Podcast appearances and mentions of Eric Lander

Funding for the NIH and US biomedical research is imperiled at a momentous time of progress. Exemplifying this is the work of Dr. Anna Greka, a leading physician-scientist at the Broad Institute who is devoted to unlocking the mysteries of rare diseases— that cumulatively affect 30 million Americans— and finding cures, science supported by the NIH.A clip from our conversationThe audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is linked here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube.Transcript with audio and external linksEric Topol (00:06):Well, hello. This is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I am really delighted to welcome today, Anna Greka. Anna is the president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) this year, a very prestigious organization, but she's also at Mass General Brigham, a nephrologist, a cell biologist, a physician-scientist, a Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and serves as a member of the institute's Executive Leadership Team. So we got a lot to talk about of all these different things you do. You must be pretty darn unique, Anna, because I don't know any cell biologists, nephrologists, physician-scientist like you.Anna Greka (00:48):Oh, thank you. It's a great honor to be here and glad to chat with you, Eric.Eric Topol (00:54):Yeah. Well, I had the real pleasure to hear you speak at a November conference, the AI for Science Forum, which we'll link to your panel. Where I was in a different panel, but you spoke about your extraordinary work and it became clear that we need to get you on Ground Truths, so you can tell your story to everybody. So I thought rather than kind of going back from the past where you were in Greece and somehow migrated to Boston and all that. We're going to get to that, but you gave an amazing TED Talk and it really encapsulated one of the many phenomenal stories of your work as a molecular sleuth. So maybe if you could give us a synopsis, and of course we'll link to that so people could watch the whole talk. But I think that Mucin-1 or MUC1, as you call it, discovery is really important to kind of ground our discussion.A Mysterious Kidney Disease Unraveled Anna Greka (01:59):Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's an interesting story. In some ways, in my TED Talk, I highlight one of the important families of this story, a family from Utah, but there's also other important families that are also part of the story. And this is also what I spoke about in London when we were together, and this is really sort of a medical mystery that initially started on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where it was found that there were many families in which in every generation, several members suffered and ultimately died from what at the time was a mysterious kidney disease. This was more than 30 years ago, and it was clear that there was something genetic going on, but it was impossible to identify the gene. And then even with the advent of Next-Gen sequencing, this is what's so interesting about this story, it was still hard to find the gene, which is a little surprising.Anna Greka (02:51):After we were able to sequence families and identify monogenic mutations pretty readily, this was still very resistant. And then it actually took the firepower of the Broad Institute, and it's actually from a scientific perspective, an interesting story because they had to dust off the old-fashioned Sanger sequencing in order to get this done. But they were ultimately able to identify this mutation in a VNTR region of the MUC1 gene. The Mucin-1 gene, which I call a dark corner of the human genome, it was really, it's highly repetitive, very GC-rich. So it becomes very difficult to sequence through there with Next-Gen sequencing. And so, ultimately the mutation of course was found and it's a single cytosine insertion in a stretch of cytosines that sort of causes this frameshift mutation and an early stop codon that essentially results in a neoprotein like a toxic, what I call a mangled protein that sort of accumulates inside the kidney cells.Anna Greka (03:55):And that's where my sort of adventure began. It was Eric Lander's group, who is the founding director of the Broad who discovered the mutation. And then through a conversation we had here in Boston, we sort of discovered that there was an opportunity to collaborate and so that's how I came to the Broad, and that's the beginnings of this story. I think what's fascinating about this story though, that starts in a remote Mediterranean island and then turns out to be a disease that you can find in every continent all over the world. There are probably millions of patients with kidney disease in whom we haven't recognized the existence of this mutation. What's really interesting about it though is that what we discovered is that the mangled protein that's a result of this misspelling of this mutation is ultimately captured by a family of cargo receptors, they're called the TMED cargo receptors and they end up sort of grabbing these misfolded proteins and holding onto them so tight that it's impossible for the cell to get rid of them.Anna Greka (04:55):And they become this growing heap of molecular trash, if you will, that becomes really hard to manage, and the cells ultimately die. So in the process of doing this molecular sleuthing, as I call it, we actually also identified a small molecule that actually disrupts these cargo receptors. And as I described in my TED Talk, it's a little bit like having these cargo trucks that ultimately need to go into the lysosome, the cells recycling facility. And this is exactly what this small molecule can do. And so, it was just like a remarkable story of discovery. And then I think the most exciting of all is that these cargo receptors turn out to be not only relevant to this one mangled misshapen protein, but they actually handle a completely different misshapen protein caused by a different genetic mutation in the eye, causing retinitis pigmentosa, a form of blindness, familial blindness. We're now studying familial Alzheimer's disease that's also involving these cargo receptors, and there are other mangled misshapen proteins in the liver, in the lung that we're now studying. So this becomes what I call a node, like a nodal mechanism that can be targeted for the benefit of many more patients than we had previously thought possible, which has been I think, the most satisfying part about this story of molecular sleuthing.Eric Topol (06:20):Yeah, and it's pretty extraordinary. We'll put the figure from your classic Cell paper in 2019, where you have a small molecule that targets the cargo receptor called TMED9.Anna Greka (06:34):Correct.Expanding the MissionEric Topol (06:34):And what's amazing about this, of course, is the potential to reverse this toxic protein disease. And as you say, it may have applicability well beyond this MUC1 kidney story, but rather eye disease with retinitis pigmentosa and the familial Alzheimer's and who knows what else. And what's also fascinating about this is how, as you said, there were these limited number of families with the kidney disease and then you found another one, uromodulin. So there's now, as you say, thousands of families, and that gets me to part of your sleuth work is not just hardcore science. You started an entity called the Ladders to Cures (L2C) Scientific Accelerator.Eric Topol (07:27):Maybe you can tell us about that because this is really pulling together all the forces, which includes the patient advocacy groups, and how are we going to move forward like this?Anna Greka (07:39):Absolutely. I think the goal of the Ladders to Cures Accelerator, which is a new initiative that we started at the Broad, but it really encompasses many colleagues across Boston. And now increasingly it's becoming sort of a national, we even have some international collaborations, and it's only two years that it's been in existence, so we're certainly in a growth mode. But the inspiration was really some of this molecular sleuthing work where I basically thought, well, for starters, it cannot be that there's only one molecular node, these TMED cargo receptors that we discovered there's got to be more, right? And so, there's a need to systematically go and find more nodes because obviously as anyone who works in rare genetic diseases will tell you, the problem for all of us is that we do what I call hand to hand combat. We start with the disease with one mutation, and we try to uncover the mechanism and then try to develop therapies, and that's wonderful.Anna Greka (08:33):But of course, it's slow, right? And if we consider the fact that there are 30 million patients in the United States in every state, everywhere in the country who suffer from a rare genetic disease, most of them, more than half of them are children, then we can appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Out of more than 8,000 genes that are involved in rare genetic diseases, we barely have something that looks like a therapy for maybe 500 of them. So there's a huge mismatch in the unmet need and magnitude of the problem. So the Ladders to Cures Accelerator is here to address this and to do this with the most modern tools available. And to your point, Eric, to bring patients along, not just as the recipients of whatever we discover, but also as partners in the research enterprise because it's really important to bring their perspectives and of course their partnerships in things like developing appropriate biomarkers, for example, for what we do down the road.Anna Greka (09:35):But from a fundamental scientific perspective, this is basically a project that aims to identify every opportunity for nodes, underlying all rare genetic diseases as quickly as possible. And this was one of the reasons I was there at the AI for Science Forum, because of course when one undertakes a project in which you're basically, this is what we're trying to do in the Ladders to Cures Accelerator, introduce dozens of thousands of missense and nonsense human mutations that cause genetic diseases, simultaneously introduce them into multiple human cells and then use modern scalable technology tools. Things like CRISPR screens, massively parallel CRISPR screens to try to interrogate all of these diseases in parallel, identify the nodes, and then develop of course therapeutic programs based on the discovery of these nodes. This is a massive data generation project that is much needed and in addition to the fact that it will help hopefully accelerate our approach to all rare diseases, genetic diseases. It is also a highly controlled cell perturbation dataset that will require the most modern tools in AI, not only to extract the data and understand the data of this dataset, but also because this, again, an extremely controlled, well controlled cell perturbation dataset can be used to train models, train AI models, so that in the future, and I hope this doesn't sound too futuristic, but I think that we're all aiming for that cell biologists for sure dream of this moment, I think when we can actually have in silico the opportunity to make predictions about what cell behaviors are going to look like based on a new perturbation that was not in the training set. So an experiment that hasn't yet been done on a cell, a perturbation that has not been made on a human cell, what if like a new drug, for example, or a new kind of perturbation, a new chemical perturbation, how would it affect the behavior of the cell? Can we make a predictive model for that? This doesn't exist today, but I think this is something, the cell prediction model is a big question for biology for the future. And so, I'm very energized by the opportunity to both address this problem of rare monogenic diseases that remains an unmet need and help as many patients as possible while at the same time advancing biology as much as we possibly can. So it's kind of like a win-win lifting all boats type of enterprise, hopefully.Eric Topol (12:11):Yeah. Well, there's many things to get to unpack what you've just been reviewing. So one thing for sure is that of these 8,000 monogenic diseases, they have relevance to the polygenic common diseases, of course. And then also the fact that the patient family advocates, they are great at scouring the world internet, finding more people, bringing together communities for each of these, as you point out aptly, these rare diseases cumulatively are high, very high proportion, 10% of Americans or more. So they're not so rare when you think about the overall.Anna Greka (12:52):Collectively.Help From the Virtual Cell?Eric Topol (12:53):Yeah. Now, and of course is this toxic proteinopathies, there's at least 50 of these and the point that people have been thinking until now that, oh, we found a mangled protein, but what you've zeroed in on is that, hey, you know what, it's not just a mangled protein, it's how it gets stuck in the cell and that it can't get to the lysosome to get rid of it, there's no waste system. And so, this is such fundamental work. Now that gets me to the virtual cell story, kind of what you're getting into. I just had a conversation with Charlotte Bunne and Steve Quake who published a paper in December on the virtual cell, and of course that's many years off, but of course it's a big, bold, ambitious project to be able to say, as you just summarized, if you had cells in silico and you could do perturbations in silico, and of course they were validated by actual experiments or bidirectionally the experiments, the real ones helped to validate the virtual cell, but then you could get a true acceleration of your understanding of cell biology, your field of course.Anna Greka (14:09):Exactly.Eric Topol (14:12):So what you described, is it the same as a virtual cell? Is it kind of a precursor to it? How do you conceive this because this is such a complex, I mean it's a fundamental unit of life, but it's also so much more complex than a protein or an RNA because not only all the things inside the cell, inside all these organelles and nucleus, but then there's all the outside interactions. So this is a bold challenge, right?Anna Greka (14:41):Oh my god, it's absolutely from a biologist perspective, it's the challenge of a generation for sure. We think taking humans to Mars, I mean that's an aspirational sort of big ambitious goal. I think this is the, if you will, the Mars shot for biology, being able to, whether the terminology, whether you call it a virtual cell. I like the idea of saying that to state it as a problem, the way that people who think about it from a mathematics perspective for example, would think about it. I think stating it as the cell prediction problem appeals to me because it actually forces us biologists to think about setting up the way that we would do these cell perturbation data sets, the way we would generate them to set them up to serve predictions. So for example, the way that I would think about this would be can I in the future have so much information about how cell perturbations work that I can train a model so that it can predict when I show it a picture of another cell under different conditions that it hasn't seen before, that it can still tell me, ah, this is a neuron in which you perturbed the mitochondria, for example, and now this is sort of the outcome that you would expect to see.Anna Greka (16:08):And so, to be able to have this ability to have a model that can have the ability to predict in silico what cells would look like after perturbation, I think that's sort of the way that I think about this problem. It is very far away from anything that exists today. But I think that the beginning starts, and this is one of the unique things about my institute, if I can say, we have a place where cell biologists, geneticists, mathematicians, machine learning experts, we all come together in the same place to really think and grapple with these problems. And of course we're very outward facing, interacting with scientists