Partick Hines, October 5th, 2022

Partick Hines, October 5th, 2022

In this interview, Patrick Hines talks about his past and being from North Carolina as well as his organization Functional Fluidics.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

en-US

Dr. Patrick Hines was originally from North Carolina, until he moved to Michigan in 2009 to pursue his MD/PhD at Wayne State University.

Detroit, MI

10/5/2022

58:11

Taylor Claybrook

Lily Chen: Okay. Cool. Today is Wednesday, October 5th. It's around 12:13 p.m. and I'm really excited to be conducting a hustle interview today at the Detroit Historical Society. And today we have Patrick Hines. Patrick, go ahead and spell your full name and how you would like it written in your...

Patrick Hines: So, Patrick Hines.

Lily Chen: And what pronouns do you use? He. Okay. Perfect. And then the name of your organization.

Patrick Hines: Functional Fluidics. Okay. Should I spell that or...

Lily Chen: I think we're good. Thank you.

Patrick Hines: And I'm also at Wayne State as well.

Lily Chen: Okay, perfect. What year was functional fluidics founded in 2014. Okay, very cool. So let's kick it back to when you were little, so. Okay. Where where are you from?

Patrick Hines: So I'm originally from Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It's a small town in northeastern North Carolina, a rural part of the state. And my mom and my dad worked at Elizabeth City State University. My dad was a music professor. My mom's a librarian. And I have one sister who's now a theater professor here at Wayne State University. She's director of the African-American Theater Program.

Lily Chen: Wow. That is really cool.

Patrick Hines: Yeah, she's good.

Lily Chen: What is her name?

Patrick Hines: Billicia Hines.

Lily Chen: Okay, I'll definitely have to ask you kind of how she played a role in your journey to. But so then when did you come here?

Patrick Hines: So I moved to Michigan in 2009, so I went to college at Hampton University in Virginia, which is not that far from where I grew up. I then went to as a chemistry major. I was also in...did a lot of stuff in music. I was on partial academic partial music scholarship and decided I go the science route to medical school at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Lily Chen: What music?

Patrick Hines: So music. I was a trumpet and french horn player.

Lily Chen: Cool. And did you do classical or. Yeah.

Patrick Hines: Yeah. So mainly classical. The symphonic winds. I did marching band. Basketball band. Okay. I did a little sort of writing and composing in high school for small groups, Little Jazz Ensemble that I played in also. So I was really into music back, back. I still am, but I was more of a participant as opposed to just an audience member like I am now.

Lily Chen: Yeah, well, that's amazing. I mean, one of the questions that we often ask is, you know, what is now that you're you have this kind of main hustle, what is your side hustle or what's like that alternate life, you know? And for you would definitely be being a musician.

Patrick Hines: Yeah, that was that was my thing. You know, it's I tell people all the time that, are in medicine and science that are artist in some kind of way. Also that there's no inconsistency with that. Because a lot of the creativity that you bring to bear as a a research scientist, for example, and in having to sort of see things in different ways, look at data in different ways, ask questions that other people don't necessarily see is very unique to how you view the world. The same way with art, you know, you know, one can produce the art that you would produce, the way that you would do it in a way that you would make it sound and the way you would interpret it. And so the same kind of creativity and the ability to sort of see things in a different way and not be locked into a box that you need as an artist is the same sort of mental creativity and flexibility that you need as a as a scientist and as a business owner to as I'm learning. Um, that's a, that's a more recent venture for me. You got to be really creative as a business owner.

Lily Chen: I bet. Yeah. So. Okay, so you studiedchemistry in college? Yes, you did. You always know you wanted to be a doctor.

Patrick Hines: I did not. I thought I wanted to be a musician. Yeah. And early on, so. But I found out that I really like science. Yeah. And when it came to something that took advantage of the skills I thought I had, which is I really love connecting with people. And I really liked science, you know, the the medical route. Seemed to be the best fit and so I actually did something interesting. When I went to Medical School, University of North Carolina, they had a program called the Medical Sciences Training Program, which is basically an M.D. and a Ph.D. program combined. Yeah, so a newer program. At that time, I was the third African-American to be accepted into that program when I was accepted back in. Was this to 2000? No, I'm sorry, 1996. 1996 is when I started that program. So it's an eight year program, four years of med school, four years of grad school. That's a long time.

Lily Chen: So you have an MD PhD? Yeah. That's not intimidating at all.

Patrick Hines: Well, it shouldn't be. Just means I was in school for a long time.

Lily Chen: That is crazy. Okay, so that makes sense. So. So you really were not thinking like, I want to practice medicine. I want to do research. Like medical research, basically.

Patrick Hines: Honestly, I couldn't decide. And I didn't want to decide because I thought that there. I couldn't. They're so intertwined. The research questions. The research didn't matter unless I understood how it impact a person that I was caring for. Right. That's what made the research exciting. That's what made it meaningful. Because, you know, research can be very lonely and isolating, which is not sort of how I'm, you know, sort of made up of it's more social and interactive. But because I understood that the research had a direct impact, or at least the way I thought about it, it had a direct impact on the lives of people that I cared about and that I was taking care of. Yeah, that really made it exciting enough for me to pursue.

