Mendelspod Podcast

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? 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

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. 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

Listen to Tim Triche from Children's Hospital Los Angeles for very long and you’ll get excited again about cancer research. I couldn’t stop listening. Which is why his interview is being published in two parts.Now sure, like other guests we’ve had on the show, Tim calls this the “absolute golden age of biomedical research.” But Tim has a unique story. He has been, and is still - though less so now, he says - an outlier in cancer genomics. Whereas most cancer researchers talk about genes, Tim is more interested in non-coding RNA. 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

When science journalist Ivan Oransky co-founded Retraction Watch, a blog with the express purpose of making scientific retractions more public, he didn’t think he would be posting much.“Adam Marcus, my co-founder, was quoted as saying, ‘yeah, we figured we’d post periodically, our mothers would read it, they’d be very happy, nobody would read it other than them.’ Obviously that hasn’t been the case,” says Oransky in this first of a series of podcasts on scientific integrity. 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

What a week for Americans . . . What a week for genomics!The Supreme Court rulings that Americans can keep their Obamacare and can all get married - no matter what state they live in - added the final good news to a week of genomics festivities around the country.But it's not all positive news this week. The New York Times featured a diagnostics company under review by Medicare for fraud. Allegedly, the New Orleans based Renaissance Rx has been paying doctors to sign up patients for a huge trial of genomic based tests, even when the patients didn't qualify. 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

Art Caplan is a prodigious writer on the topic of medical ethics. How prodigious? How about thirty-two books and over 700 peer reviewed papers on ethical conundrums ranging from organ donation to end of life care. 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 international BIO convention is all about seduction.  All fifty states sent representatives to Philly this week to make the case that their state was the best for biotech. Seventy countries were there touting their awesome awesomeness.  Does all this seduction really work?A new class of drugs for cardiovascular disease was reviewed recently at the FDA.  Will they become blockbusters like Pfizer’s Lipitor? 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

Before Bobby Sebra became the Director of Technology Development at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai in New York he worked at Pacific Biosciences, helping to develop their single molecule, long read (SMRT) 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

It’s a week of finding out again what we already knew. First that a nobel laureate can also be a total ***hole. And second that creative people really are crazy.It’s also been a week for going into the future. This week Team Mendelspod attended IndieBio’s Demo Day. Twelve, mostly very young, founder/geeks pitched their new ideas for making the world a better place to a room of investors in downtown San Francisco. We saw some amazing technology, but the real question seems to be, how will they sell these new synthetic biology products?!?. 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

Gene and Tonic for June 5, 2015What does genomics have to do with a hippie rock music event?  A few things.  Find out in today’s humorous preview of the Festival of Genomics, happening later this month in Boston.  Yes, there are the sports genes everyone knows about.  But what about those less studied that might affect your career in sports?  Do you know what is written on the sports page of your genome?And what has Ben Carson considering brain surgery?  Tune in to this week’s wrap of genomics news - it’s another Gene and Tonic from Mendelspod. 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