RealPharma: Conversations with Pharma Pathfinders

The Mold Blind Spot: Ariana Thacker on Building the First Scalable Model of Care for CIRS
 

Real Pharma, hosted by Na-Ri Oh and Ian Wendt
 

Episode Summary
 

Somewhere between one in four Americans carries a genetic profile that makes it hard to clear biotoxins from the body, and there is still no dedicated ICD-10 code for the illness that can follow. In this episode, Na-Ri and Ian talk with Ariana Thacker, founder and CEO of MoldCo, about how a mystery illness and a mold inspection turned a venture capitalist into the person building a scalable care model for a condition mainstream medicine still mostly misses. Ariana walks through her own diagnostic odyssey, the case for treating mold exposure as a public health issue rather than a niche one, and the treatment philosophy that has put MoldCo at odds with some other providers in the space.
 

About Ariana Thacker
 

Ariana Thacker is the founder and CEO of MoldCo, a digital health company building a scalable, evidence based virtual clinic for mold related illness and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). She trained as a chemical engineer with a focus on biology and spent years in early stage and deep tech investing, building a portfolio of more than 70 companies through her venture firm, Conscience VC. In 2022, an unexplained health crisis, chronic fatigue, brain fog, night sweats, and a cluster of symptoms that resisted diagnosis across a dozen physicians, led her to discover toxic mold in her Miami apartment. She founded MoldCo in 2023. The company has raised $11 million to date, including an $8 million seed round co-led by Cantos and Collaborative Fund, and is now live in 48 states.
 

What We Cover
 

[00:00] Intro — Framing the episode: a condition Thacker says affects tens of millions of Americans, with almost no infrastructure in mainstream medicine built to catch it.
 

[02:03] Ariana's origin story — An unexplained illness, months of inconclusive testing, and the mold inspection that finally connected the dots.
 

[08:42] From patient to founder — Why Ariana spent time trying to recruit someone else to be CEO before deciding to take the job herself, and the biobank findings that convinced her the opportunity was bigger than her own case.
 

[09:33] The scale of the problem — Water damage data, the genetic susceptibility angle, and Ariana's estimate of how many Americans are affected.
 

[11:02] Why mold related illness slips through the cracks — No dedicated ICD-10 code, and a set of biomarkers most primary care and specialist panels never run.
 

[12:09] The diagnostic odyssey — A dozen specialists, a friend's tip, and the Shoemaker-certified physician who finally confirmed a diagnosis.
 

[16:20] Three policy fixes — An HHS-level mold commission, an environmental screening question at the annual physical, and a new ICD-10 code for the inflammatory response to mold.
 

[18:37] Inside the Shoemaker Protocol — How MoldCo built its clinical model in collaboration with Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker, and what "90% of patients get 70 to 90% better" looks like in practice.
 

[21:17] Why access is so limited — Roughly 30 Shoemaker-certified providers nationwide, wait lists, and a pricing landscape Ariana calls inconsistent to the point of price gouging.
 

[23:08] The policy case — MoldCo's economic impact report, and early conversations with HHS, CMS, and ARPA-H.
 

[27:02] How MoldCo actually works — The three questions behind the model (am I being exposed, is mold making me sick, how do I get better), and how a $150 to $300 a month price point pencils out.
 

[31:50] Clinical quality control — Full-time staff physicians, weekly clinical huddles, and why Ariana says the price point doesn't mean corners get cut.
 

[33:09] Treating patients still in the environment — What happens when remediation or relocation isn't realistic, and why re-exposure doesn't always mean starting over.
 

[39:31] Where MoldCo draws the line — Why the team advises against antifungal treatment for CIRS, the research behind that position, and how it differs from the antifungal and naturopathic camps elsewhere in the field.
 

[44:54] The HLA haplotype connection — Why some patients get hit much harder than others, and what having the genetic marker does and doesn't predict.
 

[47:14] What's next — A forever chemicals program targeting PFAS, and the research behind it.
 

[52:50] Closing — The middle school teacher who put Ariana on a path toward science, and where to find MoldCo.
 

Notable Moments
 

On not wanting the job she ended up taking: "I actually did not want to be CEO. I was interviewing multiple CEOs for this role. I just wanted to make sure that this was built and created, whether that was through me or, even more ideally at the time, someone else."
 

On the hair loss that came with her diagnosis: "I actually had the most gratitude for the hair loss, because it anchored me in reality. There is something wrong here. There's an actual physical sign that something is wrong, versus a lot of the gaslighting and doubt I was getting through mainstream medicine."
 