all across the world as well. But there's this sort of idea of bringing people into one institute where we can just think creatively about these big aspirational problems that we want to solve. I think this is one of the unique things about the ecosystem at the Broad Institute, which I'm proud to be a part of, and it is this kind of out of the box thinking that will hopefully get us to generate the kinds of data sets that will serve the needs of building these kinds of models with predictive capabilities down the road.Anna Greka (17:19):But as you astutely said, AlphaFold of course was based on the protein database existing, right? And that was a wealth of available information in which one could train models that would ultimately be predictive, as we have seen this miracle that Demi Hassabis and John Jumper have given to humanity, if you will.Anna Greka (17:42):But as Demis and John would also say, I believe is as I have discussed with them, in fact, the cell prediction problem is really a bigger problem because we do not have a protein data bank to go to right now, but we need to create it to generate these data. And so, my Ladders to Cures Accelerator is here to basically provide some part of the answer to that problem, create this kind of well-controlled database that we need for cell perturbations, while at the same time maximizing our learnings about these fully penetrant coding mutations and what their downstream sequelae would be in many different human cells. And so, in this way, I think we can both advance our knowledge about these monogenic diseases, build models, hopefully with predictive capabilities. And to your point, a lot of what we will learn about this biology, if we think that it involves 8,000 or more out of the 20,000 genes in our genome, it will of course serve our understanding of polygenic diseases ultimately as well as we go deeper into this biology and we look at the combinatorial aspects of what different mutations do to human cells. And so, it's a huge aspirational problem for a whole generation, but it's a good one to work on, I would say.Learning the Language of Life with A.I. Eric Topol (19:01):Oh, absolutely. Now I think you already mentioned something that's quite, well, two things from what you just touched on. One of course, how vital it is to have this inner or transdisciplinary capability because you do need expertise across these vital areas. But the convergence, I mean, I love your term nodal biology and the fact that there's all these diseases like you were talking about, they do converge and nodal is a good term to highlight that, but it's not. Of course, as you mentioned, we have genome editing which allows to look at lots of different genome perturbations, like the single letter change that you found in MUC1 pathogenic critical mutation. There's also the AI world which is blossoming like I've never seen. In fact, I had in Science this week about learning the language of life with AI and how there's been like 15 new foundation models, DNA, proteins, RNA, ligands, all their interactions and the beginning of the cell story too with the human cell.Eric Topol (20:14):So this is exploding. As you said, the expertise in computer science and then this whole idea that you could take these powerful tools and do as you said, which is the need to accelerate, we just can't sit around here when there's so much discovery work to be done with the scalability, even though it might take years to get to this artificial intelligence virtual cell, which I have to agree, everyone in biology would say that's the holy grail. And as you remember at our conference in London, Demi Hassabis said that's what we'd like to do now. So it has the attention of leaders in AI around the world, obviously in the science and the biomedical community like you and many others. So it is an extraordinary time where we just can't sit still with these tools that we have, right?Anna Greka (21:15):Absolutely. And I think this is going to be, you mentioned the ASCI presidency in the beginning of our call. This is going to be the president gets to give an address at the annual meeting in Chicago. This is going to be one of the points I make, no matter what field in biomedicine we're in, we live in, I believe, a golden era and we have so many tools available to us that we can really accelerate our ability to help more patients. And of course, this is our mandate, the most important stakeholders for everything that we do as physician-scientists are our patients ultimately. So I feel very hopeful for the future and our ability to use these tools and to really make good on the promise of research is a public good. And I really hope that we can advance our knowledge for the benefit of all. And this is really an exciting time, I think, to be in this field and hopefully for the younger colleagues a time to really get excited about getting in there and getting involved and asking the big questions.Career ReflectionsEric Topol (22:21):Well, you are the prototype for this and an inspiration to everyone really, I'm sure to your lab group, which you highlighted in the TED Talk and many other things that you do. Now I want to spend a little bit of time about your career. I think it's fascinating that you grew up in Greece and your father's a nephrologist and your mother's a pathologist. So you had two physicians to model, but I guess you decided to go after nephrology, which is an area in medicine that I kind of liken it to Rodney Dangerfield, he doesn't get any respect. You don't see many people that go into nephrology. But before we get to your decision to do that somehow or other you came from Greece to Harvard for your undergrad. How did you make that connect to start your college education? And then subsequently you of course you stayed in Boston, you've never left Boston, I think.Anna Greka (23:24):I never left. Yeah, this is coming into 31 years now in Boston.Anna Greka (23:29):Yeah, I started as a Harvard undergraduate and I'm now a full professor. It's kind of a long, but wonderful road. Well, actually I would credit my parents. You mentioned that my father, they're both physician-scientists. My father is now both retired, but my father is a nephrologist, and my mother is a pathologist, actually, they were both academics. And so, when we were very young, we lived in England when my parents were doing postdoctoral work. That was actually a wonderful gift that they gave me because I became bilingual. It was a very young age, and so that allowed me to have this advantage of being fluent in English. And then when we moved back to Greece where I grew up, I went to an American school. And from that time, this is actually an interesting story in itself. I'm very proud of this school.Anna Greka (24:22):It's called Anatolia, and it was founded by American missionaries from Williams College a long time ago, 150 and more years ago. But it is in Thessaloniki, Greece, which is my hometown, and it's a wonderful institution, which gave me a lot of gifts as well, preparing me for coming to college in the United States. And of course, I was a good student in high school, but what really was catalytic was that I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to go to Harvard. And that was really, you could say the catalyst that propelled me from a teenager who was dreaming about a career as a physician-scientist because I certainly was for as far back as I remember in fact. But then to make that a reality, I found myself on the Harvard campus initially for college, and then I was in the combined Harvard-MIT program for my MD PhD. And then I trained in Boston at Mass General in Brigham, and then sort of started my academic career. And that sort of brings us to today, but it is an unlikely story and one that I feel still very lucky and blessed to have had these opportunities. So for sure, it's been wonderful.Eric Topol (25:35):We're the ones lucky that you came here and set up shop and you did your productivity and discovery work and sleuthing has been incredible. But I do think it's interesting too, because when you did your PhD, it was in neuroscience.Anna Greka (25:52):Ah, yes. That's another.Eric Topol (25:54):And then you switch gears. So tell us about that?Anna Greka (25:57):This is interesting, and actually I encourage more colleagues to think about it this way. So I have always been driven by the science, and I think that it seems a little backward to some people, but I did my PhD in neuroscience because I was interested in understanding something about these ion channels that were newly discovered at the time, and they were most highly expressed in the brain. So here I was doing work in the brain in the neuroscience program at Harvard, but then once I completed my PhD and I was in the middle of my residency training actually at Mass General, I distinctly remember that there was a paper that came out that implicated the same family of ion channels that I had spent my time understanding in the brain. It turned out to be a channelopathy that causes kidney disease.Anna Greka (26:43):So that was the light bulb, and it made me realize that maybe what I really wanted to do is just follow this thread. And my scientific curiosity basically led me into studying the kidney and then it seemed practical therefore to get done with my clinical training as efficiently as possible. So I finished residency, I did nephrology training, and then there I was in the lab trying to understand the biology around this channelopathy. And that sort of led us into the early projects in my young lab. And in fact, it's interesting we didn't talk about that work, but that work in itself actually has made it all the way to phase II trials in patients. This was a paper we published in Science in 2017 and follow onto that work, there was an opportunity to build this into a real drug targeting one of these ion channels that has made it into phase II trials. And we'll see what happens next. But it's this idea of following your scientific curiosity, which I also talked about in my TED Talk, because you don't know to what wonderful places it will lead you. And quite interestingly now my lab is back into studying familial Alzheimer's and retinitis pigmentosa in the eye in brain. So I tell people, do not limit yourself to whatever someone says your field is or should be. Just follow your scientific curiosity and usually that takes you to a lot more interesting places. And so, that's certainly been a theme from my career, I would say.Eric Topol (28:14):No, I think that's perfect. Curiosity driven science is not the term. You often hear hypothesis driven or now with AI you hear more AI exploratory science. But no, that's great. Now I want to get a little back to the AI story because it's so fascinating. You use lots of different types of AI such as cellular imaging would be fusion models and drug discovery. I mean, you've had drug discovery for different pathways. You mentioned of course the ion channel and then also as we touched on with your Cell paper, the whole idea of targeting the cargo receptor with a small molecule and then things in between. You discussed this of course at the London panel, but maybe you just give us the skinny on the different ways that you incorporate AI in the state-of-the-art science that you're doing?Anna Greka (29:17):Sure, yeah, thank you. I think there are many ways in which even for quite a long time before AI became such a well-known kind of household term, if you will, the concept of machine learning in terms of image processing is something that has been around for some time. And so, this is actually a form of AI that we use in order to process millions of images. My lab has by produced probably more than 20 million images over the last few years, maybe five to six years. And so, if you can imagine it's impossible for any human to process this many images and make sense of them. So of course, we've been using machine learning that is becoming increasingly more and more sophisticated and advanced in terms of being able to do analysis of images, which is a lot of what we cell biologists do, of course.Anna Greka (30:06):And so, there's multiple different kinds of perturbations that we do to cells, whether we're using CRISPR or base editing to make, for example, genome wide or genome scale perturbations or small molecules as we have done as well in the past. These are all ways in which we are then using machine learning to read out the effects in images of cells that we're looking at. So that's one way in which machine learning is used in our daily work, of course, because we study misshape and mangled proteins and how they are recognized by these cargo receptors. We also use AlphaFold pretty much every day in my lab. And this has been catalytic for us as a tool because we really are able to accelerate our discoveries in ways that were even just three or four years ago, completely impossible. So it's been incredible to see how the young people in my lab are just so excited to use these tools and they're becoming extremely savvy in using these tools.Anna Greka (31:06):Of course, this is a new generation of scientists, and so we use AlphaFold all the time. And this also has a lot of implications of course for some of the interventions that we might think about. So where in this cargo receptor complex that we study for example, might we be able to fit a drug that would disrupt the complex and lead the cargo tracks into the lysosome for degradation, for example. So there's many ways in which AI can be used for all of these functions. So I would say that if we were to organize our thinking around it, one way to think about the use of machine learning AI is around what I would call understanding biology in cells and what in sort of more kind of drug discovery terms you would call target identification, trying to understand the things that we might want to intervene on in order to have a benefit for disease.Anna Greka (31:59):So target ID is one area in which I think machine learning and AI will have a catalytic effect as they already are. The other of course, is in the actual development of the appropriate drugs in a rational way. So rational drug design is incredibly enabled by AlphaFold and all these advances in terms of understanding protein structures and how to fit drugs into them of all different modalities and kinds. And I think an area that we are not yet harnessing in my group, but I think the Ladders to Cures Accelerator hopes to build on is really patient data. I think that there's a lot of opportunity for AI to be used to make sense of medical records for example and how we extract information that would tell us that this cohort of patients is a better cohort to enroll in your trial versus another. There are many ways in which we can make use of these tools. Not all of them are there yet, but I think it's an exciting time for being involved in this kind of work.Eric Topol (32:58):Oh, no question. Now it must be tough when you know the mechanism of these families disease and you even have a drug candidate, but that it takes so long to go from that to helping these families. And what are your thoughts about that, I mean, are you thinking also about genome editing for some of these diseases or are you thinking to go through the route of here's a small molecule, here's the tox data in animal models and here's phase I and on and on. Where do you think because when you know so much and then these people are suffering, how do you bridge that gap?Anna Greka (33:39):Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. Of course, having patients as our partners in our research is incredible as a way for us to understand the disease, to build biomarkers, but it is also exactly creating this kind of emotional conflict, if you will, because of course, to me, honesty is the best policy, if you will. And so, I'm always very honest with patients and their families. I welcome them to the lab so they can see just how long it takes to get some of these things done. Even today with all the tools that we have, of course