height of the pandemic, the struggles of not having family allowed in the room dur...

Ralph Weichselbaum, MD, the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor of Radiation and Cellular Oncology at the University of Chicago, is the guest of honor on today’s show focusing on radiation oncology as a discipline: the changes that have occurred over the years, the state of the field today, and how the field projects over the next few years. Dr. Weichselbaum highlights the malignancie...

Chadi hosts Lars Andersen, MD, MPH, PhD, DMSc, Aarhus University Hospital (Denmark), to discuss an interesting, relatively unknown concept he recently explored in JAMA Guide to Statistics and Methods. Dr. Andersen introduces us to “collider bias” in research design and statistical analysis. He utilizes a few common examples to illustrate how collider bias can affect our interpretation of data, how...

Amer Zeidan, MBBS (@Dr_AmerZeidan), MHS, associate professor of medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, joins the show to cover the latest exciting updates in the treatment landscapes for acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplasia. The duo discuss the etiology of both malignancies, the intricacies of defining and diagnosing MDS, how patients become classified as either lower-risk or higher-ri...

A familiar animated, jovial, Twitter-famed hematologist makes his return to the show to break down all of the most impactful hematology research of the past year, including what’s moving the needle in the CAR-T, DLBCL, non-Hodgkin lymphomas, Hodgkin lymphoma, AML, transplant, and multiple myeloma spaces. Who could the guest of honor be? Tune in to find out. Check out Chadi’s website for all Health...

Chadi’s guest Kashyap Patel (@KashyappatelMd), MD, president of the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), joins the show to give an update on the current initiatives and state of COA and community oncology as a whole. He chronicles his journey to becoming a medical oncologist at a small community center outside of Charlotte (SC) and how he became aware of the pain points of community oncology in the...

Samarth Kulkarni, PhD, CEO of CRISPR Therapeutics, joins the show to chronicle his journey to CRISPR Therapeutics and to break down the ins-and-outs of the technology. He begins by sharing the evolution of CRISPR as a “molecular barcode” and its first viable indication; how he “bets” the technology will have a major footprint in the cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease treatment landscape;...

Recurring guest Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK), MD, Mayo Clinic, provides his input on the complexities of randomized controlled trials. The conversation covers the ability of fellowship programs to train fellows in the nuances of clinical trials, how funding is divvied up for different kinds of trials, how trial design is often influenced by expected time for the new drug to get to the market, whe...

Chadi shifts gears this week to sit down with a renowned business leader: Samer Saab, founder and CEO of the experience management solution company Explorance. Samer sheds light on the challenges of starting and running a successful business, especially during a once-in-a-century pandemic, and the services Explorance offers. The Great Resignation, surveys given to healthcare workers, burnout, immi...

Rana McKay (@DrRanaMcKay), MD, genitourinary oncologist at UC San Diego, joins the show to recap the clinically relevant research presented at the ASCO GU meeting. She begins with a breakdown of the ARASENS, PROpel, and MAGNITUDE trials for prostate cancer; moves to TROPHY-U-01, EV-103, and ATLANTIS trials for urothelial cancer; hits on KEYNOTE-564 for kidney cancer; and names a few other studies...

Continuing the ketogenic discussion, Chadi hosts Nick Norwitz (@nicknorwitz), PhD, Harvard Medical School, and welcomes back Dave Feldman (@DaveKeto), senior software engineer and entrepreneur, to discuss their recently authored paper “Elevated LDL Cholesterol with a Carbohydrate-Restricted Diet: Evidence for a ‘Lean Mass Hyper-Responder’ Phenotype.” The trio discuss the inspiration for the paper,...

Sanam Loghavi (@sanamloghavi), MD, hematopathologist and molecular pathologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Center, provides a clear picture of pathology as a specialty in this informative episode. Dr. Loghavi argues that medical school curriculum falls short in including pathology as a legitimate specialty for students to pursue, credits and discredits the preconceived notions about wha...

Chadi hosts a very renowned, high profile guest – one of the leading vaccine experts in the world and the man co-credited with developing the rotavirus vaccine: Paul Offit (@DrPaulOffit), MD, Director of the Vaccine Education Center and Professor of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit tackles the hard-hitting questions on everyone’s minds: whether public health policy decisi...

Tara Haella (@tarahaelle), independent science/health journalist, joins the show to discuss her reporting on vaccine hesitancy long before the pandemic (the “trenches of the mommy wars”), how this previous work aligns with today’s COVID vaccine hesitancy, and how cognitive bias plays a substantial part in our individual feelings toward vaccines. Tara explains the longstanding history of vaccine he...

Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade), long-time writer and author of “Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America,” joins the show to discuss his recent experience walking America and how his views on politics and the COVID-19 response have changed as a result. Chris shares his unique upbringing and professional background, ways in which he satisfied his early interest in long walks and what he made of t...

Chadi hosts a truly inspiring pediatrician, author, philanthropist, humanitarian, and self-described “healer”: Noha Baz. Dr. Baz opens up about her unique childhood beginning in France and moving to Lebanon, some harrowing stories about young patients being refused care because of lack of money to pay for treatment, her eventual founding of “Les Petits Soleils” in 1997 to provide medical care for...

Chadi welcomes two experienced medical writers, Marielle Fares and Tom Lang, to explain what “medical writing” entails and who the intended audience is, the difference between regulatory and medical education writing as well as patient education and scientific publications, how medical projects come in and what types of instructions and materials medical writers are given, the ins-and-outs of the...

Naveen Pemmaraju (@doctorpemm), MD, department of leukemia, University of Texas MD Anderson Center, joins the show to discuss how researchers approach the investigation of rare diseases. Chadi and Dr. Pemmaraju break down the latter’s distinguished work in blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN)—a rare, aggressive hematologic cancer—as well as other rare and orphan diseases. Context f...

Chadi welcomes back Bishal Gyawali (@oncology_bg), MD, PhD, Queen’s University Cancer Research Institute (Canada), to the show to discuss the history of the FDA’s accelerated approval regulatory pathway, how it is sometimes abused, how low-level surrogate endpoints are being used for approval, what happens (and what should happen) when confirmatory trials do not confirm clinical benefit for drugs...

Continuing his ASH Annual Meeting coverage, Chadi invites Matt Maurer (@MaurerStats), MS, principal biostatistician, Mayo Clinic, and Alan Skarbnik (@ASkarbnik), MD, director of the lymphoma and CLL program, Novant Health (Charlotte, NC), to review the three prominent CAR-T studies in relapsed/refractory DLBCL presented at the meeting. Why were the results divergent and what does this mean for CAR...

Chadi invites a trio of lymphoma experts to weigh the importance of the POLARIX trial – which was presented at the ASH Annual Meeting and looked at frontline therapy for patients with DLBCL. Matthew Matasar, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, co-authored publication of the POLARIX study “Polatuzumab Vedotin in Previously Untreated Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma” in the New England Journal...

David Zweig (@davidzweig), published author and science journalist based in New York, joins the show to tackle one specific topic pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic: mask mandates for children in schools. David’s article “The CDC’s Flawed Case for Wearing Masks in School” was published in The Atlantic early this month and spotlights the “very shaky science” propped up by the CDC that has compelle...

Emily Landon, MD, Executive Medical Director, Infection Prevention and Control, University of Chicago, makes her long-awaited return to the show to provide an update on the status of COVID-19 in the US. Chadi and Dr. Landon discuss the proportion of people in America that have gotten their vaccine and booster, how Omicron has come along so quickly as an “escape” variant, how effective the vaccines...