Hello and welcome to the Gifted Life Podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Roy Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau. And I'm Sarah Blake, we're on the program today.
We're going to learn how bone marrow may be the key to reducing organ rejection. And relaxation techniques for adults. All good. All coming your way.
Now, here on the Gifted Life we are so pleased to get to visit with Kevin Caldwell. Hey Kevin. Hey. Kevin is the founder and CEO of Oseum Health.
So if you want more information we're going to keep throwing out Oseum Health.com is where you can kind of follow along. But if you could tell us what Oseum Health is all about in the mission, Kevin. So at Oseum we are actually doing two things. The first is that we have developed a process for recovering and storing and transplanting.
Bone marrow and bone marrow derives cellular therapeutics from deceased organ tissue donors. Historically there's been a shortage of bone marrow available for transplant. We're ending that shortage by tapping into the previously unused supply of bone marrow that comes from organ tissue donors. The second thing that we're doing is developing new therapies that are made possible by the existence of that bone marrow bank resource.
And so this includes everything from simply allowing people with blood cancers like leukemia which traditionally got their bone marrow transplants from living donors to receive transplants to doing something called immune tolerance induction which is where we provide people who recently received organs from a deceased donor with a bone marrow transplant from their organ donor so that their immune system is re-educated to recognize cells from their organ donor cell. If you implement this properly the person doesn't need a amino suppression and doesn't suffer from organ digestion and that's just the beginning. There's a whole range of different therapies that are possible when you have the ability to transplant bone marrow on demand easily anywhere. So that's amazing stuff Kevin and I for you guys met actually a couple times.
We met at the AOPO conference and a couple different conferences and then of course he and his team came to Louisiana a couple years ago because we were so interested in what they had to offer and kind of the revolutionary ideas that they had. So can you tell us a little bit about ASEM and what got you into focusing on bone marrow? So you know I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and kids and you know when I ran a farm in West Tennessee and when I was young when I was born they were in the 50s but the time I graduated from high school they were in the 70s and I saw their health decline gradually during that time period and I would see them getting sick at home and then they would eventually go and they would get prescribed a treatment that would reduce their suffering but generally did not truly restore their health and I would ask why can't we anticipate what's going to make you get sick beforehand why can't we really do that use of that level of health you were at before and the answers that I got back then were that let's just not know I'm at the worst and I never really accepted that answer but I wasn't sure what could be done about it at the time and then you know you fast forward a while and you know by I would say by about size to some extent even 10 years ago there was this a revelation that begun and medicine in particular regenerative medicine had gone from being you know a hypothetical field that could emerge to really being an exciting area of research and eventually practice and within that space one of the most interesting is actually in lean ways and old procedures so bone marrow transplants they are stem cell therapy and we usually think about stem cell therapies being 21st century medicine but the first one that was actually done in the 1960s it's been around for more than six decades historically it was used to treat people with leukemia but you know there when you do with one-mount transplants you are ablating or removing the entire blood and immune system of the recipient and replacing it with the blood and immune system of a health and donor and so when you do this you are permanently checking out the person's entire blood and immune system for the rest of their lives that will produce blood and immune cells with an medicine of another being and so when we were thinking about what could we do in this space finding ways to make bone marrow transplants you know easier to do so that we could treat a huge range of different pieces that are treatable by sort of rebooting and immune system was incredibly exciting possibility and so we started to explore what the path would be to that. My co-founder, Aaron Pullo, is a chief science officer also you know he's a former president of the International Society for Cryobology and he's has some deep expertise in leveraging cell biology and so it was also just a natural space for us to remember that execute.
