Christina: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of I Am Christina DiArcangelo. And we're rearing at the end of May, and what a great month of May it was for all of us, especially those like Pathik and myself, who work in the mental health space as it relates to clinical research. I’m sorry to, like, tip you guys off already about him, but without further ado. Welcome Pathik. Why don't you tell everyone about yourself?
Pathik: Thank you, Christina, first of all for having me on the podcast.
I think it's great. We met in Philly and now it's great to connect again, basically, I'm from India. We run a clinical research center. And again, I'd like just to say that, Christina, you're doing a great job. I just saw your podcast on Ukraine clinical research, and now you've got me. So it's great that you're getting various international folks onto your podcast.
Christina: I love that. Thank you.
Pathik: Just to give you a little bit of background of myself, we run a CRO in India and we've been around for about 16 years now. We started in 2006. We actually started off just as a research site within a large multispecialty hospital but the model was quite unique. When we started off, we started with a dedicated research center. We don't like to call ourselves an SMO. We are part of the hospital as an extension of the hospital, and I think the model got appreciated by a lot of global pharma at that time, and we work with all the top ten pharma.In 2013. We then decided to diversify and then move up the value chain a little bit and become a full service CRO. So we didn't directly dive into it. We did a lot of nutraceutical studies and OTCs and cosmetics just to get into things as a full service CRO and then eventually moved into phase clinical trials. So that's a little bit about our journey. My background is I'm a business guy. I'm actually quite, I would say, an outlier in the clinical research industry. My background is I'm actually an accountant and who's accidentally got into clinical research, which a lot of people find funny. But then I did my MBA in the US and then networked with a lot of pharmaceutical folks. I knew I was going to do this before I did, but that's a whole different story.
Christina: That's awesome. I commend you because I, too, are similar to you. Like, here I do clinical research and I have multiple business degrees, multiple and even a paralegal certification that in Florida,
I could practice as an ABA paralegal. And here I'm in the biotech space. So a lot of times I'm sure you get these questions, too, when they're like, well, wait a minute, help me understand how you went from being an accountant to getting into this space. So tell me about it, because that's interesting for our viewers to hear. Our listeners, depending upon how they come across our podcast because it shows your tenacity to not give up, right? You got into something that was a little uncomfortable for you because you didn't come from that acclimate right, to begin with, and then you just went into it. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Pathik: So, to be honest, actually, the original plan wasn't to do this.
I don't come from an entrepreneurial background. My parents are doctors. And the original plan was I was working with Deloitte, a typical accounting firm, and I decided to do my MBA. I was planning to finish my MBA, get a job and live happily ever after, basically. But before I moved to I went to my MBA, I actually met the chairman of a large hospital in Puna, India, where I live. And through my mom, who's a doctor at the hospital, we got talking about this opportunity in clinical research services. And that's when I started thinking about this as a business plan. I went to the US, wrote the business plan there, and then also networked with a lot of pharmaceutical folks. I also did a job in Pfizer for a short time to get the pharmaceutical experience and 2006 actually came back and started this company. So it's been quite an exciting journey, I must say.
Christina: It's awesome. I love that. And I love the fact that you're like, listen, I didn't set off to do this. I just stumbled upon it. And that's like, what happened to me when I got into this space. I was really young, 21 years old, and I was working at a law firm that was in a satellite office in Valley Forge, PA. Which you now know where that is because it's not far from Philly where you were when you came out here not too long ago. So I was working as an MNA. Mergers and acquisition paralegal. And it so happened one of my colleagues went downstairs to work for a CRO that was a global CRO, it was a mid sized CRO. And she went to go work for the CEO and they had a contracts position opened where they needed someone to negotiate the sponsor contracts, the contracts with the sites, and work in the finance group through some of the things that were billed against from a sponsor standpoint. So she said she asked me to interview down there because I have legal knowledge, right? I was a bankruptcy litigation paralegal back in the day. I was going to court every Thursday, once a month. So I understand all these filings and all these things. I understand breach. So when she asked me if I would do it, I said, oh, I'll interview, but I don't know if they're going to hire me, but I hope it doesn't make you look bad, right? I don't know what I'm doing. And so I got interviewed and sure enough, they accepted me as a candidate. I got an offer and I started working there, and it was so exciting. I was learning so much. I'm sure you feel the same way, like when you first got into this, and we still learn. That's another important thing to mention is that just because we're at the top of our food chain, so to speak, in our companies as Cs, CEOs, that doesn't mean that we don't learn every day. We learn from our people and we learn from people that we interact with on a daily basis.