there are certain things that are still quite slow to do. And even if you have a perfect drug that looks like it fits into the right pocket, there may still be some toxicity, there may be other setbacks. And so, I try to be very honest with patients about the road that we're on. The small molecule path for the toxic proteinopathies is on its way now.Anna Greka (34:34):It's partnered with a pharmaceutical company, so it's on its way hopefully to patients. Of course, again, this is an unpredictable road. Things can happen as you very well know, but I'm at least glad that it's sort of making its way there. But to your point, and I'm in an institute where CRISPR was discovered, and base editing and prime editing were discovered by my colleagues here. So we are in fact looking at every other modality that could help with these diseases. We have several hurdles to overcome because in contrast to the liver and the brain, the kidney for example, is not an organ in which you can easily deliver nucleic acid therapies, but we're making progress. I have a whole subgroup within the bigger group who's focusing on this. It's actually organized in a way where they're running kind of independently from the cell biology group that I run.Anna Greka (35:31):And it's headed by a person who came from industry so that she has the opportunity to really drive the project the way that it would be run milestone driven, if you will, in a way that it would be run as a therapeutics program. And we're really trying to go after all kinds of different nucleic acid therapies that would target the mutations themselves rather than the cargo receptors. And so, there's ASO and siRNA technologies and then also actual gene editing technologies that we are investigating. But I would say that some of them are closer than others. And again, to your question about patients, I tell them honestly when a project looks to be more promising, and I also tell them when a project looks to have hurdles and that it will take long and that sometimes I just don't know how long it will take before we can get there. The only thing that I can promise patients in any of our projects, whether it's Alzheimer's, blindness, kidney disease, all I can promise is that we're working the hardest we possibly can on the problem.Anna Greka (36:34):And I think that is often reassuring I have found to patients, and it's best to be honest about the fact that these things take a long time, but I do think that they find it reassuring that someone is on it essentially, and that there will be some progress as we move forward. And we've made progress in the very first discovery that came out of my lab. As I mentioned to you, we've made it all the way to phase II trials. So I have seen the trajectory be realized, and I'm eager to make it happen again and again as many times as I can within my career to help as many people as possible.The Paucity of Physician-ScientistsEric Topol (37:13):I have no doubts that you'll be doing this many times in your career. No, there's no question about it. It's extraordinary actually. There's a couple of things there I want to pick up on. Physician-scientists, as you know, are a rarefied species. And you have actually so nicely told the story about when you have a physician-scientist, you're caring for the patients that you're researching, which is, most of the time we have scientists. Nothing wrong with them of course, but you have this hinge point, which is really important because you're really hearing the stories and experiencing the patients and as you say, communicating about the likelihood of being able to come up with a treatment or the progress. What are we going to do to get more physician-scientists? Because this is a huge problem, it has been for decades, but the numbers just keep going lower and lower.Anna Greka (38:15):I think you're absolutely right. And this is again, something that in my leadership of the ASCI I have made sort of a cornerstone of our efforts. I think that it has been well-documented as a problem. I think that the pressures of modern clinical care are really antithetical to the needs of research, protected time to really be able to think and be creative and even have the funding available to be able to pursue one's program. I think those pressures are becoming so heavy for investigators that many of them kind of choose one or the other route most often the clinical route because that tends to be, of course where they can support their families better. And so, this has been kind of the conundrum in some ways that we take our best and brightest medical students who are interested in investigation, we train them and invest in them in becoming physician-scientists, but then we sort of drop them at the most vulnerable time, which is usually after one completes their clinical and scientific training.Anna Greka (39:24):And they're embarking on early phases of one's careers. It has been found to be a very vulnerable point when a lot of people are now in their mid-thirties or even late thirties perhaps with some family to take care of other burdens of adulthood, if you will. And I think what it becomes very difficult to sustain a career where one salary is very limited due to the research component. And so, I think we have to invest in our youngest people, and it is a real issue that there's no good mechanism to do that at the present time. So I was actually really hoping that there would be an opportunity with leadership at the NIH to really think about this. It's also been discussed at the level of the National Academy of Medicine where I had some role in discussing the recent report that they put out on the biomedical enterprise in the United States. And it's kind of interesting to see that there is a note made there about this issue and the fact that there needs to be, I think, more generous investment in the careers of a few select physician-scientists that we can support. So if you look at the numbers, currently out of the entire physician workforce, a physician-scientist comprised of less than 1%.Anna Greka (40:45):It's probably closer to 0.8% at this point.Eric Topol (40:46):No, it's incredible.Anna Greka (40:48):So that's really not enough, I think, to maintain the enterprise and if you will, this incredible innovation economy that the United States has had this miracle engine, if you will, in biomedicine that has been fueled in large part by physician investigators. Of course, our colleagues who are non-physician investigators are equally important partners in this journey. But we do need a few of the physician-scientists investigators I think as well, if you really think about the fact that I think 70% of people who run R&D programs in all the big pharmaceutical companies are physician-scientists. And so, we need people like us to be able to work on these big problems. And so, more investment, I think that the government, the NIH has a role to play there of course. And this is important from both an economic perspective, a competition perspective with other nations around the world who are actually heavily investing in the physician-scientist workforce.Anna Greka (41:51):And I think it's also important to do so through our smaller scale efforts at the ASCI. So one of the things that I have been involved in as a council member and now as president is the creation of an awards program for those early career investigators. So we call them the Emerging-Generation Awards, and we also have the Young Physician-Scientist Awards. And these are really to recognize people who are making that transition from being kind of a trainee and a postdoc and have finished their clinical training into becoming an independent assistant professor. And so, those are small awards, but they're kind of a symbolic tap on the shoulder, if you will, that the ASCI sees you, you're talented, stay the course. We want you to become a future member. Don't give up and please keep on fighting. I think that can take us only so far.Anna Greka (42:45):I mean, unless there's a real investment, of course still it will be hard to maintain people in the pipeline. But this is just one way in which we have tried to, these programs that the ASCI offers have been very successful over the last few years. We create a cohort of investigators who are clearly recognized by members of the ASCI is being promising young colleagues. And we give them longitudinal training as part of a cohort where they learn about how to write a grant, how to write a paper, leadership skills, how to run a lab. And they're sort of like a buddy system as well. So they know that they're in it together rather than feeling isolated and struggling to get their careers going. And so, we've seen a lot of success. One way that we measure that is conversion into an ASCI membership. And so, we're encouraged by that, and we hope that the program can continue. And of course, as president, I'm going to be fundraising for that as well, it's part of the role. But it is a really worthy cause because to your point, we have to somehow make sure that our younger colleagues stay the course that we can at least maintain, if not bolster our numbers within the scientific workforce.Eric Topol (43:57):Well, you outlined some really nice strategies and plans. It's a formidable challenge, of course. And we'd like to see billions of dollars to support this. And maybe someday we will because as you say, if we could relieve the financial concerns of people who have curiosity driven ideas.Anna Greka (44:18):Exactly.Eric Topol (44:19):We could do a lot to replenish and build a big physician-scientist workforce. Now, the last thing I want to get to, is you have great communication skills. Obviously, anybody who is listening or watching this.Eric Topol (44:36):Which is another really important part of being a scientist, no less a physician or the hybrid of the two. But I wanted to just go to the backstory because your TED Talk, which has been watched by hundreds of thousands of people, and I'm sure there's hundreds of thousands more that will watch it, but the TED organization is famous for making people come to the place a week ahead. This is Vancouver used to be in LA or Los Angeles area and making them rehearse the talk, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, which seems crazy. You could train the people there, how to give a talk. Did you have to go through that?Anna Greka (45:21):Not really. I did rehearse once on stage before I actually delivered the talk live. And I was very encouraged by the fact that the TED folks who are of course very well calibrated, said just like that. It's great, just like that.Eric Topol (45:37):That says a lot because a lot of people that do these talks, they have to do it 10 times. So that kind of was another metric. But what I don't like about that is it just because these people almost have to memorize their talks from giving it so much and all this coaching, it comes across kind of stilted and unnatural, and you're just a natural great communicator added to all your other things.Anna Greka (46:03):I think it's interesting. Actually, I would say, if I may, that I credit, of course, I actually think that it's important, for us physician-scientists, again, science and research is a public good, and being able to communicate to the public what it is that we do, I think is kind of an obligation for the fact that we are funded by the public to do this kind of work. And so, I think that's important. And I always wanted to cultivate those communication skills for the benefit of communicating simply and clearly what it is that we do in our labs. But also, I would say as part of my story, I mentioned that I had the opportunity to attend a special school growing up in Greece, Anatolia, which was an American school. One of the interesting things about that is that there was an oratory competition.Anna Greka (46:50):I got very early exposure entering that competition. And if you won the first prize, it was in the kind of ancient Rome way, first among equals, right? And so, that was the prize. And I was lucky to have this early exposure. This is when I was 14, 15, 16 years old, that I was training to give these oratory speeches in front of an audience and sort of compete with other kids who were doing the same. I think these are just wonderful gifts that a school can give a student that have stayed with me for life. And I think that that's a wonderful, yeah, I credit that experience for a lot of my subsequent capabilities in this area.Eric Topol (47:40):Oh, that's fantastic. Well, this has been such an enjoyable conversation, Anna. Did I miss anything that we need to bring up, or do you think we have it covered?Anna Greka (47:50):Not at all. No, this was wonderful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. I'm very honored seeing how many other incredible colleagues you've had on the show. It's just a great honor to be a part of this. So thank you for having me.Eric Topol (48:05):Well, you really are such a great inspiration to all of us in the biomedical community, and we'll be cheering for your continued success and thanks so much for joining today, and I look forward to the next time we get a chance to visit.Anna Greka (48:20):Absolutely. Thank you, Eric.**************************************Thanks for listening, watching or reading Ground Truths. Your subscription is greatly appreciated.If you found this podcast interesting please share it!That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile.All content on Ground Truths—newsletters, analyses, and podcasts—is free, open-access.Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. And such support is becoming more vital In light of current changes of funding and support for biomedical research at NIH and other US governmental agencies.Thanks to my producer Jessica Nguyen and to Sinjun Balabanoff for audio and video support at Scripps Research. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Seema Kumar, CEO, Cure, an innovation campus in New York City, joins Eric to discuss how artificial intelligence can positively impact healthcare and lead to more innovation. She shares how AI has been used in healthcare and the promise it holds for the future.   The conversation also highlights the Cure Xchange Challenge: Health AI For Good, an initiative to incubate innovations by healthcare startups and entrepreneurs across disciplines and sectors to use artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly and equitably. Cure collaborated with MIT Solve for the Challenge and an independent board of judges selected the ten finalists. The winners will be announced later in the First Quarter of 2024.   Seema shares the stories of several finalists, including Oben Health, an AI-enabled platform that facilitates the delivery of healthcare screenings, education, and treatment via barbershops and salons, and Nutrible, artificially intelligent social workers.     This episode is part of a series of episodes featuring the Clinton Global Initiative Commitments to Action action from the Clinton Global Initiative. Please listen to the previous episode, Safe Babies Safe Moms: Rethinking Equitable Access and Maternity Care, available on all podcast apps.   About Cure Cure is an innovation campus in NYC boasting laboratories, lecture, and office space, as well as technology and other amenities to set up innovators for success across the healthcare industry, including academic institutions and other nonprofits. Visit the website at: https://cure.345pas.com/   About Seema Before Cure, Seema spent nearly 20 years at Johnson & Johnson in senior leadership roles, most recently as the Global Head of Office of Innovation, Global Health and Scientific Engagement, and served on J&J's Innovation Strategy, Public health leadership and the COVID-19 vaccine steering committee. Before her tenure at J&J, Seema was the Chief of Staff to Dr. Eric Lander and the Chief Communications Officer at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Genome Research, where she played a leadership role in the Human Genome Project.   

