In today’s episode, we chat with Hemanth Padmanabhan, Executive Director, Global Brand Launch Lead, who shares his passion for innovation and collaboration in biotechnology at Dicerna Pharmaceuticals.

Hemanth brings experience as a Marketing professional with Product Management, Market Research, Consulting, and Business Analysis experience. We talk about some of the creative things that he is seeing in the life sciences and biotech industries. 

Today, Hemanth tells us about the rare disease business, the number of rare diseases there are, the millions of dollars invested in it, and the process of working on a rare disease drug which they are trying to get this drug through clinical trials to apply to the FDA and get it approved.

However, before that is achieved the question they need to answer is how do they diagnose these patients effectively in a timely manner? The solution is sponsored genetic testing. This is where they help patients get access to free genetic testing so that they can get themselves tested if they have certain symptoms. Finding a balance between speed and diligence is one of their challenges. 

Hemanth and his team are using education to solve this. They are educating the marketplace to, get those physicians to, diagnose quicker, through their website which has information on rare diseases like uncovering PH.  Team collaboration is key in this industry, as there are many moving parts. Team alignment in their thinking is of utmost value to building the drugs and listening and meeting the needs of their patients.  

One of the cutting-edge methods the Dierna team has come up with is self-injection. This is where the patient can get this drug shipped to their home, as well as injected themselves. The patient does not have to go into the physician's office. This saves them from having to get insurance or traveling on a monthly or a quarterly basis to go into a physician's office.

As a professional leading such a team, Hemanth gets his inspiration and creative solutions from Nature. He is always hiking and going for runs. These activities help him make connections mentally, that he wouldn't have made if he was sitting in front of a computer or actually working. Cause you have some focused thinking to do there. 

In conclusion, Hemanth believes in strengthening relationships with people. “I think you need to be open to helping people. When you start with helping people at some point in your life, they get back to you and they help you when you need it.”  His future plans include working on a project that will have a real impact on the happiness level of people by writing a book.  

Company Website: Dicerna

LinkedIn: Hemanth Padmanabhan

auto-generated transcript

Unlocking your world of creativity with bestselling author and brand innovator. Mark Stinson. Mark introduces you to some of the world's leading creative talent from publishing film music, restaurants, medical research, and more. You'll discover how to tap into your most original thinking, how to organize your ideas, and most of all, how to make the connections and create the opportunities to launch your creative work, unlocking your world of creativity.

Welcome back friends to our podcast. My guest today is an old industry colleague, Hemanth Padmanabhan. Hemanth welcome to the program.

Happy to be here. Thanks, Mark.

Hemanth there's someone I've known in the industry, but we've had a chance to reconnect over the past few weeks and just wanted to talk to you. Hemanth about your creativity or your approach to the business. Some of the creative things that you're seeing and the life sciences, biotech industries. And so, as I think about it, I always like to start with just kind of what's on people's creative plate right now. What's a challenge that you're finding really needs your creative side of your brain, your creative attention right now.

That's a great question. So right now we have a situation and to give you a little more context, I work with, a rare disease drug. And so we are trying to get this drug through clinical trials and then apply to the FDA and then get it approved. So, you know, there's good intentions all around within biotech companies where we do wanna get this drug out to the marketplace. But to do that, we also have to, especially in rare diseases, you'll have to find where physicians are treating such patients. And it's not always easy to find. Typically what happens is these patients go through close to three to nine years of delay from the symptoms start all the way to getting a diagnosis. So the question we have in front of us is how do you diagnose these patients effectively in a timely manner?

And so that's the key question. What we are doing right now is looking into something called genetic testing, sponsored genetic testing. So we can help patients get access to free genetic testing so that they can get themselves tested if they have certain symptoms. And the reason why this is a creative problem is that you can't just go out there and make this available because it's expensive. And so we'll have to do this in a responsible manner and there are two sides to it. One is the medical side. And the other thing is the commercial side to how you get these things done. Some of the key creative questions we're facing are what are those constraints that you have to put in place so that patients can say, yeah, I need this, this, and this. And so I can get this testing done.

It's interesting from a clinical point of view, as you said, this conflict between speed and diligence you wanna do it right. You wanna be ever so vigilant and yet we've gotta get this thing moving.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. That's always top of mind.

And, and how do you manage that balance?

So, where we take our guidance from is really looking at what we're supposed to do in terms of a plan. So we have a tactical plan that we try to stick to. And what I mean by a tactical plan is you take a project like genetic testing. There are certain instances in time where you have to get certain milestones done. For example, if it's genetic testing, you look at the contracting that you do with a large national Labcorp is an example of a large national lab. That's not the lab you're working with, but that's just an example where you have to get the initial contracting done. And once you do that, then you start going to finer details of how exactly you would work together with them. So these are all examples of different milestones that you have to satisfy. And to do that, you have to have a plan in the first place. And so to balance speed versus accuracy, one of the mantras we use is don't let perfect be the enemy of the good, which is let's get to a point where it works and then let's get started. And then we can always be accurate on it or optimize it once you get started.

