Inside Modern Biotech

The asteroid Ryugu is a small, dark, spinning-top-shaped rock about 900 metres wide, orbiting the Sun in a path that crosses between Earth and Mars. It is a C-type asteroid, meaning it is carbon-rich, ancient, and chemically primitive. C-type asteroids are believed to be some of the most pristine material in the solar system: bodies that formed 4.6 billion years ago during the birth of the planets...

Researchers in Brazil ran a randomized controlled trial on 80 women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. One group took 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily. The other took a placebo. After six months, 43% of the vitamin D group had no cancer left by the time of surgery. In the placebo group, only 24% did. That is a 79% relative difference. From a supplement that costs a few dollars a month. In this...

In 1859, Darwin predicted the fossil record would reveal creatures caught mid-evolution. Two years later, workers in a German quarry found one: feathers of a bird, teeth of a lizard. They called it Archaeopteryx. For 164 years, one question stayed unanswered: could it actually fly? In this episode, we walk through the Chicago Archaeopteryx — the 14th and smallest known specimen, acquired by the Fi...

Lipid nanoparticles made headlines as the delivery vehicle behind COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, but their story goes far beyond the pandemic. Join us as we explore how these microscopic fat bubbles are transforming medicine from gene therapy and cancer treatment to the next generation of vaccines. We’ll break down the science, meet the researchers pushing boundaries, and discover why these nanoscale cou...

In this episode of Inside Modern Biotech, we dive into how AI is transforming protein science through tools like AlphaFold and AlphaFold 3. We’ll explore how these models can “fold” proteins in silicon from just their amino acid sequence, what that means for understanding disease, and how it’s speeding up drug discovery and protein design. From basic folding concepts to real-world applications in...

CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing system adapted from a bacterial immune defense that lets scientists cut and rewrite DNA at precise locations using a programmable guide RNA and the Cas9 “molecular scissors.” Once Cas9 makes a break in the DNA, the cell’s own repair machinery either stitches it back together in an error-prone way (knocking genes out) or uses a supplied template to make precise changes...