Wow so I see that OSEM health was founded in 2016 can you kind of walk us through kind of where you started to where we are now and the breakthroughs challenges. Yeah so you know several years ago I was working in the financial sector I was at an investment firm and you know it was this was around 2012, 2013, 2014. It was during the European sort of sovereign debt crisis and I was in charge of managing our trading strategy for a variety of different assets and it was really interesting I learned a lot, had a great experience but after a couple of years of doing that I sort of stepped back and thought about well when I'm 90 years old I'm looking back at my life like is this you know what I would want to have done this is what I would want to sit in my career doing I thought well probably not I want to do something meaningful and I'm starting thinking about what would that look like and I thought back to a lot of experiences that I've had with my grandparents growing up and also looks at where our health care system is today and you know for the last decade essentially there's been a lot of sort of ongoing conflict over this question of how we pay for our rising healthcare costs and in general if you can if you can proactively do a gender therapy that really restore health you can reduce costs relative to the sort of retroactive treatment paradigm that has been used and so I started really focusing on well what would that how would we implement that and one of the things that I did was just volunteer for an organization that was doing working on better long-term preservation of human organisms issues and to do a variety of things preserving more organs that they're not lost being able to have more time to be camped plants and one of the sets of tissues that I started really looking at though interesting was bone marrow because bone marrow is an example of a tissue that was enabled to do good cryo-preteration enough for a long time it can be stored for decades and then transplanted afterwards and I really started looking into the bone marrow transplant ecosystem and I was a bit surprised to continue with the tissue that we could store essentially permanently and yet they were still a huge shortage of it and so through my network of mutual friends got introduced to my co-founder who had previously run a cord blood bank slash sperm bank just a variety of you know low temperature preservation of human cells and started looking at what a model for doing a bone marrow bank would look like you know dig a little need this and if it did for the building and so we started really you know talking to a bunch of a few mocks doctors who do bone marrow transplants routinely about whether they would be how excited it would be about having the opportunity to just you know make a call or you know click a button and tap on rather than look for the patients in a few days and the amount of excitement that we you know got in that was really shorting there and so we decided to make it happen. I love the path of your love where is it in your whoa I see that coming.
Changing directions. Amazing. So Kevin you're talking a lot about being able to store bone marrow for a longer period of time. Are we at the point now where someone can just donate bone marrow and then have it just stored it doesn't necessarily have to go to a specific person like a beat-a-match.org it can just be stored and then whenever someone is in need then they can go to the bone marrow bank and then utilize whatever the best match is.
Are we near that point or is that something that you guys are foreseen. So we are near that point especially many of the different registries around the world and a few of them are currently offering these programs where they will actually they will ask rates for now some people who want to donate now and then simply proud of that and have that available in the future. It's not widely done it's still very very new in fact I don't even know if they've actually done any transplant using that yet but it's definitely something that a number of these registries are actively looking at precisely because of the enable it would enable the transplant to happen more quickly. The main reason why you haven't been done historically and it's still slow to pick up now is just that one you know giving bone marrow is typically perceived as being dangerous and painful.
It's actually not as bad as the law for getting this relative to quick but the public certainly you know interprets the cost of being quite high and so they're much more willing to do that as a specific person whose life is going to be saved and it's going to be a thing. The other reason though is that because to do a bone marrow transplant you need to be an HLA match for the recipient. So HLA is human econciac antigen on the surface of the million cells those complex called major histocannabinic complex. It's basically a bunch of proteins and it's a lot of the things that are misplaced.
It sort of displays pieces of proteins that cut out by the cells to the immune system and it's a lot of butts on the past. So if you look at the sequence that you see with you know I mean you compare the amount of variability across different people to different factors that you know the part that determines what your HLA type is is just one of the most variable. So every person on this call is going to have a different HLA type. And so what that means is that if you were banking in advance you would need a very large number of samples that were banked in order to have a good probability of matching someone when the time for donation comes.
So if the donor is deceased we've got one shot and so you do it immediately but if the donor is alive and they can principal come back later it's often more efficient to just wait until you actually need the bone amount and then instead of asking them to donate it and then just don't get a problem in the use. So you guys have you know thought about and spun forward the innovation I'd innovative ideas of possibly ending the need for anti-rejection medicine. So where in that sector are you guys and what big challenges are still ahead? So today when someone gets an organ transplant in general it's not possible to an HLA match for the recipient and the donor.