And I guess you think of it from the rare disease patients, point of view, they waited long enough, I mean, nine years come on.

Exactly. And it's interesting because even now with key physicians, key specialties, you still see, we talked to them on a regular basis and they tell us," just the other day, there was a patient that came through, we probably missed the diagnosis." And the reason why is, despite the fact that these are physicians, these rare diseases are not straightforward. You could present with different symptoms and it may look like something else. It may look like a more common situation when it could be a rare disease. So that's the puzzle that doctors grapple with and we try to help. And one way we help is we, launch websites, we have educational programs. So recently we launched a website called uncovering PH the letters P and H uncovering PH, and pH is a rare disease that we're trying to, resolve. So that's an example of how we try to educate in the marketplace to, get those physicians to, diagnose quicker.

And I think Hemanth that, I think our listeners might be interested, we use this term rare disease so often, and there is a needle in a haystack kind of analogy that's often used, but rare diseases as a market are really huge. Isn't it?

It is. So what they say is, if you take out the commercial number, they say the estimation is, there are roughly 7,000 rare diseases. Now, if you're focusing on one rare disease let's say hemophilia, for example. And I think right now, Genentech is the leader with this drug for hemophilia called Hemlibra. And the drug sells I think a couple billion a year, a billion dollars globally. So there are that many patients that need that drug to basically control their bleeds from hemophilia. And so you're right, despite the fact that these are rare diseases these are individually large markets, so to speak. And the reason for that is really companies have spent. For example, my company, we've spent close to 10 years so far investing in this drug, and they're gonna apply to the FDA. And so you can imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to get to that point. And then you gotta make the money. You gotta make back that money so that you can take profit and then re-invest it back in other research.

And I think maybe that's something, again, the patients and the lay public often don't understand. And, sometimes the focus is on the price of the drug or how long it's taken to get approved, or if the FDA did, or didn't like your study design, but under the hood of all of that mechanism is the search for a better cure.

Right? Exactly. And, we've had some really meaningful improvements. And recently there was a case study published by a physician in San Francisco who was taking our drug, and this is a published case study. So this is public information where the patient was supposed to undergo a combined liver and kidney transplant because of her condition. And she was on the top of the list. So she had to make a decision if she needed the liver transplant and the patient's family decided that they're not gonna take the liver transplant because they have the drug that they're using. And to be clear, this is not an approved drug. This was based on, compassionate use but the fact that the drug is helping her gives you an early inkling of the fact that these drugs, after having spent 10 years, actually have a real impact on patients' lives.

Interesting. And, as you think about the seats around your conference room this is an audio podcast. So my listeners can't see, but as you think about the other eight people that might be working with you and the scientists and the data analytics people and the regulatory people, all of them listening, what do you think the team effort to listen to the patients? Where does the value in that team approach come in for you? Hemanth?

It's a, really critical situation with most teams where you have individual thinkers and these are all functional experts in their own domain. You mentioned regulatory. So regulatory works with the FDA, as you know, there are clinical trial clinical heads who run clinical trials. There's someone like me in commercial who tries to understand how best to launch the product and there are data analysis people, there's IT, there's finance, and so on. So for all of us, what I've tried to do is I've shared this team called the commercialization team. And as part of that process, one of the main objectives is to make sure that this team is aligned in our thinking about how we need to build this drug number one, and where we get our inspiration. So that is from market research, speaking to patients, for example. So more recently, we've done something called an ethnography study where we spent I think with 15 different patients because of COVID, we couldn't go to their actual homes physically, which is what we would've done pre-COVID, but we did a virtual ethnography where we spent through a webcam.

We spent significant time with these 15 patients to really understand the burden of this rare disease and having understood that, that tells you how you need to build your product. And a good example of that is we've been looking at a pre refill syringe, and that means that you don't just get a while when you get the drug, once it's approved, all of this is, we're talking about when it's approved, but if, and when the drug is approved, which we're hopeful of, the drug would come in a pre-filled syringe and the patient just has to take it out of the box and inject it subcutaneously. And this is self-injection. The patient does not have to go into the physician's office. So these are all things that we decided based on listening to patients and understanding how we can work with their lives rather than force them on a monthly or a quarterly basis to go into a physician's office.

