Mendelspod Podcast (Theral Timpson)

Guest:

Gene Myers , Founding Director, Systems Biology Center, Max Planck Institute
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:10) What have you been up to since the Celera days?

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Guest:

Pearl Huang, VP, Global Head of DPAc, GSK
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:28) What is the Discovery Fast Track Challenge?

Listen (4:25) How do the reseachers benefit if they are chosen?

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Guest:

Scott Jewell, Senior Scientific Investigator and Director of Program for Biospecimen Science, Van Andel Institute
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (3:30) Do you see more creativity in the sample consent area?

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Guest: Alan Mendelson, Partner, Latham & Watkins
Bio and Contact Info

Alan Mendelson, a partner at Latham & Watkins, is the first service provider--as opposed to a scientist, entrepreneur, or venture capitalist--to receive one of BayBio’s prestigious Pantheon Lifetime Achievement Awards. We talk to him a month before the awards ceremony which will be held in San Francisco on December 11th, 2014.

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Guest:

Anna Barker, Co-Director, Complex Adaptive Systems Center, ASU
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (3:21) Andy's challenge

Listen (4:39) The year of immunotherapy

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Guest:

Elaine Lyon, Former President, AMP; Medical Director of Molecular Genetics, ARUP Laboratories
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:37) What is at stake here?

Listen (6:16) Is your message being heard?

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Guest:

Comfort, Nathaniel, PhD, Author, Professor, History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:20) Debate about race and genetics is really about social justice

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Guest:

Diane C. Farhi,, MD, Senior Medical Director, Quintiles Laboratories
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:37) Tracking clinical samples around the world

Listen (5:34) How to measure sample stability

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Guest:

Eric Schadt, Professor & Chair Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Director Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:01) Getting buy-in from a few lead doctors

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Guest:

Paul Beresford, VP of Bus Dev, Biodesix
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:47) VeriStrat - a test for non-small cell lung cancer

Listen (4:39) What do you anticipate on the regulatory front?

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Guest:

Bonnie Anderson, CEO, Veracyte
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:58) What is the secret to your success?

Listen (4:30) Building the case for reimbursement

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Guest:

Mara Aspinall, Founder, DxInsights

Bio and Contact Info

Listen (2:43) DxInsights and EPEMED

Listen (3:53) Diagnostics 5.0

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Guest:

Surbhi Sarna, Founder, CEO, nVision Medical

Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:43) Filling a void in female health innovation

Listen (4:31) Addressing the leading cause of infertility

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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 medicine can continue to improve the quality of care that patients currently have access to,” she says at the outset of today’s interview.

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Guest:

George Church, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School 
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:11) Church's Law

Listen (6:45) Colbert, Der Spiegel and Regenesis

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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?

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Guest:

Carolyn Compton, Professor of Pathology, ASU
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:54) A historic new consensus

Listen (6:33) CAP committed to enforcement

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Guest:

Janet, Woodcock, MD, Director, CDER, FDA

Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:41) No agency charged with better translational outcomes

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Guest:

Dan Geraghty, Researcher, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center; CEO, Scisco Genetics
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:43) Unable so far to find causal linkages in MHC region of the genome

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Guest:

Jonathan Brody, Assoc Professor of Surgery, Thomas Jefferson University
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (8:17) BRCA testing being used for pancreatic cancer as well

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Guest:

Jim Vaught, Editor-in-Chief, Biopreservation and Biobanking Journal
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:50) The importance of better biosamples only recognized in the past 10 to 15 years

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Guest:

David Haussler, Director, Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, UCSC

Bio and Contact Info

Listen (8:08) Paperwork not algorithms the biggest challenge with bioinformatics

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Guest:

Ulf Gyllensten, Professor, Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:24) What are your goals at the National Genomics Infrastructure?

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Guest:

Emanuel "Chip" Petricoin, Co-Director, CAPMM, George Mason University 
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:00) Beyond the genome

Listen (5:30) Challenges to mapping the proteome

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Guest:

David Rimm, Professor of Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:16) An unsexy science

Listen (5:36) A lack of certifications

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Guest:

Connor Dickie, CEO, Synbiota
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:13) Has open science really taken off in the life sciences?

