Episode 21: Transforming Healthcare with The Milken Institute, featuring Key Opinion Leader Caitlyn Barrett

You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, featuring stories and industry insights from experts in the bustling biotech scene of New Orleans. The entire Gulf Coast region is buzzing with excitement, and we're here to bring you frontline access to this vibrant ecosystem direct from NOLA, the city that provides a little lagniappe with everything we do. Where people come for the science but stay for the food, festivals, and resilient culture. I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Business Officer for the Tulane School of Medicine. And I'm Dr.

Elaine Hamm, the Executive in Residence for the Tulane School of Medicine.

And this is Bio from the Bayou. Welcome to Bio from the Bayou. Today's guest is Dr. Kaitlin Barrett. She is the Associate Director for Philanthropy at the Milken Institute, where she works alongside my longtime friend and colleague Melissa Stephens. Welcome to the show, Kaitlin.

Thank you so much, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, first, for our listeners who may not be familiar, the Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on financial, physical, mental, and environmental health. As such, I know that you strive to bring together the best ideas and innovative resources to develop blueprints that tackle some of our most critical global issues, both through the lens of what we need now, but also looking ahead at what we might need in the future and what's coming next. And I know that you have multiple centers, programs, and educational initiatives that all work cohesively, but separately in some ways as well. So before we dive deeper into your specific role, could you tell us a bit about the current broad goals of the Milken Institute?

Your overview was so thorough that I think what I'd like to do is talk to you a little bit more about how we take this idea of making global impact into action. And a lot of what we do as a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank is convene the right people at the right time to address different issues within the healthcare landscape, within philanthropy, within economics and finances. And so it's really taking the most diverse group of people that we can with different thoughts, with different opinions, with different backgrounds, and saying, how would you address this? What does it look like to make successful accelerated change in your mind? And how can we move forward with that?

So as a follow-on to that, how do you find those people? How do you decide who the right mix are? That's really curious.

It's a very integrated process within the Milken Institute. So we actually, we have our convener meetings. As we get to know the people that attend, as we get to know the companies that support it, that's a time when we're able to start to get a feel for the landscape. But within each of our centers, we also have our specific expertise. So within the philanthropy pillar, for example, we know some of the most influential and driven philanthropists, and we are able to say, okay, we want to have some philanthropy sessions. We want to start talking about how philanthropy can make an impact in healthcare. And we can say, okay, we know that we've got this core of people. We know that we can reach out to these people. We know what they're about, what their goals are, and we can start bringing together cohorts. It's really just taking the opportunities that we have within our convener meetings, when we're landscaping, when we're better understanding a field and saying, this is a shining star, this is a bright spot in this certain area, and we really want to make sure that that person's knowledge, experience, resources are leveraged as we try to address whatever given challenge we're focused on.

That's a perfect segue into the next question I wanted to ask you, which is about your role, which focuses more on supporting the Center for Strategic Philanthropy, which, let's be honest, is one of my favorite pillars of the Milken. And I wondered, can you tell us a bit more about that center?

Well, I may be a bit biased, but it's also my favorite. I think that what's really interesting and important about our center is the fact that we move beyond that traditional think tank characteristic or defining point within the Milken Institute, and we move into implementation. And that's important because as we're doing our landscaping, as we're building strategies, we're not just saying, okay, you should, you should do this. We're saying we can help you. A lot of what we do is almost an incubator for foundations. We are saying we can help you write your first request for proposal. We can build your scientific advisory board. We can start to analyze the field for you and let you know where your strategy and your philanthropy and your resources are going to be the most impactful. And we can move into essentially what is a grant program for that particular organization or philanthropist, and then they can move forward. We have several graduates, we call them, of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy, New Foundations that come of that. We also have some that we've worked with for 8 different funding cycles, and we're really reinventing the space within those different ecosystems that those foundations are working in.

That's a really great overview, because I know that you work a lot with people who approach you for help. And the whole reason that the center came about is the Milken was getting approached because of the Partnering for Cures meetings and FasterCures. And folks got to know that you were focused on decreasing the time to saving lives. And how could they contribute to that session? Can you talk in a little more detail about how you work with those people who approach you for help and say, hey, I want to fund something in cancer, or I want to— someone in my family has Lyme disease, and I want to find a cure. How do you work with those individuals to figure out what their best impact can be?

