This Is Only A Test

On Episode 5 of “This Is Only A Test,” Mickey Urdea takes on one of the most fundamental challenges in modern diagnostics: using the right tool for the job. As scientists gain deeper insight into the complexities of human biology - from the genome and transcriptome to proteins, metabolites, and entire cell populations - the technologies used to study them are evolving just as quickly. Choosing the...

On this episode of "This Is Only A Test", Mickey Urdea is banging his head against the issue of traumatic brain injuries, or TBI! Globally, 69 million people suffer traumatic brain injuries every year, yet there have been very few successful quantifiable diagnostics available aside from field tests for noticeable symptoms. Mickey goes deep into the known diagnosable symptoms of TBI, the...

On the third episode of  This Is Only A Test , Mickey Urdea is breaking the mold to talk to you about mold! Mycology, the study of the Kingdom of Fungi, might not get the spotlight as often as Animals or Plants (heck, maybe even less than some Protists) but the powerful Fungus plays a key cog in the cycle of life on Earth, especially in regard to their roles as decomposers (Wolfgang Amadeus Moldza...

On Episode 2 of "This Is Only A Test", Mickey Urdea is thrilled to be finally talking about APTAMERS! Aptamers are generally defined as oligomers of artificial ssDNA, RNA, or XNA which bind a specific target molecule or family or target molecules, and despite some Nobel Prize-winning work in the field, they have been underutilized for immunoassay development – until now! If Mickey has hi...

In the debut episode of "This Is Only A Test", Dr. Mickey Urdea is marching to his own rhythm - his own algorithm, that is! In order to help you understand how modern diagnostic technologies utilize mathematical algorithms, Mickey is covering the ABCs on AUC, scouring the rock bottom of ROC curves, and connecting the algebraic work of 7th century Persian polymath Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi to...

In this episode of Interesting Stories in the History of Diagnostics, Mickey Urdea is presenting this practical guide on the breadth and depth of the proteome! From an overview of the proteome itself to the techniques used to find subsets of proteins of interest that may correspond to a particular disease state, as well as the top technologies available and what separates them from the rest, this...

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Halteres Associates is serving up a new episode of Interesting Stories In The History of Diagnostics about the microbiome! As you munch on every bite of stuffing, remember that your body is made up of a community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms such as bacteria, archaea, fungi, algae, and viruses, as well as protozoans and other protists, so yo...

Spatial biology is a new frontier in molecular biology, but so far as we can tell it has not as of yet been explained all that well, so Mickey Urdea is stepping in to answer some questions about this complex study of tissues within their own 2D- and 3D-contexts, and the technologies being utilized to provide insight toward new strategies to prevent and treat disease, in “Making Space For Spatial B...

In the third and final installment of "Getting Hip To Hepatitis!", Mickey Urdea is recounting the progress that was made, in the immediate aftermath of its discovery, to know more about the Hepatitis C virus, how to measure it, and how to treat it. Armed with alpha interferon, viral load, and some help from Japan, Mickey will walk you through how Hepatitis C went from discovery to treatment, and p...

In Part Two, Mickey Urdea is picking up where he left off with the discovery of Non-A, Non-B Hepatitis, moving forward to the work that was done for developing accurate RNA tests for Hepatitis C, what genotypes and subtypes were uncovered, how the universally agreed-upon nomenclature and labeling of those subtypes were solidified by him and his team at Chiron, and how surprisingly important genoty...

“Getting Hip To Hepatitis!” Part One - On the first part of this two-part series, Mickey Urdea is sharing his perspective on the discovery of Hepatitis C Virus, and the subsequent impact on global health! Part One covers the earliest work on "Non-A Non-B" Hepatitis at Chiron Corporation up to the first approved blood screening test for the newly discovered pathogen, and Part Two will continue on w...

On Episode 24 of  Interesting Stories in the History of Diagnostics , Mickey Urdea is buzzing about malaria! Earth's leading mosquito-borne disease affects 247 million people worldwide every year, with about 619,000 deaths. On this episode, Mickey guides you through the massive scope of this parasitic infection, the historic obstacles and solutions for proper diagnosis, the many Nobel prizes that...