Listen (4:58) #ScienceHack

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Guest:

Geoffrey Ginsburg, Director, Duke Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (6:58) Genomic medicine occuring across the lifespan

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Guest:

Mike Snyder, Director, Center for Genomics & Personalized Medicine, Stanford
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:44) Current method for figuring out transcriptomes is crazy

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Guest:

Kim Stanley Robinson, Sci-Fi Author
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (3:30) Creating plot when science wants to be boring

Listen (3:22) Genetics and the distant past

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Guest: Aubrey de Grey, CoFounder, CSO, SENS Research Foundation
Bio and Contact Info



Chapters: (Advance the marker)

0:35 First Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference

4:50 Shackled by “short-termism”

6:00 Aging was not a topic for biologists

11:32 A serious nuisance

17:13 Smoking out the opposition

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Guest:

Thomas Quertermous, Director of Research, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford University
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (7:45) Close, but not quite there

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Guest:

Shawn Baker, CSO, AllSeq
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (5:27) Taking the X Ten for a test drive

Listen (6:56) What is the latest price for a whole human genome sequence through Allseq?

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Guest:

Eliot Forster, Executive Chair, MedCity
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (2:54) Cashing in on illustrious life science tradition

Listen (2:56) Culture of collaboration strong in the UK

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Guest:

Paul Davies, Principal Investigator, Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology, ASU
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:05) The phone call

Listen (3:39) Too focused on a cure

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Guest:

Michael Pishvaian, Assistant Professor, Georgetown University; CMO, Perthera 
Bio and Contact Info

Listen (4:08) Untapped potential

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We’ve heard on the program over the past few years that genomic medicine will probably take off first in a country with a centralized health service. And when the U.K. announced their 100K Genomes Project at the end of 2012 with the creation of Genomics England in 2013, it was certainly a bold visionary move to do just that—to put the entire country on a progressive path toward precision medicine for all.

So with 10K genomes sequenced, how is the project going?

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23andMe occupies its own place in the world of genomics. Known for its vision to democratize human genomic information, the company has always gone big and bold, and sometimes controversial. Today we don’t hear much controversy—is that because their approach has won out? In any case, they have certainly achieved a scale that surpasses any other genetic testing company.

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Biology is complex, and the life science tool kit continues to expand to meet the challenge of that complexity taking us into the world of multi omics and beyond. Today we talk about 3D genomics and what this additional three-dimensional structural information is telling not just researchers, but clinicians, particularly in oncology.

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Pacific Biosciences has introduced a new method for detecting DNA methylation simultaneously with DNA sequencing. They are calling it 5-base sequencing.

Today on the program, Jonas Korlach, PacBio’s Chief Scientific Officer, and Tomi Pastinen, the Director of the Genomic Medicine Center at Children’s Mercy Research Institute in Kansas City join us to describe the new breakthrough and connect it to clinical possibilities.

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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 of academic publishing.

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Oncology has emerged as the most successful disease area for precision medicine. Last year, as the genetic testing industry went through a royal shake-up brought on mostly by external market forces, it's been no surprise that precision oncology has been touted as a core strength. As the industry now works "to be more lean and profitable"--new language one hears these days, cancer testing will be a big part of that effort.

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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?

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More than one in two hundred people have an inherited form of heart disease. But most don’t know it.

Often on Mendelspod we talk about cancer genomics, but in the area of cardio, too, genetic testing can save lives.

Amy Sturm is the Director of Genomic Counseling and Screening Program at Geisinger Health Systems. There she has led the effort to return the results of cardio genetic tests to over 1,000 patients.

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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?

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By listening to him, you wouldn’t know that Peter Maag, the CEO of CareDx, was fighting to keep his company from the brink. We booked Peter for the show after news came out that CMS was once again threatening to lower reimbursement rates of established diagnostic tests.

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Even though Brian McKelligon calls himself a rookie CEO, he comes to the top position at Akoya Biosciences with a veteran’s resume. His path to one of spatial biology’s hottest companies in 2022 worked him up the ranks of some of the top names in life science tools: Affymetrix, Ingenuity, Ion Torrent, and 10X Genomics. Last year Brian led Akoya through an IPO and this year the company has launched a new integrated product line called the Phenocycler-Fusion which they are calling the fastest single-cell spatial biology system on the market.

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At the end of the year, we like to speak with a journalist who covers genetics about some of their stories.

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"We have all of these evidence based tools and evidence based methods, but the problem is it can take upwards of 20 plus years to be truly implemented into care where healthcare providers are using them and patients are receiving them. And this includes medications and diagnostic tools and other types of treatment or screening.”

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Some Americans still resist genetic testing for fear they will be discriminated against by insurance companies. Why?

in 2008, Congress passed GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, to protect us from insurance companies choosing to include us or not for policies based on the genes we came with. Then in 2010, Congress passed the ACA, or Affordable Care Act, and with it protection against preexisting conditions. This includes genetic predispositions.

