You don't have to build a million planes to test a million aeronautical designs; we have mathematical simulations and models that do that for us. But in biology—once the class you'd take in high school if you loved science, but hated math—that's been impossible... until very recently. In this episode, Markus Covert, Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, a16z deal partner Judy Savitskaya, and Bio Eats World host Hanne Winarsky, talk all about where we are in our ability to simulate and build m...
Dec 07, 2020•33 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Infertility is a common struggle with limited treatment options, particularly if caused by an issue with the uterus. On this episode of Journal Club host Lauren Richardson (@lr_bio) talks to Professor Anthony Atala about his lab's work engineering a replacement uterus that can -- incredibly! -- support pregnancy and live birth in rabbits. They discuss how the Atala lab created these bioengineered uteruses and tested their functionality, what kinds of conditions they can be used to treat, and pot...
Dec 03, 2020•18 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Descriptions of the mental illness we today call schizophrenia are as old as humankind itself. And more than likely, we are are all familiar with this disease in some way, as it touches 1% of us—millions of lives—and of course, their families. In this episode, we dive into the remarkable story of one such American family, the Galvins: Mimi, Don, and their 12 children, 6 of whom were afflicted with schizophrenia. In his book, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, Robert Kolke...
Nov 30, 2020•38 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast We all know that eating healthy is better for you—and that following that advice is far harder than it sounds, for a multitude of reasons, from culture to preferences to access and affordability. And yet the reality is that access to good, nutritious food is perhaps the most powerful medical treatment we have, when it comes not just preventing sickness, but helping sick people get better—and potentially saving the healthcare system potentially billions in treating chronic disease. So what happen...
Nov 24, 2020•20 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast Approximately half of all severe developmental disorders are caused by de novo (new, not inherited) mutations in protein-coding genes. But which genes? In this episode of the Bio Eats World Journal Club, Vineeta Agarwala (@vintweeta) and Lauren Richardson (@lr_bio) discuss a recent article finding new genes linked to developmental disorders and highlighting how many still need to be decoded. Vineeta Agarwala, physician and a16z general partner, and host Lauren Richardson discuss the Nature artic...
Nov 19, 2020•22 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast Imagine if the airline industry did not post prices for flights in advance. What if instead of posting fares on travel sites, airlines argued they could only bill you after the flight, because they didn't know what the fuel price will be that day; whether or not you would consume a beverage; if the flight might be diverted or delayed; whether that pilot would have to work harder and bill more in their coding of the flight after they land? And yet, this is exactly what happens in healthcare. Desp...
Nov 16, 2020•31 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease with no cure and challenging treatment regimes. The disease is characterized by self-reactive immune cells that attack and destroy cells in the pancreas that produce insulin and are essential for regulating metabolism, called beta cells. Since the advent of stem cell technology, scientists have dreamed of curing Type 1 Diabetes by replacing the beta cells lost to disease with lab grown, stem cell-derived beta cells. However, it wasn't until recent work fr...
Nov 12, 2020•20 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast Healthcare is perhaps unique in that the entire system exists entirely to serve the patient... and yet, in many ways, that same patient is not the customer. In fact, the patient—and the patient's voice—can often be lost or overlooked in the enormous, complex, convoluted business flows, between a huge system of providers, in elaborate clinical work flows, in insurance coverage and reimbursements, or in high level policy debates. In this episode, a16z General Partner Julie Yoo and a16z partner Jay...
Nov 09, 2020•35 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast Mechanical forces and architecture may not sound very "bio", but they are key tools of epidermal stem cells. These stem cells essentially engineer their environment by producing both the cells above them (the skin cells) and the extracellular matrix mesh (the basement membrane) that they sit on. In this episode we explore whether, when these stem cells acquire oncogenic mutations (the ones that cause cancer), do they now architect in a different way, and does this influence the development of ca...
Nov 05, 2020•23 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast with @lifelikephysics, @vijaypande, and @omnivorousread Where does life truly begin? How do we understand the fundamental nature of what is “alive” and what is “not alive”? In this episode of Bio Eats World, Professor Jeremy England discusses his new book, Every Life is on Fire, all about how what we might use physics to understand to be the origins of life—and how we define what being alive is. As biologists, we are taught that life evolved as the result of Darwinian natural selection. But what...
Nov 02, 2020•25 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of the Bio Eats World Journal Club, a16z bio deal team partner Judy Savitskaya and host Lauren Richardson discuss a new article that makes the full arc from basic science discovery to application. The article -- " Reverse and forward engineering of Drosophila corneal nanocoatings " by Mikhail Kryuchkov, Oleksii Bilousov, Jannis Lehmann, Manfred Fiebig & Vladimir L. Katanaev, published in Nature -- and the conversation begin by discussing insect eye nanocoatings, which give eyes k...
Oct 29, 2020•20 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of Bio Eats World, a16z founder and internet pioneer Marc Andreessen and general partner Jorge Conde zoom out to discuss the large scale societal effects of the current pandemic on society, healthcare, biotech, and innovation. COVID-19 has been catastrophic—but also catalyzed enormous change and a dramatic groundswell of innovation. Where are we now? Which of these changes will stay, and which may recede? What new innovations and impacts might be still to come, and what are we le...
