The Race to Protect Newborns: Dr. Howard Berman on HIE

What happens when a newborn does not receive enough oxygen and blood flow around birth, putting the brain at risk of serious injury? Cooling can help slow the damage, but it does not directly treat the underlying causes.Dr. Howard Berman, CEO of ReAlta Life Sciences, joins Solomon Wilcots to discuss hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE, a severe neonatal condition that can lead to brain injury, disability, cerebral palsy, and death. While therapeutic hypothermia can help slow inflammation, there are currently no approved drug therapies that directly address the biological drivers of HIE.Howard explains how ReAlta’s investigational therapy, pegtarazimod, is designed to target multiple components of the inflammatory response. He also discusses the company’s Phase 2 STAR trial, which is evaluating pegtarazimod in combination with therapeutic hypothermia and using MRI to measure changes in brain injury.For anyone interested in the science, leadership, and urgency behind the race to protect newborns with HIE, this episode offers a close look at what may come next.