Mendelspod Podcast

We're back in the office after a fabulous vacation, and ready to have some fun. It's Friday, and time for Gene and Tonic. Yes, we celebrate the news this week that women have their own sex pill. And we make our best guesses as to why the FDA's drug approval rate is up in the stratosphere. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes...

Nathan Pearson, formerly a genome scientist at Ingenuity and Knome, has been doing public outreach for genomics at the New York Genome Center for about a year now. In today’s interview, Nathan says he always wanted to be able to speak directly to the larger public about the great science he’s been involved in. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get ac...

We recently interviewed cancer researcher Tim Triche from Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Tim had two main points: First, microarrays are still a very valuable tool for research and for the clinic. Second, there are perhaps more answers for cancer research to be found in the non-coding portion of the genome than in the genes. Here, we've compiled Tim's comments on the staying power of arrays. Thi...

Major outbreaks of deadly viruses, such as the recent spread of Ebola in Northern Africa, are nothing new on planet earth. What is new is the technology that we are using to identify, track, and contain such plagues. 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

Emmanuel Vincent is the founder of Cl i mate Feedback , a project which includes a new tool for scientists to comment directly on climate science news. The tool is a plugin which can be downloaded for free and gives a viewer real time access to the feedback of scientists on a particular online article. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to...

Matt Might came knocking on the door of genomic medicine out of pure necessity. After a four year diagnostic odyssey that led them to Duke University, Matt and his wife, Cristina, finally found out through exome sequencing that their son, Bertrand, was suffering from a rare disease known as NGLY1 deficiency. That was three years ago. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with oth...

Last year, pharma giant Roche went on a buying spree, picking up one company after another. In December, when it was announced they had bought out Bina Technologies, many of us were playing catch up. Who is Bina, and how do they fit in the overall bioinformatics space? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelsp...

In the second part of our interview with Tim Triche, Director of the Personalized Medicine Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Tim says that micro arrays are still a vital technology for today’s cancer researcher. Making use of both next-gen sequencing and arrays for his research, Tim confirms that arrays still have advantages in the clinic as well, such as quicker turn around time.  Tim al...

Listen to Tim Triche from Children's Hospital Los Angeles for very long and you’ll get excited again about cancer research. I couldn’t stop listening. Which is why his interview is being published in two parts. Now sure, like other guests we’ve had on the show, Tim calls this the “absolute golden age of biomedical research.” But Tim has a unique story. He has been, and is still - though less so no...

When science journalist Ivan Oransky co-founded Retraction Watch, a blog with the express purpose of making scientific retractions more public, he didn’t think he would be posting much. “Adam Marcus, my co-founder, was quoted as saying, ‘yeah, we figured we’d post periodically, our mothers would read it, they’d be very happy, nobody would read it other than them.’ Obviously that hasn’t been the ca...

What a week for Americans . . . What a week for genomics! The Supreme Court rulings that Americans can keep their Obamacare and can all get married - no matter what state they live in - added the final good news to a week of genomics festivities around the country. But it's not all positive news this week. The New York Times featured a diagnostics company under review by Medicare for fraud. Allege...

Art Caplan is a prodigious writer on the topic of medical ethics. How prodigious? How about thirty-two books and over 700 peer reviewed papers on ethical conundrums ranging from organ donation to end of life care. 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 international BIO convention is all about seduction.  All fifty states sent representatives to Philly this week to make the case that their state was the best for biotech. Seventy countries were there touting their awesome awesomeness.   Does all this seduction really work? A new class of drugs for cardiovascular disease was reviewed recently at the FDA.  Will they become blockbusters like Pfi...

Before Bobby Sebra became the Director of Technology Development at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai in New York he worked at Pacific Biosciences, helping to develop their single molecule, long read (SMRT) sequencing technology. 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 a week of finding out again what we already knew. First that a nobel laureate can also be a total ***hole. And second that creative people really are crazy. It’s also been a week for going into the future. This week Team Mendelspod attended IndieBio’s Demo Day. Twelve, mostly very young, founder/geeks pitched their new ideas for making the world a better place to a room of investors in downto...

Gene and Tonic for June 5, 2015 What does genomics have to do with a hippie rock music event?  A few things.  Find out in today’s humorous preview of the Festival of Genomics, happening later this month in Boston.   Yes, there are the sports genes everyone knows about.  But what about those less studied that might affect your career in sports?  Do you know what is written on the sports page of you...

Jeremy Koenig is a molecular biologist and an athlete. His interest in both led him to found a new direct-to-consumer genetic testing company called Athletigen. 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

If you haven’t already, check out the inaugural Festival of Genomics being held in Boston later this month. 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

Gene and Tonic: May 29, 2015 Did you hear?  The Age of Genomics has come to an end.   According to science journalist, David Dobbs, after 110 years of studying genomics, we have come up with almost nothing to improve human health, or as Dobbs put it so elegantly, we ain't got  " diddly-squat ."   What will all of our geneticist friends do?  They don't want to be known as "diddlly-squaticists." Thi...

By 2050, there will be 9 billion people on the planet. What will they eat? This is the question that led Rod Wing, Director of the Arizona Genomics Institute, into the field of plant genomics. What has been accomplished so far in the mission to come up with some super green crops?  And how does Rod see anti-GMO sentiment and the recent trend toward gluten free diets factoring in? This is a public...

A very unique biotechnology event took place this week. BEINGS 2015, or the Biotech and the Ethical Imagination Global Summit, was held at The Tabernacle, a former church turned concert hall in Atlanta, Georgia. The venue was not the only unusual thing for a summit about science. Speakers at the meeting included a well known linguist, a famous Canadian novelist, and Catholic rector along with prof...

If you followed the news from the recent show of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), no doubt you heard about the exciting potential of liquid biopsies. These new blood-based tests, made possible by better tools and analysis techniques, offer a non-invasive way of understanding various cancers. Traditionally, with non-hematological cancers, solid tumor biopsies are obtained throug...

In a keynote talk this week for the online Genetics and Genomics conference , computational biology whiz, John Quackenbush, listed some pretty wild correlations found by a Harvard Business School student when he mixed some large data sets.  For example, U.S. spending on science, space, and technology corresponds directly with suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation.  We never would have...

Just as biomedical research is experiencing a surge of translation into clinical application, so too must the stories of this research and its impact in the lives of patients be translated to a larger audience. 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 New Republic argued in a pice entitled, " The Decline of Pseudos cience ," this week that now that the so called "natural" living industry has gone mainstream, "it's days are numbered."  Surely Oprah's dumping of Dr. Oz backs this up.   But other events this week show a different story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episod...