Lily Chen: Yeah. Your your Ph.D. research or your dissertation what was that on?

Patrick Hines: So it was in the study of red blood cell biology and biochemistry in the Department of Pharmacology and the clinical application. So just studying that as a as a discipline would have probably bored me to tears. But what made it exciting was the application to sickle cell disease. and we were understanding back in those days how people with sickle cell disease, their condition is very episodic. So they can be sort of in their normal state of health one minute and without warning, they can be just incapacitated with pain that can put them in the hospital, put them in the emergency department. They will have to get I.V. pain medications, blood transfusions, all kind of awful stuff. But we didn't really understand what are the sort of signals that change you from being your normal self to being incapacitated? And that's where we were understanding what signals the body sent out that changed the behavior and the health of red blood cells in a way that they would misbehave and prevent the normal flow of blood that would cause these problems. That was really what I was trying to understand, because at the time there really weren't many mechanisms to treat patients in the way that we could prevent these problems. And that was frustrating because I knew a lot of patients with sickle cell disease. In fact, my my sister, who was a student in North Carolina A&T was dating a young man that had sickle cell disease. And it it really illustrates sort of a lot of the the things that they deal with. You try to live a normal life. You're trying to be a normal college student, but you've got this thing that just, you know, keeps impacting your life and doesn't allow you to do the things you want to do. And the fact we couldn't offer anything more was really frustrating. So the study of the biology and the biochemistry, but it was it was bigger than just sort of this wonky science, but it was something that could potentially help someone live a normal life. Yeah. And that's that's why I was interested in it. And that became an interest for the rest of my career. And it's really the foundation for Functional Fludics, the company that I found it back in 2014. Right.

Lily Chen: So give us a sense of. I think lots of people have heard of sickle cell disease. And give us a sense of, you know, maybe how many people it impacts. And we are learning from you kind of the stakes. Right, and how it impacts people's lives. But how many people are we talking and. And if you were to break it down into the most basic explanation.

Patrick Hines: Sure. Sure.

Lily Chen: Well, how would the public understand it?

Patrick Hines: Yeah. So in the United States, sickle cell affects about 100,000 people. Okay, it sounds like a small number, but there are many more people that are living with the trait for sickle cell disease. And because of sort of changing population demographics, that number is growing, actually. So but but it's so it's considered a rare disease in the United States. Globally, it's a much bigger problem. It's about 25 million people globally. The majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. But there are a lot of people living with sickle cell disease in India, in South America, in the Middle East, really anywhere where malaria is endemic, you see a there's a pressure to propagate the gene for sickle cell disease because having sickle cell trait actually protects you from malaria. So because you can survive malaria better if you have the trait, the gene sort of carries on. That's where you live. You have the disease. That's a really bad thing and that's much worse than having the trait and so yeah, so that that's, you know, really the demographics, about 100,000 people in the United States and a much bigger problem worldwide.

Lily Chen: That's crazy. It's like you're seeing the way that evolution works now in real time.

Patrick Hines: Exactly.

Lily Chen: When we see it with bacteria all the time. But. Right, that's crazy. And then, you know, for the people that are impacted, what does life look like, you know?

Patrick Hines: So I think the easiest way to think about it is to think about the fundamental problem with sickle cell disease. So it's a point mutation in the gene that codes for the most important, I think the most important protein in your body that exists in red blood cells is called hemoglobin. Why is that the most important protein in your body? So we're sitting here breathing air right now, right? Feeling good. It doesn't matter. Our lungs ability to take an oxygen if our red blood cells don't capture that oxygen and carry it to our brain or liver or kidneys everywhere in our body that needs it. So this point mutation that affects hemoglobin in people with sickle cell disease does a really bad thing when there's two genes, one for mom and one from dad that have this mutation when that hemoglobin let's go of oxygen. And so it's without oxygen for a period of time, it can actually what we call polymerase, we can stick together and form these long chains that miss shapes the red cell that causes it to have that sort of classic sickle shape that we think about. But what we've learned about the disease is that it does a lot of other things too, that causes the red cell to misbehave and really become unhealthy. And that's why I've really been fascinated by red blood cell health as a really as a area of study, because red cells are so foundational to our health and wellness. And and you need to look no further than the sickle cell disease. When red blood cells aren't functioning, it impacts every organ in your body. Yeah, your brain, your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, sexual function, reproduction, reproductive function. You're all affected by this one point mutation in one protein inside your red blood cells. That's how important your red blood cells are.

Lily Chen: Okay, well, it's crazy to think about. So I'm I'm learning like, basically how your research has very, uh, like very consequential in real life for people. And I can also see, like, you know, through the years how, you know, majoring in chemistry and then starting your research and medical practice and then where you are today. It's like all all very much related. Right.

