Emmanuel Vincent is the founder of Cl i mate Feedback , a project which includes a new tool for scientists to comment directly on climate science news. The tool is a plugin which can be downloaded for free and gives a viewer real time access to the feedback of scientists on a particular online article. 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...
Jul 23, 2015•22 min
Matt Might came knocking on the door of genomic medicine out of pure necessity. After a four year diagnostic odyssey that led them to Duke University, Matt and his wife, Cristina, finally found out through exome sequencing that their son, Bertrand, was suffering from a rare disease known as NGLY1 deficiency. That was three years ago. 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...
Jul 21, 2015•22 min
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...
Jul 17, 2015•26 min
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 e...
Jul 14, 2015•19 min
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...
Jul 09, 2015•25 min
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 ep...
Jul 07, 2015•33 min
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 tri...
Jun 26, 2015•6 min
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
Jun 24, 2015•29 min
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 acc...
Jun 19, 2015•6 min
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
Jun 15, 2015•27 min
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 s...
Jun 12, 2015•6 min
Gene and Tonic for June 5, 2015 What 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 ...
Jun 05, 2015•5 min
Jeremy Koenig is a molecular biologist and an athlete. His interest in both led him to found a new direct-to-consumer genetic testing company called Athletigen. 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
Jun 04, 2015•23 min
If you haven’t already, check out the inaugural Festival of Genomics being held in Boston later this month. 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
Jun 02, 2015•18 min
Gene and Tonic: May 29, 2015 Did you hear? The Age of Genomics has come to an end. According to science journalist, David Dobbs, after 110 years of studying genomics, we have come up with almost nothing to improve human health, or as Dobbs put it so elegantly, we ain't got " diddly-squat ." What will all of our geneticist friends do? They don't want to be known as "diddlly-squaticists." This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes...
May 29, 2015•5 min
By 2050, there will be 9 billion people on the planet. What will they eat? This is the question that led Rod Wing, Director of the Arizona Genomics Institute, into the field of plant genomics. What has been accomplished so far in the mission to come up with some super green crops? And how does Rod see anti-GMO sentiment and the recent trend toward gluten free diets factoring in? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ...
May 27, 2015•31 min
A very unique biotechnology event took place this week. BEINGS 2015, or the Biotech and the Ethical Imagination Global Summit, was held at The Tabernacle, a former church turned concert hall in Atlanta, Georgia. The venue was not the only unusual thing for a summit about science. Speakers at the meeting included a well known linguist, a famous Canadian novelist, and Catholic rector along with professors of bioethics, law, and, of course, biology. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus...
May 22, 2015•26 min
If you followed the news from the recent show of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), no doubt you heard about the exciting potential of liquid biopsies. These new blood-based tests, made possible by better tools and analysis techniques, offer a non-invasive way of understanding various cancers. Traditionally, with non-hematological cancers, solid tumor biopsies are obtained through surgical recession or an invasive needle. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this ...
May 19, 2015•22 min
In a keynote talk this week for the online Genetics and Genomics conference , computational biology whiz, John Quackenbush, listed some pretty wild correlations found by a Harvard Business School student when he mixed some large data sets. For example, U.S. spending on science, space, and technology corresponds directly with suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation. We never would have guessed it without the help of big data. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with...
May 15, 2015•6 min
Just as biomedical research is experiencing a surge of translation into clinical application, so too must the stories of this research and its impact in the lives of patients be translated to a larger audience. 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
May 12, 2015•17 min
The New Republic argued in a pice entitled, " The Decline of Pseudos cience ," this week that now that the so called "natural" living industry has gone mainstream, "it's days are numbered." Surely Oprah's dumping of Dr. Oz backs this up. But other events this week show a different story. 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...
May 08, 2015•6 min
Janitors have had a terribly busy time this week cleaning up all those jaws that were dropped on floors of research labs everywhere around the country. Have you heard about this latest sexism scandal? Two female co-authors of a scientific paper submitted their work to PLOS -- you know, the open access journal. You won’t believe what they heard back from the lone peer reviewer. They were told to go find “one or two male biologists” to be co-authors on the paper to increase its chances of being pu...
May 01, 2015•6 min
Pharma companies have always had their chief medical officers (CMOs). Now, as the diagnostics industry grows, many kinds of life science companies are filling this important position as well. Sequencing tool makers, direct-to-consumer firms, bioinformatics companies—they’re all appointing CMOs. 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...
Apr 15, 2015•27 min
An Old New DTC Co. on the Move Let’s start with a bit of trivia. What company has resorted to selling genetic ancestry testing online direct to consumers? Hint: the company is located in the San Francisco Bay area, has banked more than 800,000 samples from customers all over the world, and is slowly transforming itself into major biomedical player. That’s right. You got it. It’s Ancestry.com . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus e...
Apr 10, 2015•6 min
When President Bill Clinton stood with Francis Collins and Craig Venter in 2001 to announce the sequencing of the genome, the genome wasn’t really done. 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
Apr 07, 2015•24 min
Actually there was no news this week. It turns out the whole industry took the week off to watch the stunning Ken Burns documentary on cancer. No, that’s not true. We did find some news. How about this? The Affordable Care Act turned five this past week. Happy Birthday, ObamaCare! So we thought we’d share some important numbers about the ACA: 11.7 million: the number of Americans who have signed up for 2015 coverage. 46%: the increase in enrollment from 2014 to 2015. This is a public episode. If...
Apr 03, 2015•5 min
Will tech companies like Google and Apple be good at life science applications? We pursue this question today with Dale Yuzuki, the avid life science blogger, scientist, and now a marketing manager at Thermo Fisher. (See his recent blog, The Core Competency of Google Is Not Life Sciences. ) 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...
Mar 31, 2015•23 min
We were off last week, so there’s plenty to talk about. 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
Mar 27, 2015•6 min
The future of diagnostics is in the hands of those taking care of the biospecimen samples says, Andy Brooks our final guest in the series, Improving Biospecimen Standards. Andy is the Chief Operating Officer at Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository, or RUCDR. 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...
Mar 19, 2015•21 min
More than with any other major disease, the understanding and treatment of cancer is being transformed by genomics. And these are early days. John McPherson has been involved in sequencing since the original Human Genome Project. He now directs the Genome Technologies Program at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. John chaired a panel on cancer genomics at the recent AGBT, or Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference, and shares his thoughts on this year's meeting. This is a pu...
Mar 17, 2015•22 min