Hey everybody, I'm Joe Miller and here's what's going on in the world of tech law & policy.    ADL Report: Spotify has a white supremacist problem References to Hitler, Pepe the Frog, Tucker Carlson talking about the “great replacement” anti-immigration theory — it looks like songs that contain them are totally fine for Spotify, which the Anti Defamation League finds in a new report has verified at least 40 bands and musicians with hateful lyrics and imagery on their album covers. Also, it's super-easy to get verified on Spotify, even though the company claims to have a handle on this stuff. The Washington Post has the full report.   Trump appears to nod to QAnon The Washington Post's Technology 202 newsletter reports that Donald Trump appears to be showing increased support for QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that accuses high profile democrats are running some kind of a pedophilia ring in which they drink the blood of children. The Post notes that this conspiracy theory has moved from the fringes to the mainstream political discourse and underscores the inefficacy of social media platforms to catch subtle references to disinformation campaigns. At an Ohio rally on Saturday, Trump took the stage to music that sounded a lot like music associated with QAnon, which many see as a “wink and a nod” to QAnon supporters. Trump has subtly endorsed QAnon on social media, but took a more explicit approach on his own social media platform – Truth Social – by including an image of himself wearing a QAnon lapel pin.   Center for Countering Digital Hate: Incel movement is growing online Another movement that appears to be becoming more mainstream is the so-called incel, or “involuntary celibate” movement is growing online according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate , which also names Google, YouTube and Cloudflare for facilitating the channel, which has 2.6 million monthly site visits and over a million posts. Lots of conversations going on there about mass murder and sexually assaulting pre-pubescent girls.  And the Washington Post also reports that a cop was convicted in Indiana for texting with, what he thought, was a 14-year-old girl, and attempting to meet her at an Olive Garden for sex. It turns out it wasn't a 14-year old girl at all – it was one of a growing number of vigilantes who bait guys like this and then record themselves shaming them, sharing it on the internet. According to the Post, the police had been reluctant to work with these citizen vigilantes to bring alleged pedophiles to trial. But the police are showing increased interest in working with these groups, according to the Post.   BSR: Facebook suppressed Palestian posts during last year's Gaza war Consulting firm Business for Social Responsibility published a report demonstrating how Facebook suppressed posts made by Palestinians during last year's war between Israel and Hamas – it did so by unfairly removing posts in Arabic at a disproportionate rate – posts that had no apparent connection to Hamas at all – compared to those made in Hebrew.    Florida takes anti-content moderation case to Supreme Court The state of Florida wants the Supreme Court to decide whether states can pass laws that prevent social media companies from blocking or limiting certain types of speech – such as some of the speech I just mentioned - hate speech, disinformation – you know, things like that. Florida's petition comes on the heels of the Fifth Circuit upholding a similar law in Texas last week. Florida wants to ban companies from doing this. We published a report in late 2020 on the pattern of conservatives, throughout history, seeking to ban liberal speech, starting almost as soon as European immigrants landed in the new world and wanted to control Native Americans, not to mention slaves. America's entire history is one of suppressing the voices of people of color – not the other way around.   Meanwhile, Microsoft has decided it won't flag disinformation and TikTok apparently enforces its content moderation policies more leniently in favor of users with millions of followers.   Senate confirms new OSTP director, Arati Prabhakar In a 56-40 vote with 10 Republicans on board, the Senate has for the first time confirmed a woman, immigrant, and person of color to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Previously, Arati Prabhakar led the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  Dr. Alondra Nelson, a prominent scholar who appeared on this podcast back on Episode 70, had been performing the duties of the OSTP Director role since previous diretor Eric Lander stepped down in February amid accusations that he mistreated subordinates. Dr. Nelson will continue in her role as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for Science and Society. More News Virginia's Spanish-language election site is out-of-date   Mozilla report on potential anticompetitive behavior by leading browsers   Washington Post: Health Apps sharing data with advertisers   City of New York to provide free internet/cable for 300K public housing residents   To go deeper, you can find links to all of these stories, plus additional ones, in the show notes. Stay safe, stay informed, have a great week. Ciao.