Patrick Hines: Right.

Lily Chen: Did you before you entered college, how did you end up in chemistry?

Patrick Hines: That's a good question. So I think the simplest explanation is that I knew I like science. They were offering scholarships in chemistry. They weren't offering scholarships in biology. There were a lot fewer chemistry majors than biology majors. I need money to go to school. It was an easy equation for me. Very practical. That makes sense. Yeah.

Lily Chen: I mean, I feel like that's how a lot of us.

Patrick Hines: A lot of us have to make decisions based on factors other than just the love of something. Right. And particularly, you know, many of us that they come from, you know, either, you know, African-American or disadvantaged backgrounds where you don't have the same amount of resources as other people. So you have to be more practical in your decision making. And it can't be all just about what you love, but you got to be able to to pay the bills, pay the tuition if you're going to be there and find a way. We were talking about, you know, Detroit Hustle. That's what ...that's a part of the hustle. Yeah, you got it. You got to find a way to make it work. So when there might not look like there is a way, you got to you got to figure it out. And so there are a lot of other things that you take into account beyond just what you like. Absolutely.

Lily Chen: You had mentioned that you were the third black chemist that that went into the MD/PhD program. Right. Is that right? Right. So, I mean, we know to this day, 2022, science and the hard sciences in particular is very white, very male. Um. Any like thoughts on kind of your experience or even encouragement for young people of color, young women of color that are trying to follow that path?

Patrick Hines: Yeah, I can just tell anyone is thinking about that, especially younger folks in school. You're needed, you're desperately needed because you need to look no further than COVID to understand why we need to be represented in in the health fields. Trust is a huge part of science, and medicine is more intuitive with medicine, but not so with science. The science that you do, if you look at COVID as an example, even sickle cell disease has to be applied to people that have to agree. Yeah. To be a part of that, where there is research where I'm going to allow my body to be a part of a study to help us understand whether this thing we're developing actually works. That's a big step. And if I don't trust the people that are coming up with this science that I am participating in, then I may not choose to participate in it, which will slow down the development of science. You know, we need the public to participate in science. We need the public to understand science. And if that's going to happen, you need people that understand the public, that reflect who you know the public is in the United States. And right now, we are grossly underrepresented. Yeah, it is. And it's more than just a numbers thing. It's being able to be effective. There's ...it's a life and death thing. There's many people who do not trust COVID vaccinations and vaccines because they weren't getting information from trusted sources. Yeah. So we need more trusted sources to understand the hard science and the medicine that come from the communities where these where the public comes from to build that trust. Yeah. And we need to learn how to communicate in ways that the public can understand. You know, because we aren't talking to scientists and physicians, that's a very sort of insular community. We need to be able to talk to our neighbor down the street. We needed to get to talk to the the lady at the grocery store, you know, the teacher at your kid's school. I mean, these are the folks that you really need to be able to communicate with and engage with. You got to understand those communities and one of the most efficient ways to get there is to have scientists and physicians and health care providers that come from those communities to understand those communities and what their concerns are.

Lily Chen: Yeah, that I that is so important and I'm so glad to hear that response. Like I, I feel like in a lot of the debate it's been. You know, there is a history of abuse and and there's this need for trust. But I think the correct response is the one that you have, which is then well, then we need more people of color doctors. We need people where I can look at that person and say, hey, I don't feel threatened. Right. Right. By what you could do to me. And that's totally right. And it speaks to kind of the just just how important, like things like representation and. Just having doctors that look like you, researchers that look like you, you know.

Patrick Hines: And you know, I've had some of the greatest mentors of my career have been folks that look nothing like me. Yeah, my PhD mentor was was a white woman who just loved her field, was a great teacher, and just cared about people. Yeah. So, you know that that is fundamentally what is, is, is needed. But beyond that, I do think there's something that I'm able to contribute in the spaces where I operate in science, in medicine now in entrepreneurship. That is it's it's a different perspective I can offer because I've lived a different experience. Yeah. Right. When people say it's, you know, it's hard to find black and brown scientists and physicians and, you know, we don't know where they are. I know where they are. They're my friends. I talk to them every day. Yeah. So, you know, I have a different sort of sphere of friends and colleagues that I that I interact with and and having more of that representation, it it makes it possible to have more representation because of the circles that those folks existed.

Lily Chen: Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me of this is like a personal story that we'll cut out. But I was doing radiation for cancer and my doctor was a white man and was very confused when I wouldn't take a pregnancy test because I'm a lesbian. Mm hmm.

Patrick Hines: Mm hmm.

Lily Chen: And he just couldn't. He was like, But you could be pregnant. And I was like, But. But I can't.

Patrick Hines: What medicine are you talking about?