Oct 26, 2020•27 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast Neurons do not divide or replicate, so how can we replace neurons killed by neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's Disease? On the Bio Eats World Journal Club, UCSD Professor Xiang-Dong Fu and host Lauren Richardson discuss his team's work generating new neurons in the brain by inducing non-neuronal cells to become neurons. The conversation covers how they programmed this cell type conversion, how they verified that these newly created neurons were functioning correctly, and how they demons...
Oct 22, 2020•26 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Why do we experience physical pain? Is all pain the same, or are there different types? Do people experience pain differently? Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School Clifford Woolf, and Bio Eats World host Hanne Winarsky talk about everything we know about the biology of pain. Technology is today enabling a new, deeper, and much more complex understanding of the phenomenon of pain. Which pathways and neurons are activated in the brain and when, and what patterns might represent diff...
Oct 19, 2020•37 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast There is a wide range of diagnostic tests for COVID-19 that are all well suited for determining whether an individual patient is sick with the virus. But to safely reopen society in the absence of a vaccine, we need tests that can be given broadly across a population, including to people who are asymptomatic. Many of these existing tests cannot be administered at this grand scale. That is where SwabSeq comes in. SwabSeq is an open source COVID-19 diagnostic platform that leverages the power of g...
Oct 15, 2020•19 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast We’re at the dawn of a new era where we’re truly able to design biology: from genetically engineered cotton, to meat made from plants, to incredibly complex new therapies composed of engineered cells and genes. And that's just the very beginning. One day, just about everything will be genetically engineered, from our medicines to our materials and manufacturing and much more. The question is no longer, can we design biology? Instead the question now is, what can we build with these tools? So how...
Oct 13, 2020•32 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past 15 years we have made huge advances in our ability to engineer the genome, meaning that we now have the ability to edit DNA in a programmable and precise manner. In the lab, these editing tools allow us to create models of disease and to investigate how changes in the genome lead to changes in cell and organismal biology. And excitingly, these genome editing technologies are now entering clinical trials to treat, and possibly cure, diseases like sickle cell anemia. But there is a c...
Oct 08, 2020•21 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast It's not normal to talk to your employer about the details of your health: your current temperature, who you've been exposed to, whether your kid is sick, whether or not you've been social distancing. So how do employers handle and manage this entirely new process of employees returning to the workplace in the midst of an ongoing pandemic? In this episode of Bio Eats World, Vineeta Agarwala (general partner at a16z), Phong Nguyen (EVP and General Manager at Accolade), Ryan Sandler (CEO and Cofou...
Oct 06, 2020•26 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast The human brain is endlessly fascinating and mysterious, but the majority of brain research to date has focused on neurons and their functions. While the other types of brain cells, such as astrocytes and glia, are starting to get their due, there is another element of the brain that to this day has gone woefully unstudied: the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the brain structure that produces it, the choroid plexus. The CSF is a clear, colorless fluid found in the brain and spinal cord, and is tra...
Oct 01, 2020•23 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast with @JorgeCondeBio, @JLimMD, @AmerCancerCEO, and @omnivorousread In this episode of Bio Eats World, we explore all the major revolutions in cancer treatment across the history of medicine—and what’s coming next. Hanne Winarsky delves into the past and future of the fight against cancer with Gary Reedy, CEO of the American Cancer Society; Jonathan Lim, CEO of Erasca, a biotech company with the mission of erasing cancer; and Jorge Conde, a16z general partner. The conversation spans not only the h...
Sep 29, 2020•35 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast In Bio Eats World's Journal Club episodes, we discuss groundbreaking research articles, why they matter, what new opportunities they present, and how to take these findings from paper to practice. In this episode, Stanford Professor Carolyn Bertozzi and host Lauren Richardson discuss the article " Lysosome-targeting chimaeras for degradation of extracellular proteins" by Steven M. Banik, Kayvon Pedram, Simon Wisnovsky, Green Ahn, Nicholas M. Riley & Carolyn R. Bertozzi, published in Nature 584, ...
Sep 24, 2020•24 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast with @LauraDeming, @kpfortney, @vijaypande, and @omnivorousread Welcome to the first episode of Bio Eats World, a brand new podcast all about how biology is technology. Bio is breaking out of the lab and clinic and into our daily lives—on the verge of revolutionizing our world in ways we are only just beginning to imagine. In this episode, we talk all about the science of aging. Once a fringe field, aging research is now entering a new phase with the first clinical trials of aging-related drugs....
Sep 22, 2020•27 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast This new show, from the same team that produces the popular a16z Podcast, will be all about how biology today is where technology was 50 years ago: on the precipice of revolutionizing our world in ways we are only just beginning to appreciate. Through conversations with scientists, builders, entrepreneurs, and leaders at the intersection of science, tech, and business, the Bio Eats World team, including hosts Hanne Winarsky and Lauren Richardson, examine how biology—and our new ability to engine...
Aug 18, 2020•2 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast 