On why MoldCo won't budge on antifungals: "We're not a Shoemaker company, we're MoldCo. In light of new data and evidence, we're happy to change our opinion and our approach. But for now, what we're doing is working, and it's working great."
 

On pricing: "There's no reason this can't be affordable and accessible for patients... there's no reason it should include a $13,000 price tag. I just think that's absurd."

Mentioned in This Episode

The Shoemaker Protocol, and the work of Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker and Dr. Scott McMahon

MoldCo's economic impact report on the healthcare cost burden of mold related illness

LabCorp, where MoldCo's lab panel is processed

Conscience VC, Ariana's venture firm prior to founding MoldCo

MoldCo's free environmental exposure guide and self-assessment

From Patient Involvement to Patient Leadership: A Conversation with Donna Cryer, JD
Real Pharma, hosted by Na-Ri Oh and Ian Wendt

Episode Summary
As AI moves deeper into drug development, from trial design to evidence generation, the more pressing question isn't what the technology can do. It's who has the authority to decide how it's used. In this episode, Na-Ri and Ian sit down with Donna Cryer, JD, founder of the Global Liver Institute, longtime FDA patient representative, and the person credited with creating the Chief Patient Officer role in Pharma. Donna draws a hard line between patient involvement and patient leadership and makes the case that one changes outcomes while the other is often just theater.

About Donna Cryer
Donna Cryer is a lawyer, patient advocate, and two-time (arguably four-time, counting interim roles) CEO who has spent decades pushing patients from the margins of drug development into governance roles with real authority. She was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease at 13, which led to a rare autoimmune liver disease and a liver transplant in her twenties. She founded and led the Global Liver Institute for a decade, serves as an FDA patient representative on advisory committees, sits on the board of PathAI, and built the framework that became the pharmaceutical industry's Chief Patient Officer role.

What We Cover
[00:00] Intro — Framing the episode: patient leadership in a moment when pharma is becoming more data-driven and AI-enabled, and why the real question is one of authority, not just capability.

[02:19] What shaped Donna's philosophy — How a decade building the Global Liver Institute, and a career of being one of the only people in the room who knows where the liver actually is, shaped her approach to patient leadership.

[05:33] Liver disease and stigma — Why most of what people think they know about liver disease is wrong, how stigma shows up differently across hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and cirrhosis, and how Donna worked to change CPT coding so mash patients weren't buried under cardiovascular or diabetes diagnoses.

[07:34] Donna's own story — Diagnosed with IBD at 13, an autoimmune liver disease in her twenties, and a transplant that gave her a kind of authority no amount of professional training can substitute for.

[11:22] Defining patient centricity — Donna's litmus test: did something actually change because a patient was in the room? If nothing changed, it wasn't patient engagement, no matter what the meeting deck says.

[17:47] From involvement to leadership — Why one patient out of twenty on a P&T committee isn't leadership, and what it actually takes for patient input to carry weight in a decision rather than just being collected.

[23:14] Building the Chief Patient Officer role — The origin story, why nearly every CPO hire ended up being a physician despite Donna's original intent, and the trust gap she thinks still needs to close: can a patient leader be trusted with fiduciary and business responsibility, not just advocacy.

[30:09] FDA patient representative: voice vs. vote — What it's actually like sitting on an FDA advisory committee with a vote, not just a comment period, and how that changed the outcome of specific drug approval decisions.

[36:50] Culture and acceptance — The uneven reception patient reps still get in rooms full of physicians and biostatisticians, and Donna's approach to turning skepticism into buy-in, plus her case for clinician training on working with patients as peers rather than problems.

[44:24] AI in pharma — Donna's board role at PathAI, and a guiding principle she credits to a colleague: if a task doesn't require your judgment, your license, or your network, AI can probably do it. Where that leaves the parts of the job that still require a human.

[50:06] Where AI helps, and where it doesn't yet — The problem of patient data missing from the sources most models are trained on, and why patient registries, patient communities, and even patient co-authorship on publications matter for closing that gap.

[51:51] Patient skepticism about AI and health data — Why concerns about data governance and security are real, but patients in genuine medical need are often more willing to adopt AI tools than the industry assumes.

[55:05] Closing advice for pharma CEOs — Donna's ask: don't just bring a patient in to solve "a patient problem." Bring a patient in to help solve the biggest problem facing the company.

Notable Moments
On what patient centricity actually requires: "My favorite definition of patient centeredness, and certainly patient engagement, is: did something change because a patient was there? If nothing changed, then it wasn't patient... it certainly wasn't patient engagement."