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This month we saw Big Money being infused into genomics and other life science research projects. There’s no question that science is big business, but do we see improved healthcare as a result?

Was the NIH too hasty in it’s ban on gene editing of human embryos?

Superheroes are lurking among us everywhere . . . or so the mainstream media would have us believe in their take on a new study from the Icahn School of Medicine.

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After decades on the loose, it’s cool the cops finally caught him. But is it cool how they caught him?

Nathan Pearson and Laura Hercher are back for April’s headlines. AACR had some more good news about Keytruda, and we take a look at the cancer prediction space.

DNA Day, the first cannabis based therapy to be recommended for FDA approval, the Zuckerberg hearing—there’s lots in here today.

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April was a tough month for some genomics companies. The FBI raided the offices of uBiome and two other pioneers in the field failed. Are there broader implications?

Nathan and Laura have returned to first give us some facts and then to throw their hats in the ring.

Lots happened this month in the world of DNA. Tune in and catch it all.

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Our commentators, Nathan Pearson of Root and Laura Hercher of Sarah Laurence College, join us to look back on month two of the first modern pandemic.

We begin with a scandal that rocked the Twitter science community and talk about how science itself may be having a big moment. Will this be a silver lining for this strange year?

Then it’s on to antibody testing. What would a good antibody test need to do? And will there be tough ethical questions when some “have their immunity papers” and go back to work while others do not?

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Today we're joined by Matt Plavan, President of Arcadia Specialty Genomics.
The last time we talked with someone from Arcadia Bioscience, a biotech company working on plant genomics in Davis, California, they were confronting GMO regulatory hurdles.
Which was a pity. They had created these great new strains of rice and soybeans, among other crops, that were being held from market due to regulations in Southeast Asia. This at a time when world population is . . . well, you know what its doing.

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It’s a question we’ve asked on the program before. Are we over relying on the genomics route getting us to biomedical research paradise? Should we be putting more eggs in other baskets?

After combing through lots of clinical trials data, Tony Letai of Dana Farber and the Broad, found that a majority of cancer patients have not benefited from precision medicine. On today’s show he says we need to rethink our approach to cancer research and treatment.

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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 through surgical recession or an invasive needle.

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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.

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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 that Eurocentric studies have implicit racism. Laura agrees, saying the lack of racial diversity in biological databases is a major weakness that we must face head on.

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Back from summer vacation, Nathan and Laura are smoking hot as they look back over some exciting headlines.
The summer boiled over with plenty to talk about, but it was just this week that delivered most of the news for our discussion today. Novartis’ gene therapy based on CAR-T technology was approved Wednesday, making it the first gene therapy to be approved ever in the US. Analysts will be trying to figure out how high high is when it comes to the price tag, but Nathan and Laura explain why this therapy is a big deal for patients.

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It’s our first show back after the summer break, and nothing has got us all buzzing about genomics again like a polygenic risk score. It even has Laura Hercher talking about the Human Genome Project doing some delivering, god forbid.

CRISPR has had a rough summer. But still . . . it is CRISPR.

Is Burning Man still cool, we were asked last weekend. Don't know. Don't care. We asked back, is 23andMe still cool?

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After a long break, the world's first genomics pundits are back for the season. And they are calm and collected in the face of the strorm on Pennsylvania Ave. We're sixty days from an election. How serious should we be taking politicization of the COVID vaccine, this radical shift on LDTs at the FDA?

We also discuss some regular approvals and on rejection that sent the industry reeling with disappointment. Then it's on to Laura's, Nathan's, and Theral's picks for science of the month.

Welcome back!

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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, or proteins to better define disease and disease populations. The company is able to stratify auto-immune diseases better than we’ve done with genomics.

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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.)

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SynBioBeta is the largest gathering of the synthetic biology community worldwide.  It’s taking place May 23-25 in Oakland, California.  John Cumbers is the founder and CEO of the conference, and he joins us to talk about trends in the space and preview this year’s confab.
First, we discuss the impact Washington D.C. is having on the field.  What doe’s Biden’s love for bio mean for synbio?

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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?

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Our goal with today’s show was twofold: bring you a practical holiday gift idea and to take you into the world of a synthetic biology entrepreneur. Our guest: Zack Abbott, CEO of ZBiotics.

