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Mission Aligned: Helmsley Charitable Trust and StartUp Health on T1D Moonshot · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we hear directly from the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health. I'm your host, Logan Plaster.
• 0:10
  [upbeat music] Typically on this show, we talk to founders of startups.
• 0:13
  We're all about understanding what's new and what's next in health, and that often means talking to the folks who are in the early days of creating a product or business.
• 0:21
  Most early stage startups, healthcare or otherwise, have one thing in common, they need money.
• 0:27
  It takes a long time to get a healthcare business profitable, and so founders need outside funds to get an idea off the ground, to complete their research, or to scale up. That brings us to today's guest, David Panzirer.
• 0:39
  He's a trustee at the Helmsley Charitable Trust. To put it in simple startup terms, David is a funder.
• 0:46
  The Helmsley Charitable Trust is an $8 billion philanthropy renowned for its work funding healthcare research and innovative healthcare programs. Of course, [laughs] David's a lot more than a funder.
• 0:57
  He's a father, for one thing, a fact that's driven his work more than anything else. I get my daughter's blood sugars on my phone, so I can just literally take a look. Wow.
• 1:05
  10 years ago, I would have to go in my daughter's room, prick her finger, get a glucose reading to make sure she was okay.
• 1:11
  David's also a firebrand and an instigator in an industry that often needs a little push in the right direction. You will get no pretense, no BS. I'm very direct, and it's meant because I'm on a mission.
• 1:24
  The reason for our interview, which took place at a recent health tech event, is that the Helmsley Charitable Trust has been the anchor partner for StartUp Health's Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, and David has been instrumental in getting that effort off the ground.
• 1:37
  He's been part of our impact board and has personally met with founders on multiple occasions to give them invaluable feedback and advice.
• 1:44
  In our chat, we talk about the Wild West of conversational AI as it applies to healthcare and diabetes, about promising new T1D therapeutics, rural medicine, and why Helmsley has positioned itself as a high-risk, high-reward funder.
• 1:59
  Let's get into it. [upbeat music] Tell me what you are getting excited about as you walk around this floor. You're highly involved in Type 1 diabetes innovation.
• 2:10
  There's a lot of folks here coming up with new, uh, therapies, um, you know, biotech companies, platforms. What's exciting you? So what's exciting to me is also what's making me a little bit nervous. Okay. And that's AI.
• 2:24
  So Type 1 diabetes is a very data intensive disease. Mm-hmm. Especially if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, it gives you a reading every five minutes.
• 2:32
  You could do the math on how many readings that is per day. Um, but obviously it's a lot of data, and a lot of people don't know what to do with it. Okay. Everywhere you turn here, every panel is talking about AI. Mm.
• 2:42
  And I feel like AI is kind of where stem cells was 15 years ago. It's the Wild West. Okay. And there's...
• 2:49
  Everybody's talking about it, which means a whole bunch of the stuff needs to weed itself out before it gets really valuable.
• 2:56
  So- Given, given your experience in the market, were there lessons learned from stem cells that you see applicable here? Well, stem cells was a political hot button- Okay... for obvious reasons. I just think this is new.
• 3:07
  It's exciting. Everybody's talking about it.
• 3:10
  So that's super exciting for Type 1 diabetes or anybody for that matter using a continuous glucose monitor, which more and more we're seeing insulin using Type 2s, which just helps Type 1s.
• 3:21
  The more you expand the market, the more people care about it, the more people that use this s- stuff, the faster companies innovate, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:28
  So part of the reason why we're having this conversation is your support for our T1D Moonshot community, which really is elevating the idea of collaboration.
• 3:37
  What's it been like to be part of a group of, uh, like-minded innovators passionate about Type 1 diabetes in this way? So I... Obviously having like-minded people is one thing, which is great.
• 3:50
  Uh, I'm all about execution though. Yeah. So it's, it's more than just being like-minded. It's, okay, what are we gonna do to get stuff done at the end of the day? That's... I'm a bottom line kind of person. Yeah.
• 4:00
  So- 'Cause this is personal for you. Very much so. I've got two daughters with Type 1. Yeah. And, uh, been involved in this, been doing this full-time since 2008. So, so for you, talk is cheap. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
• 4:11
  It's... That's what I'm about. Yeah. And it's... You will get no pretense, no BS. I'm very direct, and it's meant because I'm on a mission. You're on a mission. That's right. That's right.
• 4:22
  You mentioned AI, gets you excited, also gets you nervous. There are other areas of progress in terms of therapies, potential, uh, drugs, potential, um, but for innovative platforms. Beyond AI, what gets you excited?
• 4:37
  So we... On my panel actually was a woman who... So I've been obsessed with hypoglycemia. So low blood sugars are acutely dangerous. Yep.
• 4:46
  People, unfortunately it happens a few hundred times a year where people die in their sleep. Yep. I know one. Yeah. Um, so for me, that's literally keeps me [laughs] up at night. Um- Yeah.
• 4:56
  I'm up twice a night minimum to check. Really? I get my daughter's blood sugars on my phone, so I can just literally take a look. Wow.
• 5:03
  10 years ago, I would have to go in my daughter's room, prick her finger, get a glucose reading to make sure she was okay. In the middle of the night. Oh, yeah. Twice a night. I... As a father, I can't even imagine.
• 5:12
  She... Thankfully she slept right through it most of the time. Wow. Um, but yeah, it was no fun. That's heavy. Um, it is. So where we are now with, um...
• 5:22
  There was a woman on our panel that has a molecule that can actually prevent low blood sugars. Mm. So basically the cause of low blood sugars is too much insulin in the body.
• 5:32
  In Type 1 diabetes, not only do we have a problem regulating insulin, the alpha cell is the opposite of the insulin cell. It's kind of like your EpiPen for too much- Sure. It brings your body back to normal glycemia.