Lily Chen: I can't. And I remember a researcher later reaching out and saying, you know, you know, it's... I think not all the doctors have come around to like being completely comfortable with they pronouns or queer people. Absolutely. You know. It's not just about, you know, I want a doctor that looks like me. It's like, hey, when someone doesn't have that shared experience, it can actually impact my experience. Right? Right. And I'm doing something terrifying, like, you know, dealing with cancer. So it's like I would really love to not have my sexuality questioned, you know? Right. In that process.

Patrick Hines: And I think that a lot of folks just don't understand how much people who are consumers of health care have to conform to us. Yes. Yeah, right. And that is not the way it's that's not the way any other sort of, you know, good consumer provider relationship works. Yeah, but it commonly looks like that in medicine. Like one of the, another example I'll give you this specific to sickle cell disease, because pain is one of the main manifestations of the disease. If you are a sickle cell patient or the person living with sickle cell disease and you come to see me there's not a blood test for pain instead of X-ray for pain, I've got to believe you. Yep. And often African-Americans are not given the benefit of the doubt when they say they're in pain. Right. So so you imagine coming in if ten is the worst pain you ever had in your life and zero is no pain, you pretty much live at a four or five. It's like if we were at a four or five, I know if I was at a four or five, I would not be here talking to you today. Yeah. Let alone if it escalated beyond that to eight or nine. And to the point where I had to come and get help.

Lily Chen: Yeah.

Patrick Hines: And patients. People with sickle cell disease are having to make the decision. Do I suffer at home? Or do I put myself through the indignity of going to an emergency department and dealing with some health care providers who I have to convince that I'm actually hurting right before they'll provide care for me. That was really one of the things that that motivated me to look for ways that red blood cell health could speak for patients because there's things that are happening with your biology well before you have pain. Right. But we weren't we aren't measuring these things. And these things shouldn't take the place of what a patient is telling us. We did a study in Detroit, and this was really one of the things that was foundational for functional fluid. We looked at a population of people living with sickle cell disease right here in metro Detroit. And we did something really unusual as a research study. We didn't ask them to come to the ivory tower to participate. We came to them. So they had these iPad like devices where every day they would tell us, what's your pain level and are you in a pain crisis? Right. We didn't ask a doctor wouldn't ask a nurse. We'd ask the health care provider. It came directly from the patient. This was a patient reported outcome. Yeah, right. And their subjective assessment of their pain status was the only thing they needed to establish that that was happening. Yeah, if that was happening, a mobile blood drawing expert would come to their home, draw a blood sample to reflect what was happening biologically. That blood sample will come back to our lab. We would measure it. You know what we found when a patient says they're hurting? The biology backs it up for the most part, of course. Right. Yeah. We went through all of that. And and there are situations where they don't line up completely because there are other things that cause pain other than the things that we're looking at in our tests. But but for the most part, we see very good alignment between the patient telling us, you know, these black people with sickle cell disease saying I'm hurting, I'm having a crisis. And the biology proving that out so we can save ourselves a lot of trouble by believing what our patients are telling us. Yeah, right. And and acting on that. Right. And I think that the the technology that functional fluidics is developing a can give voice to the patient in terms of the biology that they can't speak to. Yeah, the biology speaks on their behalf and it helps us and it gives us the opportunity to prevent these problems from happening. Because if we can measure this and we see these changes happening before it actually result in pain, now we can intervene early, right? We can start talking about prevention as opposed to reacting to a crisis. Right. Right. My goal and my vision for functional fluidics is that a Detroit is the Mecca for red blood cell health. Right. We're going to build a laboratory business right here where every health care provider around the country that that needs this testing has to send their samples to Detroit. We assess it. We send that data back. And and that data that we send back will help us understand what's happening with people with sickle cell disease and eventually other diseases impacted by our red cells cardiovascular disease, diabetes, perinatology, infectious diseases. There's a lot of things that we're working on. But right now the focus is sickle cell disease. And we want to be able to provide the insight where those providers can keep people healthy because red blood cell health becomes an achievable endpoint of care. We can keep these red blood cells healthy so that the body doesn't have to suffer with with illness and disease. Yeah. And that's really the vision of what we're trying to do.

Lily Chen: Well, something that you're speaking to that's really important. I think sometimes it's hard for people to understand the difference between, like a racist remark and like, structural racism. Right. And you're speaking to this kind of disparity in health care that is just huge. It's very much present today. We saw it through the pandemic, but it's so true that, you know, there are so many studies that show that black pain is not taken seriously. Right. You know, and there's a long history of of how we got to there and what we're dealing with right now. The other thing that. Uh, that I think is so cool about your work is that so many scientists, you know, because of, like, positivism, are really obsessed with, like, you know. There needs to be...The biology speaks first. something that you're saying that's so refreshing is that it's your. It's people's experience that are guiding your work instead of the other way around.

Patrick Hines: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Lily Chen: It's the same thing for things like PTSD and whatever. Right where you shouldn't need a really fancy MRI, too, for someone to get to that conclusion. So.

