Name:
Robert Philibert on a digital PCR test for addiction
Description:
Robert Philibert on a digital PCR test for addiction
Thumbnail URL:
https://cadmoremediastorage.blob.core.windows.net/8980ac61-cdfd-4efd-9ba0-7f73537a83b1/videoscrubberimages/Scrubber_510.jpg
Duration:
T00H10M25S
Embed URL:
https://stream.cadmore.media/player/8980ac61-cdfd-4efd-9ba0-7f73537a83b1
Content URL:
https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/8980ac61-cdfd-4efd-9ba0-7f73537a83b1/RobertPhilibertBT_V3_04.12.19.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=COU71DaqScWY7B7f8OZZ%2BM8s%2F7c1fE0Qf0%2FJH%2BCrPnw%3D&st=2024-12-04T08%3A34%3A24Z&se=2024-12-04T10%3A39%3A24Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2020-01-20T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:1 Introduction.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROBERT PHILIBERT: My name is Dr. Rob Philibert, and I'm the CEO of Behavioral Diagnostics.
Segment:2 Can you tell us about your presentation?.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: So at this meeting, what we are presenting is the-- are the characteristics of our digital PCR tests for cigarette and alcohol consumption. The tests are-- the challenge, Tristan, in behavioral medicine, is to be able to measure.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: All of psychiatry right now and a lot of medicine is self-report. The difficulty with self-report, particularly in the addictions, is that patients are very reluctant to confide the depths of their despair. They wish to become favorably perceived by their physicians and by their families, so they tend to underreport or completely ignore problematic substance use disorder.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: And what this allows-- allows the substance use to do is to grow and to fester to the point where it causes problems in their relationships, losses of their jobs, or severe impact for their health. As we were joking before, currently the way we diagnose alcoholism in psychiatry is you get arrested, you get divorced, you lose your job. And the hard part here is once that has happened, we have lost the strongest predictor of recovery-- strong familial support.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Early recognition of substance use is essential to good prevention and effective treatment. What quantitative digital PCR allows us to do is to non-invasively take self-report out of it-- so take it from the confession of guilt or a confession of failure into just another lab test.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: It allows us to treat smoking and drinking just like we do diabetes-- as a number. These numbers are just like a hemoglobin A1C for cigarette and alcohol consumption. This allows prompt recognition and effective treatment. And more importantly is, like diabetes-- when a person gets treatment for their diabetes, they get better, they consume less health care costs, and they can function better in their family unit.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Similarly, when a smoker quits smoking, everybody wins. They win. Their health's better. Their insurance company wins because they pay less. The rest of society wins because they have someone who's more productive in the work environment. Their employer wins because they have a more productive employee.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: So this allows us not only to go from a mechanism-- well, you shouldn't smoke-- to, how can I persuade you to do a very pro-social thing and help all of us to quit smoking. This allows us to use incentive-based methods, because we can absolutely tell how much you're smoking, absolutely tell how much you're drinking, and we can reward you for doing it. Incentive-based programming works.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Study after study after study has shown that paying people to quit works. It is a very pro-social behavior and allows the person who has to do the heaviest lifting to receive a reward. The challenge in these approaches is to be able to quantitate the amount of alcohol or cigarette or smoking cessation. Digital PCR allows this technique to be done in any laboratory quantitatively, quickly, precisely, and reliably.
ROBERT PHILIBERT:
Segment:3 Do you need to account for gene variants when using your test?.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: So this is epigenetic. And the epigenetic test, the DNA methylation, is the same in everyone. So for instance, in smoking, whether you're black or white, male or female, no matter what age, your DNA methylation is 86%, plus or minus about 2%. It has not affected-- this locus is not affected by genetic variation.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: All it is affected is by your consumption. So it is, shall we say, a bias-free test. And best yet, it is a dynamic test. As you change, it changes. So it gives us a-- it gives us a chance to not only tell how this is impacting your health, but show you how much you are benefiting by quitting. Personally, like I said, is if we got every smoker in the United States to quit, that would be a huge victory for the United States.
ROBERT PHILIBERT:
Segment:4 Hyperbole in the field of epigenetics.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Well, epigenetics-- you're absolutely right. It cannot be hyped. And you have to remember. All I'm doing is measuring something more precisely. And number one is, this is not a stunning breakthrough. This was paid through-- about probably $25 to $30 million of National Institutes of Health money and the participation of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of patients, involvement of a lot of researchers.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Yeah, I did a lot of pipe headache, but so did a lot of other people. And so did a lot of the reviewers reviewing my grants, helping me write my papers and edit my papers. But remember, I'm a physician researcher. I don't make digital PCR. What I used was the tools the industry provided us to make-- to innovate and to make a new product here. We're not any smarter than our forebears, but I tell you, we have better tools for medicine.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: And what it's incumbent upon us rather well-paid physicians is to translate that into better health care for everyone.
Segment:5 What do you need to advance this research in the next 5 years?.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: If I could ever gain one thing , I would say societal engagement. The hardest thing to realize is smoking and drinking do not just affect me, and they do not affect doctors, but it affects our entire society. And I think we have to treat this as a bad personality trait and, too, as a shared burden.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: In other words, how do we incentivize and persuade people to do the pro-social thing? And I can't do that alone. This invention may lead to the identification of better treatments. However, what it may allow physicians and allied health professionals to do is to more effectively implement the treatments they have, because now they can absolutely determine smoking and alcohol consumption.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: To do this, we've got to get it-- ideally, we have to push this through the FDA, and that ain't going to come cheap. Because whereas doing clinical trials and obtaining CBT codes and persuading its adoption and changing the clinical paradigm-- and the current clinical paradigm is essentially failure-- is a tall order, but I think the question is that it is the only pathway.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: Failure is not an option anymore. We've got to cut health care costs. Why not cut out the cigarette companies' contribution to our excessive health care costs?
Segment:6 What challenges have you faced while developing these diagnostic tools?.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: The challenge, as every scientist does-- writing grants, writing papers, teaching. But there have been more roses than thorns in this work.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: And the opportunity-- if just one smoker quits, that's a win. And the good news here is that we've been-- in NIH-funded trials, we've been successful using incentive-based therapies, using these techniques to get people to quit. And that is the best reward of all. Because at the end of the day, I went into medicine to make people better. And it is gratifying to see that some of the things that I did in my-- as my mother would say, my basement chemistry set, are coming to fruition.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: We walk on the shoulders of giants. We were talking before. I was taught by people, originally, who did their training in London. All I'm using is better tools and the lessons they did and the inspiration they give me to make the next step. And the question is, is that somewhere at this meeting There's probably a 25-year-old, a 30-year-old sitting there, saying-- maybe having an aha moment or being persuaded that this is the future of medicine that I want to engage in.
ROBERT PHILIBERT: And if so, that is yet another win. The future is coming. You can either step boldly and optimistically into it, or you can put your head down. I say, walk forward, walk strong, and quite honestly, address the scourge that is excessive alcohol consumption and smoking.
Form Title Download
Form Title Bookmark
Form Title Share
Form Title Cite