Zack is a scientist turned businessman who is on a mission to change the conversation around GMOs. His first product is a genetically engineered probiotic that alleviates the morning-after hangover by breaking down acetaldehyde. Zack says he chose this product because it’s something consumers can choose to take—unlike a medicine that’s necessary like insulin.

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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?

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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 is now working to improve the panel with other metabolites.

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If you attended or followed the recent AGBT conference about all things sequencing, you probably saw a few BioNano Genomics t-shirts with the slogan, “Back to the Map.” They’re referring of course, to a genome map. Just like Google Maps, a genome map consists of landmarks that tell scientists where on the genome they are. But unlike Google Maps and more like the maps North America that were made by European explorers in the 17th century, the map of the human genome is quite incomplete, the map of a frontier.

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From a career at NIH where he was Chief of the Genetic Disease Branch to academic Chief of Medical Genetics at UCSF to his current business title of Chief Medical Officer at InVitae, Bob Nussbaum has been a central figure in the field of genetic testing. A chief among chiefs. Today he gives our State of Genetic Testing: 2020 Edition.

Our approach is to ask Bob to weigh into the recent debates that have come up this past year. And they can be summarized into one question. Even one word. "Expanded."

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Last week we attended the 2015 Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference where we heard about the latest developments in aging research.

We were fortunate enough to sit down with two of the major figures in the field of aging research, Aubrey de Grey, CSO of the SENS Research Foundation and Brian Kennedy, CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Brian and Aubrey have gone about their work in different ways but say that their approaches are now converging as the momentum behind aging research increases.

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You hear it everywhere. And it’s getting old. That "diagnostics is a tough slog.” That it’s the “redheaded stepchild of healthcare.”

And today’s guest doesn’t disappoint, repeating both these phrases. But Brad Gray and NanoString can claim some big “slogging" success. They’re coming out on top in diagnostics through some clever business strategy built on a solid platform. Made CEO at just 33 years of age, Brad has taken NanoString public and overseen a successful expansion from the research to the clinical market.

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There are some technologies that become so ubiquitous in biomedical research that their name turns synonymous with their use. This has been the case for the Luminex xMAP platform and multiple biomarker analysis. The product has been applied in just about every area of life sciences including infectious disease, STD, organ transplant rejection, vaccine development, cancer research, immunodeficiency, animal testing, agriculture, and others. (xMAP is a research use only product and not for use in diagnostic procedures.)

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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.

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Sara Radcliffe can be happy--extra happy. She is the CEO of the California Life Sciences Association at a time when the state is breaking records, beating out every other state in category after category. Today Sara discusses a new report the organization has released along with PWC detailing our sector’s explosive growth. Jobs: check. Wages and revenue: check. VC funding: check. NIH funding: check. California leads in all. Big yaaaawn?

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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.

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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 small and come from all corners of society. A third of CRUK’s funding comes from donations averaging £10 or less.

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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 sequencing to analyze the connection between the human papillomavirus (HPV) with oropharyngeall cancer.

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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 also weighs in on some ongoing questions about whether poor biospecimen quality is hampering research efforts and whether genomic medicine is paying off for patients.

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As we begin the countdown to the new year, we take a look back at 2015 in cancer research, treatment and prevention. Mendelspod is increasingly becoming known for the coverage of genomics and precision medicine, and cancer as a disease area offers a specific window whereby we can look at practical outcomes.

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You’re a mother, and life is typical. You’re also a pediatrician. Then one day you hear that your daughter is autistic. OK. Then you get the news that, no, it’s not autism but a very rare disease called Sanfilippo Syndrome. From your training as a pediatrician you quickly think back and remember the MPS rare diseases, but nothing else prepares you for what’s ahead.

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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 Stanford, particularly in his own discipline of cardiology.

A regular speaker on the conference circuit, Euan titles his talks, "Genomic Medicine Is Here."

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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 with sound. By eliminating the need for pipette tips and other “solid” surfaces, the machines guarantee much more precision.

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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-the-scenes labs, and we want to make it a part of folks' everyday lives.”

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We’ve heard a lot this year about the search for new structural variants and the hope that scientists will find new causal linkages for diseases such as cancer. But will the genome still yield dramatic genetic signatures such as KRAS, BRAF and EGFR that have been so helpful in cancer treatment?

Today’s guest says, yes, and he’s on the trail.

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Last week with a crowd of 1,200 customers in a Los Angeles nightclub, sequencing company Pacific Bioscience launched two new sequencers, both long and short read, Revio and Onso. It was a night of great technology, music, and anticipation. Their customers have waited a long time for this moment. Revio offers long read whole genomes at scale for under $1,000.

