Meesha Dogan, PhD, CEO, Co-Founder and Director of Cardio Diagnostics, was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.
Cardio Diagnostics makes cardiovascular disease prevention and early detection more accessible, personalized and precise. Its proprietary AI platform called Genetic-Epigenetic Engine is designed to help healthcare professionals better detect and diagnose coronary heart disease and tailor treatment "precisely" to each patient.
Ms. Dogan spoke about the innovative approach and how her company is the only one doing it in the cardiovascular space.
Cardio Diagnostics makes cardiovascular disease prevention and early detection more accessible, personalized and precise. Its proprietary AI platform called Genetic-Epigenetic Engine is designed to help healthcare professionals better detect and diagnose coronary heart disease and tailor treatment "precisely" to each patient.
Ms. Dogan spoke about the innovative approach and how her company is the only one doing it in the cardiovascular space.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Good morning, welcome to the show.
00:07Good morning.
00:08Thank you for having me.
00:09Absolutely.
00:10I know last time we were talking together, we talked so much about AI and the things
00:13that your company was working on, so I'm excited to get some updates there.
00:16But for the folks at home that might not be familiar with your company, give us a quick
00:20brief overview of what is it that you do.
00:22Yeah, of course.
00:24So Cardio is a company focused on the prevention, detection, and management of heart disease.
00:29We know that heart disease is the number one killer both in the United States and globally.
00:34And we've had some incremental improvements when we think about technologies and tools
00:38to be able to get insights related to heart disease and also to treat and manage this
00:44condition.
00:45But what Cardio brings to the table is what I would consider a paradigm shift altogether,
00:51a new type of biomarker, a newer technology in the field of artificial intelligence, bringing
00:57all of these things together so providers, employers, all the different major health
01:02care stakeholders can better get after heart disease.
01:06You know, there's so much advancement that happens in the health space so many times.
01:10And of course, AI is something that's being deployed so much more now.
01:13But outside of AI, what would you say is kind of the key to your technology?
01:16Because I'll talk about AI here in a second, but in terms of the genetics and the epigenetics,
01:21how do they kind of work together?
01:23What's the key to your technology?
01:25So when we're thinking about heart disease, only about 20 percent of it is our genetics.
01:31So for someone like me who comes from a family of two generations history of heart disease,
01:34I like to say that I can only blame my family for up to 20 percent of my risk.
01:39The rest of it comes from our lifestyle and environment.
01:41And we know genetics really well.
01:43It's something we measure from our DNA.
01:45But what a lot of people don't realize is our lifestyle and environment also turns a
01:51certain DNA biomarker on and off, and that's called epigenetics.
01:55So it's a dynamic way and a more objective way to look at the influence of lifestyle
02:00and environment, which is also unique to each of us because it's coming from our DNA.
02:05And more importantly, it accounts for that larger portion of the variation, which is
02:10the up to 80 percent that is not covered by just our genetic markers.
02:15So it's new information.
02:16Content is higher information content by being able to leverage both of those.
02:21But one of the things I would add about epigenetics that is key to what we do is when
02:27interventions are put in place, whether it's lifestyle or therapeutics, they do change
02:32in as little as 90 days, which are genetics.
02:34They do not change.
02:36But our epigenetics changes, which is a great way to say, all right, what could it be used
02:42for drug development?
02:43Could it be used to understand the effectiveness of certain interventions to personalize
02:48interventions? There are a lot of different use cases, but the core of what we do forms
02:53the basis for everything else that we build on our technology.
02:57You are much kinder than I am, because I 100 percent would blame my mom, my father and
03:01whoever else is above them for any problems I have in life.
03:05Doesn't matter if they're health related or not, but I'm glad you kind of broke down the
03:09differentiation between the two.
03:11But now let's go and bring AI back into the conversation as well.
03:14How do you integrate that with everything that you're doing?
03:17You know, all of us are walking around with millions of these biomarkers and billions of
03:23combinations. And the combinations are really important because if you think about it, two
03:27people who smoke the same amount don't have the same risk for heart disease.
03:31Two people who have the same level of cholesterol don't have the same level of risk for heart
03:35disease. So looking at what's your genetic background and how it confounds with the lifestyle
03:41and environment as we see it through epigenetics now starts becoming very complex and it's
03:47billions of combinations.
03:49So AI becomes sort of the foundational tool to be able to say not all of these biomarkers
03:56are relevant, not all of the patterns are relevant.
03:59What are those patterns that are relevant that we can robustly use to be able to identify
04:06risk and status, but also take it further to say, is there a drug target?
04:11Is there a way we can understand the effectiveness of interventions?
04:14And so AI becomes critical to go through the pattern recognition process.
04:19And also because it's complex, we do implement machine learning when new patients are tested
04:24and we're trying to evaluate their heart disease risk.
04:27We implement those models to understand what their risk is and what their status is.
04:32See, all this whole conversation is going to make me want to order like a 23andMe just
04:36to see what I'm kind of really up against.
04:38And of course, got to take your diet and different things like that as well.
04:41You have a partnership that I wanted to go ahead and discuss with Navier Telehealth.
04:45Tell us about the deal.
04:47For the longest time, you know, one of the key drawbacks in the cardiovascular space
04:53has been access to testing.
04:56If we think about the traditional modes of testing, you have to go into your doctor's
05:00office, you have to get the appointments, whether it's days, weeks, however long it takes.