And one of the things with rare diseases is you could have a patient that's in the middle of nowhere who needs treatment, and he, or she may have to travel hundreds of miles, sometimes, number one, to get a diagnosis and number two to get treatment. And also once you move that far, and the reason why you have to go that far is that an expert in your disease may not be in your local area. And when you do that, now insurance becomes a problem because many of these regional plans, don't cover a physician that's out of network. So there are all these issues that patients have to deal with, which is why we came up with the facility to make sure the patient can get this drug shipped to home, as well as injected themselves. So that removes many of the problems. So that's an example of how I had to convince the commercialization team to say, these are the features we need to have in this drug product because this is what would work well with the patient's life. And that's how we stay aligned.

It sounds terrific. And, you know, Hemanth, that's so interesting because it makes so much sense when you step back from it, and yet even today, there are entrepreneurs, there are inventors, there are companies out there that say, look, I've, I've created God's gift to X, Y, Z. And so we just need to push it out there. Right. And you know, this customer-centered patient-centered approach certainly helps speed things along, I believe. Is that what you found as well?

It does. In fact, it's interesting, I talked about the answer to your first question about patient diagnosis and patient finding. You can build the product, but they will not come. These are all rare diseases. So while you can build it, you gotta build it in a manner that you gotta really understand the patient's needs and build it. And then also do the work to find these physicians and these patients that are either misdiagnosed or something else, or they been diagnosed, but they have no idea that the drug is available. So to do all of that, you have gotta do some deep discussions with patients to understand how they think and how they approach healthcare so that you can be available and you can make yourself make them aware of your drug.

So good. Well, to maybe step back a little bit from the work and the industry-specific stories, I'm also just curious about your own creative inspiration, where do you derive some of your creative ideas, whether it be hobbies or readings or other pursuits.

Thank you for asking that. So for me, I'll say there are a couple of areas where I find inspiration and these are physical activities that I do. For example, I hike quite regularly every once a week. I go running once a week as well. And, because of my rapidly aging body, I've decided I've had to tone down on the running from three times a week to once a week. But those are all times when you are physically under stress. But for me, that's a time when I actually can think as well. And, it takes your mind off of the, running, let's say five miles every second you can feel it. And the way you do that, the way I try to forget it is by thinking about many things that I've dealt with it could be an idea that I've read to the newspaper or on a website. And, and that's where I get my inspiration. There are quite a few times where I've to listen to podcasts, just like this one, and something sparks in you. Some sort of a question that says, yeah, what if I can apply that somewhere else? And so those are all the ways I get my inspiration for creativity.

There you go. We'll have to get you out to Boise to do some hiking. Some real, real mountains. Not those little Hills in Boston. Although there is one famous heartbreak hill, we have bigger Hills.

Yeah. Make sure, Makes sense. Recently, I did a mountain Washington out here, in the white mountains.

Oh, gorgeous. Yes.

It's a beautiful Mountain. And, I wouldn't dare do it in the winter.

Think I did go in the winter once during the Christmas break. It is gorgeous. But it's so interesting. You say that sometimes when you step away from the computer you're out running, this is the thing that people always say, I get my best ideas in the shower. What, do you think it is about stepping away from it and just letting the ideas take a chill pill and then, come back at it.

My theory is, just like dreams and that early morning time when I'm either stressed out about something or I'm actually happy thinking about something that could go well. I think that these are times when you don't have any walls around your thinking. But whether it's running for me or even, I'll tell you even early in the morning, you know, the time when you wake up and you don't didn't wanna wake up, but you're awake now and you're trying to get back to sleep, but then your mind starts racing. At least that's how mine happens. And that's when you get to thinking that is not bound by your normal checks and balances. And I feel that's when you make connections that you never would have done otherwise. I'll tell you, I've been a wannabe author for a long, long time. and, I get some of my ideas to write when I'm just tossing and turning. Unfortunately, I've never finished any of those, but I think the answer to your question in my mind, my theory is that you just make connections mentally, that you wouldn't have made if you're sitting in front of a computer or actually working. Cause you have some focused thinking to do there.

Yes. Well, we've been talking about synapsis and connections, but let's talk about networking and connections. A lot of people are listening to this podcast, a lot of creative people with a lot of different talents, but what are you looking for in terms of attracting talent or connections, resources, knowledge, what are you out there looking for these days?

Thinking back to an example, recently, I connected with the CEO of a company who wrote something on LinkedIn and he talked about, how do you strengthen relationships with people after you meet them? Many times and I'm very much guilty of this, I meet people, but then I don't really follow up. And so this CEO had written about how do you follow up? How do you make sure that you can actually get back to this person? You never know how you could be helpful to them or vice versa, they could be helpful to you. People are a valuable resource and I've seen them time and time again. Even my friends and relatives where people try to talk to someone if they think that there'll be some value there, and I think that's the wrong way to do it.