They are so rare and so rarely available underneath of them is so large and their amount of time that we have from transplanting them is so low that we of course just transplant them immediately which means in general there's not a match in people with injector organs. And so the immunosuppressant resonance that people are on for those enabling organs to last longer than they otherwise would. Most organs are still ultimately rejected, most of them are rejected within about 12 years of the initial transplant. And of course in the meantime you know because patients are mainly in prison so depressed they have elevated risk of infection even diabetes cancers that are this for a long time for you know the first several decades of translational and essentially are only option.
But we mentioned earlier that if you give someone a bone marrow transplant you are giving them the blood and immune system of their bone marrow donor. And so with this process called immune con conduction what we do is we ablaze or remove just a portion of the bone marrow themselves of the organ recipient, give them a transphinal cells from their organ donor and then when those cells engraft and start to populate within the recipient the instant it's called the makes chimerysin, when they're producing blood and immune cells are descended from both their own native bone marrow and the donors at the same time. And this chimeric state results over time to result in what's called tolerance to occur where the recipient's blood and immune system starts to tolerate or accept cells that are descended from the bone marrow and of course the organ donor because they're the same person. And so with this the earliest studies of what the tolerance was possible I should get back sometimes several decades ago but for more recently there's been a series of studies that have demonstrated that you can donate kidneys from little donors and then provide bone marrow from those same living donors and do so on and you have people walking around today not taking any means pressing pills with unmatched kidney donors.
There have also been studies with the teach donors where limbs are transplanted and bone marrow from the limb donors within arm is also transplanted. This tolerance protocol is applied and those people are walking around and they're gone from three drugs that are necessary for immunocipressants down to one. And so at RCM so this is great this is incredible progress. The thing is that most of the work so far has been focused on living donors of kidneys because the protocols and techniques that are bone marrow transplants and the same living donors are well established but 80% of all organ donation in the US is from the C-stones.
And so if we want to bring all the medical and economic benefits of immunotons to 80% of organ recipients that we have to have a way of recovering, banking and transplanting bone marrow from the C-stones. And so this is the core of OSCM's mission and work in this supply we partnered closely with OCOs like mobile and others around the country. And so for this we have we're launching three clinical studies over the next 18 months. One of them is going to be an intestine transplant study.
You probably, you know, intestine transplants aren't that common. One of the main reasons why they're not common is not a life command. It's actually known as the man. It's usually rejected.
There's actually a number of graphs like this. What it'd be an intestine and what it'd be, a limb where they're just very rare because they don't work because of the digestion. We believe actually data that we have that we have that we make these transplant work. We've been enabling people to lose limbs or we need intestine transplant for the first time to really get one in a viable way.
And so a couple of our early studies on intestine and transplants and then later we'll be doing a study for this is on kidneys and thoracic organs, heart and lungs and most of these won't trip off in 2021. Hey Kevin, so this is Sarah and my job at LOPAs I am a family advocate so I approach families for donation. So right now when we approach for donation we approach for organ tissue and ideonation as well as research. And right now our bone marrow is considered research.
And so I know it means a lot to the families whenever we share that the processes of bone marrow transplantation with organ donation not only increase the length of life that the recipient will receive as well as their quality of life. So I guess my question is, is the ultimate goal for you to be bone marrow transplant with organ transplant as a standard procedure? Is that our ultimate goal? Yes it is.
We would like to see every organ transplant nationwide paired with a bone marrow transplant so that immunosuppression and all of the suffering that comes with it and the cost associated with it is a thing of that. Right. And that means a lot to our families, especially our donor families that not only are their loved ones going to be saving lives but they're going to be improving them as well. So you kind of touched on the economics portion.
I can't imagine the impact that it's going to have from an economic standpoint since you mentioned that the cost of anti-rejection medicine you talked about having 10 and 12 pills a day. Right. And they talk about that being such a hindrance, such a hurdle for them to remain compliant. And thus if they can't afford it, the next step is well they don't take it and their organ rejects it now, they're back at square one and the jobs that you guys are doing to hopefully make such an impact there is so huge.
Right. Not only receive the gift of life but be able to afford it is such an interesting concept that we have going on right now. Right. And so as far as the research for specifically for bone marrow to inhibit the anti-rejection medicines or decrease the anti-rejection medicines, where are we as far as the trials?