On the difference a vote makes: "The difference between a voice and a vote. A vote is so much better."

On AI and professional judgment: "If it doesn't need my judgment, my license, or my network, I shouldn't be doing it. AI can probably do it."

Mentioned in This Episode

Global Liver Institute

PathAI

Advanced Advocacy Academy

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

PatientsLikeMe

When Healthcare Policy Incentives Backfire: 340B, Hospital Pricing, MFN, and Drug Affordability with Deborah Williams
Healthcare policies are often evaluated by what they are intended to accomplish. But what happens when the incentives created by those policies produce very different results?

In this episode of RealPharma, Ian Wendt and Dr. Na-Ri Oh speak with longtime health policy expert Deborah Williams about the unintended consequences embedded in the U.S. healthcare system—from hospital reimbursement and industry consolidation to the 340B Drug Pricing Program, biosimilars, most-favored-nation pricing, and pharmaceutical innovation.

Deborah argues that healthcare policy must be judged not by its stated purpose, but by the behaviors, financial incentives, and measurable outcomes it creates. The discussion examines why transparency alone may not lower healthcare costs, how hospital systems use their political and economic influence, and why policies designed to improve affordability can sometimes contribute to higher prices.

The conversation also explores the practical and constitutional uncertainties surrounding most-favored-nation drug pricing, the Trump administration’s GARD, GLOBE, and GENEROUS models, and the potential downstream effects of pricing reform on research, development, manufacturing, and patient access.

Topics Discussed

Why healthcare policy should be evaluated by results rather than intentions

The history and limitations of diagnosis-related groups, or DRGs

Why MACRA has failed to create an effective physician payment system

Whether healthcare price transparency can meaningfully reduce costs

The effects of hospital consolidation and certificate-of-need laws

Why hospital systems have become so politically difficult to challenge

Indiana’s effort to cap hospital prices relative to Medicare rates

The widening divide between large health systems and rural hospitals

How nonprofit hospitals deploy capital and justify tax-exempt status

The role of hospital employment in local political influence

Why 340B purchasing incentives can favor higher-priced branded products

How 340B spreads may undermine biosimilar adoption

Whether 340B savings are reaching vulnerable patients

Alternatives to funding safety-net and uncompensated-care services through drug discounts

Why policymakers may need to separate hospital support from pharmaceutical pricing

The rationale behind most-favored-nation drug pricing

Whether European countries are likely to pay more for pharmaceuticals

How Medicaid best-price rules affect commercial contracting

The relationship between direct-to-consumer pricing and 340B exposure

GARD, GLOBE, and GENEROUS drug-pricing models

The legal and constitutional questions surrounding mandatory drug rebates

Pharmaceutical manufacturing reshoring and national economic policy

How interest rates and global reimbursement policies affect drug development

The need to measure the quality—not merely the quantity—of pharmaceutical innovation

Why every healthcare payment system has both intended and unintended consequences

Key Takeaways
Policy intentions do not guarantee beneficial outcomes
Even carefully designed reimbursement systems can produce distortions once stakeholders respond to the incentives. Deborah emphasizes that policymakers must continuously measure what happens after implementation rather than assuming a program is working because its goals are admirable.

Transparency is necessary, but not sufficient
Publishing hospital prices may help patients and purchasers compare costs, but transparency has limited value when every available option is still unaffordable. Meaningful reform may also require addressing hospital concentration, market power, and state certificate-of-need restrictions.

Hospitals possess considerable economic and political power
Large health systems are often among the biggest employers in a congressional district or state. That employment base, combined with campaign contributions and community influence, makes hospital payment reform politically difficult—even when prices and capital spending appear difficult to justify.

The 340B program can create incentives that conflict with affordability
The discussion examines how hospitals may earn substantial spreads between the discounted acquisition cost of a drug and the amount ultimately reimbursed. Those spreads can influence product selection, encourage use of higher-priced brands, and weaken the competitive position of lower-cost biosimilars.

Safety-net funding should be tied to services society wants to support
Rather than indirectly subsidizing hospitals through drug-pricing spreads, Deborah suggests that policymakers consider more direct support for uncompensated care, emergency services, obstetrics, psychiatric care, and other socially valuable services.

Most-favored-nation pricing remains highly uncertain
MFN policies may be politically attractive because Americans pay more for many medicines than patients in other developed countries. However, other countries may be unwilling or unable to increase their spending, leaving manufacturers to absorb much of the financial impact in the United States.