This is a really special— I keep saying things are special because I think that our center is very special. But this is actually something that's really unique about what we do, and that is, True partnership. So when someone comes to us, we build a relationship with them. We understand their motivations, their goals. We understand their experiences, and that helps us better understand what direction we should move in. We've had partners come to us and say, I've recognized that there are no drugs, or there haven't been drugs developed in the last 30 years for my child's disease. How do I influence that system? Or I don't know how we haven't solved the issue of Lyme disease yet. How do we address that? And so one of the things that we do is once we've developed that relationship, once we found those priorities, we then go in and do due diligence. We landscape, we determine where there are opportunities, where there are barriers and challenges within the research spectrum, and that's both on the clinical and the research side. And we say, okay, this particular challenge is here. Maybe there are 6 or 7 challenges. And we also look at the funding landscape. So we say, okay, there isn't any funding within the translational realm within this disease area. And what we do with all of that information is develop opportunities that are specific for that philanthropist. So the relationship plus the— The research landscape plus the funding landscape all inform those different strategies that the philanthropists might move forward with. One really important next step though is making sure that all of that information is shared more broadly. So while they have a specific opportunity that they will want to pursue, we want to make sure that everything we learned goes out more publicly so other philanthropists can fill spaces where there are needs, researchers and clinicians can understand where their incredible work is making a difference and where maybe they could potentially be moving in different directions to make more of an impact.

Again, this is one of the reasons why I love your pillar so much, because working at a university that was founded as a school of medicine to combat a public health pandemic, yellow fever, these things are really important to us at Tulane. And I was curious if there are any specific examples that come to mind that you can share, or any that have had a real-world impact on research or patient healthcare at this point.

Yeah, there are actually 3 that I came up with as I was preparing for this podcast, and I think the first one is a really great example of the variety of work we can do. I mean, I mentioned grant programs, I mentioned landscaping, but one of the really interesting things that we've done recently is a consensus definition for a disorder called misophonia, and that is a disorder defined by an aversion to certain sounds or the stimuli associated with those those sounds. So a lot of times you hear about people chewing being aversive or almost a visceral response to something like that. And there really wasn't a definition for that disorder. And if there's not a definition, then all of a sudden you have challenges with the whole healthcare system. You have trouble with reimbursement, with treatment, with running clinical trials. And so without that definition, the field was kind of stagnant. There's no way to move forward clinically. There's no way to move forward in the research realm. So with the Rehm Foundation, the Misophonia Research Fund, they supported our facilitation of the development of that consensus definition. We worked with 15 experts across audiology, psychology, neuropsychology, and took all of their expertise and the literature and were able to develop a consensus definition. And now as they fund research moving forward, that's a huge impact. There's a huge impact on patients.

We're all heading towards the same endpoint, which is so huge.

Exactly. It's incredibly important. On the other side, this still relates to patients. We have our Breakthrough Discoveries for Thriving with Bipolar Disorder program. And I think that that one is really special because it started with a patient wellness survey and better understanding where patients felt that there were gaps in their care, their treatment, as they were living with bipolar disorder. And that has been at the forefront of our minds, the responses to those questions, as we've developed that program, which has really turned into a $150 million commitment to research, data development, and really a learning healthcare system where the treatment of patients rolls back into the research, the research feeds back into the treatment of patients, and, and we'll continue to iteratively improve how bipolar disorder is treated.

Oh, it's fascinating. I love hearing about this stuff. It's why I love coming to your events so much, because I learn about all the things that you guys have been helping to move along. So along those lines, one of the reasons I come to your events is because I'm always curious about this, and how can centers of academic medicine or universities such as Tulane, LSU Health next door, or Xavier University of Louisiana with their pharmacy school interact with you and help engage with the Institute, especially because you in the Gulf South, we often will have The diversity of patient population, and we're kind of a macro-microcosm of the world in many ways, where you can do things here that can expand to other countries. How can we help you do your job better? How can we make it easier?

