The Genetics Podcast

In this week’s episode Patrick speaks to Sonya Chowdhury, Chris Ponting and Andy Devereux-Cooke from the DecodeME project, the world’s largest genetic myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome study. They discuss the symptoms of ME, the challenges facing ME and chronic fatigue patients, the issues surrounding funding and the future of personalised treatments.

This week’s guest, Paulo Fontes, is a Professor of Surgery and Chief Medical Officer at LyGenesis, an organ regeneration technology platform with a current focus on liver regeneration for patients with end stage liver disease. He talks to Patrick about how our lymph nodes can act as a 'bioreactor' to regrow functioning organs, how liver cells could be used in multiple transplants, and shares his thoughts on the future of organ transplants.

In this week’s episode Patrick speaks to Director of the Big Data Institute at University of Oxford, Professor Cecilia Lindgren, about her biggest eureka moment, the power of collaboration and consortiums across academia and industry to grow genetic sample sizes and accelerate research, and the importance of best practice standards to enable genetic research to scale successfully.

What is the role of genetics in Parkinson’s disease? From the impact of variants in the LRRK2 gene, to the need to expand PD research in diverse populations to aid the development of new medicines, this week’s guests, Dr Ignacio Mata and Dr James Beck, talk to Patrick about the history, and future, of precision medicine development in Parkinson’s disease.

In this special episode we’re sharing Patrick’s guest appearance on GIANT’s Healthy Innovators Podcast. He talks to the podcast’s host, Barry Shrier, about the need to accelerate the development of new treatment options, how personalised medicine is changing the future of healthcare and what it takes to create a successful startup in the genomic medicine landscape.

As more and more people get their DNA sequenced, through health care initiatives, biobanks and direct-to-consumer testing, an array of ethical questions arise. From how results are shared with research participants, to the ambiguities surrounding gene editing, Patrick and this week’s guest, Dr Anna Lewis, Research Associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, dive deep into the big questions surrounding genetics and medicine.

For many Long COVID patients the debilitating long-term symptoms they experience emerged after what, at first, appeared to be a mild COVID-19 infection. Professor David Strain, Senior Clinical Lecturer at University of Exeter Medical School and Honorary Consultant in Medicine, speaks to Patrick about the patterns he saw emerge while working on the frontline of the pandemic. From the first time David attended a meeting about COVID-19, at a 3am webinar broadcast from China, to working with Sano to help identify the genetic markers of Long COVID, they discuss the still emerging impact of the condition, from the first use of the term 'Long COVID' in May 2020, up until today.

In this special episode we’re sharing Patrick’s guest appearance on Genomics England’s new podcast, The G Word. Patrick speaks to Chris Wigley, CEO of Genomics England, about his work on the Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD) project during his PhD and how his career has focused on the power of translation research to directly impact on and improve people’s lives.

How can precision medicine techniques be used to develop potential new treatments for genetic Parkinson’s disease? In the latest episode of our Precision Pioneers miniseries, Patrick speaks to Dr Carrolee Barlow, Chief Medical Officer at ESCAPE Bio, about the challenges of accessing genetic testing for Parkinson’s patients, how genetically guided treatments could help patients with the LRRK2 gene, and how new technologies such as wearable devices could help catch Parkinson’s cases at an earlier stage.

Can the speed and success of COVID-19 trials teach us how to run other trials 5x faster going forward? Can polygenic risk scores be effectively integrated into healthcare systems? Why do 'unique datasets' hold the key to future drug discovery? And why is there a disparity between precision medicine development in cancer and all other disease areas? Dr Vineeta Agarwala, General Partner at the Andreessen Horowitz Bio Fund, answers all these questions and more as she discusses the future of biotech and genomic medicine with Patrick.