Empowered Patient Podcast

Chris Hoyt, CEO of KeifeRx,  talks about the oral medication being developed that uses tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and autophagy to remove unwanted proteins.  Research done by Georgetown University on leukemia, led by Dr. Charbel Moussa, found that lower doses of drugs like nilotinib and bosutinib could cross the blood-brain barrier and remove toxic proteins on an intracellular basis.  This research has been used to develop treatments for neurodegenerative conditions with promising results in reducing cognitive decline. Chris explains, "Essentially, the way TKIs work in the body, and particularly in the case of the neurodegenerative conditions that we're using them to treat at KeifeRx, is they trigger a mechanism called autophagy, which essentially is the cell's garbage disposal mechanism. What we're doing with TKIs is using that mechanism to remove toxic proteins. TKIs have mostly been used historically in cancer, and particularly in leukemia. The classic use would be in cancer to try to remove as muc