Who is Eric Lander you are asking?  He served as the Science Officer for the Biden Administration.  He lasted eight months.  He resigned after accusations of bullying and sexism forced the White House to say "ummm, hey, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a stupid-easy cabinet post, why are we hearing so much about you."  Eric Lander had the chance to be a real life Dr. Spock, the first Chief Science Officer on Planet Earth.  Instead he made his staff feel undervalued and apparently this was a super common occurrence when those people happened to be women. It's not like this came without warning.  Eric had to make some public apologies before he was appointed.  He explained during his Congressional Appointment hearing that sometimes he behaved in ways he wasn't proud of and in the same hearing then also apologized for understating the contributions of two female scientist who helped with the discovery of CRISPR technology. Eric happens to have been the President and Founding Member of the Broad Institute (if you are smart you've heard of it and if not...well you've heard of it now so welcome to the smart club).  The Broad Institute happens to be in a patent war with UC Berkley over the discovery of CRISPR and the legal dispute also happens to involve the two scientists whose contributions to the CRISPR field Eric had understated in a published paper (coincidentally, these two Nobel Prize winning scientists also happen to have vaginas).   What is CRISPR you ask?  Well, it's like the internet was in the 1990s: it's this weird thing that people are talking about now that sounds really sci fi and in no way impacts you, and five years from now you will be guzzling some gene enhancing solution to change your eye color to match your shirt.  That is a promise.

Eric Lander, the man tabbed by President Biden for a cabinent position has run into some roadblocks due to his relationship with Epstein. According to him it was only two meetings.Join me as I dive in.(commercial at 13:58)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Source:https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/22/biden-top-scientist-met-jeffrey-epstein-confirmation-484159

Eric Lander, the man tabbed by President Biden for a cabinent position has run into some roadblocks due to his relationship with Epstein. According to him it was only two meetings.Join me as I dive in.(commercial at 13:58)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Source:https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/22/biden-top-scientist-met-jeffrey-epstein-confirmation-484159

This episode is absolutely groundbreaking... Everyone needs to share this information!  Who Is the Man Leading the COVID-19 / Great Reset Agenda? Yuval Noah Harari “History began when humans invented gods, and will end when humans become gods.” - Yuval Noah Harari (Yuval Noah Harari is often referred to as “the prophet.” He a the Israeli vegan, openly gay, pro-transhumanist who is obsessed with rejecting the God of his fathers and turning humans into gods. He is the lead advisor to Klaus Schwab and is praised by Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Silicon Valley, the New York Times, TED, Stanford, Harvard, the World Economic Forum, James Corden, Natalie Portman, etc.) According to World Economic Forum luminary and historian Yuval Noah Harari, the transition to “digital dictatorships” will have a “big watershed” moment once governments start using “surveillance under the skin.” Epstein + Biden + Harari = “Pre-Crime Prevention” The Biden administration asked Congress for $6.5 billion to fund a new biomedical research agency which would merge “national security” with “health security” in such a way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink. This agency was to be largely guided by Biden's confirmed top science adviser, ERIC LANDER. LANDER formerly the head of the Silicon Valley-dominated Broad Institute, has been controversial for his ties to eugenicist and child sex trafficker JEFFREY EPSTEIN. https://cen.acs.org/policy/Eric-Lander-resigns-Bidens-science/100/i6 Look Up & Read HR 6666 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6666/text What Did Yuval Noah Harari Say? Yuval Noah Harari is a lead advisor for Klaus Schwab. Klaus Schwab is the author of COVID-19 / The Great Reset and the founder of The World Economic Forum. Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum Are Implementing "The Great Reset." Yuval is praised by the likes of Klaus Schwab, Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, who reviewed Harari's latest book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Harari speaks at the World Economic Forum at Davos, New York Times, Stanford, TED, and TimesTalks. At the time of this writing, his books occupied the top two slots on the New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list. - READ - https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/yuval-noah-harari-sapiens-facebook-silicon-valley-hollywood.html Free Will Is Over - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vthdl6-the-evil-transhumanism-agenda-of-klaus-schwab-and-doctor-yuval-noah-harari.html “16 Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; 17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, 20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” - Ephesians 1:16-21 Free Will Is a Theological Mistake - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy5ejj-yuval-noah-harari-free-will-is-a-theological-mistake-and-hacking-humans.html “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” - Galatians 5:1 “3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” - 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 "If You Have the Tools to Overcome Human Biology...Think About the SEX Life." - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxee5z-yuval-noah-harari-if-you-have-the-tools-to-overcome-human-biology...think-a.html NOTE: Yuval (Jubal) in the Hebrew Bible means son of Lamech. Lamech was the Bible's first polygamist. “19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.” Genesis 4:19 Surveillance Under the Skin? Trusting Science Over Everything Else? - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy525f-yuval-noah-harari-surveillance-under-the-skin-and-trusting-science-above-ev.html “16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” - Revelation 13:16-18 Yuval Noah Harari | Klaus Schwab Advisor: Advocating Genetically Modified Babies - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy4xyl-yuval-noah-harari-klaus-schwab-advisor-advocating-genetically-modified-babi.html “41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” - Daniel 2:41-44 Hacking Humans, BEAST System, Ending Free Will & Privacy - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy3dy9-yuval-noah-harari-what-did-he-say-hacking-humans-beast-system-ending-free-w.html “16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” - Revelation 13:16-18 Hacking Humans and Shifting Authority from Humans to Algorithms - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy18k5-yuval-noah-harari-hacking-humans-and-shifting-authority-from-humans-to-algo.html “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” - Genesis 1:26 Yuval Noah Harari | We Need to Work with the BEAST and Not Against It - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy129f-yuval-noah-harari-we-need-to-work-with-the-beast-and-not-against-it.html “And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” - Revelation 13:4 Yuval Noah Harari | "We Are Upgrading Humans Into Gods" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy126n-yuval-noah-harari-we-are-upgrading-humans-into-gods.html “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” - 2 Thessalonians 2:4 “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” - Genesis Chapter 6: 1-7 Yuval Noah Harari | "We Are On the Verge of Creating the First Inorganic Life Forms" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy0vtt-yuval-noah-harari-we-are-on-the-verge-of-creating-the-first-inorganic-life-.html “37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” - Matthew 24: 37-39 Yuval Noah Harari | "We Are On the Verge of Creating the First Inorganic Life Forms" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy0vtt-yuval-noah-harari-we-are-on-the-verge-of-creating-the-first-inorganic-life-.html Genesis - “27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” 1:27 Yuval Noah Harari | Creating an Anti-Virus for the Mind & the Basic Premise of Religion Doesn't Work - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy0oj9-yuval-noah-harari-creating-an-anti-virus-for-the-mind-and-the-basic-premise.html Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. - James 1:27 - Yuval Noah Harari | Yuval Advocates Allowing Artificial Intelligence to Vote Instead of Humans - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy0nep-yuval-noah-harari-yuval-advocates-allowing-artificial-intelligence-to-vote-.html “16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” - Revelation 13:16-18 Yuval Noah Harari w/ Huawei CEO Banned by Trump | Hacking Humans, Inheriting Souls & Mind Anti-Virus - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vy0mkh-yuval-noah-harari-w-huawei-ceo-banned-by-trump-hacking-humans-inheriting-so.html “13 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? 5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” - Revelation 13: 1-7 Yuval Noah Harari | "Surveillance Is Going Under the Skin." + Choosing Science Over Religion - https://rumble.com/vy0l1z-yuval-noah-harari-surveillance-is-going-under-the-skin..html “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Hebrews 11:3 Yuval Noah Harari | Yuval States, "Jesus Rising from the Dead and Being the Son of God is FAKE NEWS" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxz099-yuval-noah-harari-yuval-states-jesus-rising-from-the-dead-and-being-the-son.html “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.” - Luke 12:10 Yuval Noah Harari | "Humans Are Hackable Animals...Directly Connecting Brains to Computers" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxywe3-yuval-noah-harari-humans-are-hackable-animals...directly-connecting-brains-.html “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” - 1 Corinthians 2:16 Why Research Into How to Manipulate the GOD Gene (The VMAT2 gene) Begin? - READ - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2262126/ December 9, 2019 Technology Is Created to Use mRNA to Deliver CRISPR gene-editing: Cell-Selective Messenger RNA Delivery and CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing by Modulating the Interface of Phenylboronic Acid-Derived Lipid Nanoparticles and Cellular Surface Sialic Acid - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31763806/ What Is CRISPR? – In China Scientist Jiankui stunned the genetic community when he announced he had already used CRISPR, which hasn't been proven either safe or effective in human patients, to permanently alter the genomes of twin girls. – https://time.com/5642755/crispr-gene-editing-humans/ What Is CRISPR? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32532987/ “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” - Revelation 18:23 Yuval Noah Harari | "In the Future You Will Face Discrimination Based On a Good Assessment" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxyslr-yuval-noah-harari-in-the-future-you-will-face-discrimination-based-on-a-goo.html “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” - Matthew 7:1-4 Yuval Noah Harari | Yuval Argues Against God's Existence, Human Rights, National Sovereignty & Money - https://rumble.com/vxyrp7-yuval-noah-harari-yuval-argues-against-gods-existence-human-rights-national.html - WATCH - “And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.” - Revelation 13:6 Yuval Noah Harari | Why Do "Elites" Often Refer to Yuvah Noah Harari As a Prophet? - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxynrv-yuval-noah-harari-why-do-elites-often-refer-to-yuvah-noah-harari-as-a-proph.html “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:15 Yuval Noval Harari | "Economies in the Future Where Humans Are Not Needed Even As Consumers." - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxyl7n-yuval-noval-harari-economies-in-the-future-where-humans-are-not-needed-even.html “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” - John 8:44 Yuval Noah Harari | "The COVID Crisis Was the Moment When Surveillance Started Going Under the Skin" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxyfo5-yuval-noah-harari-the-covid-crisis-was-the-moment-when-surveillance-started.html And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. - Luke 21:25-26 Yuval Noah Harari | "Dictators Always Dreamt About It...It's NOW Possible to Eliminate Privacy." - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxyf7r-yuval-noah-harari-dictators-always-dreamt-about-it...its-now-possible-to-el.html “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” - Revelation 18:23 Yuval Noah Harari | "They Trade and Make Billions of Dollars and You Don't Use Humans as Consumers" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxxnex-yuval-noah-harari-they-trade-and-make-billions-of-dollars-and-you-dont-use-.html “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” - Genesis 1:27 Yuval Noah Harari Explains the Artificial Intelligence Social Credit Score System Which Is Coming Soon to Determine Who Can Buy or Sell - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxeccf-yuval-noah-harari-explains-the-social-credit-score-system-which-is-coming-s.html “And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.” - Daniel Chapter 11:36 Yuvah Noah Harari | "You Cannot Violate the Rules of Nature" | Lead Advisor for Klaus Schwab - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxebkn-yuvah-noah-harari-you-cannot-violate-the-rules-of-nature-lead-advisor-for-k.html “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” - Galatians 5:16-17 Yuval Noah Harari | "We Are In the Process of Becoming Gods" & "We Need Some Type of Global Loyalty" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxe57j-yuval-noah-harari-we-are-in-the-process-of-becoming-gods-and-we-need-some-t.html “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” 2 John 1:7 Yuval Noah Harari | "There Is No Such Thing As Free Will" & "Humans Have Invented God" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxcgaf-yuval-noah-harari-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-will-and-humans-have-inven.html “I will freely sacrifice unto thee: I will praise thy name, O Lord; for it is good.” - Psalm 54:6 “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” - Joshua 24:15 Yuval Noah Harari | "Feelings Are the Ultimate Source of Authority" | Lead Advisor to Klaus Schwab - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxcffn-yuval-noah-harari-feelings-are-the-ultimate-source-of-authority-lead-adviso.html “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” - Proverbs 9:10 “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:8” Yuval Noah Harari | Lead Advisor for Klaus Schwab Argues Against the Bible and God's Commandments https://rumble.com/vxcet5-yuval-noah-harari-lead-advisor-for-klaus-schwab-argues-against-the-bible-an.html “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” - Mark 8:34 Yuval Noah Harari | Top Advisor for Klaus Schwab Explains "We Need a Antivirus for the Brain" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxcdkz-yuval-noah-harari-top-advisor-for-klaus-schwab-explains-we-need-a-anti-viru.html “3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” - 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12 Yuval Noah Harari | Interview w/ Mark Zuckerberg "Is Still True That the Voter Knows Best?" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vxcc01-yuval-noah-harari-interview-w-mark-zuckerberg-is-still-true-that-the-voter-.html Yuval Noah Harari | "How Can We Get Global Agreement On AI (w/ Putin in Ukraine)?" - WATCH - https://rumble.com/vwtgvx-yuval-noah-harari-how-can-we-get-global-agreement-on-ai-w-putin-in-ukraine.html “3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” - 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12 What Does the Name “Yuval” Mean? Yuval (also Jubal) was the son of Lamech and Adah, a brother of Jabal, a descendant of Cain. “20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. 21 And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.” - Genesis 4:20-21 Did You Know That Yuval Noah Harari Is Openly Gay? “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.” - Daniel 11:37 Did You Know That Yuval Noah Harari Does Not Eat Meat? “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.” - 1 Timothy 4:3 Where is Yuval Noah Harari from? Yuval Noah Harari is from Kiryat Ata (Israel) “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.” - Daniel 11:37 Why Did the United Nations place the “Guardian of Nations” statue in front of the United Nations Building located at 405 East 42nd Street New York, New York? - VIEW - https://twitter.com/un_photo/status/1458178013082816513?lang=en “2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” - Revelation 13:2 “Less than a decade ago, Yuval Noah Harari was a junior professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, stuck teaching a world history survey course because none of the senior faculty would deign to take it on. Today, he's listened to and praised by the likes of Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, who reviewed Harari's latest book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Harari speaks at the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, and TimesTalks. At the time of this writing, his books occupied the top two slots on the New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list.” - https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/yuval-noah-harari-sapiens-facebook-silicon-valley-hollywood.html “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” - Revelation 18:23 Yuval Noah Harari is a lead advisor for Klaus Schwab. Klaus Schwab is the author of COVID-19 / The Great Reset and the founder of The World Economic Forum. Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum Are Implementing "The Great Reset." Yuval is praised by the likes of Klaus Schwab, Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, who reviewed Harari's latest book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. Harari speaks at the World Economic Forum at Davos, TED, and TimesTalks. At the time of this writing, his books occupied the top two slots on the New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list. - READ - https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/yuval-noah-harari-sapiens-facebook-silicon-valley-hollywood.html “3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: 5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth. 6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.” - Revelation 17: 3-6 Numerically, What Does the World CORONA mean? What Legislation Is Being Written to Force Everyone to Take the mRNA-modifying COVID-19 vaccines? H.R.6666 - COVID–19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act - https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6666/text What Does the World Now Believe to Be the Ultimate Source of Truth? What Is the Publication Number for the Patent Application Filed by Microsoft for a CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA? - Read - https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606 “16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” - Revelation 13:16-18 Yuval Noah Harari is a lead advisor to Klaus Schwab. Klaus Schwab is the author of COVID-19 / The Great Reset and the Founder of the World Economic Forum which is implementing the worldwide Great Reset. Connect the Dots Between COVID-19 / The Great Reset, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, 5G, and the RNA-Modifying COVID-19 Vaccines Agenda: https://timetofreeamerica.com/revelation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Help us fund the operation here: www.ToddCoconato.com/give Get up to the minute news here: www.Remnant.News Download our new app at www.ToddCoconato.com/app Follow Pastor Todd here: www.toddcoconato.com/findme Go to our store for special deals for Remnant Warriors here: https://remnant.news/hanews/deals-for-remnant-warriors/    