You know, a key part of what we do every time we approach a new disease is that landscaping and just openness. Donation of time of these key researchers within these fields is such an important piece and understanding what kind of patient populations you have, understanding how you're working with biotech. I mean, BIO on the Bayou is such a great opportunity to showcase that academia is shifting towards this new way of behaving and new way of working on development of treatments. That's really important when we think about the rare diseases and mental health disorders that we really focus on within the Center for Strategic Philanthropy. We're not gonna make a big impact with pharmaceutical companies. It's going to require this academic biotech collaboration. It's going to require that we're really thoughtful about what the business model is for development of therapeutics and kind of what I call the last frontier of medical research, which is this personalized rare disease, all the groups that haven't really benefited from therapeutic development up to this point. So it's really understanding where these institutions are moving, understanding how they're interacting with biotech, how they're innovating, how they're collaborating. All of that is so important to me. So I could talk to every researcher at Tulane and still not fully understand the entire ecosystem. So it's just being open and donating time and putting on meetings like this so that we can better understand how The field is moving.

We appreciate that. And you'll probably notice, I know it's your first time at Bio on the Bayou, but as you sit through the next day and a half that we have left, that, you know, I've drawn liberally from things like Partnering for Cures, the Future of Healthcare Conference, all the great things that Milken does. And we've taken bits and pieces and tried to put the academic twist on it, but really present it in that way. And with that, I wanted to ask, are there any events that you have coming up that you're particularly excited about that you'd love to talk about over the course of the next year?

Oh, I feel like you must already know that my very favorite is Future of Health Summit.

Mm-hmm.

And that's actually November 6th through 8th. And I'm really actually excited about the theme that we've selected this year. And it's Closing the Gap, Better Health Care for More People. And you kind of alluded to this earlier when you said there's a great opportunity in this area because there are such a wide variety of patients and there's a lot of diversity. That is something, and we think about Hurricane Katrina and how it had an impact on this area. That's something that's really important, and we're finding that as machine learning and artificial intelligence are taking form, and as we're personalizing medicine, as we're making these incredible advancements, there are certain populations that are being left behind. And I really look forward to this Future of Health Summit where we get people that are driving forward healthcare thinking, okay, how do we start considering making sure that better health for more people is happening as we march forward? Make sure we're not leaving anyone behind. I think that's a really key aspect of the Future of Health Summit this year. You mentioned you stole pieces. When I was at CureSearch for Children's Cancer and I developed convener meetings, I went to the Future of Health Summit, and it was the pinnacle of what it looks like to be able to say the right people are in the right room at the right time talking about the right things. And I always sought to reach for that dream. And now that I'm here, it's just so wonderful to see how it comes together and how meaningful these meetings are.

Well, and I love that you're calling it closing a gap because to close out our podcast today, I feel like our focus for both of us is on closing the gap between all the pieces that have to come together to solve problems. And I wanted to ask if you have any final thoughts.

When you say closing the gap, you're right, there are so many pieces. You can think about collaborative networks. You can think about how you bridge the way an academic works with the way an industry member works. There's so much benefit to both of those pieces. There's the learning, the understanding of disease that comes in the academic space, and then there's the ability to move forward. and there's the ability to say, this is going to be a promising area, we are going to pursue it, and we know how to get the FDA to approve it. I mean, those things need to come together. Having worked in the pediatric cancer space, this is a gap we saw all too much, so that one needs to be closed. The gap between the advancements that we're making and the patients that are benefiting. Then on the philanthropy side, the gap between what is being funded right now at the federal level and What is not? There's a lot of need.

There's just a lot, right? Yeah.

There's a lot of need in that translational space. So as I'm talking about closing the gap between academia and industry, there needs to be funding to support the closing of that gap. We need that bridge of funding, of money. So all of these things form this ecosystem that I think is really integral to thinking about how we move forward in the future.

Well, thanks so much, Caitlin. We really look forward to following the Milken Institute. I know I do. I imagine many more listeners will now who may not have known about Y'all before, and the Center for Strategic Philanthropy especially. As always, we'll have Dr. Caitlin Barrett's contact info and informational links posted in our show notes. Make sure you check them out to learn more. And Caitlin, thank you once again.

Thank you so much for having me, James.

It was a pleasure. This episode of Bio from the Bayou was recorded at Bio on the Bayou, our annual event showcasing academic science, biotech, and startups from the entire Gulf South region. Save the date for 2024, October 29th and 30th. Check out bioonthebayou.com for more information. Thanks for joining us for BIO From the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again. If you'd like to learn more about the emerging biotech scene in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, visit us at biofromthebayou.com, where we have more info on who we are, how to get involved and connected in biotech in New Orleans, and the industry events we'll be hosting where you can meet with us in person. And we'd be remiss if we didn't give a special thanks to the Accelerator Network for providing funding for this podcast. Learn more about them in our show notes. We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.