Mendelspod Podcast

Each year at this time we bring on a guest who is somewhat out of the way of our normal lineup, for example, a science fiction writer or a philosopher. Today Theral interviews a law professor who loves to philosophize and write about the impact of biotechnology on our lives now and in the near future. His newest book out this year, “The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction,” is another...

Back in 2009 at the annual AGBT meeting for sequencing, Marco Marra presented one of the first cases of cancer treatment using whole genome sequencing. We caught up with Marco at his office at the University of British Columbia where he heads the Department of Medical Genetics. Marco also directs the Genome Sciences Center which is part of a very special organization called the BC Cancer Agency. T...

While everyone is asking what will become of Obamacare, we ask our regular commentators, Nathan Pearson and Laura Hercher, specifically about genomics and medicine. Nathan begins by saying that data scientists everywhere should be humbled. Does the failure to predict the election send out warnings about big data predictions in genomics? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with...

Today Ethan Perlstein joins us on the program for a third time. His path as a ‘rogue scientist’ has become a bit of a case study here at Mendelspod as we look into alternate paths for scientists and for drug development. 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

When we talk precision medicine on Mendelspod, we’re usually talking about oncology. But today we shift our focus to diabetes. Raghu Mirmira is an MD PhD at Indiana University who is working on a panel of biomarkers that would predict Type 1 diabetes. That’s right. Predict. Having already found a DNA biomarker candidate which detects dying beta cells using the new technology of digital PCR, Raghu...

Let’s take a break from the US and head over to the UK, home of the world’s largest single disease medical research charity. Cancer Research UK (CRUK) raises five hundred million pounds a year for research and drug discovery into any and all of the two hundred plus types of cancer. The charity is extremely well integrated into U.K. culture, and uniquely English in that the donations are mostly sma...

Are you lactose tolerant? If you’re of Northern European ancestry this is because of a stretch of DNA in a gene enhancer that developed some 9,000 years ago. That's the same time Northern Europeans began domesticating cattle for milk. If you’re of African ancestry, you may have one of three mutations which appeared independently of the European mutation--and of each other--about 6,000 years ago, a...

Today’s show was recorded on Halloween, which now feels so yesterday. Forgive us for some spookiness. What doesn’t feel so yesterday is the launch this past month of Helix, a company spun out of Illumina that aims to add exomes to the lineup of direct-to-consumer testing. Nathan points out their model for delivering data incrementally through various apps. Laura questions how Helix will vet the ap...

There’s a basic assumption in our field today that has been around for some time. We think of medicine as on a direct and even continuum with science. That discoveries in genomics, for example, will lead directly to breakthroughs in medicine. But the breakthroughs on the medical side have been much more rare to date than those coming from the study of biology and genomics. This is a public episode...

As we get closer to the election and the end of 2016, the debate over LDT regulation has gone quiet. At this time last year, there was one hearing after another, first in the Senate, then in the House. The FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren was called before congress and drilled over the nuances of the guidance as well as asked when it would be released. He said, in the first half of 2016. This is a public epis...

A couple months back, we reported on a study showing that genetic tests for an inherited heart disorder were more likely to come back with false positive results for black Americans than for whites. The study provoked many in our industry to urge scientists to incorporate more ethnic diversity in their studies. So far, biology has been too Eurocentric—the databases are implicitly racist, they argu...

There were many headlines this past week heralding the first three parent baby to be born. But in fact, as our commentators point out in today’s look back on last month’s genomics news, three parent babies have been around for some time. So why are couples going to Mexico for mitochondrial transfer today? Why is it not legal in the U.S.? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with...

There is tons of life science journalism. Our coffee tables and inboxes fill up each week with that quarterly or that daily. We sift through headlines and product advertisements to assess what’s going on in our industry. It’s our job to know. In this age of several-times-per-day newsletters and 24 hrs a day Twitter, we catch what we can. And occasionally, we come across a carefully written piece o...

Most of the time, when we talk about personalized medicine, it’s not that personalized. What we’re really talking about is population-based medicine. However, there is a growing number of clinical/research groups around the world, including the folks at the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine (FIMM) who are combining an older method of functional profiling with new molecular profiling to come...

The history of science is also a history of toolmaking. And nowhere is this more true than in modern biology. New instruments in the lab allow biologists additional modes of discovery, new levels of quantification, and the opportunity to pursue new and old questions with more data. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...

For the next installment of our series on genetic counseling, we’re joined by Erica Ramos. She’s the president-elect of the National Society of Genetic Counselors and was the second genetic counselor hired at Illumina where she’s been for four years. Illumina now has 15 genetic counselors. Erica has been a trail blazer throughout her career. Before joining Illumina, she was the first ‘cancer couns...

It’s the end of summer and end of another month. Joining us to discuss the genomics headlines of August are Laura Hercher and Nathan Pearson. A recent study demonstrating that breast cancer patients with low genomic risk may not need chemotherapy is just what precision medicine is all about, isn’t it? Theral and Laura think the study is a big deal. Nathan’s not so sure. Nathan is convinced though...

Today we feature a pharma company that has been around for some time but recently getting more media coverage for the impressive scale of their new genetic center. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, insiders joke, has been an overnight success that took 25 years. One might think every big pharma company has their own genetic center for internal R & D. But today’s guest, Jeff Reid, Executive Director of Ge...

We often hear at conferences that there are too few genetic counselors. And that this bottleneck is constraining the delivery and promise of genomic medicine. Is this true? It is 100% true, says Laura Hercher of Sarah Lawrence College in the second part of our interview on genetic counseling. “We graduate just under 300 genetic counselors a year. And last year at our annual meeting [National Socie...

They’ve been called the “unsung heroes” of our age. They are primarily women. And when the trend for most of us is to become specialists, they have been generalists. Today we begin a special series on genetic counselors. Our first guest, a genetic counselor herself, is a name familiar to our audience. Laura Hercher is one of our regular month-in-reviewers, and today it’s all about her. She is on t...

Today’s show with Jonathan Hirsch, the President and co-founder of Syapse begins a couple years ago. We first featured him on the program in January of 2014 with the headline, Is this the Omics-to-Clinic Site We’ve All Been Waiting For? 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

On July 6th, as part of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative, the FDA issued two new draft guidances for the oversight of next gen sequencing (NGS) tests. The first guidance is for using NGS testing to diagnose germline diseases. In the second, the FDA lists guidelines for building and using genetic variant databases. To help us understand just what the guidance is and what led to its rel...

Today's guests have been separately on the program recently. And we've asked them, both Brits, to come back on for a discussion of the Brexit. Clare Turnbull is Clinical Lead for the 100K Genomes Project Cancer Program at Genomics England. Hadyn Parry is the CEO at Oxitec, a company based in Oxford which is already selling their genetically engineered mosquitos into Brazil to deal with viral disea...

John Carroll has been the editor-in-chief at Fierce Biotech for thirteen years. Now he's moved to a new gig. Two weeks ago, he and a former colleague launched a new and independent life science media site, Endpoints. 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 show was recorded July 1st, the first day that Vermont’s GMO labeling law went into effect. Just how big a win was this for the anti-GMO crowd, we ask our two commentators, Nathan Pearson and Laura Hercher. They have a surprisingly optimistic take, suggesting that the GMO labeling could become a positive marketing tool. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other sub...