Business leaders today have a lot on their minds – and on their plates. They juggle hiring challenges. Mask mandates. Retaining talented players. Vaccine guidelines. Supply chain issues. Generating revenue. All these tasks are demanding, requiring attention and intention every minute. Yes, these are important considerations in today's business environment. However, they are not the ONLY important considerations. Leaders may have a preconceived notion about these considerations: “This is my sole job: managing results.” When leaders are immersed in tasks like these, they may ignore reports that things aren't going well in their work culture. If leaders learn about bosses behaving badly, most don't want to deal with it. Another preconceived notion takes over: a perception that “managing results is more important” or “it can't be that bad” or “HR will handle it.” Such preconceived notions are deeply flawed. The reality is that there is NOTHING more important for leaders to pay attention to than disrespect in their workplace. Here are two recent examples where preconceived notions may have contributed to bad boss behavior was enabled. Eric Lander, the top White House scientist, resigned on February 14 after a months-long investigation found he regularly bullied subordinates – particularly women and people of color. It's good that Lander resigned. What is not good is how long it took to address his toxic behavior. Complaints were filed last year – yet Lander's was not challenged to treat people respectfully. It is likely a preconceived notion that “Eric is rough around the edges” allowed him to stay in his role. California State University chancellor Joseph Castro resigned on February 17 after an investigation found he mishandled years of sexual harassment, bullying, and retaliation complaints against a senior administrator while Castro was president of CSU Fresno. Castro hired this administrator. A preconceived notion that “Frank means no harm” would explain Castro's lack of interest in addressing the problem. Don't let preconceived notions dissuade you from engaging willingly in workplace issues that arise. Results are certainly important – and they're exactly HALF the leader's job. The other half? Ensuring everyone is treated with respect, every day. This is episode 101 of my Culture Leadership Charge video series. In these concise videos, I share proven practices for building and sustaining a purposeful, positive, productive culture – where good comes first. You'll find my Culture Leadership Charge and Good Comes First episodes and more on my YouTube, iTunes, and Amazon Podcast channels. If you like what you learn, please subscribe. Have you responded to this month's culture leadership poll? Add your ratings to two questions. It'll take less than a minute. Once you vote, click “results” to see the responses from around the globe.

In the news, former Innocence Project Board Director, Dr. Eric Lander, resigns from the Biden Administration after accusations of bullying; in the Coach's Briefing, John explains strength-based coaching and its applications to teamwork and leadership.

Will there be a new ALS drug this year? What business does Wall Street have with CRISPR? And when can kids get Covid-19 vaccines? We cover all that and more this week. First, STAT's Nicholas Florko joins us to preview the trials ahead for Robert Califf as he retakes the reins at the FDA — including a high-profile decision on a new treatment for ALS. Then, CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and financier Marty Chavez join us to talk about the future of genome editing and the investments they plan to make in it. We also discuss the latest on Eric Lander, the Covid-19 vaccine meeting that wasn't, and the future of Chinese-developed cancer drugs.

An Abrupt Departure For Biden's Science Adviser This week, Eric Lander, the Presidential science advisor and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, resigned following an investigation into bullying behavior towards his subordinates. In an apology, Lander acknowledged being “disrespectful and demeaning” towards staff. Lander, a mathematician and genomics researcher, was previously the head of the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor for WNYC Radio in New York, joins Ira to discuss the resignation and what it might mean for the president's science policy initiatives. They also talk about other stories from the week in science, including an advance in fusion research in Europe, concerns over the increasing saltiness of Lake Michigan, and the question of whether sequestering urine from the sewage stream might have environmental advantages.   New COVID-19 Antiviral Pills: How Do They Work? Late last year, two new drugs joined the lineup of options for high-risk patients who may need extra help fighting COVID-19: Merck's pill molnupiravir, and Pfizer's pill Paxlovid. The two pills join remdesivir, an infusion-only drug, as antiviral compounds that attack the SARS-CoV2 virus in different ways. But how exactly do they work, how well do they work, and what makes them complicated to use in real life? Ira talks to virologists Ran Swanstrom and Adam Lauring about the fundamentals of antiviral drugs, concerns about molnupiravir's method of mutating the virus to death, and the long drug interaction list for Paxlovid. Plus, why timing is a critical issue for getting drugs to patients.   Meet The Drag Artists Who Are Making Science More Accessible Each generation has had science communicators who brought a sometimes stuffy, siloed subject into homes, inspiring minds young and old. Scientists like Don Herbert, Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye are classic examples. But our modern age of social media has brought more diverse communicators into the forefront of science communication, including the wild, wonderful world of STEM drag stars. These are queer folk who mix the flashy fashions of the drag world with science education. Some, like Kyne, use TikTok as a medium to teach concepts like math. Others, like Pattie Gonia, use drag to attract more people to the great outdoors. The accessibility of the internet has made these personalities available to a wide audience. Kyne and Pattie Gonia join Ira to talk about the magic drag can bring to science education, and why they think the future of SciComm looks more diverse than the past.    

