Mendelspod Podcast

When Lee Schwartzberg did his training as an oncologist some thirty years ago at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, he had a dream. And after training, he set off to make that dream a reality: to bring the resources, expertise, and research that one enjoys at a major research hospital cancer center to the community level. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscr...

“The new drug is the engaged individual,” says today’s guest, Daniel Kraft. Daniel is the founder of Exponential Medicine where he has championed digital health and the explosion of wearable technologies.  He's also hosting the new Healthy Conversations podcast--go check it out!  There you will find interviews with the innovator’s of today’s medical culture, including shows with former FDA Directo...

First comes love, then comes marriage; then comes the genomic couple's report.  Isn't that how the line goes? Perhaps that's a how it will begin to go. Today's guest is the founder of Orchid Health, which as of this week is offering the world’s first risk prediction couple’s report . Based on whole genome sequencing from a saliva sample that expectant parents take from home, the report will tell t...

Will there be a fourth surge of COVID here in the U.S.? Already that we’re asking the question and it’s not an inevitability is a good sign. It’s become a race between vaccination clinics and viral variants. The U.S. was a bit slow to this race, but we are catching up. Viral surveillance has become a key part of any nation’s pandemic strategy. This past month, PacBio and Labcorp announced a partne...

Kevin Hrusovosky’s career has been dedicated to transforming medicine from reactive “sick care” to preventative personalized care. A serial entrepreneur, he currently serves as the CEO of Quanterix, a company which has just nabbed $700 million and is raising the bar on proteomics testing. “Genomics can tell you what your predisposition is,” he says in today’s interview, “proteomics can tell you th...

Raj Krishnan has a good story, and probably a good product. More data will tell. He's the CEO of Biological Dynamics, a new liquid biopsy company that is able to detect biomarkers in not only blood but other biological fluids. And the company's products are good for not only cancer but Alzheimer's and other disease areas as well. Raj comes to precision medicine from electrical engineering. You don...

Mendelspod was live this week at AGBT 2021 where Theral interviewed CEO Erik Holmlin and CMO Alka Chaubey of Bionano Genomics on Tuesday. The topic was the future of big biology. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

How fast is the coronavirus mutating? Why is the U.K. variant, or B.1.1.7, more transmissible than original strains of the virus? Is viral surveillance the weak spot in the U.S.'s fight against the pandemic? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

It’s been a year since the coronavirus breached American shores. Here to look back with some perspective is New York Times science writer, Carl Zimmer. Carl has authored thirteen books on science, including Planet of Viruses which includes an essay titled, "Predicting the Next Plague." This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, v...

We’ve all heard of and perhaps worked with data from The Cancer Atlas Project. Now, with the help of new spatial biology tools, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing what they call The Cancer Immunome Project. This is a comprehensive effort to fully characterize the immune system and how it interacts with and fights off cancer. Today we talk with J C Villasboas, a physician-scientist at Ma...

A discovery here. A paper there. An important paper gets passed over. A fortuitous encounter in a coffee shop among two ambitious scientists. A yogurt company just being a yogurt company. Science moves forward in fits and starts. By the time we read the headline in the paper, “breakthrough of the year,” it can have an inevitable quality about it. Then, in a few years, the historian comes and shows...

At the beginning of the year, we were all holding our breath for the future of PacBio. And by all, I mean all. It seems everyone has been rooting for this sequencing technology company. And why? It’s simple. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that they have the highest quality reads on the market. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bon...

We speak directly with the Oracle today. It's Keith Robison, blogger at Omics Omics. Your All Knowingness, we ask, what has happened in the world of sequencing technology this year? “The companies may need a mulligan,” he quips and laughs. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

Our October Review show is a Halloween special this year. Join us around the campfire amidst the sounds of howling wolves as Nathan, Laura, and Count Theracula recall some of their creepiest and spookiest times in the world of genomics. It's Mendelspod's Haunted House of the Genome. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visi...

There’s an urgency about Stephen Kingsmore. Which is not to say he’s in a rush. He’s the CEO of the Rady’s Children’s Genomics Institute. He and his team have two world records to their name for the incredible speed of diagnosing a rare disease using whole genome sequencing. The latest is 19.5 hours. Dr. Kingsmore feels they can even shave time off that. They’re shooting for a new record of somewh...

Diversity’s in the news these days. It's not just political correctness. Let’s look deeper into our field at how limited diversity in genetics is affecting all of us. If you are a member of a minority population and you go into a cancer clinic seeking help, some of the genetic tests on offer may not work for you because of your ethnic background. Not only is this wrong on a social justice level. I...

“In an era where we look at these surveys about trust and everything’s going off the cliff, everyone still trusts the NHS. It’s so deep in the British psyche." This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.com/subscribe

We take a deep dive into a core genomics question that is somewhat philosophical today: “what is a disease, or disability?” This month we heard about a new experimental drug for dwarfism called vosoritide that raised questions for parents of dwarfism. If the drug could make their children taller, would they give it to them? Laura asks “can we put forth a medication for a condition saying those who...

From a career at NIH where he was Chief of the Genetic Disease Branch to academic Chief of Medical Genetics at UCSF to his current business title of Chief Medical Officer at InVitae, Bob Nussbaum has been a central figure in the field of genetic testing. A chief among chiefs. Today he gives our State of Genetic Testing: 2020 Edition. Our approach is to ask Bob to weigh into the recent debates that...

Synthetic biology was surging like perhaps no other bio-based industry when the pandemic struck, and it has had some unique weapons in its arsenal for aiding in the fight against COVID. There are the leading vaccine makers such as Moderna using synthetic biology, as well as antibody technology and CRISPR based testing. But many of the surging trends from the last year have only been made more urge...

First it was all about biomarkers. Then panels of biomarkers. But biology is complicated. Why does one patient respond to an immuno therapy when another which shares the same biomarker does not? Welcome to the age of spatial biology. Garry Nolan joins us today. He's a professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford who's career has been a journey of seeing intracellular happenings more and mo...

After a long break, the world's first genomics pundits are back for the season. And they are calm and collected in the face of the strorm on Pennsylvania Ave. We're sixty days from an election. How serious should we be taking politicization of the COVID vaccine, this radical shift on LDTs at the FDA? We also discuss some regular approvals and on rejection that sent the industry reeling with disapp...

We see this new ingredient appearing advertised and in products everywhere. On the billboards, in the new shops next to our favorite restaurant, on the counters at the barbershop and when we pick up our prescriptions at the pharmacy. C-B-D. It has to do with the ongoing revolution that’s happening around the country—around the world—regarding the deregulation of marijuana. But there’s another revo...

Mary Norton is a perinatologist and clinical geneticist at UCSF who says that in the age when we are diagnosing ever more rare diseases, adding to the carrier screening panel can be a good thing, but it’s complicated. But it can be a good thing. But it’s complicated. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod...

Has this pandemic presented a unique moment for science in our history? Or is it just a strange and temporary moment of science fiction? Or both? Sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson (The Mars Trilogy, The Ministry of the Future) recently penned an essay  in the New Yorker about how the virus has “changed our imaginations” and created a new “structure of feeling.” This is a public episode. If you'd...