Well, so there have been there are a couple of trials that are ongoing that some other groups have done focused on living donors that have succeeded in that there are a couple of hundred people now who participated in those clinical studies. And there are people walking around today with kidneys and bone marrow that they've gotten from living donors who are not taking any mispressions. On the deceased turner side, one of our principal investigators and partners over at the Johns Hopkins has done a number of limb transplants using a version of the same protocol that we use to do the recovery of bone marrow. And his patients are walking around, mentioned to see if they also have bone marrow transplant from and they're not, they're on one drug instead of three.
And that's drug number of pills they take per day because it's as much larger as you point out. And so for us, we're going to start our first study. So touch a number of things I mentioned around during intestine transplants and ultimately to me and heart among the first of our studies is going to start in next year in 2020. Wow.
So I'm on the floor. I've been taking notes about in the community, Kevin, where we get these kinds of questions and what's next. And I always say, just hold on tight because we never know what's going to happen tomorrow. Will you are doing that and pushing that forward.
And that is just incredible. So I'm doing research for your interview. We looked up Osteum Health.com. That's O-S-S-I-U-M Health.com.
So if you want more, that's a good site that you can go to. And Kevin, we just appreciate what you're doing. I find it interesting. Your path in life.
And I love where you are now. And we just appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much. All right, guys.
This is a special segment. Should we say of the gift of life? Are you guys ready? Yeah.
But Rebecca, are you ready? I don't know. All right, so we talk about this. You may have heard her name mentioned.
Tell us who Rebecca is, Joe. Well, Rebecca random is the lovely daughter of our esteemed CEO, Kelly random, the number one CEO in the country, by the way. Who's been? I agree.
Yeah. And she's been editing the podcast for the past few months. So of course, she's heard a lot of umbs whoa, huh? You know, so I guess my first question to you, Rebecca, is what's the most difficult part of editing from, you know, compared to what you would have expected?
I think really the hardest part, maybe just editing information that I don't really know that I'm not the best on. So sometimes I ask my mom being like, Hey, like, what do they mean by this? And so she helps out a lot with that. So that's really the hardest is because sometimes I don't understand what you're talking about with the medical talking.
I'm like, okay. So can I be honest? Same here, Rebecca. I was gonna say, that's why we have to break it down.
That's why we have Joey. So tell us a little bit about your background. So you're interning. So how old are you?
What school do you go to? What do you want to do with yourself? So I'm 17. I got a lecture high school out of Mandeville and I started getting into editing when I was like a little bit younger, we go on family vacation.
So I just put a video together. And then my mom told me that y'all started doing this podcast and that I could help out maybe. And so that was the first time I started like audio editing. And so Troy helped me out a lot.
So my mom let me do this to see if I wanted to do this in the future. And so right now this one I'm leaning towards. So for me, Kelly is a brilliant woman. I have to say visionary.
Yeah, Troy, she's had to stay your job. I think she wants you to bring some of this info home. So obviously you grew up with donation being a good thing. You've seen how it's helping.
So tell us your your view on donation and then working with this podcast, it must have opened you up because you said you're learning. Yes. So I've grown up with organization. My mom's always talked about it.
It's just always been around me. I always had a concept of it. Like what I like I knew what it was. I knew what it was.
I knew it helped people. Like I just knew it was the right thing to do. So editing this podcast really helped me out a lot more to go into depth with it. So like when people ask me questions like, well, what do you do?
Like what do you edit? Like I could just tell them everything I learned and it really helps inform people. Yeah. You're beautiful.
Look at that. So Sarah, this reminds me of me talking to you when you were in college. Yeah. I'm not allowed now.
I get it. But I was deathly shy. So getting up to a microphone. I would have passed out.
I passed out. I passed out. Yeah. So bring back some memories Sarah.
Absolutely. But with you behind the wheel helping, you were shy at 17, but you helped us. And I'm sure you helped steer us like in the ways that we can help spread the word. I'm pretty sure Lori was never shy.
So what she's trying to do right here. Listen, in college. It's natural as Rebecca, I'm going to show you. Okay.