Drug-pricing rules interact in complicated ways
Best-price requirements, 340B discounts, Medicare reimbursement, direct-to-consumer models, and international reference pricing cannot be evaluated in isolation. A change in one area can cascade through the rest of the pharmaceutical pricing system.

Innovation should be measured by scientific and clinical value
Deborah argues that policy analysis should move beyond simply estimating how many drugs might be lost under a pricing reform. The more important question is whether policies reduce the development of first-in-class therapies, novel mechanisms, and clinically meaningful advances.

Episode Summary
In this episode of Real Pharma, hosts Na-Ri Oh and Ian Wendt sit down with Kristiaan Rawlings, Executive Director at EPM Scientific, to unpack what is really happening in the biopharma talent market right now. From the surprising resurgence of market access hiring to the growing influence of AI in recruiting and candidate preparation, this conversation explores the forces reshaping commercial talent strategy in 2026. The group also digs into salary inflation, title compression, M&A-driven hiring shifts, hybrid work expectations, and why communication skills and executive presence may matter more than ever.

What We Cover

Why market access has re-emerged as one of the hottest hiring areas in biopharma

How companies are responding to policy shifts, competition, and launch pressure

What the current K-shaped hiring market means for candidates in high-demand vs. lower-demand functions

Why specialists in forecasting, analytics, and insights may need to broaden their skill sets

How AI is affecting interviews, candidate prep, and recruiting workflows

The continued importance of presentation skills, executive presence, and storytelling

How M&A activity is influencing hiring, retention packages, and future job movement

What’s happening with salary growth, especially at the director, senior director, and VP levels

Why hybrid work is still the norm and fully remote roles remain limited

What candidates should know before making a move in 2026

Key Takeaways
Biopharma hiring is not following a single trend. Some functions are seeing intense demand and rising compensation, while others are consolidating under broader roles. Kristiaan explains that market access, select commercial operations roles, and experience in competitive therapeutic areas are commanding a premium right now. At the same time, he notes that professionals who can combine technical skill with strong communication and leadership presence are consistently outperforming others in the interview process.

The episode also highlights a more nuanced view of AI: it is not simply replacing jobs, but it is changing how work gets done. Used well, AI can improve recruiting efficiency, candidate prep, and search precision. Used poorly, it can make candidates sound generic, underprepared, or overly scripted.

🧠 Episode Summary
What if we’ve been thinking about cancer all wrong?

In this deeply personal and paradigm-shifting episode of RealPharma, hosts Dr. Na-Ri Oh and Ian Wendt sit down with Dr. Christopher Gregg—neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and stage 4 cancer patient—to explore a bold new vision for cancer care.

Dr. Gregg shares how his own diagnosis sparked a radical rethink of oncology: moving away from the “war on cancer” mindset toward managing it as a chronic, controllable condition. Drawing inspiration from agriculture, AI, and evolutionary biology, he introduces the concept of “algorithms as drugs”—dynamic, data-driven treatment strategies designed to outmaneuver resistance.

This conversation blends cutting-edge science with raw human experience, offering a hopeful and pragmatic roadmap for the future of precision medicine.

🔑 Key Topics Covered

Why curing cancer may not always be the best goal—and what to aim for instead

The concept of adaptive therapy and managing cancer like a chronic disease

What elephants, farmers, and pests can teach us about treatment resistance

The limitations of today’s drug development and clinical trial systems

“Algorithms as drugs” and the future of programmable medicine

How AI, smartphones, and behavioral data can unlock scalable precision care

The role of value-based care models in accelerating innovation

Dr. Gregg’s personal journey living 7+ years with stage 4 cancer

Building Storyline Health, Primordial AI, and Uncharted Health

The importance of patient agency—and the risks of unguided experimentation

 

 
🚀 Why This Episode Matters
Cancer care is at an inflection point. While billions are spent developing new drugs, Dr. Gregg argues that the real breakthrough may come from how we use the drugs we already have.

By combining AI, real-time patient data, and systems thinking, this approach could dramatically extend lives, reduce costs, and make care more human-centered.

🔗 Learn More

Explore Dr. Gregg’s free masterclass: Uncharted Health

Follow developments from Storyline Health and Primordial AI

Stay tuned for upcoming clinical applications of algorithm-driven care

🎧 About the Guest
Dr. Christopher Gregg is a Professor of Neurobiology and Human Genetics at the University of Utah, a leading researcher in genomics and brain science, and a biotech entrepreneur. His work spans neuroscience, AI, and precision medicine—and is deeply informed by his personal experience living with metastatic cancer.