[00:30] Turning on Biden (13 minutes)Americans are losing faith in Joe Biden's administration. A CNN poll found that 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden's job performance, and 56 percent say Joe Biden has done nothing for them at all. [13:15] The Growing Movement Against Mandates (14 minutes)Canada's protest against mask and vaccine mandates is causing great concern for the Communist left. Leaders around the world are fearful of such a movement coming to a city near them, and as a result, some leaders are beginning to hint at relaxing and even lifting the tyrannical mandates many of them have implemented. [27:40] Biden's Top Science Adviser Profits From Pandemic (9 minutes)According to Politico, Eric Lander, Biden's top science adviser and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, made huge profits on stocks he had with BioNTech—$500,000 to $1 million. It's no wonder Biden's administration has been so quick to endorse and publicly promote the vaccine: They're making major profits on the pandemic. [36:10] Department of Defense Fudging Medical Stats? (6 minutes)The Department of Defense's health database showed a 1,000 percent increase in disease and injury reports in the U.S. military in 2021 compared to the years 2016 through 2020. This has left the Pentagon scrambling to update database numbers from 2016 to 2020 in an attempt to cover up the astronomical increase under Biden's administration. As Daniel Horowitz wrote at the Blaze, “The Pentagon's response to the explosive DOD medical data is an even bigger story than the data.” [42:05] Biden's Lockdown Scandal (13 minutes)Democratic states are preparing to loosen and lift mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is standing by its belief that masks work and the mandates need to remain in place. Why are Biden and his team so uncompromising with their radical agenda even though many Americans, even Democrats, are turning against him?

Does Big Science have a bullying problem? Why did the FDA change its tune on China? And what's cooler than $100 billion? We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT's biotech podcast. We discuss the scandalous end of Eric Lander's tenure as presidential science adviser with STAT Washington correspondent Lev Facher and science writer Megan Molteni. Then we dive into the FDA's about-face on cancer drugs developed in China and what it means for the cost of medicine in the U.S. We also explain how Pfizer's record-setting year somehow disappointed Wall Street and explore whether it's a good idea to end mask mandates.

“World leaders try to de-escalate Russia-Ukraine tensions with diplomacy”; China's choice of Uyghur torchbearer causes controversy; the Supreme Court sides with Republicans in Alabama's election map case; allegedly a few NFL coaches were paid to lose games; some democratic governors are putting an end to mask mandates in schools while the CDC recommends indoor masking for schools continue; the houston texans in talks with Lovie Smith about potentially becoming next head coach and your thoughts on the pro bowl; there are 11 days until government funding expires and there is no deal made; Senator McConnell “denounced the RNC for calling the Jan. 6 riot legitimate political discourse” as VP Pence said he had no “right” to overturn election;  top biden science adviser Dr. Eric Lander resigns after accusations of bullying; in Beijing Olympic athletes complain about a lack of food, and information at the quarantine hotels; johnson & johnson pauses production of their one shot vaccine-why; peng shaui spoke to the press at the Olympics; silencing Joe Rogan-will that affect his 1st amendment rights?; what is happening to the republican party's election platform as the House GOP retreat has not invited democratic President Biden to their conference in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., from March 23-25?;  and more, if we can fit it in, at our new day and time, Tuesday, 7pm.

An internal White House investigation recently concluded that President Joe Biden's top science adviser, Eric Lander, bullied and demeaned his subordinates and violated the White House's workplace policy. On Monday, Lander resigned. Reporter Alex Thompson — who had the original scoop — shares the story.

Yesterday Mitch McConnell spoke out against the Republican National Committee's censure of representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Next, we have an update on the so called Freedom Convoy protests in Canada, before getting to a summary of the joint press conference regarding Russia and Ukraine. Meanwhile, multiple states have announced this week that they will be rolling back mask mandates. Then, we discuss Peloton's own CEO stepping down (and also laying off 2,800 employees in the process). We share another interesting resignation, then close with why a pub that claims to be England's oldest could close its doors because of COVID. Resources/Articles mentioned this episode: NBC News: “McConnell calls Jan. 6 a ‘violent insurrection,' breaking with RNC” Washington Post: “Ambassador Bridge blocked in Canada Freedom Convoy trucker protest” AP News: “Macron: Putin told him Russia won't escalate Ukraine crisis” NY Times: “New York joins several other U.S. states in rolling back mask mandates as infections fall” Axios: “Peloton CEO John Foley stepping down” Axios: “Biden science adviser Eric Lander resigns after violating workplace policy” NPR: “A pub that claims to be England's oldest could close its doors because of COVID”

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Eric Lander, who Biden tapped as his science chief , has resigned after an internal review found that he was a bully and that he treated staff and employees improperly. In this look back episode, we go back to the confirmation process and see, even then, that Lander was not the right man for the job. (Commercial at 10:43)To contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/04/29/lander-science-gender-race-epstein-485005

Eric Lander, who Biden tapped as his science chief , has resigned after an internal review found that he was a bully and that he treated staff and employees improperly. In this look back episode, we go back to the confirmation process and see, even then, that Lander was not the right man for the job. (Commercial at 10:43)To contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/04/29/lander-science-gender-race-epstein-485005

Hour 1 -  Nick Reed talks about a variety of topics in the news, including: Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), said Monday on MSNBC's “Deadline” that the Republican Party's “failure to accept science as it relates to vaccines” means they politically own the COVID deaths of the unvaccinated. The DOJ may allow "safe injection" sites for heroin use. President Biden's Cabinet member, Dr. Eric Lander, who served as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, resigned after an investigation found he had spoken disrespectfully to colleagues. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who recently appeared maskless among dozens of masked-up children during a visit to a Georgia elementary school, did so “on the condition that everyone around her” wore a face covering, including children, her campaign said. More Democrats are dropping mask mandates.

Today on Boston Public Radio: We start the show by opening phone lines, checking in with listeners about how their kids have been faring at school. Trenni Kusnierek talks about a decline in viewership during the Beijing Olympics, and tennis player Peng Shuai's meeting with International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach. Kusnierek is an anchor and reporter for NBC Sports Boston, and a BPR contributor.  Imran Ahmed discusses the spread of misinformation on social media, and explains how social media platforms should combat misinformation online. Ahmed is CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an international not-for-profit organization working to stop the cycle of online hate and misinformation. Robert Lewis Jr. shares the latest on his community youth outreach work through the BASE. He also talks about his new role as the head of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston. Lewis Jr. is founder of The BASE in Roxbury, which he's led for the past nine years. In March, he will become president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston. Elle Simone Scott talks about some of her favorite recipes, and her journey in the traditionally male and white food world. Scott is Executive Editor and Inclusion Leader at America's Test Kitchen. She is also founder of the mentoring organization SheChef. Her forthcoming book, “Boards: Stylish Spreads for Casual Gatherings,” is out in April. John King updates us on the latest political headlines, focusing on the resignation of President Joe Biden's top science adviser Eric Lander for workplace harassment. King is CNN's chief national correspondent and host of Inside Politics Monday through Friday at noon. We then ask listeners for their bad boss stories.

Mask mandates are about to be lifted in multiple states across the country, including in many schools. A day of high stakes diplomacy in Washington and Moscow failed to break the deadlock over Ukraine. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say as many as 130,000 Russian troops are now deployed near Ukraine's borders. A new warning from the federal government about possible copycat attacks following last month's standoff at a Texas synagogue -- in which the suspect died and the hostages escaped unhurt. In other news from Washington, President Biden's top science adviser is stepping down. An internal review last year found Eric Lander had bullied his staff. Republicans have just won a major victory at the Supreme Court -- over a controversial new congressional map in the state of Alabama. American Jessie Diggins won team USA's first ever individual medal in a cross-country sprint ski event. Turning now to the NFL -- the Houston Texans have hired Lovie Smith as their new head coach. This comes as the NFL faces a racial discrimination suit over hiring practices, from former Dolphins coach Brian Flores.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The White House, which has known about Eric Lander's behavior for weeks following an internal investigation, faces questions about why Biden failed to fire the Cabinet-level official sooner. Also: 900,000 Americans have died of COVID. As states give up on mitigation efforts, what does the future of the pandemic look like?This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and health reporter Will Stone.Connect:Email the show at nprpolitics@npr.orgJoin the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.

Join Jim and Greg as they applaud their countrymen for their refusal to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics, handing NBC terrible ratings. They laugh at the sudden change in "The Science" as Democratic governors realize mask mandates in schools are unpopular. And President Biden's tough talk on workplace bullying proves ineffective as it took a two month investigation to fire science advisor Eric Lander.Please visit our great sponsors:XChairhttps://xchairmartini.comSave up to $100 today only!My Pillowhttps://www.mypillow.comSave 60% on the Giza Dream Sheets with code MARTINI in the Radio Listeners Specials box.

The fallout from the RNC's weekend censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) spread to Capitol Hill on Monday: Hill Republicans returned to town and lit into Chair Ronna McDaniel. Senate Republicans went on the record to say that looking back to 2020 is a losing strategy that won't help the party flip both chambers of Congress.  And they're furious that the RNC would dub the activities of Jan. 6 “legitimate political discourse.” And less than 24 hours after our colleague Alex Thompson reported that an internal White House investigation found that top White House science adviser Eric Lander bullied and mistreated his subordinates, Lander resigned. Subscribe to POLITICO Playbook. Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook. Jenny Ament is the Senior Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Post-scriptum sur les 127 qubits d'IBM.  https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/services?services=systems&system=ibm_washington Événements La conférence Q2B de QC-Ware https://hudsongroup.physics.ucla.edu/content/ba-133-goldilocks-qubit (pour IonQ)https://q2b.qcware.com/  Remise de la Médaille d'Or du CNRS à Jean Dalibard https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9rique-vidal-06_toutes-mes-f%C3%A9licitations-%C3%A0-m-jean-dalibard-activity-6874464013107949568-KtsB Intervention à Strasbourg le 6 décembre 2021 autour de la sortie de ton ebook “Understanding Quantum Computing”.https://recherche.insa-strasbourg.fr/save-the-date-understanding-quantum-technologies-le-6-decembre-2021/  Le livre d'Olivier sur Arxiv ! https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.15352 Un premier podcast avec des américains : Michael Strike and Ryan Malinowski de @GRLedgerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyRBwGUIR20 Table ronde sur les technologies quantiques organisée dans le cadre du parcours technologie quantique ARTeQ Forum NAIA-A  et ENSIERB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn6Gs-bqdOY&t=2s USASignature du Joint Statement France USA par Frédérique Vidal et Eric Lander à la Maison Blanche, en présence du coordinateur national de la stratégie quantique, Neil Abroug. https://www.state.gov/us-france-science-technology-cooperation Le plan quantique US.https://www.quantum.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/NQI-Annual-Report-FY2022.pdfIndustrie Le CERN a récemment acquis un émulateur « Atos Quantum Learning Machine » (QLM) selon une communication d'Atos du 3 décembre 2021. https://atos.net/fr/2021/communiques-de-presse_2021_12_03/atos-saffirme-comme-leader-mondial-de-lhybridation-quantique-a-loccasion-du-8eme-atos-quantum-advisory-boardLe consortium européen mené par Deutsche Telekom et auquel participe Thales, chargé de mettre au point le plan directeur pour la conception d'un "internet quantique" sécurisé pour les infrastructures critiques de l'Union Européenne, a livré ses premiers résultats.https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/le-reseau-europeen-de-communications-quantiques-a-son-plan-de-marche.N1167607Air Liquide sécurise l'approvisionnement en hélium 3 avec Laurentis Energy Partners (Canada).https://en.media.airliquide.com/news/air-liquide-enters-a-long-term-partnership-to-secure-its-supply-of-helium-3-3ea0-56033.html Démarrage du Projet HPCQS, première pierre dans l'élaboration d'une plateforme pan-européenne de calcul hybride HPC-Quantique: https://www.genci.fr/fr/node/1157 Partenariat Nvidia et Pasqal.  Annonce de Rigetti. 40x2 qubits ! https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/12/15/2352647/0/en/Rigetti-Computing-Announces-Next-Generation-40Q-and-80Q-Quantum-Systems.htmlhttps://medium.com/rigetti/beyond-qubits-unlocking-the-third-state-in-quantum-processors-12d2f84133c4https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.11.021010Infos sur OQC ?Des nouvelles des qubits silicium de Grenoble de Maud Vientet pour FINIR : l'intrication de qubits supraconducteurs avec un tartigrade, piloté par une équipe de chercheurs du CQT à Singapour. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.07978v1.pdf 

This month, Shobita and Jack discuss efforts to engage publics in the development and regulation of AI, including the AI Bill of Rights proposed by the White house, and the most recent Facebook controversies. And they talk to sociologist and lawyer Karen Levy about her forthcoming book examining the rise of technology-based surveillance in the trucking industry and its social, political, and labor implications.- Eric Lander and Alondra Nelson (2021). "Americans Need a Bill of Rights for an AI-Powered World." WIRED. October 8.- Karen Levy (2021). "You Had Me at ‘Has Never Filed for Bankruptcy'." The New York Times. March 31.- Julie Weed (2020). "Wearable Tech that tells Drowsy Truckers it's Time to Pull Over." The New York Times. February 6.- Clara Berrige and Karen Levy (2019). "Webcams in Nursing Home Rooms May Deter Elder Abuse--But Are They Ethical?" The Conversation. July 24.- Christophe Haubersin (2017). "Automation is coming for truckers. But first, they're being watched." Vox. November 20.Study Questions:1. What are the benefits and drawbacks of bringing EDL and other surveillance technologies into trucking?2. To what extent do you think the trucking (and other forms of labor) shortage can be traced to resistance to and frustration with surveillance technologies?3. How do the new technologies transform the kinds of knowledge and expertise deemed relevant to trucking? What knowledge is now valued, and what is devalued? What are the consequences?4. What is a multi-sited ethnography, and why is it useful for studying technologies, their implications, and the development of appropriate policies to manage them?(Transcript available at thereceivedwisdom.org.)

