Dan Rogers: BAMF health is really busy at making personalized care available and affordable to as many people as possible. And the area that we work in is what's called radio pharmaceuticals, where we attach radioactive isotopes to a targeting molecule, which is used for imaging as well as therapy. And so that's an injectable medicine is what we're talking about. Really BAMF is focused on everything around that technology to make that work. And so, we've been busy in Grand Rapids since 2016 in developing this concept of what a center like this looks like to deliver this type of care and what type of technology you need to support that. We opened our clinic in August of 2022. Since then, have become really a world leading center in terms of expertise in delivering this care, as well as developing facilities like what we have here and doing clinical trials in the space to develop the next imaging and therapy agents to help more patients.
Patrick Center: One of the primary areas of expertise is delivering those isotopes attacking cancers, correct? It's like dropping a nuclear bomb directly on the cancer. Is that one way to put it?
Dan Rogers: It's very well put.
Patrick Center: So now you want to expand these therapies and processes with other research organizations, hospitals, and you're launching something called BAMF RadioNexus. Can you explain what that is?
Dan Rogers: As we've been busy here in Grand Rapids, we've had a lot of outreach from independent physician practices who are getting into the delivery of the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) approved agents in the space, as well as hospital systems and academic medical centers. And really they're eager to be a part of developing the next imaging, the next therapy drugs, and want to have the cutting-edge offerings for their patients as well. So out of that, as well as pharma interest for sites to conduct trials to quickly understand their medicines work or not, there's been a big unmet need for qualified sites to do these clinical trials and do them well. And that's where we're hoping to share our expertise and do that rapidly with more and more centers and kind of move the entire field along. So, we've signed one national health system partner, which we're eager to get our first trial with this fall. And we're adding a handful of more centers over the next three to six months, doing so in a very methodical way to make sure that we do this at a high quality, because these clinical trials are what help us to determine are these drugs safe and effective at treating things like cancer?
Patrick Center: Can you give an example of the processes that would go into a trial?
Dan Rogers: Typically, a sponsor reaches out with interest about that trial and your site and asks and qualifies, do you see this patient population? Do you have physician expertise? Do you have staff that can effectively run this trial? All the things to do that well. And for a site that's new to doing that type of research or has done that maybe in small scale. We think that we can add efficiency and learnings from what we've done here in Grand Rapids, the tools that we've developed, the education that we can share with other sites. That's how we will be able to walk hand in hand with them to set up those trials faster, more efficiently and better to run and hopefully complete those trials much faster too. Again, understanding as soon as possible whether or not that drug works or doesn't work. The best side of that is that we develop new products that are effective for treating the patients that we see in Grand Rapids and the other centers that we're going to open up. We also have a business of making the imaging agents called PET (Positron Emission Tomography) agents for use on PET/CT cameras. So that helps in that way, as well as, yeah, really just spreading that personalized healthcare further to more patients here and around the world. There's no cost for partners to join our network. Really, we're looking at it as kind of a, not a formal joint venture, but that's the way that it operates. You know, we share in the upside of doing more trials and that helps to fund growth of the program at those sites. The amount of people and infrastructure and work that goes into standing up these trials is quite substantial and expensive. And we want to help sites to be able to do more all towards the end of developing more, more of these products faster.
Patrick Center: This comes at an interesting time when we're seeing federal funding being pulled back for scientific research. Does any of that factor in with this platform that you're offering?
Dan Rogers: I think it certainly plays into it. I think the field by itself of radiopharmaceuticals is establishing as a pillar of oncology care, along with chemo and surgery and radiation therapy, you know, traditional radiation therapy. So now here's a big tool in physicians, you know, medical oncologists toolbox to be able to treat patients better, more precisely, less side effects. So, there's interest to bring up that program within their centers. And along with that, with some centers that have high reliance historically on NCI (National Cancer Institute) funding, I think they are driving towards bringing on a more of an industry sponsored program to help to essentially make ends meet.
Patrick Cener: Here in Grand Rapids since 2022, the advancement that we are seeing, is this really beginning to take hold and are we going to see more of radiopharmaceutical treatments across the country?
Dan Rogers: The use of the FDA approved agents, I'd say, has increased dramatically. So, in prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers in men behind lung, Pluvicto or Lutetium. PSMA 617 is the proper name. It has seen dramatic increase in usage, moving from an end stage indication after all other therapies have failed, moving to a pre-chemo setting and we're anticipating that moving even earlier in the patient staging, which we think is a tremendous benefit to the patients with the low side effect profile of that medication and higher efficacy in earlier usage. Beyond prostate cancer, there's another drug approved in a more rare tumor called neuroendocrine tumor, and we are seeing similar progression and usage there. Beyond that, the amount of development in the space from pharma partners is extremely broad across GI (gastrointestinal), GU genitourinary), and much wider oncology indications, lung cancer, breast cancer, et cetera. And a lot of those are in early phase development. And what we know about phase one trials is only a certain percentage of those end up being positive and drugs moving on to further development. But if the pharma investment is any indication in this field in general, which is somewhere in the tens of billions of dollars over the last three years, there's going to be some incredible development coming down the pipe, you know, a tidal wave of new radiopharmaceutical therapies.
Patrick Center: Are you implementing artificial intelligence to come up with new therapies?
Dan Rogers: So, our center isn't focused on the identification of novel targets and the medicines themselves. We are more so the place that helps to facilitate the trials where pharma companies or academic partners bring their novel agents to us. What I will say is we've seen across the field AI used in that side of it in the development. Where we are using it is in the operation side to be able to deliver this care at a volume and really a concierge level to patients, as well as really getting the best intelligence out of. health information and the individual patient's care, getting more personalized care for them. That's where we're focusing on AI usage within our team.
Patrick Center: Dan Rogers, you are the Director of Clinical Trials Platform with BAMF Health. Thank you so much.
Dan Rogers: Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me.