Mendelspod Podcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 market Has RNAi at last knocked out its target?   Then Nathan gives to yuppies devil's choice. Which one libs: gluten dough or GMOs?  

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.

When we first talked with Tim Triche of LA Children's Hospital, we found out he was a bit of an outlier among cancer researchers. He was an advocate for poking around in the non-coding RNA. Today we welcome Tim back to the show to talk about a new gene panel that he has designed specifically for childhood cancers. It’s a first of its kind and was modeled quite closely on the gene panel for the NCI’s MATCH trial. The new panel has both a DNA and an RNA component, and the RNA side is by far the biggest.

Back in 2009, University of Washington professor, Jay Shendure, wrote a definitive paper offering up a roadmap for exome sequencing. Since then, the cost of sequencing has come down so far that many have debated whether or not to do whole genome sequencing vs. just the exome.  

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.

The challenge for the first ever in-human gene editing trial, according to today’s guest, is with the delivery to the body. “At the moment, the easiest place to deliver your gene or genome editing is to the liver, using AAV which are viruses that seek out and go to the liver cells," says Sandy Macrae, the CEO of Sangamo Therapeutics. Sangamo is known for two things: They have pioneered the commercialization of an older gene editing technology called Zinc Fingers. And they have done a lot of work in the area of HIV.

Today we get to bring you a feel good story, one of the major achievements so far in precision oncology. Three large companies—Thermo Fisher, Pfizer, and Novartis—put aside their differences to come together for patients. The patients are those who suffer from non-small cell lung cancer. In June, the FDA approved for the first time an NGS panel with multiple genes for multiple drugs that treat this kind of cancer.

Invitae appointed their co-founder Sean George as CEO earlier this year. He joins us to share his bold vision for the field of genetic testing.

The life science tools space is flourishing. Biomedical research output is at an all time high. Today’s guest says there are over 40,000 papers published each year on cancer biomarkers. But very few of those become commercialized tests. Why?

They’re getting a lot of buzz this week. We’re pleased to have Justin Kao, a co-founder of Helix on the program today for the first time.

Barrett Bready is back on the program. He’s the CEO of Nabsys, a company with some new technology for genome mapping. Originally Nabsys had been working to develop nanopore sequencing, but after a recent reboot has become focused on scaling up scientists' ability to read structural genomic information. Barrett compares Nabsys’ new multiplex technology for genome mapping to the improvement of arrays over single nucleotide (SNP) detection.

George Church joins us today. He’s the Robert Winthrop Professor of . . . . well, he’s George Church. And he confirms that, yes, a movie called “Woolly" is being made about his lab. In the next breath, he reminds us (and himself?) that less than 1% of his press is about the woolly mammoth.

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.

When will we see the results of microbiome research in our every day lives? And what will that look like? Rob Knight joins us for the first time today. He’s a professor at UC San Diego and Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation. He is well known for co-authoring a paper showing that the microbial populations in the guts of obese mice differentiate from those in lean mice.