Mendelspod Podcast

Janitors have had a terribly busy time this week cleaning up all those jaws that were dropped on floors of research labs everywhere around the country. Have you heard about this latest sexism scandal? Two female co-authors of a scientific paper submitted their work to PLOS -- you know, the open access journal.   You won’t believe what they heard back from the lone peer reviewer.  They were told to...

Pharma companies have always had their chief medical officers (CMOs). Now, as the diagnostics industry grows, many kinds of life science companies are filling this important position as well. Sequencing tool makers, direct-to-consumer firms, bioinformatics companies—they’re all appointing CMOs. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus ep...

An Old New DTC Co. on the Move Let’s start with a bit of trivia.  What company has resorted to selling genetic ancestry testing online direct to consumers?  Hint:  the company is located in the San Francisco Bay area, has banked more than 800,000 samples from customers all over the world, and is slowly transforming itself into major biomedical player. That’s right.  You got it.  It’s Ancestry.com...

When President Bill Clinton stood with Francis Collins and Craig Venter in 2001 to announce the sequencing of the genome, the genome wasn’t really done. 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

Actually there was no news this week.  It turns out the whole industry took the week off to watch the stunning Ken Burns documentary on cancer.   No, that’s not true.  We did find some news.   How about this?  The Affordable Care Act turned five this past week.  Happy Birthday, ObamaCare!  So we thought we’d share some important numbers about the ACA: 11.7 million:   the number of Americans who ha...

Will tech companies like Google and Apple be good at life science applications? We pursue this question today with Dale Yuzuki, the avid life science blogger, scientist, and now a marketing manager at Thermo Fisher. (See his recent blog, The Core Competency of Google Is Not Life Sciences. ) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episod...

We were off last week, so there’s plenty to talk about. 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 future of diagnostics is in the hands of those taking care of the biospecimen samples says, Andy Brooks our final guest in the series, Improving Biospecimen Standards. Andy is the Chief Operating Officer at Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository, or RUCDR. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mendelspod.co...

More than with any other major disease, the understanding and treatment of cancer is being transformed by genomics. And these are early days. John McPherson has been involved in sequencing since the original Human Genome Project. He now directs the Genome Technologies Program at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. John chaired a panel on cancer genomics at the recent AGBT, or Advances in Ge...

Friday March 13th It’s Friday already and time for Gene and Tonic, our wrap of the week’s headlines. On Monday, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, announced that the iWatch is indeed a reality. The iWatch has all the wearable techies and mobile health folks doing somersaults. But it was what happened afterward that was so interesting. Did you hear about this? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss...

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing has had a bumpy ride. Back in 2010, Pathway Genomics and Walgreens made a deal to sell DTC genetic tests in thousands of Walgreens drugstores. Within 48 hours of the deal being announced, it collapsed. The FDA sent a letter to Pathway basically asking them what the hell they were doing. Walgreens quickly elected to put the kibosh on the partnership. This is...

Go about anywhere in the life science industry, and you’ll run into someone who once worked at Affymetrix. Since the founding of Affymetrix and the development of what’s come to be known simply as the Affy chip, the company’s history has been intertwined with that of biotech and the genomics revolution. But what has become of the company today? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss th...

Join Theral for a quick wrap-up of the week's biotech news: The biggest news this week has been the flow of stories coming from last week’s AGBT conference held in Florida. This is the annual all out party for the all out darling of our industry, the sequencing space. Like a debutante ball, it’s where anybody who’s anybody comes out and does their curtsy to society. This is a public episode. If yo...

Keira Havens is the co-founder of Revolution Bioengineering, and this week the company launched a crowd funding campaign (see video below) to produce flowers that can change colors. And what is the revolution? “We want to change the world,” says Keira. “We really want to make a difference in the way people think about biotechnology. For a long time it’s been the realm of large companies and behind...

Today we bring you a story which you probably wouldn’t have heard at last week’s AGBT conference at Marcos Island. While PacBio and 10X Genomics were getting most of the buzz at the annual show on all things sequencing, it could be the new BGI/Complete Genomics platform that steals the show later this year, says David Smith, a cancer researcher at the Mayo Clinic. In his research, David uses seque...

For many years, the trend in biotech was for drug development companies to pursue one or maybe two drug candidates, or assets, as they’re called in industry parlance. Go lean and attract the attention of big pharma or investors in the late stage trials. But today’s guest says there is more innovation when the biotech organization invests in a technology platform that produces multiple drug candida...

In today’s special studio interview, the health tech duo, David Shaywitz and Lisa Suennen, walk us through the changing paradigms around healthcare. They offer their thoughts on some of the new digital health and peer-to-peer social platforms which are becoming integrated in daily clinical care. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...

One of those attending the recent White House gathering where Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative was a woman who has worked tirelessly as a patient advocate for over twenty years. She’s an award winning scientist and the CEO of the Genetic Alliance: Sharon Terry joins us to kick off a new series, Personalized Medicine and the Consumerization of Healthcare. This is a public episode....

Today we bring you a story which fits nicely in the vein of personalized medicine. But this time with a twist. We talk with the CEO of Protagen, a company that has developed a platform to find new biomarkers for disease, particularly autoimmune diseases such as SLE, or Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. But the platform is based on the hunt for genetic mutations. Rather the company is using antibodies,...

This past month one of the most successful genetic testing companies, Myriad Genetics, has been settling one gene patent case after another. Also, the FDA has been attempting to regulate some very complicated lab testing. So we figured we better talk to a lawyer about the devil in the details. We’ve chosen Antoinette Konski of the law firm, Foley and Lardner. Antoinette agrees that the Myriad sett...

David Schwartz was focused on long read sequencing and the structural variations of the genome—the big picture—long before the current trend. His lab at the University of Wisconsin at Madison developed optical mapping and posted the first optical map of the human genome several years ago. And last year, they published the first optical map of a cancer genome. This is a public episode. If you'd lik...

Just less than a year ago, the national biotech editor at Xconomy, Luke Timmerman, left his post. Yeah, he just left it. Gone was the regular Monday column that helped us all absorb the newest trends in biotech. Gone were the lists of companies to watch out for that made sense even if we weren't up to date on Luke's sports analogies. One day the columns were here, then they were gone. Luke said he...

We’re very pleased to have Liz Mansfield of the FDA on the program to finish up our current Special Report on LDTs Series. Liz is part of the team at the FDA working on the new guidance for the regulation of LDTs, and she was at the recent meeting the FDA held to receive community feedback. Today we get into some of the details of that feedback. Did Liz and the FDA hear any new issues that they ha...

Amy Miller is the Executive Vice President for the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) and joins us in our Special Report on LDTs Series. Though the PMC does not have a position on whether the FDA should regulate LDTs, Amy says that the stakes could not be higher. “We see the future of personalized medicine is at stake. We urge the FDA to get this right the first time so that personalized medici...

Guest: John LaMattina, Senior Partner, Pure Tech Ventures Bio and Contact Info Listen (6:27) Comparing drug approvals: 2014 with 1996 Listen (7:10) More rational 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