Mendelspod Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com Most cancer biomarkers aren’t found in your DNA—they’re found on a microscope slide. And according to Dr. Andy Beck, CEO and co-founder of PathAI, that slide is undergoing a digital transformation. In this episode, Andy takes us behind the scenes of modern pathology to reveal how AI is reshaping not only cancer diagno...

In this episode of Mendelspod , we’re joined by Raju Rayavarapu, bioinformatician at DNAnexus and former FDA data specialist, to discuss how regulatory science is adapting to the age of AI, big data, and cloud platforms. * 0:00 How has AI changed regulatory informatics? * 4:15 KISS * 12:50 On standards * 25:00 So nothing new about AI? The juicy question of the interview * 32:45 Raju’s life: good d...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com “Genomics works. Don’t be scared of it.” That’s the message from Mike Kreitzinger, a longtime Illumina leader now advising the Institute for Pediatric Rare Disease at Florida State University and stepping into a broader role as a genomics advocate. In this episode, Mike gives us an inside look at Florida’s newly funde...

Illumina’s new interpretation software, Illumina Connected Insights, signals a turning point in oncology genomics—where sequencing power meets end-to-end clinical utility. On this episode of Mendelspod, host Theral Timpson sits down with Jing Gao, VP of Software Engineering at Illumina, to explore how the company is extending its leadership from sequencers to software. “We’ve moved from offering m...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com Can we finally replace animal testing in drug development—and still know a drug is safe and effective? That’s the provocative question at the heart of this episode, as we sit down with Andrei Georgescu, co-founder and CEO of Vivodyne . The company is developing robotic, AI-enabled systems for growing living, biopsy-li...

In this episode of Mendelspod, Theral welcomes Dr. Rita Shaknovich, Chief Medical Officer in Agilent’s Life Sciences and Diagnostics group, for a high-level and deeply insightful look at where liquid biopsy technology stands today. With her background in hematopathology and molecular diagnostics, Rita brings clarity to a field that has long promised transformation—and is now delivering. “It’s not...

In this episode of Mendelspod , Theral speaks with Frédéric Debode, Scientific Director at CRA-W in Wallonia, Belgium, about the evolving landscape of GMO detection in the age of gene editing. From early work in real-time PCR to the latest in next-gen sequencing and target enrichment, Debode has been on the front lines of tracking genetically modified organisms—often when the modifications leave a...

“We’re going to be rewriting the textbooks on how tissues work.” In this compelling reunion with spatial biology pioneer Joe Beechem and a first-time visit from Oliver Braubach , we explore the rapid evolution of spatial technologies at Bruker , a legacy instrumentation company newly resurgent in the spatial space. Following Bruker’s acquisition of Nanostring and Canopy, the company has emerged as...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com In this episode of Mendelspod , Theral sits down with Rob Neely, co-founder and CSO at Tagomics, to discuss how his company is fusing genomics, epigenomics, and fragmentomics into a single, assumption-free assay for early cancer detection. The conversation begins with breaking news: Tagomics has just received a new gr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com In this premium episode of Mendelspod, we’re joined by one of the few people speaking clearly and globally about biosecurity in the era of synthetic biology and AI: Sophie Peresson . A consultant and leader in responsible innovation, Sophie brings an unusually broad and grounded perspective. With experience spanning i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com As artificial intelligence continues to influence the life sciences, some researchers are questioning not just what it can predict, but what it can explain. On this episode, Mike Kiebish, VP of Platform and Translational Sciences at BPGbio, discusses the company’s “biology-first” approach to drug discovery—one that be...

In this episode of Mendelspod , we plunge into the shape-shifting world of RNA with Dr. Gavin Knott, associate professor at Monash University and alum of Jennifer Doudna’s lab. Knott is part of a new generation of researchers setting structural biology ablaze with AI, decoding RNA-guided systems and expanding the CRISPR toolbox far beyond its original scope. Knott introduces the listener to RNA no...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com For decades, drug discovery has followed two main roads: small molecules that can slip into cells but often lack precision, and biologics that offer specificity but struggle with delivery and manufacturing. In this episode, Christian Schafmeister introduces us to a third path: spiroligomers —synthetic, fused-ring mole...