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Cliff Reid, CEO of Complete Genomics, is back on the conference circuit, touting a new product. After years of building his company to do sequencing as a service, Cliff presented data at last week's ASHG meeting on Complete's first sequencer as a product, or what they are calling the Revolocity supersequencer.

Cliff was a pioneer in developing the service model, offering only whole human genome sequencing. But after being bought out by BGI, who already had a service business in China, he was compelled to shift his business model to that of selling sequencers.

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Laura Hercher, host of our sister podcast, The Beagle Has Landed, joins us today to compare notes. Her gig is much more focused on the clinical side of genomics. Genetic counselors are her core audience. Today we do a highlights show looking back over the Beagle's past year.

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If today's guest were a super hero, he'd be High Resolution Sequencing Man.

Bobby Sebra is the Director of Technology Development at the Icahn Institute of Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mt Sinai in New York. He has the complete arsenal of DNA sequencers in his lab. He specializes in long read applications, and today he goes into several of those spaces, including infectious disease and oncology.

How has sequencing changed since we last had Bobby on a couple years ago, and how does he see it changing in the next two years?

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We like talking to the folks at the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC). They have many stakeholders and multifaceted speakers on a wide range of topics. Recently they’re open to talking more about DTC testing—as are most of the traditional diagnostics community. (In our most popular program of the year, CEO of Invitae, Sean George said back in May that the clinical community must “coop” with the rapidly growing DTC movement.)

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The MPS Society is a rare organization. Not just because it is an umbrella for the rare diseases that have in common lysosomal storage malfunction. But because it is one of the largest rare disease organizations in the world.

Terri Klein is the CEO leading the MPS Society. She says the group has over three thousand members on their roster. This brings some strength and resources in an area where low numbers intensifies an uphill battle.

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Remember all those firsts for synthetic biology that we heard about coming from Craig Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics in San Diego? The first genome of a whole organism transplanted. First genome synthesized. First synthetic life created.

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It’s been a year since the coronavirus breached American shores. Here to look back with some perspective is New York Times science writer, Carl Zimmer. Carl has authored thirteen books on science, including Planet of Viruses which includes an essay titled, "Predicting the Next Plague."

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What is a human genome? Well it’s the three billion letters of our DNA. But how is it measured? How do we know when we have it accurately represented?

These are questions that will have to be answered as precision medicine takes hold; for we must have defined standards that will be the basis for regulatory policy, commerce, and better research. These are also the questions that are foremost on the mind of today’s guest.

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It’s the end of the month--and the half year mark--so we open up today's monthly discussion with Nathan and Laura to include some of the headlines we’ve missed this year.

Last month a paper was published warning about the off target effects when using CRISPR. Laura and Nathan agree the kerfuffle which exploded into this month was more about Wall Street than adding anything new to science.

Remember the technology we used before CRISPR? Sangamo Biosciences launched the first ever “in vivo” (in human) trial for gene editing using Zinc Finger technology.

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Designer babies. The term means many things to many people. To some it means kids only dressed in Gucci.

Some say that by doing pre-implantation genetic screening, we are already living in the age of designer babies. Others have been holding out for that time when humans edit their own germline offering the new progeny not only disease repair, but also enhancements. It's also argued there’s a third category in the middle there somewhere, a protection against disease in the future. That’s what He Jiankui attempted.

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A discovery here. A paper there. An important paper gets passed over. A fortuitous encounter in a coffee shop among two ambitious scientists. A yogurt company just being a yogurt company. Science moves forward in fits and starts.
By the time we read the headline in the paper, “breakthrough of the year,” it can have an inevitable quality about it. Then, in a few years, the historian comes and shows us just how random, messy, and, yes, how beautiful is the business of science.

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What is the key to getting a coronavirus vaccine? “Manufacturing,” says today’s guest, Jeff Stein of Cidara Therapeutics.

Jeff joined us just last fall to talk about his company’s exciting new technology, an immunotherapy, that is a universal flu preventative and therapy. Yes, you read that right. A universal flu preventative.

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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.

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“The new drug is the engaged individual,” says today’s guest, Daniel Kraft.
Daniel is the founder of Exponential Medicine where he has championed digital health and the explosion of wearable technologies.  He's also hosting the new Healthy Conversations podcast--go check it out!  There you will find interviews with the innovator’s of today’s medical culture, including shows with former FDA Director, Scott Gottlieb, and genomic medicine guru, Eric Topol.

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