On Episode 23 of "Interesting Stories in the History of Diagnostics", Mickey is resurrecting the idea of the "zombie life science company" to elucidate just why diagnostics companies fail. Some life science companies with a great idea turn out to be successes, some end up as failures, and some make a critical error somewhere along the way and are dead before they even know it yet - hence, a zombie...

While we tend to associate mummies with Halloween, manmade and naturally occurring mummies are one of science’s greatest sources of the genetics of human history, and analyzing parasites and diseases within their preserved bodies can help unwrap (if you will) the layers of yet-untold stories of how mankind got where we are today. In this episode, Mickey is unsealing the entombed secrets of the Inc...

On episode 21 of "Interesting Stories In The History Of Diagnostics", Mickey Urdea is asking: "Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?" That's no puzzle - it's a palindrome! Yes that's right, he's discussing CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, the hallmark trait of a bacterial defense system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing tec...

On this episode, Mickey Urdea is plunging into the plague! The bubonic plague pandemic, or The Black Death, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, killing at least 75–200 million people and forever altering the future of Europe and Asia - but where did the plague come from? How did it spread so quickly? Why have we learned so much more about...

In Part 1 of this 3-part series on "the emperor of all maladies", Mickey Urdea tracked cancer all the way from Australopithecus bones and Egyptian mummies up to the first days of modern day protein assays for the detection of cancer markers, especially focusing on the contributions of the global pioneer in such assays, the company Centocor. Now in Parts 2 and 3, Mickey Urdea gets to move on to the...

In Part 1 of this 3-part series on "the emperor of all maladies", Mickey Urdea tracked cancer all the way from Australopithecus bones and Egyptian mummies up to the first days of modern day protein assays for the detection of cancer markers, especially focusing on the contributions of the global pioneer in such assays, the company Centocor. Now in Parts 2 and 3, Mickey Urdea gets to move on to the...

Happy New Year to you from Halteres Associates! As we wrap up 2022, Mickey Urdea is just getting started on the history of diagnosing cancer! In Part 1 on this subject, Mickey tracks cancer all the way from Australopithecus bones and Egyptian mummies up to cutting edge modern day protein assays for the detection of cancer markers for potential uses in early detection, secondary screening, therapy...

On Episode 18 of “Interesting Stories in the History of Diagnostics”, Mickey Urdea is reviewing breath-based diagnostics, or what is transpiring with transpiration! Exhaled breath holds many secrets beyond what you ate for breakfast, and analysis of the compounds in breath can help to diagnose SARS-CoV-2, gastrointestinal disorders, and even lung cancer (among many others). New instruments and tec...

On October 17th, 2022, Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the now-bankrupt diagnostics company Theranos, will be sentenced after her conviction for one count of wire fraud conspiracy and three substantive wire fraud counts relating to the scheme to defraud investors, including wire transfers totaling more than $140 million. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and a fine of...

Tick tock, it’s time for some tick talk! On this episode, Mickey is discussing tick-borne diseases – their causes, their related detection technologies, and why climate change might exacerbate the problem worldwide. Lyme Disease receives much of the spotlight (especially given its many famous cases, including Shania Twain and Yolanda and Bella Hadid), but even Lyme is not fully understood (or agre...

This week, we’re getting to the very last drop on the subject of wastewater testing! Hot in the news after recent occurrences of polio and monkeypox, as well as for the continued monitoring of Covid-19, wastewater testing is the future of public health monitoring. Breakthroughs in wastewater screening by the CDC and at UC San Diego, among others, have expanded the scope and capabilities of wastewa...

In the next installment of “Interesting Stories in the History of Diagnostics”, Mickey Urdea is catching you up on syphilis, the evolution of its symptoms and treatment over seven centuries, and the still hotly-debated subject of whether “the great pox” was originally an Old World or a New World disease! After all, the first recorded European case of “the great imitator” took place in 1495, right...

Dr. Mickey Urdea doesn't want to stir up a can of worms, but he's returning to "This Wormy World"! On this episode, Dr. Urdea gets the opportunity to interview Dr. Govert Van Dam, a Senior Researcher for the Leiden Parasitology Diagnostics Group (ParaDiag) at the Leiden University Medical Centre. Together, Mickey and Govert, a worldwide expert on the detection of schistosomiasis, unpack the latest...