So in college, you're 17. So you make your way there. And we have to do this project and the TV cameras were coming and they needed somebody to interview and I spent that class in the bathroom. Because it's a way.
I could do that. Right? So we're glad that you're here. Are you glad that you did it?
Yes. I'm very happy with actually committing to this and starting to work on it a lot more. It's helped me out a lot. So what do you think about Troy?
I mean, up in the air with how this guy is, our auntie guru, like a good teacher, right? Oh, he's amazing. He's the best. Yeah.
And so when you look at the gifted life podcast crew, your favorite. All of y'all. She looked at me before she gets married. When your mom was in his exact chair and we posed the same question, Joie made me.
She picked Troy. Of course she did. But I think it was because he took you under his wing. Most likely.
So where do you see yourself? So you're like 17, Rebecca. So where do you see yourself at? You know, 27, Rebecca.
Hopefully. Amelia, Rebecca. I hope. But just doing what makes me happy, doing helps spread the word of ordination, doing what's the best for the community.
Yeah. And college wise, you're staying around? Hopefully going to Florida. Oh, we can take the kettle on the roof.
Rebecca, think about it. Really? Yeah. All right.
So I like that during the summer, you're working, you're interning, you're keeping your mind fresh. That's amazing. Yeah. And thanks for helping us on a gifted life.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pre-smile.
All right. Thanks for letting us grill you. You're on the gifted podcast. We like to take a moment for mental health.
Yep. In today's episode, Sarah's going to be talking to us about something that my wife tells me I need quite a bit of. What is it? What is it?
Relaxation techniques for adults. I agree. I can do some of that too Sarah. We all do.
We all have stressful lives. Fast paced. Yeah. So today we're going to go ahead and talk about how adults can use these skills and techniques in order to create a better, healthier environment for themselves and maybe for their kids and work.
So as we always like to say, self care is really important. Anytime you're on an airplane, they say, put your mask on first before you assist. So this is what we need to do. Yeah.
Yeah. So let's talk about some skills. First, a really, really great activity we can do is called breath focus. So what this essentially is, is taking deep breaths while being mindful in the moment of what we're doing.
Doing now. What do we write? Yeah. It's just taking deep breaths and focusing on it deep breath physically and mentally.
It's really effective in it. Breathing is just so helpful for us anyways and it does reduce stress. But when you take it to the next step and you actually fully focus on it, it creates a mindful environment for you. Yeah.
When life gets to be too much and finally by myself, like either behind the wheel or such. Exactly. How much does that have? A lot.
Yeah. It's so simple that it really helps. It really helps. Another technique we can use is called the body scan.
Now, this is not a CT scan. You do it at the hospital. They're an app for that. Sarah.
Right. What you do is you either lay down or sit down and while you're breathing heavily or deeply, I should say, what you do is you go from the top of your head to relax to the bottom and you focus on each part of your body and turn to relax it and feel that moment of peace in each part of your body. So like, yeah, am I thinking, okay, relax your cheeks. Now relax your shoulders.
That's exactly right. I do. I'm like, no, that's exactly right. So it helps too.
If you want to tense your body fully and one by one, work your way down to relax it. Yeah. I'm so tall. Take me all afternoon.
Well, you could do it in a couple minutes. Okay. Yeah. You could do it at your desk.
That's all the better probably. That's also my brain. Sometimes I totally need what you're saying. Keep coming, girl.
All right. And the last one we'll talk about is what we like to call guided imagery. Now, this you'll probably need aid with. So what you can do is you can get on YouTube and you can look out guided imagery guides and they'll either walk you through any kind of image that you want to feel at peace with.
So a lot of people do like a walk on the beach and you close your eyes and we fully focus on what they're telling you. So you can do something like a walk on the beach or you can do like a forest hike trail, whatever you find the most relaxing in your life. You play this on YouTube or you can Google anything and they will walk you through it and you close your eyes and you fully focus on what the images are guiding you to. Ironically, my wife purchased a VR goggles for me for my birthday this past year.
And my favorite app on there is guided meditation. Right. And it's basically that though, because obviously it's in VR. So it's a 360 view and my favorite part of it, the favorite one that I usually choose at night is a walk on the beach type thing.
