"If you go to a scientific meeting, even with the greatest critics, and you ask, how many people in this audience believe that your entire genome will be part of your everyday medical care in fifty years, every person will raise their hand. So the only questions we’re debating are: how do we get there, how soon can we get there, and what evidence base must we have in place before we get there? What’s really exciting to me is getting there sooner rather than later. If we get there 20 years sooner, we are saving thousands of people's lives.”

Mendelspod Podcast

Robert Green: Newborn Sequencing Is the Goal Here in the U.S.

We’re all aware of the way that next gen sequencing has changed many tests in the clinical laboratory. But some testing has held stubbornly resistant to change. This has been the case in cytogenetics, or the analysis of chromosomes. That is now changing thanks to a technology that is making inroads where next gen sequencing could not.

The Studies Are In—Optical Mapping Can Replace Traditional Cytogenetics Tests

"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.”

Amy Sturm of Geisinger on FH Testing and New Implementation Science

One of the hottest new trends in biomedical research today is what is known as spatial biology--the ability to capture tissues in a 3D context. It was named Method of the Year by Nature Magazine in 2020.

Out of the Reductionist Trap: Brad Gray of NanoString on Spatial Biology

When Lee Schwartzberg did his training as an oncologist some thirty years ago at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, he had a dream. And after training, he set off to make that dream a reality: to bring the resources, expertise, and research that one enjoys at a major research hospital cancer center to the community level.

Precision Oncology at the Community Level with Lee Schwartzberg

“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.

Daniel Kraft on the Digitome in the Age of COVID

First comes love, then comes marriage; then comes the genomic couple's report.  Isn't that how the line goes? Perhaps that's a how it will begin to go. Today's guest is the founder of Orchid Health, which as of this week is offering the world’s first risk prediction couple’s report. Based on whole genome sequencing from a saliva sample that expectant parents take from home, the report will tell them their genetic risk for the major diseases, including brain, heart, cancer, diabetes, and inflammatory bowel.

Orchid Health Is 1st in the World to Offer Whole Genome Couple's Report for a Healthy Child

Will there be a fourth surge of COVID here in the U.S.? Already that we’re asking the question and it’s not an inevitability is a good sign. It’s become a race between vaccination clinics and viral variants. Viral surveillance has become a key part of any nation’s pandemic strategy. The U.S. was a bit slow to this race, but we are catching up. This past month, PacBio and Labcorp announced a partnership that brings the tool of long read sequencing to this effort.

PacBio and Labcorp Team Up on a Global Pan-Pathogen Surveillance Network

Kevin Hrusovosky’s career has been dedicated to transforming medicine from reactive “sick care” to preventative personalized care. A serial entrepreneur, he currently serves as the CEO of Quanterix, a company which has just nabbed $700 million and is raising the bar on proteomics testing. “Genomics can tell you what your predisposition is,” he says in today’s interview, “proteomics can tell you the earliest moment you are in a disease cascade.”

Will High Sensitivity Proteomics Enable a New Paradigm in Precision Health? with Kevin Hrusovsky, Quanterix

Raj Krishnan has a good story, and probably a good product. More data will tell. He's the CEO of Biological Dynamics, a new liquid biopsy company that is able to detect biomarkers in not only blood but other biological fluids. And the company's products are good for not only cancer but Alzheimer's and other disease areas as well. Raj comes to precision medicine from electrical engineering. You don't hear that very often. One day in his lab while working on his PhD he had a classic eureka! moment. That unexpected discovery for which every scientist longs.

A Liquid Biopsy Technology that Doesn't Degrade the Sample: Raj Krishnan of Biological Dynamics

Mendelspod was live this week at AGBT 2021 where Theral interviewed CEO Erik Holmlin and CMO Alka Chaubey of Bionano Genomics on Tuesday. The topic was the future of big biology.

The Future of Big Biology: Bionano at AGBT

How fast is the coronavirus mutating? Why is the U.K. variant, or B.1.1.7, more transmissible than original strains of the virus? Is viral surveillance the weak spot in the U.S.'s fight against the pandemic?

Playing Catch Up--Viral Surveillance in the U.S. with Will Lee of Helix

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."

The Coronavirus, A Year On with Carl Zimmer

We’ve all heard of and perhaps worked with data from The Cancer Atlas Project. Now, with the help of new spatial biology tools, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing what they call The Cancer Immunome Project. This is a comprehensive effort to fully characterize the immune system and how it interacts with and fights off cancer. Today we talk with J C Villasboas, a physician-scientist at Mayo who co-started the project. He’s also Director of Mayo’s Immune Monitoring Core Facility.

Spatial Biology Enables The Cancer Immunome Project

Has this pandemic presented a unique moment for science in our history? Or is it just a strange and temporary moment of science fiction? Or both? Sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson (The Mars Trilogy, The Ministry of the Future) recently penned an essay in the New Yorker about how the virus has “changed our imaginations” and created a new “structure of feeling.”

Is This A Unique Time for Science? We Ask Sci-fi Writer Kim Stanley Robinson

Mendelspod was founded in 2011 by Theral Timpson and Ayanna Monteverdi to advance life science research, connecting people and ideas. Influenced by the thinking tools developed by Eli Goldgratt, the founders bring a unique approach to media in the life sciences. With help from our advisors around the industry, Mendelspod goes beyond quick sound bites to create a space for probing conversations and deep insight into the topics and trends which shape the industry's future and therefore our future as a species.

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