Patrick Hines: Yeah, yeah. And I think we would, you know, my, my medical practice is pediatric ICU. And one of the things that I teach trainees that I've worked with over the years is. Listen to the moms and dads of these kids. You may have the medical degree. You may be a expert in this particular specialty. But that parent is the expert in this child sitting in front of you who knows the nuances and the things that they might not be able to explain with the with a lab test or an X-ray or an MRI. Why their child looks a different right now. But something is different about that child. Yeah. And you could save yourself a lot of time and trouble and do better for the care of that patient by listening to that parent who knows their child better than you do. Yeah. And starting from there, start your investigation to figure out what's going on and seeing if we can get to the root of the problem that sees so many times that we have to get to belief. right. And. And you lose a lot of time and in the process and trust. Right. It comes back to trust. Many of these patients are coming in and they've had these negative experiences with the with the health care system. Yeah. And so, you know, in order for me to give my child over for you to care for, I got to trust you. Yeah. And so it's my job. And then gaining trust becomes a part of the practice of medicine. Yeah. It becomes a part of the practice of science and research. And it's a part of the practice of what I see the mission of of functional fluidics is doing. Before we can do anything, we've got to gain the trust of the people that we're trying to help. Yeah. And that is this big of a part of the job is the technology that we're developing.

Lily Chen: Yeah, absolutely. And it's great to hear, too, the research methodology of kind of meeting people where they're at. Right. Rather than so often. It's especially with minority populations. It's like, come here and feel scared and we're going to touch you and prod you. Right? Right. You know.

Patrick Hines: And why does it have to be like that? Yeah, because it's always been that way. Yeah. In medicine, research and in science, there's a lot of inertia. And if there's anything that's good that came out of COVID, there were people talking about we need to really decentralize the way that we care for people. Does it make sense that they have to come to this place to see us? Yeah, that's difficult for them to navigate. It's difficult for them. They've got to go through the stress of getting transportation. They got to go through the stress of finding childcare. They got to go to the stress of taking time off work to finally be here to see us for 15 minutes. Right. This wasn't a new problem, but COVID amplified it. Yeah, but because people couldn't come in, we figured out a way to get it done. Yeah. And we learned how to quickly pivot to telemedicine. Yeah. And meeting patients where they are. Yeah. And decentralize. And we'd be careful. So, you know, if you keep people at the center of what you do. You can much more efficiently come to a solution that makes sense in this sustainable. We should have been here years ago. It shouldn't have taken covid to do that, we had to technology. Right. We do tele-everything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Lily Chen: No, it's so true. I think COVID reminds us of many ways that like people of color have been so creative when it comes to being resilient.

Patrick Hines: Oh, yeah.

Lily Chen: For sure. Okay. So you mentioned that you have medical practice. You're a pediatric physician. Is that right?

Patrick Hines: Pediatric intensive care.

Lily Chen: Okay. And where do you practice?

Patrick Hines: So at Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Lily Chen: Okay. And then you also run a successful company and you also teach at Wayne State. Right? Okay. And what are you teaching at Wayne State?

Patrick Hines: So, Wayne State, the teaching is really the teaching of students who are doing research. So it's not all classroom teaching, sort of the classic didactic teaching, although we do do some of that. But the bulk and the most meaningful teaching that I do is having students come in the lab and learn how to do research. Yeah. Learn how to ask questions. Learn how to analyze data. Learn how to draw conclusions from that data. And decide what the next steps are to figure out how to get that research supported. That's a whole process. Yeah. And I'm really proud to see one of the first folks that I trained who's actually now on faculty at Wayne State, which I guess means I'm getting old. Jennell White is a assistant professor in the School of Medicine who has her own lab, who's doing some amazing research on sickle cell disease. And that's the payoff from teaching. Right. That is, there's nothing more rewarding than that. So, yeah, so that's sort of the teaching aspect is more sort of teaching folks to do research and teaching folks how to, how to practice. So at the bedside, you're teaching them how to do procedures. You teach them how to make diagnoses and how to engage with patients. Right. How to how to communicate bad news to patients, how to connect with patients and gain their trust and all of that kind of stuff, which you can't do in a classroom or in a book. You got it right. You got to be beside them and work with them. And so that's a really amazing opportunity because, you know, the story I remember that really put into context why teaching is so important. I was on call in the ICU at night and you know, I love that environment. I love the ability to have someone come in that has a very specific problem and you can identify it and you can intervene and get them better, especially with kids when most people get better. But it's it's a pretty busy environment, I would imagine. All right. So I'm on call covering ICU. I get a call from my wife. I get two kids at the time, a two and a half year old and a four and a half year old. And she tells me and my my youngest son is having a lot of pain in his in his belly. And he's not a whiner. And that's kind of odd. And he was just, you know, holding himself down by his lower part of his belly. And and my wife was worried. So I was worried. And it sounds like just bring him to the emergency department. We'll take a look at him. Yeah. And so he gets to the emergency department. I come down from the ICU and I see him there. And he is in agony right now. This is somebody all I do is take care of kids in crisis. Right? That's my specialty. And I can do it and I can just be really focused on what I'm doing. I see my kids sitting there and I am a mess. Yeah. And I see the folks that I had trained. They're taking care of him. That crystallizes the opportunity you have as a as a medical educator. Right. These people that you're teaching, they may be taking care of your mom, your dad, your child, like the most precious thing in your life. So teaching is a really important discipline. Yeah. And fortunately, they did a great job, actually had admitted him to the ICU. He had surgery the next day. He had a hernia, which the surgeons did a great job, repaired it well, the anesthesiologist did a great job. The nurses in the ICU, I'm so glad I was nice to them they took such good care of me and my family and most importantly, my son. So, you know, it really was a reminder of of, you know, what this is you do. Because I was on the other side of the fence. I was on both sides of the fence at the scenes. Right. Right. That night. But, you know, that perspective really affects how you engage with other people because you understand what they're going through, right?