Pathik: Absolutely.Thank you for sharing your story. It's pretty exciting that these things happen by accident. And then we've been in this for I don't know how many years now.
Christina: Long time.
Pathik: It’s been a long time. So, yeah, it's great.
Christina: I think it's awesome. And I think also, it's a testament to the fact that we accept challenges head on and we just keep going until we get to where we think we were supposed to be, wherever that ends up being.And then always when you get to where you're supposed to be, then you're also looking to where you want to go next. It's a constant hurdle. We just keep jumping over these hurdles time and time again. And I can see that with the way that you built your businesses, that you didn't set out intentionally and you were paying attention to some of the things, and then you expanded on that because you saw a need that you could help provide a solution for.
Pathik: Yeah, so I've just been to the US for about a month now. I met a lot of prospective and existing clients, and I must say it's been pretty exciting. I've enjoyed myself previously I used to spend most of my initial discussion with prospective clients talking about India as a country because they knew so little bit about it. And the general impression was there is poverty and there are traffic issues, which is true. But there's another side to it. Of course, India has a lot of potential. We just are now the most populous country in the world. Of course, patient enrolment. Yeah, we are the fastest growing economy, and our health care system is really good. We've got really good English speaking doctors. So I think in the global economy, India is definitely coming up in a big way, especially in clinical research.
Christina: Absolutely. I mean, that was one of the reasons why we went out there and have a brick and mortar in India last year. And the majority of my team is not offshore, they're Indian on purpose. Like, we purposely target that population of professionals because we are a global enterprise. And even with my brand, even CD, we have people that work in India that support the brand. And we this year launched our first global APA Affinity Patient Advocacy Ambassador program, where we have our interns come in and they work in the summer with us on different initiatives. So we have three interns in the Northeast here which makes sense because I'm in the Northeast, here in the States, and then we have three interns from India also. And so this is giving these kids an opportunity to work across the globe and learn about each other and business practice And advocacy is patient advocacy is something that's needed all over the world. Right? So we're doing something that everybody needs, even in India. You need it.I have patients that have been coming to us lately, ironically, that need help in India. A lot of oncology patients have been coming to me because we're everywhere and because Affinity is the sister for the CRO that's there. And I'm everywhere. CD people can find me and then they can get help. So it's really exciting. We're going to be releasing a lot of blogs from our interns.And you're going to see them come out of India and the United States. You're going to see their marketing stuff starting to pop up. And then we're going to shoot a podcast with all of them.
Pathik: That's amazing.
Christina: So that people see them. Because as a leader, I feel like we are the same here too.We tried to build our team up. Right? I had the pleasure of meeting some of your team yesterday on a Zoom. We were talking about spectral stuff and it was so neat to see, like you didn't have to be present and I don't have to be present either in meetings. And it'll still flow the way it's supposed to flow. And everybody feels heard and seen, which is important in business and for us. I never want to be viewed as an American that doesn't understand all the cultures. I got into this industry globally. Like I said, when I was in my early 20s and my second job industry was Johnson and Johnson and I worked on Remicade, which was a big blockbuster for them. And there they mandated that we did global training. I think it was every quarter. We had to do it as part of our job corps skill set because they constantly wanted to establish soft skills. And so a lot of that stuff made me very aware here. And so for you and I to talk when we talked, it was like we'd known each other forever. We'd never even spoke to each otherwhen we had our first Zoom.
Pathik: Absolutely. No, that's amazing. Obviously, Christina, you're ahead of the curve. You've been exploring India much before. But in this trip I was pleasantly surprised, to be to be honest. People were you know, when they said, I'm from India, they wanted to talk to me immediately and see how they could explore the opportunities here It's pretty eye opening as compared to my previous experience.
Christina: That is so positive. I love to hear that. Especially since we're an industry that was almost crippled during COVID. Right? All of us were dealing with some sort of situation or another during COVID You all were working on COVID treatments. I was working on all of my companies were also working on COVID treatments. Then the nonprofit was getting patients left, right and center that were long hauler patients, patients with COVID. Patients with vaccine issues. All these things were happening. And I'm so happy that it made people understand that you have to be more global mindful as it relates to clinical development and that we need to help all of the communities in the world. It's not just focused on the United States, which I feel as though we're very elitist about. I don't operate that way. As you know. I purposely make sure that we have the global span and the reach, and I purposely target certain things like helping people in the Dominican Republic, working on FDA filings in the DR equivalent FDA. I did that a couple of years already in my career. This past couple of years, I hope that people start to want to really help patients outside of the United States, and the FDA is now mandating specifically, they keep sending out language and things that we need to adhere to with response to the global patients. They want in these clinical trials to understand the genetics.