I think you need to be open to helping people. And, when you start with helping people at some point in your life, they get back to you and they help you when you need it. That's, been my mantra, I connect with pretty much everyone in my office, for example, and I'll tell you, this is not an exaggeration. I sometimes stay late in the office and the person who cleans the tables and cleans the trash is actually a friend of mine. And that's my philosophy. I mean, I don't care who you are or what you do as long as, you're a human that's connected. you may have differences in opinion that's perfectly fine. As long as you can share a laugh, I think that's great. And you find a way to stay in touch.

And like you said, if you're just open to that, I think you're even how we reconnected. We probably didn't even know each other's names 10 years ago. Right. And yet, as we just have been talking in the last few weeks, we probably now have 50 people that we know in common, and that's just scratching the surface. Isn't it. So one thing leads to another. And as you say, it's not just task-oriented that you would say, I need to talk to you about X, Y, or Z, but rather, Hey, we're open to the connection. We'll see where it takes us. I like that. Well, Heman, what a terrific conversation I've really enjoyed talking with you think about your own creativity and the pursuit, even in your vocation, but where do you see things over the horizon?

For me, I'll tell you a future role in the ideal world, which I hope to make real, but that involves taking quite a bit of risk on my part is to really strike out and start something that has a fundamental impact on the world. And, you know, it's clearly romantic to think of that. It feels nice and it's easier said than done. I can imagine how hard it is to, be an entrepreneur, but I think having an impact at the end of the day, I'll tell you a stark way of looking at it is if you look back when you retire and you look back and you say, what impact have you had for me? If I say I've done a nine to five all my life, and I'm happy where I am. I think for me personally, it would be a failure.

I think I want to have some real impact. And, I'll give you an example. One of the things where I'd love to have an impact is on just the happiness levels of people. When I go running, I see people and I did an experiment. I actually decided to say hello to people, random people as I was running. And I saw roughly 70% of them said, hello back. The remaining 30%, there was actually one lady I specifically remember, she didn't want to connect, and this was when I was walking. And so I had more time to say hello multiple times. clearly, there's something going on in the minds of people, and this may be a specific situation, but people deal with a lot of things.

They may be wired about things at work. They may be unhappy. They may be actually maybe even depressed. So what I'm trying to do is how do you get people out of that shell? And I don't know how to do it, but it's just an idea where maybe if I can have an impact on that, I'll be, good. In fact, I was thinking maybe I can write a book on that. A simple small book, not a large novel, but a simple illustrative book to say, Hey, do these basics. And you'll be, in a better mood than you are at this moment.

Yes. Well, what a great happiness experiment to say? So on your next walk around the block, just say, hi to the folks, and see what happens.

And see what happens. Exactly. And some people are surprised that you're saying hello, and they're pleasantly surprised when they're happy.

Do I know you?

Exactly. But now with the age of phones, it's almost unheard of for people to say. They just wanna look at their phones. And the other thing is, this is sad, but I recently read an article about ladies who don't wanna attract the wrong kind of attention and how they've been trying to curtail themselves and not smile at people. Not, say hello simply because they felt like they were attracting unwanted attention. It's such a sad state of affairs. Cause if that's where people are heading where they can't be, free and they can't just be human.

I'm glad you're open to a wave and a hello. And on that note, how can people connect with you Hemanth, and follow you and follow your work and perhaps make a connection?

I'm on LinkedIn and that's really the place where I generally thrive. Unfortunately, it's been just a few years, since I've logged onto Facebook, but I think LinkedIn is much more active. if anyone has any questions or just wants a sounding board, I'm happy to help, whatever your location or industry is. So you can find me on linked in.

Fantastic. I'll put the link in the show notes. So people can just click on it. Oh, very good. What a great conversation Hemanth I have really enjoyed talking with you.

Same here. Thank you, Mark. Very interesting questions.

Thank you. Oh, my guest today has been, Hemanth Padmanabhan. and you can connect with him on LinkedIn and listeners. Come back again. Next time. We're gonna continue our around-the-world journeys. We love making these global connections today in Boston, but we've also talked to the artists in Nigeria scientists in Guttenberg Sweden. So we continue to explore the world of creative and that's what it's all about. So come back again for our next episode of unlocking your world of creativity. I'm Mark Stinson, and we'll talk to you soon,

Unlocking your world of creativity with bestselling author and brand innovator. Mark Stinson. This program was produced by BSB media creators, Entelechy Leadership Stories, unlocking your world of creativity and the peace room. love. We've created a special offer just for listeners of the podcast. You can get the book, a world of creativity for a special price of 5.98 for paperback. And the Kindle version is only 99 cents. Go to mark-stinson.com to take advantage of this special offer.