Lily Chen: Yeah. That's such a reminder of like our humanity and and how even though the field of medicine and especially medical research feels so foreign, it feels very scary. Ultimately like it is all a big circle. You know, we are caring for each other. Right. And we have to trust other people to be your friend.

Patrick Hines: Exactly.

Lily Chen: I'm so glad that your son is good.

Patrick Hines: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they are. He's 12. My oldest is 14 now. That was a little while ago. so, yeah, they're doing great. Yeah.

Lily Chen: Okay. So you advise, I assume, like M.D., Ph.D. students for that, right?

Patrick Hines: Yeah. Yeah. MDs/PhDs, you know, I've had some undergrads that come through the lab. I've had a couple of high school kids come to the lab. Yeah. Yeah, that was exciting.

Lily Chen: That must be really fun.

Patrick Hines: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it just reminds you what it is that when you were that age, right. In the kind of questions that you ask. And the first high school student that came through my lab is now in his fourth year of medical school.

Lily Chen: Yeah, that's. I mean, it's amazing. And, you know, you really think about even in your journey to like how those those years are, like, crucial. Yeah. To who you become for the rest of your life, you know, and having mentor figures, having people open their doors and say, yeah, you can come check out what's happening in the lab. You know, make such a huge difference, though. Okay. So you're you are a dad and a husband and you're teaching, you're a doctor and also you're running this business. So lots of free time.

Patrick Hines: Yeah.

Lily Chen: I know. You said you listen to music. Yeah. Uh, any particular taste?

Patrick Hines: I'm all over the map. If you looked at my i-Tunes playlist, you would be like, Who is this? Because, you know, jazz, blues, gospel, hip hop, old school hip hop, newer hip hop. You know, there's a lot of stuff I like classical. Yeah, I'm.

Lily Chen: Classically trained, so. Yeah, you got. Yeah, it's just straight up. Old school.

Patrick Hines: Yeah. Good. Good music crosses genres. Yeah, right. And I think even someone who's a, you know, a fan of rock and roll, you know, you hear a awesomely produced hip hop track. You will appreciate it. Yeah. You'll appreciate, you know, kind of blue, even if you're a younger person, is into, you know, some of the kind of music. I mean, you can't not if you really listen to it and appreciate it. Yeah. So good music crosses boundaries.

Lily Chen: That's absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your wife.

Patrick Hines: My wife. So is that that's the brains of the family. So, yeah, my wife and I met in undergrad at Hampton University. We're both chemistry majors, but I was a senior, she was a freshman, and she went on to graduate the top of her class when she graduated. She would, of course, to do an MD/Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins.

Lily Chen: She also has an M.D./PhD.

Patrick Hines: She does.

Lily Chen: Okay.

Patrick Hines: It was way easier for her cause...

Lily Chen: And she was at Johns Hopkins.

Patrick Hines: She was at Johns Hopkins.

Lily Chen: so like the number one place to do so.

Patrick Hines: In the in the world. In the world. Yeah. You know, made it look so easy. And she's so down to earth, and you just, you know, wouldn't know she's done all that stuff because she's so laid back and easygoing, but. But just probably the smartest person I know. And and so she just an amazing mom. She's a dermatologist in Troy, she's actually the president of the Wayne County Medical Society. And tonight, we're actually going to see her inducted. So very proud of her. Doing awesome stuff. But, yeah, I mean, she's, uh, you know, holds everything together, keeps us all grounded, you know, she's got, you know, three boys, as she says. And I guess I'm among those that I love.

Lily Chen: Like, one of my favorite things when I interview successful people is learning about, you know, their spouses. Especially just some of the women out here are like I'm just like. So am I interviewing the right side?

Patrick Hines: Right, right, right, right, right.

Lily Chen: I'm like, wow, these women are so cool.