05:04If you live in rural America, and I think we have between 3,000 or 6,000 cardiologists
05:09in the country where we don't really have access to them, but we need them when we're
05:14having signs and symptoms, how do we get after the issue with healthcare delivery that we also have?
05:22The analogy that I like to use is, you know, if we have a test that is only available in
05:27Antarctica, you know, how many people are going to be able to get there to get tested
05:32and get the insights and the value?
05:34So for us, in addition to building a cutting edge technology, it became very important
05:40to say, how do we get broad adoption, broad access, get it in the hands of more people
05:47than what we're able to do today with today's tools and technologies?
05:51And so coupling our tests to telemedicine became very critical.
05:56And the reason the telemedicine option works is because as a blood test, we're able to
06:01send individuals, patients, once the test is ordered, kids to collect their blood sample
06:06at home, send a phlebotomist to their house, they can draw their blood at the doctor's
06:10office.
06:11What we're trying to do is make sure we're also innovating when it comes to healthcare
06:16delivery, not just the technology.
06:18And again, our goal for that is to make sure we get the broadest of the broad adoption
06:23of our technologies and tools.
06:25Yeah, we saw the importance of telehealth, obviously, in COVID, it kind of really ramped
06:29up as well.
06:30Right.
06:31And even before then, I remember when I got my life insurance, someone came to my place
06:33to go and get my blood work taken care of.
06:34And it's just very, very convenient to not be able to just have someone come at home
06:39and take care of it or have it done remotely and kind of get similar results to what you're
06:42looking for as well.
06:44You had a presentation at the, I believe it was the American College of Cardiologists,
06:48I think it was like the 73rd annual scientific session back in April.
06:52Give me quick insights that you shared there.
06:55One of the key things for us is to get in front as many providers as possible, because
07:00at the end of the day, our products, our clinical blood tests that we do need providers to order.
07:05So getting them up to speed, getting them looped in into our technology, but more importantly,
07:10being able to show them the opportunity to be able to increase access to patients.
07:16Not a lot of these providers have a treadmill or a CCTA machine in house.
07:23So for them to be able to, one, have a better test, but two, a lot of times we hear providers
07:29ask us, one of the gaps we have is how do we use information to inform treatment?
07:35If we know that there is a blockage in the artery, that's great, but how do we know what
07:39to treat?
07:40We're always treating cholesterol when cholesterol may not necessarily be the problem.
07:44So with Cardio's technology, we map our biomarkers to pathways where they provide personalized
07:51insights to say, someone's signal coming from inflammation, is it coming from diabetes?
07:55Is it coming from cholesterol?
07:56And that's something that was very well received by those that attended the American College
08:02of Cardiology.
08:03Now, before I let you go, I promised the viewers if they had some good questions, I'd bring
08:07it up and I will substitute mine for what David's asking, but I'll put a little spin
08:11on it.
08:12Give us an insight on what kind of gives you the edge, right?
08:14I have the privilege to talk to many biotech companies that focus on different things when
08:17it comes to the body and the mind and what separates you from your competitors?
08:21What gives you that edge to succeed in taking more market share than possibly them?
08:25Sure.
08:26First and foremost, it's our one of a kind technology, right?
08:29We're the, to our best of our knowledge, we're the only ones doing genetics and epigenetics
08:33for cardiovascular disease.
08:35Others may have heard companies like Cologuard with exact sciences that are doing epigenetics
08:40based testing, but a lot of them are in the cancer space, not much in the cardiovascular.
08:45The other thing, which is a key differentiator was what I shared a second ago.
08:49A lot of the tools and technologies available out there don't necessarily tell what needs
08:55to be done.
08:56How do you personalize the care for patients?
08:58So precision medicine, true and true, and also do not necessarily provide insights on
09:03how well these treatments are working.
09:06So those are some of the key areas where we are truly differentiated from others.
09:09All right.
09:10Well, hey, look, I appreciate the insights, but I do want to give you the floor for a
09:13quick minute.
09:14Is there anything else that you want to discuss that I didn't get a chance to bring up?
09:17The floor is kind of yours to talk to our viewers.
09:20Of course.
09:21We're very excited this year to be able to scale up, to be able to increase the adoption
09:26of our technology.
09:27We actually just shared a press release this morning talking about our pathway for Medicare
09:33as well.
09:34We did receive CPT codes for our test, dedicated codes.
09:38So we're now taking the next steps.
09:40Also always top of mind for us is broad access, broad adoption, getting as much market share
09:47as possible.
09:48Well, that's interesting.
09:49And I do want to focus on that.
09:50One more question is how is this going to benefit the company long term, right?
09:55How does it impact the bottom line, the reach?
09:58Any insights on that more than you just shared?
10:00On the Medicare side or in general?
10:02Give me both.
10:04Of course.
10:05So when we're talking about, you know, when we're talking about payment, we're always
10:09being creative in who's paying for tests like ours.
10:12Right.
10:13And for us, it's about casting a white net.
10:15It's about casting a white net with payers like Medicare, Medicaid, private payers.
10:20But it's also casting a white net with employers because there are a lot of self-insured employers.
10:25So being able to diversify our revenue streams and being able to, again, reach as many people
10:31as possible, not just the testing aspect, but also from generating revenue is absolutely
10:37key for our bottom line.
10:39All right.
10:40Well, appreciate the insight.
10:41Thank you so much for your time.
10:42Wonderful.
10:43Thank you for having me.