Pathik:, Yes, no, that's very true. In fact, just to tell you about, during COVID obviously it was a completely different situation. And then we took that opportunity to kind of leapfrog in the decentralized space. So we were also working on the COVID vaccine study, the AstraZeneca Oxford study, and in a very short time,we could move the entire thing in a paperless way where the informed consent was done using the patient app, and the patients didn't need to come to the hospital. And it could be done completely remotely. Yeah. The IP could be shipped to the patient's house The blood draws could be done from the patient. So it was completely remote and paperless. So I think we use COVID as an opportunity to kind of leapfrog in that space.
Christina:I think so. I'm sure you guys were also running studies that were non COVID related during COVID and all of our enrollment was very difficult. Because even if you could ship study drug to them directly, depending upon what the compound was and what it was scheduled at. A lot of these patients were feeling very stressed out mental health wise with all this because there was that isolation that happened that were mandated by many of our governments across the world. And you had mentioned before we got on about my podcast, or actually you said it today, the podcast with the Ukraine, Anna, when I spoke with her about her experience of being in an actual country that was in war and running clinical studies. Listen, folks, I don't know why people think it's so sexy what it is that we do here. It is not it is very difficult, it's very challenging. And I especially appreciate and applaud people like you and Anna, for example, that worry about patient safety first, right? Making sure our patients are safe in these clinical studies
You probably saw the recent podcast I was on with Dan Safara, and then I had him on my podcast prior, and then I was on his and we talked about this from the site center Heart Space, which is where you also are, and so is Anna. And look at this. You're in India, Anna's in the Ukraine. Old boy Dan, he's in Arizona, originally from the L.A. area. I'm in the Northeast, in the Philadelphia area. And we're all saying the same things.
Pathik: It's the same language.
Christina: Right.
Pathik: It’s patient safety at the end of it. That's the core of all what we do. That's the most important thing.
Christina: Absolutely. It makes me so happy that I find people like you, that you were all drawn to work together because we all want to do what's right for these patients, and we know that a lot of them are suffering from horrible things.
Pathik: Right
Christina: And this is a potential shot for them. Not shot meaning sub queue or something like that. I just mean an opportunity like shooting that this might help them feel better in the end. Right? And I think that if we constantly have that advocacy mindset, which, you know, I'm very obviously very centered about that, I choose that first. Patient advocacy is number one. Even when I'm working in the CRO setting or when I'm working in Spectral, my patient's focus is really who I am. And you are the same, Anna's, the same, Dan's, the same. His whole entire team. I got to meet them recently when I was on his podcast, and they're amazing individuals, Dr. Joe, especially nutraceutical physician that's out there to help people feel better without stacking on all these medications, without having drug drug interactions.
Pathik: Yeah Yeah
Christina: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just popped into my head. I just wrote a case study, actually two case studies for Spectral, for telemonitoring. And I talked about two different case studies that were personal to me. One was about my brother and his battle with opiates and having CHF and then dying from COVID and how this all fell down and why it fell down and what is the solution. And then that was in 22. And then my mom's recent passing, which I shared with you when we talked the last time in January of 23, and how there was not enough communication between the physician, the hospital, the pharmacies, the nursing homes. There were all these people involved, and here I am, somebody who knows better. But I couldn't see what I needed to see because she wasn't hooked into the telemonitoring system. If my mom was in the telemonitoring system or my brother was, this wouldn't have happened. We put ourselves out there on purpose for patients.
Pathik: It’s hard for us, as being part of the healthcare system to see this, and it's sad and unfortunately, in COVID, everybody has lost some near and dear one, but at least now we can say it's past behind us and we can move ahead. And at least we being in the industry an make a little bit of a difference, some impact that improve other patients lives.
