Latest / Masters in Business / Targeting Pain (Sponsored Content)

Transcript

Targeting Pain (Sponsored Content) · Masters in Business

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Since you're a subscriber to this Bloomberg podcast, we thought
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: you'd be interested in a six episode sponsored podcast called
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Targeting the Toughest Diseases produced by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Bloomberg
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Media Studios. It explores the innovative tools, methods, and unique
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: philosophy Vertex Pharmaceuticals is using to search for treatments for
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: some of humanity's most challenging diseases. Here's a recent episode.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: That's Damian Sanchez, or if you are a jazz fan
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: living in Miami, Damian jy Well.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: I play all types of music, but yes, my passion
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: lies in the jazz genre. The history of jazz inspires
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: me to create. I get very passionate about talking about
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: the history of jazz from its very beginnings until today.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: His passion started when he was twelve years old.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I saw a picture in a magazine that changed my life.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: When I was young. It was a picture of a
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: young man who was holding every single would win because
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: he could play them all, and so I wanted to
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: be like that kid.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Damien started with the obo, then the flute, the alto, sacks,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: the clarinet, and even the bassoon.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I also play guitar. I also play piano, and I
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: also play various percussion instruments, mainly Latin percussion stuff because
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: it's part of my project to perform Latin jazz.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: But on a day that should have been a musical celebration,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Damien's life took a terrible turn.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Hi.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I'm Jordan Gospore, a member of the University of Southern
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: California's Center for Health Journalism. This is Targeting the Toughest
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Diseases a podcast produced by Bloomberg Media Studios and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: In this series, we look at some of humanity's most
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: challenging diseases and how Vertex, a Boston based biotech company,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: is using innovative tools, methods, and a unique philosophy to
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: search for treatments and cures. Today, we're looking at a
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: cute pain. You might think pain is just a sign
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: that something else is wrong in your body, but Vertex
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: is looking at pain as its own unique condition. They're
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: researching it as a disease.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: It's December twenty twenty two. I just finished about a
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: month of rehearsals with a symphony, a very specific symphony
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: made up of nonprofit organizations sponsoring young musicians and professional
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: musicians here that play classical music that is of unheard
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: of composers of color.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: This was the day of the inaugural performance.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I wake up early that day. It was a Saturday.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: We're performing at the Broward Set of the Performing Arts,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: this wonderful hall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I live in Miami,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: so I grab my scooter.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: See, Damien doesn't like driving. He's not a guy that
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: likes sitting still, and South Florida's traffic can be bad,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: so instead of a car, he uses an electric kickscooter
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: and public transit. Getting to Fort Lauderdale means riding his
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: scooter to the train station, taking the train up the coast,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: and then using the scooter again to get to the venue.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: I have my English horrant and my olbow and my
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: music and my backpack on my backstrapped on. I had
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: my helmet.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: He's also wearing a brand new tuxedo.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: And I remember looking to the left and looking to
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: the right and saying, ha ha ah, traffic sucks.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Damien was in the bike lane going down a steep
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: hill when a driver apparently attempting to get out of
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the gridlock suddenly turned into the bike lane.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: I hit the front of her car with my scooter,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: which I do not let go of, which actually ends
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: up flipping me over the front of her car. I
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: fly into the air and I land on my ribs,
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: which get cracked, and my foot, my right foot get
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: caught up in the accident, and my tibia and my
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: fibria both are shattered in many many places, and my
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: leg is completely discombobulated, disjointed to the side.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Damien didn't lose consciousness. In fact, he tried to stand up.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: And as soon as I put one ounce of pressure
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: on that right foot, then the pain started coming in,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: very very strong. As you can imagine. I have all
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: these broken bones in my right leg, and I'm trying
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: to walk on it and walk it off like and
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: nothing ever happened.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: A crowd gathered and someone called for an ambulance. Within minutes,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: he was in the emergency room of a nearby hospital.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: The pain in his leg was unbearable.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: This one guy says, we're gonna give you more, and
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: we're gonna manipulate that leg until they're ready to operate,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: because it needs to be manipulated. I said, I've never
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: had any drugs. I don't take drugs. They said, well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: you're gonna want it. I said okay, and they gave
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: it to me through my ivy and I felt like
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: I was really drunk. And then he grabbed my foot
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: and put it back in place. I ready didn't feel inebriated.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I was laughing. I was joking, you know. I was
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: being very bubbly, which I usually am anyways, but I
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: was kind of scared.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: After a few hours, the drugs were off and the
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: pain returned. It was time for a second dose.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: I wasn't gonna take anything. I didn't want to get hooked.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: My family has a lineage of substance and alcohol abuse.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: My brother fights it, and my uncles fought it, and
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: I've always had that trauma in my brain.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: It's a horrible decision many patients face, choosing between pain
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: and the risk of addiction. The doctors tried their best
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: to persuade him.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: They were all about it. They were all about it.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Now you sure, are you sure? You don't want to
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: think nothing? What are you going to do? I'm just
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: gonna deal with it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And that's what many patients do when faced with acute pain.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: They just deal with it.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I never took any pain medication, no matter how bad
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: it hurt. But yeah, the first three months were hel Man.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Pain isn't entirely a bad thing. It's actually an important