Patrick Hines: Yeah. And they do it. You know, we've had similar, you know, if you look at us on paper. But she's had to do it having two kids. Right. Taking time off. She took a whole year off after having our youngest son, who's now 14. And and so you're you're doing all of this stuff and carrying a whole nother load on top of that. Yeah. So, you know, it's, you know, anyone who thinks that, you know, who questions the value of having women represented in medicine and science in any profession. Yeah, I work with a lot of women because, you know, you know, I look at how my wife has achieved and done stuff and knowing what she's had to deal with, knowing, you know, the gender discrimination, sexism and all of that kind of stuff that from her, I can hear it at at a deeper level and understand what it is to have to to go through these sort of professional circles and try to accomplish the same things. Dealing with that on top of everything else. Absolutely. So, so much respect for for what she does. And I love her to death.

Lily Chen: Yeah. I mean, just as a woman scientist, as a woman doctor, like having to be 200%, you know, like to prove that. Not only are you good enough, but you are excellent, you know, top of the field so.

Patrick Hines: And balance stuff at home and still be, you know, a parent to the kids and be there for them and keep all of that stuff. There's a lot of balls to keep in the air, right? Yeah.

Lily Chen: So she does not do red blood cell research?

Patrick Hines: No, she's dermatology. Okay. So she has a much bigger interest in telemedicine, tele dermatology, using that as a platform to make sure that underserved populations have access to the best care. Yeah, that's another really cool thing about sort of the telemedicine concept is that it reduces the geographic disparity. Yeah, right. If you can get access to people who otherwise wouldn't have access to a highly trained provider like my wife. Telemedicine can can bridge that.

Lily Chen: Yeah. How did the two of you end up in Detroit?

Patrick Hines: So when she decided to do dermatology. She got accepted in a residency program at University of Michigan. Okay. So we first moved from Philadelphia, which is where we were before moving here. She was really impressed with the program in Ann Arbor. And so we moved from Philadelphia to Ann Arbor, and we lived there for the first three years. And then since I was practicing in Detroit, we moved out this way after she finished up her program. And so that's how we ended up here. Okay.

Lily Chen: So you've been in Detroit for like.

Patrick Hines: Two decades, since 2009.

Lily Chen: Okay. Yeah. Wow. Long time. So do you feel like you're a Detroiter right now?

Patrick Hines: I do. I do. I have you know, I admire the just the Detroit Grit and spirit, which has been a big part of just becoming an entrepreneur and and figuring stuff out in non-ideal situations and just being determined to make it work. Yeah. And so quitting and giving up is just not even in the DNA. You know, you know, while you're doing it, you know what your purpose is. You figure it out. Yeah.

Lily Chen: You remind us of like. I mean, what you're talking about is that Detroit and its energies are what inspired you. You know, and I feel that way all the time. Yeah. So. So you started your business in 2014? That is really unique. Yeah. You know, to be a practicing physician and a researcher and to have... Of course, it's very much all encompassing of what you do, but tell me about starting your business.

