Mendelspod Podcast

Let’s say you’re a biomedical researcher looking for a place to make your mark. You find out that there is still a major disease that affects more than 2 million people in the US, and we still know virtually nothing about this disease at the molecular level. Wouldn't that stand out? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visi...

What does it take to collaborate in genomics? A platform, for one thing. Over the past few years bioinformaticians have been speculating about a dominant "go to” site that would serve the software needs of those in genomics. Would it be a private company, a Google of genomics? Or would it be a non profit consortium? Would it be created at the government level? This is a public episode. If you'd li...

Is Grail already merging? Genomic autopsies? Does the House's new healthcare bill turn mere genetic risk into pre-conditions? Nathan and Laura are back to find meaning in the rush of May's headlines. Laura cites a disturbing survey of over 2,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer that found half of them had unnecessary double mastectomies after genetic testing. She says unabashedly, “In big letter...

Is health the same thing for an individual as it is for a population? This question goes to the foundation of how we practice medicine today and that of most of genomic research. Michel Accad is a cardiologist in San Francisco and the author of a new book, Moving Mountains: A Socratic Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Population Medicine , in which he uses Socrates to spar with Geoffrey Rose...

Mike Snyder is well known in the genomics community for his iPOP (integrated personal omics profiling) study. Profiling himself with hundreds of thousands of measurements each day over a period of seven years and a group of a hundred others for about three years, he and his team at Stanford have shown that sequencing and other omics data can be used to predict Type II diabetes, cancer, heart probl...

What does it take to make it in synthetic biology in 2017? 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

For genomics nerds, April 2017 will be remembered as the date when the FDA adopted a more open policy towards 23andMe and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. What does this decision mean, and just where is the FDA drawing the line? A genetic counselor herself, Laura found the decision “head turning.” “There’s lots of reasons why some genetic counselors are not going to be thrilled to deal wi...

Today we follow up with Richard Price, the founder and CEO of the most popular social sharing site for the academic sector, Academia.edu . When we talked to Richard almost five years ago, the site had 1.5 million users, mostly academics sharing their own papers so that their peers had access without any paywalls. Today the site boasts over 50 million users and serves as a laboratory for the future...

Rubbing shoulders at molecular medicine conferences these days one senses a sigh of relief when you talk about laboratory developed tests (LDTs). With the FDA’s decision to put regulation on hold coupled with the expected confirmation of Scott Gottlieb as FDA commissioner, those in the lab testing business seem to be confidently settling back to the status quo. And those who were arguing that all...

Talk to someone who attended this year’s AGBT, and you’ll know the big buzz was about single cell genomics. One of the exciting new platforms came from a new player in the genomics space and yet from a very old company. 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

The largest cut to NIH budget ever, rolling back genetic non-discriminatory law—the bad news continues to roll from Washington. But there was great news this month as well. 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

Today’s guest makes time to create beauty in the lab. Memo Berkmen is a bacterial artist along with being a staff scientist at New England Bio Labs. He and his colleague, Maria Penil, were the winners of the American Society for Microbiology’s agar art contest in 2015. Their felicitous relationship with the unseen, often unnoticed, world of ancient organisms fills us with wonder and inspiration. -...

Marc Edwards is telling a different story than the one most of us have been reading and hearing lately. But then he’s used to it. Marc was the engineer from Virginia Tech who was called one day in September, 2015, by a resident of Flint, Michigan. A Ms Lee Ann Walters wanted Marc to check out her water. When Marc and his team got to Flint they uncovered super high levels of lead in the potable wat...

Mike Murray and the crew over at Geisinger are making the implementation of genomic medicine look down right easy. In today’s interview, Mike explains GenomeFIRST Medicine, a program at the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania to offer care “that is based on an individual’s DNA sequence.” The healthcare provider boasts its own biobank and has partnered up with Regeneron’s Genome Center to offer...

Commentators Nathan Pearson and Laura Hercher join us to look back on February’s genomics headlines. Beginning this time with science, Nathan says we should be expecting great things from new in-situ sequencing. Laura found it encouraging that the National Academy of Sciences shifted to be more in support of genome editing. Theral asks what life forms are left to sequence for the Earth BioGenome P...

First of all, watch the video below. A Santa Cruz company is now previewing a nanopore device that could be a major disruptor in molecular testing. The device is the size of a glucometer and could take all kinds of testing—perhaps someday even cancer-tracking liquid biopsies—into the home with its ease of use and ability to work with thousands of different assays. This is a public episode. If you'...

Freeman Dyson famously said, “the great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrine.” Today we talk with Mark Fischer-Colbrie, CEO of Labcyte, a company which has made some waves--literally-- in the life sciences by changing a very fundamental laboratory procedure: liquid transfer. For some years now, Labcyte has been selling machines that move liquid around wit...

Moray Campbell was for all intents and purposes an accomplished and successful cancer biologist at the renowned Roswell Park Cancer Center. Then one day he woke up and realized he was becoming irrelevant. He was a traditionally trained wet lab biologist who was getting left behind by computer science. Any scientist must keep up with their field, but this was different. A few conferences and journa...

Euan Ashley is one of the big names in genomic medicine that has been missing from our guest list. We’re happy to correct that today. In 2010, he led the team who did the first clinical interpretation of a human genome--that of his Stanford colleague, Steve Quake. Since then Euan, an MD PhD, has been driving to make the use of new genomic tools and discoveries a routine part of medicine at Stanfor...

As we look back at January’s headlines with our two regular commentators, Nathan and Laura, the question becomes: How much should we ignore the fire raging across America to focus on the science? Speaking of Trump's new immigration order and the very real threat of a "brain drain," Nathan tells of his own personal time doing research in Iran, commending scientists there and the many Iranian scient...

Why are there no viable psychiatric genetic tests, we ask today’s guest. Rob Philibert is a geneticist and psychiatrist working at the University of Iowa. He admits at the outset of today’s interview that the field of psychiatric genetics is in a “quandary.” “The results are not matching the hype,” he says. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acces...

Podcast brought to you by: Slone Partners - Providing the leaders that shape the clinical trials space. About six years ago there was a wave of genome interpretation startups getting their first rounds of funding. One of them was Personalis, a company founded by a well known group of Stanford geneticists and bioinformaticians. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subs...

Mark Akeson has been working on nanopore sequencing at UC Santa Cruz’s biophysics lab for twenty years. Up until the past few years with the launch of Oxford Nanopore’s sequencers, that work was mostly the methodical toil of the quiet inventor. Today it is quite ordinary to see a sequencer the size of your wallet being taken out into the field for DNA work. But for years, the naysayers dominated....

Each year at this time, sequencing tools leader, Illumina, generates another round of sequencing buzz in the industry, this year by announcing the $100 genome is around the corner with their latest boxes. But more and more, people are asking just what they will get with that $100. Indeed, what do they get today with a $1,500 genome? Illumina sells short read sequencing technology which is unable t...

From new CRISPR trials in humans to mitochondrial transfer therapy, from the spinout by Illumina of two new genomics health companies to the complete and utter failure of Theranos, from the approval by the FDA of GM mosquitos to the FDA giving up on LDT regulation as a result of the election, the genomics headlines of 2016 didn’t fail to dazzle, deliver, and disappoint. Hear which stories our regu...