Christina: I love that. I agree with you 100%. I think that COVID taught us a lot of things on how we could be better. And I think also it taught us that spending time with our loved ones and people, we appreciate and care about who we were quarantined with, obviously, because there was that that happened, too, where you couldn't see people, and people were dying in your family and you couldn't go see them. I mean, my brother, when he died, he didn't die from CHF. CHF was the cause of why he ravished so badly with COVID But when he died, I had to say goodbye through an iPad, I was lucky, though, right? People in your country, they were dying, and you didn't even know they were dying. They were dying because there was no way to track them. And then they would find them days later dead, and then where do you put them?
Pathik:Yeah, it was a horrible situation. It was a horrible situation during COVID just because we were part of the healthcare system, we were getting calls, about 120 calls a day, just asking for, is there a bed available? Is there Remdesivir available? Is there oxygen available? And we were quite helpless at that situation because there was a shortage everywhere. Unfortunately, people were dying,the morgues were full. It was just a horrible situation. But I'm glad we are past it.
Christina: I learned about the funeral system and how different it is for COVID patients. Right? I didn't know about this stuff because when my dad passed in 2015, that was cancer, right? Stage four liver, lung and stomach cancers, which started APA when my brother died. And when he died, it was January 22. So it's 01-09-22. We were still at the height of COVID at that point. The treatment drug came out from Pfizer. But the problem with that was not everybody had it. That was another thing that was happening. So even though we bought supposedly the United States, all these doses of this drug, not everybody got it. And some of the patients that were Medic Aid didn't get it. So it was like, okay, here we are, working hard to help solve this issue, and now still, not everybody's getting what they need.
Pathik: Absolutely. No, it's such a dichotomy.
Christina: But I'm so glad that everybody, when you came out here not too long ago, that there was an awareness about India in a positive light, like you said. I loved how you brought it up very carefully in the beginning, which was stigmatization. Well, it's an impoverished country. Is there really compliance? What's their health care really like? Should we waste our money? I mean, I can't even believe that people would say things like this. I know because I've been in rooms where it's been said, hence the reason why I'm saying things and you're shaking your head because I know you've heard it before, this is nonsense. So I'm really glad that we're starting to really embrace all the global countries and we're trying to work with people everywhere we can possible to really help patients feel better because that's what our jobs are in this industry is to help people feel better at the end of the day.
Pathik: Yeah, yeah
Christina: This was great. Thank you so much for I'm sorry, I talked a lot about advocacy and all that stuff, but we're one and the same when it comes to that. I know that you agree with a lot of these things and I agree with how you view things as well. So I figured let's show different sides of who you are today so people can really see why you do what you do, that you are a heart centered, service oriented leader. There's not many of us out there. I know, I'm one of them. And it's not easy, right?
Pathik: Yeah, it's not easy. No, but it's great. I'm glad. Thank you again for inviting me on the podcast. I've enjoyed it and I've enjoyed the interactions we've had previously. Also, I think there's a great connection and I'm really looking forward to working with you in the long term and see how we can make a difference together.
Christina: Me too. I can't wait. I cannot wait because there's a lot of things we can do together. We're stronger together than separate. And I said that today. I'm not to be corny, but I was on with my tech team and my bio esthetician from Affinity Bio Partners and then the new business development head for Spectral and we were talking about the system and what we want to see in things. Like we want to increase some of the reporting capabilities based on a biosystem vantage point, which we were talking about earlier. It gives us even more competitive edge for our platform that shows we're different. Right? Because like you were saying, I'm an accountant, right? And I got into the space. I have a tech company and I'm not a programmer and I always say that like I said it to your team yesterday. Listen, I'm going to say what's in the room. The elephant is in the room and that's me because I am not a tech CEO like most of the EDCE Pro telemonitoring companies. I am a clinical researcher and patient advocate. So I make sure I say that and then I build the best team possible so that they support our initiatives. Right? Because that's how we work and I feel as though that's how you are too and that's why we get along so well.
Pathik: Absolutely. I think it's a kind of advantage that we have that we are not directly from the industry we can get away with silly questions. And sometimes those silly questions are actually very important.
Christina: I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate it. I know there'll be other opportunities for you to come on in the future. Maybe we shoot one specifically about global clinical research, and we invite some of my global friends on that. You can then meet, and we could come together as one in a little while. I think that would make a lot of sense, because that's where we're all kind of sailing our ships to the same sea here where we know we need to be global and we know we had to have these global patients.
Pathik: Absolutely, Well, thank you again. Thank you, Christina. It was lovely.
Christina: Thank you so much. And like we say in every episode, thank you so much for joining us today or joining me. Remember, we are the same. I am Christina DiArcangelo. Thank you again.