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: warning system. It's our body's way of telling us something
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: is wrong.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Typically, you expect a broken limb to hurt a lot
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: when you injure it gradually get better. It'll be a
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: key for a few weeks, but as it heals after
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: three months, you would not expect someone to still have
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: pain from that broken limb.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Doctor Norman Buckley is the director of the Michael G.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Degrout National Pain Center in Hamilton, Canada.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: There certainly are a settings where people continue to report pain.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: Then you have to consider what's the reason for that,
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: he says.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Doctors have used medicine to manage pain for centuries. Opium
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: in the sixteen hundreds, ether and chloroform in the eighteen hundreds,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: then morphine and even heroin in the nineteen hundreds. More recently,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: insets have been used. Those are nonsterodal anti inflammatory drugs
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and of course opioids, which can be effective but bring
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: tolerability concerns and carry the risk of addiction. Innovation and
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: pain management has been slow, in part because pain is
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: both common and complex. It affects individual people differently. Those
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: differences might be influenced by gender, genetics, and age, as
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: well as other factors. Pain represents exactly the kind of
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: medical problem Vertex likes to target. There's a long history
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: of research to build on, there's new technology available or
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Vertex thinks they can develop it. There's a large unmet
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: need and Vertex thinks it may be possible to make
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: an impact.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We've picked a set of diseases, cystic fibrosis, type one, diabetes,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: sickle cell disease, also pain.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: That's doctor David Altschuler. He's the chief scientific officer at
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Vertex Pharmaceuticals. What he's really on is a quest for
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: something innovative. He's in search of new ways to think
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: about old problems.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: The real question in our mind is can we succeed?
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: Can we make a difference? Pain itself can be a disease.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: That's doctor Paul Negelescu. He's leading Vertex's research in this area.
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: So while pain is a symptom of diseases, many diseases,
• 8:47
  Speaker 6: it can also be a disease in and of itself.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Vertex has been working on that puzzle for decades.
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: There are tens of millions of people in the US
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: that get pain experience every year, either acute or chronic pain.
• 9:03
  Speaker 7: One thing that really interested me is why does it
• 9:06
  Speaker 7: seem like some people are more sensitive to pain than others.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: It's a very subjective thing pain, and it's actually we
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: don't understand what makes different people sensitive or not to pain.
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: I would say though, that there are outliers.
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: I mean, there are definitely some people that are way
• 9:25
  Speaker 6: off the charts in terms of their ability to detect
• 9:28
  Speaker 6: pain or not.
• 9:29
  Speaker 7: Would you be able to break down for me a
• 9:32
  Speaker 7: little bit further into what exactly is pain?
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: It's a really good question. So pain is an unpleasant sensation.
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: It's something that you experience, and so therefore it is
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: something that has been processed by your brain and depending
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: on your state of mind, literally that affects your ability
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: to sense pain. So it's a complicated process by which.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: We perceive pain.
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: Now the way that we're trying to approach it, which
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: is to kind of take it out of the brain part,
• 10:06
  Speaker 6: because we know it starts in the periphery.
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: In most cases it's due to.
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: An injury or a surgery or damage to a nerve
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: that's outside the brain, so that part of the body
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: is sending signals to the brain. It hurts, It hurts,
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: and then you're processing those signals, and depending on whether
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: you're awake a sleep distracted, you feel.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: Different levels of pain.
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: Our goal is to try to cut it off so
• 10:31
  Speaker 6: it never really gets to the brain. Opioids work at
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: the level.
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: Of the central nervous system.
• 10:36
  Speaker 6: They actually suppress the inputs that are coming into the brain,
• 10:41
  Speaker 6: and so we're trying to work from the outside of
• 10:43
  Speaker 6: the brain to reduce the pain signals into it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: That's the unique aspect of Vertex's approach to research, innovative
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: approaches based on the underlying mechanism of the disease.
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: The way we're approaching pain is by targeting the these
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: proteins that have been identified through human genetics as playing
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: a key role in the transmission of pain signals in
• 11:07
  Speaker 6: the pain sensing neurons. If you think about the pain
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: sensing neuron as a wire, it's transmitting a signal that
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: says I've got pain in one part of my body
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: to the other part of your body, and for that
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: signal to get transmitted, it has to be conducted along
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: that wire to conduct that electrical signal through that sensory nerve.
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: It's kind of like a bucket brigade. One channel opens
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: at one end and it passes the electrical signal to
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: the next and that gets passed to the next one
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: and so on, and that's how the signal gets propagated.
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: And so you know, we're trying to interrupt that transmission.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: The work is focused on researching the mechanism of how
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: a pain signal travels in the body, with the hope
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: of making a difference for patients. It's been two years
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: since Damien's accident, and other than walking with a slight limp,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: he's moved on with his life. He doesn't dwell on
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: those pain filled months after his surgery. In fact, he
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: says he really doesn't remember most of it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: You tend to block out memories that you don't want,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: you really do. They're painful, So I think that's why
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: I don't remember more about that time in the hospital.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: What he does remember is that when the pain was
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: so bad it made it difficult to even stand up,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: he never lost his passion.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: I don't want to give up on music. I don't
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: want to give up on my music. As long as
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I'm close to the music and keep playing music, I'm
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: very happy. So that's what I want to know. I'm
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: want to be at peace.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: This is Targeting the toughest diseases. A podcast from Bloomberg
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Media Studios and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. If you like what you hear,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: subscribe and leave us a review. I'm Jordan Gospore. Thanks
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: for listening.