And it's the waves rolling in and of course he's helping you to meditate. He's having me focus on relaxing my arms and relaxing my legs and things pretty much very similar to what you're describing now. But I can certainly see the benefits. It's something that I never really focus on meditation, never focused on relaxing.
Honestly, I didn't focus on self care much. And with this, it's almost a nightly thing for me that I look forward to just putting the VR goggles on, relaxing and then kind of watching myself walk on the beach. Nice. And it really, really works.
And like you said, a lot of people don't focus on their self care and especially with adults, mindfulness is the key. So all of these techniques have deep breathing and mindfulness and it really will create a healthier, more stress-free life that you can lead. So this doesn't cost anything. You can do it wherever, whenever.
And I highly encourage you to do it. I love it. So that's for adults and this life on the go, totally necessary. In the next episode, we're talking about relaxation techniques for children.
For children. Yeah. So if you have kids, we're going to help you help them. I like that.
Self care. And that's the topic you want Sarah to cover. Info at thegiftedlife.org. In every episode of the Gifted Life, we honor a hero.
Today's hero, Jared Bradley Brown. Yes, we received this from Jared's family. Jared was 19 years old with a bright future. He became a donor in May, 2009 following an automobile accident.
He was a son, grandson, nephew and cousin. Jared was full of life and drew people to him. He had so, so many friends that loved him. He was a born athlete.
He played baseball, football and racetrack. He was able to help five people with his donation of life, which makes him a hero in his loving family's eyes forever. And now we pause and say thank you to Jared for the gift of life. It's time for our question and answer segment here on the Gifted Life.
One of our listeners wrote in and asked, I really want to have an event to educate about organ tissue and eye donation in my community. Does Lopa offer speakers for events? What? I love this.
Did you send this in? This is amazing question. I love that people are thinking about this and talking about this. Here on the podcast, we want to spur those healthy conversations about organ tissue.
And I don't want to tell you that you are the key. So yes, yes, yes, yes. And Lopa.org slash speaker. If you're in Louisiana, Lopa.org slash speaker, tell us what you're looking for.
We're very flexible. We cater the presentation for your audience of the high schoolers. We're doing a council and agent coming up. We had 4-H University for kids from across the state.
So yes, Lopa.org slash speaker. Now maybe you're outside of Louisiana and you're listening. Find the nearest organ procurement agency near you. You can do that at AOPO.org.
That's AOPO.org. That's the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations. And who? I'm trying to blame.
Who's the president of AOPO at this time? That's our very own Kelly Rannem, I believe. Wow, Lopa CEO Kelly Rannem is the current president of AOPO. But if you go to AOPO.org, then you can click on your state.
Find the nearest OPO to you and then you can request assistance. Our goal is to help you help others and make life happen. And as always, we want to hear from you. Email your questions to info at thegiftedlife.org.
You can also give us a call. That number is 5046483477. We may even play your message on the podcast. And that'll do it, guys, for episode 114 of the Gifted Life.
Yeah, thanks to Kevin Caldwell and our partners there at Oseum Health for all that they are doing to advance donation and transplantation. And we love you listening. We're a team. Our ask is that you share, share, share this information.
We're learning from each other and we're trying to save more lives. The best place to find us is thegiftedlife.org. Listen there and find links to listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And thank you so much for listening, guys.
We know a lot of you on social media. You can like our Facebook page, the Gifted Life podcast. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at GiftedLifePod. Joe, do we inspire you today?
Yes, you do. Sarah, absolutely. I'm inspired myself. Guys, hopefully we prompted you to register as an organ tissue and eye donor.
That's registerme.org. That's a quick one-stop shop to say, yes, I want to help save lives if I can, right? We also are asking that you go out and do something you would normally do to help us make life happen. We're a team.
Talk to you soon. This is a production of LOPA, or the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency. The Gifted Life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Boudreau, and Sarah Blakemore. Our executive producer is Kirsten Heis, producer is Shalom Caraway.
Intern is Rebecca Rannam, and we are recorded, engineered, and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.