What if drug design didn’t depend on pre-existing biological data? In this episode of Mendelspod , Theral sits down with Aridni Shah, co-founder and CEO of Immunito AI, a Bengaluru-based biotech startup reinventing how we develop antibody therapies. Shah and her team are using artificial intelligence to design antibodies from scratch , bypassing traditional animal-based and data-heavy methods. “We...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com Yes, the Trump economy has been tough on life science tools—but according to today’s guest, the business model was failing us anyway. It’s time to go back to rethinking the basics. Today we’re joined by Stephane Budel , founding partner at DeciBio , one of the leading market research and consulting firms focused on li...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com On today’s episode of Mendelspod , Theral sits down with Giovanna Prout, CEO of Scale Biosciences , to explore a how the company is achieving new orders of magnitude of scale in the single cell space. "In the past, single cell was one cell per well—maybe 96 cells per experiment," Prout explains. "Now, with our Quantum...

What if you could step inside a molecule ? On today’s episode of Mendelspod , we talk with Steve McCloskey, founder and CEO of Nanome , the company bringing virtual reality into the world of drug discovery and molecular modeling. A former nanoengineering student at UC San Diego and a self-described futurist, Steve founded Nanome to create what he calls the "ultimate scientific interface"—a way for...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.com Wait! What? Sequencing as a service? That was the reaction when Mark Budde first set out to upend a basic ritual in molecular biology—confirmation Sanger sequencing—with his company Plasmidsaurus. You’ve heard it many times: Illumina machines sequence around 80% of the bases in the world. But as Mark points out in tod...

Just weeks before the FDA’s sweeping rule to regulate laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) was set to take effect, a federal court struck it down. What does this mean for the field of precision medicine and for labs themselves? There are have been those on the side of regulation arguing its importance for reimbursement. Yet many, such as the plaintiffs in this case, the ACLA and AMP, have argued that...

In today’s show, Theral is joined by Chris Petersen, Chief Technology Officer at Scientist.com, a company sometimes called the "Amazon for science"—though with a great deal more complexity. Chris pulls back the curtain on how AI is transforming the research services marketplace and offers a rare look into how AI is already reshaping the infrastructure of pharma and biotech. Calling this the "tinke...

In today’s program, we continue our series on disease subtyping with Dr. Jeffery Klco, a pediatric pathologist and researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Dr. Klco joins us to discuss groundbreaking work recently published in Nature Genetics , which redefines the genomic landscape of childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Klco and his team have identified twelve novel molecular subty...

Dr. Aaron Viny, oncologist and researcher at Columbia University , begins today’s conversation with a personal milestone—he’s now been leukemia-free for 21 years. This experience gives his work on cancer a powerful human dimension that comes through in his interview with Theral today—not only in his dedication to patient care, but in his boundary-pushing research on the epigenetic roots of cancer....

We’re happy to welcome back Ben Busby, Principal Scientist at DNAnexus, to dive deeper into the evolving world of disease subtyping and multi-omic data sets. Building on our previous conversation with Busby about the genomic data ecosystem, we explore the shift from single-cause disease models to multifaceted approaches that incorporate genomics, proteomics, imaging, and more. "We’re no longer in...

John Cumbers , founder of SynBioBeta, joins Theral for our annual look ahead at the field of synthetic biology and the upcoming SynBioBeta 2025 conference , happening May 6–9 in San Jose . It's obviously a big year for AI, and synthetic biology is no exception. As John puts it, “Biology and AI coming together represents a huge opportunity for us to be able to understand biology and then ultimately...

Today Theral is joined by returning guests Chris Mason of Weill Cornell Medicine and Simon Fredriksson , CEO of Pixelgen Technologies, for a deep dive into the emerging field of cell surface proteomics and its power to illuminate both space biology and cancer research. Chris Mason shares new insights from his work on the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), the largest collection of astronaut hea...