• 5:45
  Yeah. In Type 1 diabetes, that too is dysregulated and oftentimes comes too late- Yeah... which is why people have severe lows. Got it. Yeah.
• 5:53
  I actually had the privilege of interviewing her in this seat, so I know what you're talking about. Oh. Yeah, so she's... Yeah. And very exciting. Very exciting.
• 6:00
  And she has an interesting different approach to sort of, uh, empowering researchers and scientists, which is, which is really interesting. Um-Yeah. I mean, what is it that excites you around the...
• 6:13
  You know, there's so many platforms that are trying to make daily life better. Does that interest you, or you're like, "Let's just shoot for the moon.
• 6:20
  Let's get these, let's get these pharmaceuticals, you know, through the, uh, the, the pathway"? Yeah. So I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that everybody'll go for.
• 6:30
  I'm trying to be five years ahead of where industry's going. Yeah, makes sense. So, you know, at the end of the d- the end of the day, we're low... We're high-risk philanthropic dollars. Yeah.
• 6:41
  And we should be very far out on the risk curve, and that's what we kind of preach. Yeah. So I'm more interested in not the stuff that everybody's talking about, but where we're going. What's next. Right. So
• 6:53
  the care is gonna get better, right? We're gonna... But what we really have to do is decentralize the healthcare. And if you look at what happens here in, even in this country, where in rural areas, the...
• 7:06
  You know, for, so for t- for diabetes, you wanna be on a continuous glucose monitor. It is the go-to- Sure... tool to manage your glucose. Yep.
• 7:13
  The percentage of prescriptions that are written outside of the diabetes specialty clinics is, like, 15 or 20%, which means if you live in rural America, you're not getting it. Right?
• 7:22
  If you're African American, your chances go down even more. Yeah. Um, the health disparities are tremendous, and in this day and age with technology, there's absolutely no reason for it.
• 7:33
  And- So let's get everybody up to the standard of care. Right. But we have to figure out a way to decentralize it. I want you to become an endocrinologist- Right... but the reimbursement system is so poor- Yeah...
• 7:43
  um, that to properly take care of people, you don't have enough time in the day. Mm.
• 7:47
  So if we don't figure out how to decentralize down to a nurse practitioner, a certified diabetes educator or, you know, a, a, um, PA, physician assistant, um, that's where we need to get to. Interesting.
• 8:00
  And we, at Helmsley, personally believe the pharmacist is extremely underutilized. I read a statistic that said 80% of the US population lives within 20 miles of one of the retail pharmacies.
• 8:14
  So why is it that we don't utilize the pharmacy, pharmacists to do more? Mm. So we're in the middle of funding a study right now.
• 8:22
  Right now in the c- in this country, there are two states where the pharmacist can prescribe and onboard somebody to a continuous glucose monitor. Interesting. Interesting. Why can't we do that across the country?
• 8:32
  So we believe the pharmacist is a underutilized- Mm... person in the whole healthcare system.
• 8:37
  So I'm seeing two interesting sides of this coin, this accessibility p- accessibility piece now, where we want to make continuous glucose monitors available.
• 8:46
  And yet you also wanna be looking five years ahead, seven years ahead to the things that no one's even thinking about, kind of bringing those two worlds together, the future and the, and the present.
• 8:55
  Yeah, Logan, that's exactly right. I mean, we, we funded continuous glucose monitors eight or nine years ago. Yeah. Um, you know, both with JDRF and ourselves. We funded Medtronic, Becton Dickinson.
• 9:07
  Helmsley went on to fund Dexcom by ourselves, and that iterated and forced the entire field to move quicker. Yeah. So instead of a typical 36-month iteration, they were iterating every 18 months. Gotcha.
• 9:19
  So the technology has advanced so rapidly, and I'd like to think that we applied a lot of pressure to the field- Yeah... to be able to do that.
• 9:26
  If this video was used as a call for innovation to a viewer, what would you like someone to, to pitch to you or come to market with that's not here right now? So I would turn that question a little bit, if I can. Yeah.
• 9:39
  I, I think what we really need, and it's really part of what StartUp Health is trying to do, is a more educated entrepreneur. Mm. So we get a lot of pitches from people coming right out of academia. Right.
• 9:52
  That unfort- you know, it's just not their, it's not their jobs, right? They don't know how to start a business. Okay. But yet they're going for it. And, and I applaud them. They get, they get Type 1 diabetes.
• 10:01
  They don't get the business side, you're saying. Or... No, I'm just saying academics in general. Okay. Are, you have an idea, you're gonna go do a startup. Yeah.
• 10:09
  And what's happened is they get, there are, there's the huge valley of death which is now continuous from basically startup to phase two trials. Uh-huh. Right? And what's lacking is a way to present to a funder.
• 10:22
  So to me, the most important thing is diligence. And what I mean by that is if you're in the field, you need to first and foremost understand what does the patient group want that you're trying to impact.
• 10:34
  You need to understand what people want. You need to, most importantly, understand who's doing what as far as industry in the space. 'Cause most academics are not gonna bring it to market.
• 10:44
  They're gonna look to get acquired by industry. Yep. Why not engage with them early? Yeah.
• 10:49
  And then lastly, and not least, engage with the FDA and the insurance companies really early, um, because without them, you're going nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. So you might as well get their buy-in early. Love it, David.
• 11:01
  Thank you for dropping by the studio with me. You know, your passion for execution over c- over, over talk is infectious, and I appreciate it.
• 11:10
  So I, uh, you know, I'm excited to see how you push the industry in the next year. Well, we'll keep at it. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks, David. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening to StartUp Health NOW.
• 11:23
  We'll be back again with another episode next week. [upbeat music]