Patrick Hines: So I didn't know anything about starting a business. I knew that there was a problem and that after all of this work that we've done over many decades, finally people are caring enough about people with sickle cell disease in this field to make investments in the therapies and the clinical trials. And so with the clinical trials, we know that the therapies are on the horizon, therapies that we can actually give to patients to keep them from getting sicker on the horizon. I saw a big vulnerability in our inability to assess red blood cell health in these people that if we just treat and just step back and see what happens, there's a lot of bad things that could happen. There's a lot of, you know, unintended effects of these therapies that we won't know anything about. So it became really important to me to figure out a solution to that. And I learned that it's not enough to just recognize a problem a lot of times are really good at seeing, okay, this is a problem. And, you know, somebody needs to do something about it and complaining about the tools that we don't have. But I couldn't solve it through practice. Right. I can only take care of the patients in front of me. I couldn't solve it through my research because I could generate new knowledge and I could publish and I could talk at conferences and things like that. But at the end of the day, the patients still don't have access to it. Yeah, I can only solve that through innovation. Innovation and figuring out how to take a medical technology to market. So if I really believed that the technology that we developed in the lab could help make patients lives better, I need to get off my butt and figure out how to make it accessible. Yeah. And so I talked to our technology commercialization office at Wayne State. John Dunbar at the time, who's a director at office, was extremely supportive of the university as a whole, was just so supportive of what I was trying to do. And they connected me with an entrepreneur in residence who helped me sort of incorporate the company license, the technology. And now we had a, you know, a company that existed outside of the university that was ready to start making this technology available to drug companies so they could look at these drugs in clinical trials and eventually the patients. And so to now, we've got to get funding. So we go out there and, you know, so now we just all we had to do now is just talk to investors and raise the money and we're off to the races. No one wanted to invest, really. And back in 2014, 15, no success. So and that was a very humbling experience, right? Because I'm sort of at the top of the field in terms of just the practice and the research. And so, you know, I can do that. I can do this very different skill set and very different priorities that you have to communicate. To get people with resources to convince them that this is not only just something that's important, but it's an invest. It's a good investment. And that language. I didn't have that language at the time. Not to mention that not many investors had seen many, you know, founders of CEOs who look like me. So we had to figure out a way to make a way that no way. And so we bootstrapped for about three years. Pharma saw the value in what we were doing because they saw their limitations without having biomarkers that could show what these drugs are doing. So we supported the company through our own revenue, through contracts with pharmaceutical companies, and we were able to generate enough data to show that this is really doing what we say it is doing. And we were able to get billing codes from CMS so that we could actually make this available to health care providers to be able to order like any other test. And and I was able to identify it to the early stage of getting an investment. Usually you're talking friends and family and many of us that come from, you know, African-American communities don't have friends and family with those kind of resources. Well, I was really fortunate that I was connected with a gentleman by the name of Ron Thompson, who was just phenomenally brilliant individual. He was a former chair of the board at TIAA Craft and on the board of Fiat-Chrysler. He ran his own business for many, many years. He was a really successful entrepreneur who took the time because he's a very good friend of my father in law. He took the time to sit with me and understand the business that we were trying to develop and not only just how idealistically it would work from a medical standpoint, but the business of it. How does this become a business? And for about a year, he would commute from Ohio up to Detroit, sit with me and my chief operations officer, and just pound us on our financial modeling and how we're thinking about commercialization and marketing and all of that kind of stuff that, you know, I was just that wasn't what I did and it wasn't so my my area of expertize. But after a year of that, we really got our stuff together and it became a a noble idea. It went from just a noble idea to an investable opportunity. And he became our first major investor. And with that first major investment, we were able to outfit the lab to pass the regulatory requirements we needed to do clinical testing. We had a pathway to generating revenue through making it available as a clinical test. And and we were able to attract additional investors. And then since then, we've been able to attract investment partners that we've needed to be able to grow and really grow the business right here in Detroit. So right now, we're probably the leading biomarker provider for red blood cell health for both pharma and also for providers and patients. We are the only provider of these types of tests of anyone in the country. and so if anyone has a patient where they're looking to have their red blood cell health assessed, we are the lab where you'll send your blood samples to right here in midtown Detroit, like three miles from here at Tech Town. And so we've got samples coming in from all over the country. Our lab is six days a week. This is all we do. We provide that data back to those providers. Every week we talk to those providers about every patient that they test. We talk about the data. We talk about how those individual patients are doing. And we collaboratively decide how we should best approach this individual patient based on this data that we're providing and the clinical data that they have. And collectively, we've shown that we can do a much better job in intervening with these people before they get sick and focusing on keeping them healthy as opposed to reacting when they're sick. So that sort of dream that we had years ago. We're seeing it play out. And that's the most exciting thing I could imagine. Yeah. So, you know, you talk about you doing all these different things. You got to love what you're doing, and it's got to have an impact. And and I really am able to see that we're having an impact. And I'm just so lucky to be able to be a part of that. So it's it's been an amazing journey.

Lily Chen: That's amazing. What is the address of the lab?

Patrick Hines: 440 Burroughs Street. And it's Tech Town, Detroit.

Lily Chen: Okay. And over the years, you've grown. How many people do you have on your team?

Patrick Hines: So we have 24 people on the team now.

Lily Chen: Wow. Okay. And then, of course, you have students all the time. Yeah. And if there's any way to estimate, like, how many people you've served over the years or maybe how many tests you've conducted?

Patrick Hines: Well, so we've done over 17,000 tests. In the clinical. Now, if we if we add in research, it's much, much more than that. But for clinical testing, we've done about 17,000 tests in nearly a thousand individual patients, and that's just in the indication of sickle cell disease. So more testing than anybody in this field, and we're really proud of that. And we're even more proud that we've been able to do that in Detroit, where most folks think, you know, and I've heard this from investors and other people, if you're going to do a biotech start up and, you know, diagnostics companies need to be out on the West Coast, you need to be in Boston. And but, you know, many of these patients that we're trying to help are right here. Metro Detroit. Metro Detroit has one of the largest concentrations of individuals living with sickle cell disease anywhere else in the country.

Lily Chen: Right.

Patrick Hines: Why would we not be here? Right. And we've got health systems like the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, Beaumont. You know, we've got great collaborators that are here. Wanda Cerny, who's the president and CEO of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Michigan Chapter, whose dad was the founder of that organization, which is the largest advocacy organization for people living with sickle cell disease in the world right here in Detroit. And a number of different, you know, physicians and scientists there that are right here that have made all types of amazing contributions. Why not Detroit? Yeah, there's the question.

Lily Chen: Yeah. Okay. So my final question is, what does hustle mean to you?

Patrick Hines: So I've said it a bunch of times. Hustle is making a way out of no way. Right. Is a closed door is not an impediment. You know, I had a a mentor in medical school who had this saying if if the front door is closed, go to the back door, the back door is closed, go to the window. And if the window shut, you got to tear the roof off of it. You got to get to get in somehow. Right. And that's that's what hustle is. I mean, if it's an important thing, which this is to me and the patients that we serve, you figure out how to make it work.

Lily Chen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today. I'm going to turn this off.