How do we move from treating diseases to caring for individuals? Dr. Anthony Yanni, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Patient Centricity at Astellas Pharma Inc, has spent his career shaping patient-centricity—and in this episode, he shares a framework for embedding it into drug development, clinical trials, and healthcare delivery.

We cover:
- Building a patient-focused culture—why real patient centricity is an active process, not a slogan
- Bridging the gap between research and real-world care—ensuring patient input guides drug development from the start
- Mental health & neuropsychiatry trials—why patient voices must be front and center in an area long overlooked
- Patient burden & clinical trials—how early engagement can improve recruitment and retention
- Trust in pharma—why patient relationships must be built on transparency, collaboration, and listening first

Dr. Yanni also shares insights from his new book, A Bandana and a Bluebird: The Path to a Patient-Centric Healthcare System.

In this episode, Brandon Li sits down with Raymond Sanchez, former CMO of Cerevel, now at Bain Capital Life Sciences, to discuss the neuroscience renaissance—the explosion of new treatments, novel mechanisms, and scientific breakthroughs reshaping the future of neuropsychiatric research.

Ray shares his career journey, from early psychiatry research at Yale to scaling Cerevel from 3 to 350 employees and guiding it to a $8.7B acquisition by AbbVie.

Key topics include:
- The neuroscience renaissance: What’s driving renewed investment and innovation in brain research.

- Research in schizophrenia: How muscarinic drugs like KarXT and Emraclidine could change the treatment landscape for schizophrenia.

- The challenge of clinical trials in psychiatry: Why subjective measures, variability, and rising placebo effects make trials so difficult—and why we urgently need objective biomarkers.

- Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s research: Why disease-modifying therapies are the next frontier, and what’s still missing.

- Precision neuroscience: The promise of biomarkers, digital tools, and personalized medicine—and how long it might take to reach clinical practice.

Ray also shares one of his hopes for the future: developing validated biomarkers that can make psychiatric trials more objective and accelerate drug approvals.

On this episode of Power to the Patients, we are joined by Amit Etkin, Founder & CEO of Alto Neuroscience and adjunct professor at Stanford, to explore how precision psychiatry is paving the way for more tailored approaches to mental health care. Amit discusses his journey from academia to founding Alto, the role of biomarkers in advancing treatment, and Alto's work on precision psychiatric medicines for MDD.

Key Takeaways:

- Precision Psychiatry in Practice: Amit shares how precision psychiatry applies biological insights, such as EEG biomarkers, to better understand and treat mental health conditions. While still emerging, these tools hold promise for improving care for patients.

- Biomarkers and Individualized Treatment: EEG biomarkers are being used to study how individual brain activity can guide treatment choices. Amit explains how these data-driven methods could reduce the need for trial-and-error in psychiatry.

- Amit’s Shift from Academia to Industry: Leaving a tenured position at Stanford, Amit founded Alto Neuroscience to create scalable solutions for unmet needs in psychiatry. He reflects on the challenges and rewards of translating science into real-world applications.

- ALTO-300, Advancing MDD Treatment: ALTO-300 is being developed as an adjunctive therapy for major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients who haven’t responded to a first-line antidepressant. By using EEG biomarkers, Alto aims to identify patients most likely to benefit, potentially improving outcomes and speeding up recovery.

- The Future of Precision Psychiatry: While precision psychiatry is still an evolving field, Amit emphasizes the importance of collaboration, rigorous testing, and scalable tools to make meaningful progress in mental health care.