DISCOURSE
It ’ s almost six years from the time something is FDA approved to be in every hospital across the United States accessible to patients . Terrible . That means if we had the cure for cancer today , that ’ s how long it would take . support stockholders in these companies . Our mission is to get products to market faster and support the treatments that patients so desperately need . So it ’ s crucially important for us to stay … independent and to support all five companies working on a specific type of cancer to all be successful or for all five to be as successful as possible faster , because that ’ s what helps patients . That ’ s what gets ( patients ) the best options available .
Several months ago , StemExpress partnered with Sacramento County to ramp up COVID-19 testing efforts . Can you tell me about that undertaking and how it ’ s been going ? We created 10 different testing sites that people could go to on behalf of the county . … Our staff would physically man these sites and have some personnel from the county as well . We created a scheduling tool . … If people could schedule and we knew there were 500 people coming in , we could be prepared for 500 tests . … They didn ’ t have to wait in line for hours , and we could filter them through and then use that to ultimately dictate what was needed on the site . We can also dictate that back to our lab — our lab was physically running the tests . … So when we got those samples , then we could turn around the testing in roughly 24 hours , which was another huge issue we saw across this pandemic was huge wait times and issues with turnaround time .
Besides COVID-19 testing , what are some of the other big projects or focus areas underway for your company ? Vaccines . During this pandemic , we ’ ve been trying to take that model that I just explained that works really well and say , “ How can we now also add vaccines ?” … So ( we ’ re ) not only managing the testing phase but also the vaccine . We are making progress and have been on calls with senior officials at the White House , Health and Human Services , and Indian Health Service … about how to take the model that we ’ ve really built successfully here and apply it … more on a national scale and include vaccine deployment as well . The progress since Jan . 20 has been slower than I , or the community I know , was hoping for . This administration came into a much worse situation than was public , but they are starting to round the corner and getting great leaders in place .
Does StemExpress have other initiatives in the works ? A key part of our core business as a company is really that speed in which patients can actually receive the treatment they so desperately need . … A big passion for me has been to always see ( our efforts ) come full circle , if you think about it , from the onset of R & D to clinical trials through commercialization . ( We ’ re ) redefining the word commercialization . For us , our focus has been that redefinition . For example , in previous years , our success , we would look at it from the standpoint of an FDA-approved product . We help a client get all the way through to an FDA-approved product . But then what I noticed is it would take years sometimes to get that ( product ) out to every hospital . It ’ s terrifying if you really look at the numbers . It ’ s almost six years from the time something is FDA approved to be in every hospital across the United States accessible to patients . Terrible . That means if we had the cure for cancer today , that ’ s how long it would take .
32 comstocksmag . com | March 2021