Mendelspod Podcast

Our topic today: biotech leadership. What makes a good biotech CEO? Are there unique issues to biotech and diagnostics that shape and demand a different kind of leadership? 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

It didn’t take long to come up with our lead story for November’s month in review show. Looking at the pictures of the boy in Germany playing soccer after successful treatment of his rare skin disease is just the kind of images we had in mind when we first heard of stem cell therapies. 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

Carla Grandori was for thirty years a cancer researcher most recently at the Fred Hutch in Seattle. She had her personal reasons for working on cancer, she tells us in today’s show. Now, she’s the CEO and founder of SEngine, a startup offering something completely new for oncologists around the country.Carla says she was motivated to step out of the research lab when two patients came to her personally and asked her, “can you study my cancer?” 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

Immuno oncology is now the dominant topic at Mendelspod. From shows with CEOs presenting new panels of predictive biomarker tests, to the firsts at the FDA with the CAR-T approvals as well as the first approval of a drug (Merck’s Keytruda) based on a common biomarker (MSI) rather than on a tumor type, to scientists discussing rare cells of the immune system, we had more podcasts on this topic than any other in 2017. 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

Here’s a title for you. Chief Genomics Officer. Today’s guest is also the VP of Genomic Medicine and a faculty investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. 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 past few months have seen the first approvals at the FDA for CAR-T cancer therapies. But trials have been going on for years. And not just by big pharma.Today’s guest, Dr. Michael Jensen, is a researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital and started his first CAR-T cell trial back in 2002.“It’s been a long road to get to the point where we understand enough about the science and physiology of this technology to make it work int he clinic," he tells us in today's interview. 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

Modena, Italy is the town where one of the world's rarest cars were first developed and built: the Ferrari sports car. It’s also home to one of the world’s oldest universities where today’s guest spends his time studying rare human cells. 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

From 1999 to 2013, Deanna Church was a staff scientist at the NCBI where, for a time, she headed the Genome Reference Consortium. This was the effort to continually update, improve and maintain the reference genome. Then Deanna went into private industry, first to Personalis--a genome interpretation company, and now she’s Director of Applications at 10X Genomics--the tools company offering linked read sequencing technology. 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

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? 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

To honor Laura's pentametric thirst,We write the summary today in verse. Was it a quake that had no epicenter,That silly paper out by J. Craig Venter? And after years of silencing the marketHas RNAi at last knocked out its target? Then Nathan gives to yuppies devil's choice.Which one libs: gluten dough or GMOs? 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