Harry traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area this summer, and while there he interviewed the co-founders of three local data-driven diagnostics and drug discovery startups, all of whom participated in the same graduate program: the Biomedical Informatics Program at Stanford's School of Medicine.  Joining Harry were Aria Pharmaceuticals co-founder and CEO Andrew Radin, BigHat Biosciences co-founder and chief scientific officer Peyton Greenside, and Inflammatix co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. The conversation covered how each company's work to advance healthcare and therapeutics rests on data and  computation, and how the ideas, skills, connections each entrepreneur picked up at Stanford have played into their startups and their careers.Radin's company, formerly known as twoXar, models pathogenesis computationally to identify potential drug molecules, shaving years off the drug development process. Radin developed Aria's core technology, a collection of proprietary algorithms for discovering novel small molecule therapies. The algorithms incorporate system biology data, disease-specific data, chemistry libraries, and more than 60 separate AI methods to sift through molecules with known chemistry to find those with novel mechanisms of action and favorable safety profiles absorption properties. Whereas traditional drug discovery methods have a 1-2% success rate after 4 years, Aria claims its approach has a 30% success rate after just 6 months. It has a pipeline of at 18 drug candidates in areas including kidney, lung, and liver diseases, lupus, cancers of the liver and lung, glioblastoma, and glaucoma. Radin holds MS and BS degrees in computer science from Rochester Institute of Technology, studied computational biology and medicine through the Stanford Center for Professional Development, and was formerly an advisor to several venture capital firms and startup accelerators. Greenside started BigHat to combine wet-lab science and machine learning with the goal of speeding up the design of antibody therapies. BigHat's lab consists of numerous “workcells,” each of which cycles through multiple tests of a given set of antibodies synthesized from in silico designs. Assays characterize each antibody variant for traits such as yield, stability, solubility, specificity, affinity, and function. Machine learning algorithms determine how mutations affected each of these properties and feed this learning back into a new set of designs for the next round. The company says this approach allows it to identify therapeutic-grade antibodies faster than traditional bulk screening techniques (in days rather than weeks or months). Greenside is a computational biologist with a PhD from Stanford, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and a BA from Harvard. Silicon Valley Business Journal named her to its 2021 list of “Women of Influence in Silicon Valley.”Sweeney co-founded Inflammatix to develop a new class of diagnostic tests that—rather than searching for a specific bug—“read” the host response of a patient's immune system for clues about the cause and severity of an infection. The problem, as Sweeney originally saw it, is that traditional tests can only detect infections once a pathogen has spread to the bloodstream, meaning that doctors often guess incorrectly about whether a patient needs an antibiotic, or which one they need. Inflammatix is built around the idea that the human immune system has evolved targeted responses to different kinds of infections and other diseases. These responses are complex and vary according to age and setting, but by analyzing mRNA samples from multiple, diverse cohorts, the company believes it can identify a “reproducible signal in the ‘noise' of multiple datasets.” Inflammatix is developing a cartridge-based system called Myrna for use in emergency rooms, urgent care clinics, and outpatient clinics that can screen for acute bacterial infections, viral infections, and sepsis in 30 minutes. Sweeney is a physician and data scientist who earned an MD/PhD from Duke and then trained as a general surgery resident at Stanford.Please rate and review MoneyBall Medicine on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 2. Navigate to the page of the MoneyBall Medicine podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.3.Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."4.Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."5.Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. 6.Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.7.Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner. 8.If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out. 9.After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.Full TranscriptHarry Glorikian: I'm Harry Glorikian, and this is MoneyBall Medicine, the interview podcast where we meet researchers, entrepreneurs, and physicians who are using the power of data to improve patient health and make healthcare delivery more efficient. You can think of each episode as a new chapter in the never-ending audio version of my 2017 book, “MoneyBall Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market.” If you like the show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts.Harry Glorikian:Home base for MoneyBall Medicine is the Boston area. It's one of the world capitals for biomedical innovation and the digital revolution in healthcare. So I don't have to venture far to find great guests.But obviously Boston isn't the only capital for biosciences innovation. This summer, during the brief break between surges in the coronavirus pandemic, I escaped to the San Francisco Bay area. And while I was there, I got a lesson about the considerable impact created by one particular Bay Area institution. Namely, the Stanford School of Medicine's Biomedical Informatics program, or BMI for short.BMI trains students how to use and adapt computational methods like machine learning to solve hard problems in biology and medicine. And a remarkable number of BMI alumni have fanned out into the world of life science startups. On today's show you'll hear from three of them. We'll talk about the work their companies are doing now and how the skills and connections they picked up at Stanford have played into their careers.The first guest, and the person who helped to organize the group interview, has actually been on the show twice before. His name is Andrew Radin, and he joined me in November of 2018 and again in August of 2020 to talk about his Palo Alto-based company Aria Pharmaceuticals, formerly known as twoXar. Aria uses a collection of proprietary AI algorithms to discover new small-molecule drugs for a range of diseases. In traditional drug discovery, years can go by between the identification of a new drug candidate and testing the drug in animals. Radin says Aria's AI can reduce that time to just weeks.Andrew kindly recruited two of his fellow Stanford BMI alumni for our conversation. One is Peyton Greenside, the co-founder and chief scientific officer at BigHat Biosciences in San Carlos, California. The company combines wet-lab science and machine learning to make it easier and faster to design new antibody therapies. And again, the leap forward is that BigHat's rapid cycle of antibody design, synthesis, and characterization vastly speed things up, reducing the time required to identify new therapeutic antibodies from months to just days.And our final guest is Tim Sweeney. He trained as a surgery resident at Stanford and then founded a company to tackle one of the biggest problems in acute care, namely how to diagnose infections faster and more accurately. The company is called Inflammatix, and it's building a device that emergency departments and outpatient clinics can use to rapidly analyze messenger RNA in patients' blood to screen for sepsis and other kinds of infections.All three of these companies are benefiting in different ways from the computational methods their founders studied at Stanford. And they've got some great stories to share about how their time at BMI convinced them that future progress in medicine and drug discovery would depend on data above all else.We originally planned to meet up in person for this interview. But we switched to Zoom at the last minute out of concerns over the Delta variant. So without further ado, here's my talk with Andrew Radin, Peyton Greenside, and Tim Sweeney.Harry Glorikian: Well, hello everybody. And welcome to today's show. Tim Sweeney: Thank you. Peyton Greenside: It's great to be here. Harry Glorikian: Yeah, it's, it's great to have all of you here. For everybody listening and watching, we were actually supposed to do this in person, but unfortunately the Delta variant sort of threw a monkey wrench in that whole process. So I reserve the right that we can do this in the future and actually get together when this whole thing is over, like normal human beings. Each of you are working on super exciting things. Different companies, focusing in different areas. And I know you all know each other, so I'm going to step back one second and say, if you had to give a brief description of your company or pretend you don't know each other, where we're at a cocktail party and you're going to give me two or three sentences about what you're doing and why it's interesting, how would you sort of do that? And Andrew, since you're the ringleader that sort of helped bring this group together, I'll throw it out to you first to sort of get going.Andrew Radin: Well, that's a lot of pressure, but certainly like, our description I think is pretty simple. We are a preclinical stage pharmaceutical company. And we happen to have a proprietary artificial intelligence platform that's discovered all the assets that we have under development. And these days we have 18 programs, 18 different disease areas where we've got new experimental medications and we are working on progressing those new inventions to the clinic and ultimately to FDA approval.Harry Glorikian: Peyton?Peyton Greenside: Hi everyone. I'm Peyton and one of the co-founders of Big Hat Biosciences, and our mission is to improve human health by making it easier to design advanced antibody therapeutics. So we actually do that through a combination of a high-speed wet lab and machine learning techniques in order to very iteratively design and improve antibodies until they meet unmet patient need. And it's been a lot of fun. Then we've been founded since 2019.Harry Glorikian: And finally, Tim. Tim Sweeney: thanks for the opportunity, Harry. Inflammatix was founded about five years ago, spun out of Stanford along with, of course, Aria and Big Hat. We are designing novel diagnostics focused on acute care and critical illness needs. So we basically have a data analytics platform that allows us to decode certain signals of gene expression within the immune system. And then for those of you watching, I'll show you, we have a cartridge that allows us to sort of implement that in a 30 minute point of care diagnostic setting.So our particular focus is basically bringing precision medicine into acute care settings, the hospital, the clinic, the ICU, where sort of historically there hasn't been a lot of diagnostic innovation. Harry Glorikian: Interesting. That's funny because I actually, I wrote a a textbook on how to commercialize novel diagnostics a few years ago. Because you know, unless you've been through the ringer, you may not know all the different pieces.But you guys now all know each other right? Now, that may not surprising because we're in Silicon Valley, and I'm actually in Berkeley right now, but that's close enough. And drug discovery companies and tech companies are all swimming around each other. But your connection is a little bit deeper. I mean, you guys all went to Stanford together. So this is not necessarily a commercial for Stanford, but it's, that's pretty interesting that three CEOs of data-driven, you know, healthcare companies out of the same class, whoosh, come out of Stanford. So how did you, how did you guys meet at first?Andrew Radin: Well, and I would say we're not the only ones to—it's just, you know, the people that happen to be in front of you today. It was funny. So, right before this, I sent a panicked email, because I didn't want to say something that wasn't true. I was like, Peyton, you were in this class, weren't you? Peyton Greenside: Yeah. I don't know if I was Andrew's TA or if we'd all actually been in the same class. But I think our Stanford journeys all started, it sounds like, the same year. Same time. And we all were taking translational bioinformatics, which was a course taught by, I believe, Atul Butte who I think, you know, really brought to fame the idea of big data for biology, what you can draw out a very large data sets and drawing insights. So we were all in the same class and with many other people, as Andrew said, and it was a lot of fun. And I think it was the start of long journeys for all of us than in a similar vein. Andrew Radin: And it was a place for…I think what was awesome about that class, again, not to be an advertisement for the coursework, but it was kind of my characterization of the class was, you basically learned how other people use data science to solve some medical mystery, like across the spectrum. And so the, the purpose of learning all that was to just kind of fill you full of ideas of things that you could do. And then the kind of the capstone of the class was a final project where you basically had to come up with something, right? And so you were just sort of primed with all this like super interesting sort of research on how other people had approached very different problems in the space. And for me, it was just the source of lots of interesting ideas that then, you know, helped me ultimately create what's the technology behind our company today. Tim Sweeney: It is remarkable how much came out of Stanford biomedical informatics. Though, I mean, to Andrew's point, there are, there are a number of other CEOs that came through in that sort of in maybe a five or seven year stretch, all out of the same program. And I think a lot of it had to do with that, yes, this one particular class had all the different applications of data science sort of across the spectrum of life sciences, but they also attracted people like that. Right? I mean, everyone on this call has a very different background before Stanford BMI. And I think that was part of what made that culture so special is that it ended up being a real team sport, whether your background was medicine or business or math or computer science or bio-engineering or anything else, learning a technique from A, and applying it into area B, I think, was a pretty successful way to grow innovation. Harry Glorikian: I feel like as a venture guy, I should be standing at the exit door and just sort of saying, you know, “What's your idea, what's your idea,” screening as they're coming out the door.Peyton Greenside: Well, you know, some folks have also become venture capitalists. Harry Glorikian: That's true. Peyton Greenside: Yep.Harry Glorikian: So was there anything in particular that you guys, interests or questions or discussions that you sort of bonded over that sort of brought you together? I mean, even, even as just friends that decided to keep in touch? Andrew Radin: Well, I think it's probably different for different people. I think the first real interaction I had with Tim, you know,the details escape me, because this is almost 10 years ago now, but I remember, he's a medical doctor, right? He's got a MD and a PhD if I'm, if I'm not mistaken. And so my, you know, I'm a hardcore computer scientist. That's my background. And so back in those days, I was rapidly learning all I could about medicine and biology. And I don't remember the topic, but I do recall him helping me after class was something that wasn't just quite, you know, sitting in my head correctly. And I remember thinking like, what a nice dude, to, like, you know, kind of take some time and give me like, you know, a little private tutoring. And then and then if I recall afterwards, you said, yeah, so I'm trying to do this stuff with some clinical data. Can you help me with this sort of stuff? Which if I remember correctly, I never actually helped you. I was talking about, oh, I might be able to help you. And then eventually you said, “I figured it out. I don't need you”Tim Sweeney: I said I needed to build a web scraper. And I said, I have no idea how to.Andrew Radin: Oh yeah, I have totally done that. Lots of times. So yeah, something like that. That's how the conversation started with Tim, which was sort of to the point about having very different backgrounds, You know, with Peyton, I don't really recall the first interaction. I remember we were in a journal club, maybe with Russ and you were talking about some stuff, but I think the more I got connected to her was around the time she was working on her defense and I actually went to her PhD defense. And I have this BS detector that sometimes go off a little early, right? When people make a statement, I'm like, “I don't know about that.” We're sitting in her defense and every time she said something that made me, do one of these, like, “Wait a minute,” she instantly resolved that in the next sentence. I was like, “Okay. All right. That's cool.”Peyton Greenside: Okay, that feels good. Fortunately, fortunately. Andrew Radin: You don't have to pass my scrutiny obviously, but yeah, I think that led to a number of kind of interesting conversations as she was contemplating, you know, what to do next. She was moving through her career, but yeah, I think that the interactions are very, very different for each person. At least that's my view, but I don't know if you guys have different memories. Peyton Greenside: Yeah, I think what's, what's interesting, I mean, just generally I agree with that. And I think one of the most interesting parts of BMI, as Tim said, is just the backgrounds that everyone has. And I also come from the kind of applied math, computer science background, and there's this kind of fascination of what you can do with computational skills in biology. I think to me, a lot of the conversations were around where do I even apply this to? I think people sort of think of computational biology as a, maybe sort of a niche, small field at the intersection of maybe somewhere where biology meets, I guess, you know, statistics, computer science and math. But it's so broad and it's so vast. And I think most of the, I say the most exciting conversations I've had are, you know, we work in immunology, you know, you're a clinician, you work with clinical data. How do you apply these tools? The most daunting but fun task upon showing up at Stanford with such an incredible ecosystem here is, where do you even focus your attention? Where should you work? There's too many exciting opportunities to pick. And I think some of the fun conversations I remember also having a Tim, with a more clinical background, is what's actually useful? You know, I want, I want to do something useful and sort of try to figure out, you know, where this, you know, where are you can actually kind of apply your time to the most impactful problem. It was a lot of fun. Andrew Radin: And I think, Tim, it'd be great for you to share. I mean, when we first met, I'd asked you kind of like, what were you doing there? What your story was? I can't remember the words back then. But you basically said like, “Look, I'm a surgeon,” if I recall, “I'm trying to save people's lives and I'm just thinking like, is there a better way? Can I like just, you know, do something that's going to have a much larger impact? And I don't know what that is yet.” I know I'm wildly paraphrasing what you said, right. But I'm thinking about like what that could be. And I think. You know, when I met you, you were sort of on the hunt for figuring out where to apply, you know, kind of the, the skill set.Tim Sweeney: I think that the everyone shows up with their strengths and weaknesses. Mine certainly was the summer before the program actually started, I had to take, you know, basic courses in computer science and linear algebra. And I remember, I mean, I literally went from my last overnight call at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, running two ICUs, to the next morning CS 106x. Which, because it was the summer, was filled with all the high school students that are just total whiz kids, like 16 year olds, and they're like, you know, we're learning like order of operations or something and they're raising their hands and I'm like desperately trying to write down like, oh, if n means....You know, and obviously Andrew and Peyton were among the folks that sort of helped me on the basic science side of things. But I think that the story about sort of getting the question right is absolutely correct. And I remember actually the time that I knew I was in the right program was maybe two or three months in to training. They used to have these like sort of work in progress talks, and it was like, you know, Wednesday or Thursday or something, you bring a lunch. And somebody was talking about this thing that sounded very, very cool to me. It was all about how you could, you could program a system to learn new knowledge on its own. And it was like, you know, generalized AI for health data. And I was incredibly impressed. And, and the first example that was given was like, you know, so we've sifted through all of the billions of data points. And I have discovered—he stumbles over the drug name—I've discovered that plopacapagril, by which he meant clopidogrel, is associated with bleeding events. And everyone goes, “oh.” And I put my hand up, like, “That's an anti-platelet medication.” And he looks at me and I'm like, “the point of that is that it thins the blood.” He looked at me and was like, “So bleeding is a known side effect?” Totally crestfallen that people knew this already. Like, he had no idea. I was like, I do have something to contribute, so it's good. It's a good merge.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. So, you know, Tim, you're running a diagnostics company you know, Peyton and Andrew you're running what I'll lump together as drug discovery companies in different markets, different regulatory processes. You know, I'm sure there are common challenges to life science startups in the valley. What are some of the biggest challenges that you guys see? Is it scalability? Is it finding the right people? Is it finding the right investors? Where do you guys see your challenges?Andrew Radin: And I would just say for a little clarification to Peyton's point about there's so many different problems. Even though Peyton and I are both in the business of creating new medicines, we couldn't be any more different. We're a small molecule company. She's a large molecule company. If you know what that means. You know, I'm making motorcycles, she's making trucks. Like, we're just, we're just, we're just doing completely different things. To your question about like, kind of what are the very similar things, we're not really even competing with one another from that perspective.But I think, to answer your question, at least from my viewpoint, you kind of have to do all those things. I think, you know, in startups, everything has to work. You can't sort of have any one thing that doesn't function and whether that's the science or the fundraising or the team or all of those things, if you've got a problem in any one of those areas, it can be life-threatening to the company.And so I think part of the experience for the entrepreneur is sort of, you know, because your time is limited and your resources are limited is sort of finding a best fit to try to solve, you know, or, or to maximize all of those problems simultaneously. And I would say all the things that you've listed, they all at various points in the company, they've been critical and it's more of a juggling act rather than “Geez, all you need to do is just knock it out of the park, on, you know, financing and who cares about anything else?” We know lots of stories where that hasn't gone well. Or you knock it on the park on an exceptional team, and the other things don't come together. So, you know, from my standpoint, all of that stuff has to work. Peyton Greenside: I think my answer continues. I think one of the things I, and what many people who just find, I would say many scientific, inquiries fascinating, is just what to work on that. And I have the same problem now, you know, I think it happened when I went to Stanford and happened you know, postdoc and have it happened now.And, in the context of my company, wo we basically have a platform that can work on engineering any protein. We work on antibodies, but really can be anything. So, you know, we have this landscape. There are tons of diseases with unmet need. There's sort of tons of opportunities for the type of therapeutic protein you would use, whether that's a standard antibody, monoclonal IgG, sort of a next generation antibody. And so we always have to decide, you know, what, what are the programs gonna be? What are you going to go after? What's the modality? And I think at the crux of it, like you know, for a drug discovery company, is what is the shape of your company. But our platform is so broad that basically we can work on so many things. And I, once again, by myself faced the same problem, which is okay, like, you know, where should we focus our attention? And that's been really fun. This is getting maybe more of Tim's background, but so we're learning more about the clinical side of things and where that need is and where that pairs with our technology. But I agree with what Andrew said, nothing really can go shortchanged, but that's been the same theme, I would say just now in a different vein. Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I mean, I think about this as a balance of dynamics where you're at different stages at different points, depending on where you are in the development cycle. And you need different people and different issues become a problem at different points or maybe become more acute at different points. But you know, all of you guys have one theme in common, which is why we're on the show together. It's data and some form of machine learning or other, you know, part of artificial intelligence that's being applied to find something valuable or identify some valuable piece of information that can make something actionable. It's sort of a big question, but how do you employ machine learning and AI in what you're doing in each of your businesses? Because I think of these things as like I have a toolbox and then I have to apply that tool in a very specific way with a specific set of knowledge that can feed it, where I can get an output that I'm looking for. And so each one of you, like you said, Andrew, you're, you're working on the motorcycle, she's working on the big truck, and he's trying to make sure that everybody gets diagnosed and not, not ends up in worse than they already are. So how are you each of you thinking or approaching this in your own unique way? If you can summarize. Tim, why don't you go first?Tim Sweeney: Our tests work by measuring a discrete number of genes within the body. It's their expression levels. So for instance, for our flagship test inset, we look at 29 different gene expression levels from, from blood. And then of course we have to somehow integrate  29 different levels into actionable information. And so the backend of that is the data science part, the machine learning. So step one is actually choosing what to measure. And then after you've chosen what to measure, then it's training hardened algorithms that turn 29 different things into a score that says, “This person has a bacterial infection.” And then of course doing that repeatably, doing it in a way that is traceable and verifiable. And then all of the post hoc, you know, how is it affected by different demographics? And how has it, in the actual context of care, and of course in the coming years when actually implemented in a health system, how does it impact patients and providers and does it save costs and improve outcomes?And maybe just since I didn't get a chance to answer, I think one of the questions about challenges is a lot of times it changes with the application that you're taking farther. Right? One of the things that we all have in common, I think is that we're all platform companies. And to, to Peyton's point, like you can apply that data science platform to a lot of different areas, but each one of those areas has to be taken through a very long development process to actually help a person and the challenges totally change along that development life cycle. Harry Glorikian: And just for everybody listening—so you developed this product. What is the, so what, what is the impact? Tim Sweeney: In our case, we decided that we wanted to go after one first indication that would be a big enough hit to make the business matter. We've got lots of things we'd like to do in the long run, but sepsis is an area of outstanding unmet need. And the “so what” is right now, if you go in and you're feeling sick and you see a doctor and you want to know, Hey doc, like, do I need antibiotics? There is literally no test that can answer that question. It's a guess. So it's not to say that antibiotics aren't administered quickly, but as a physician myself, I can tell you that that is it's a guess at first, and then you have to wait for tests to come back and those tests themselves are imperfect. And so something like 40% of antibiotics are probably misprescribed. And if you knew in 30 minutes, Hey, this person has a bacterial infection or no, you could greatly simplify care and really improve outcomes. And that's the premise. But the challenge of course is that beyond the data science, there's so much that goes into building the product and proving out the clinical data and get it through FDA and then getting it reimbursed and, and, you know, getting it rolled out more broadly, if you want to get to the point where you've actually helped a number of people and built a solid business. Harry Glorikian: When I, in my last company, before I moved on to venture, I, we had a strategy consulting firm and we did a lot of digging into sepsis. That was a big problem, a nut that people were trying to crack, and, you know, if you could crack it, the opportunity is quite significant.So Peyton, Andrew, how do you guys think about it? Because I'm, I'm thinking manipulating an antibody and sort of tweaking little parts of it until you find the exact fit. [It requires] supercomputing or massive computing. Peyton Greenside: It's funny. I actually think that the context in which we all met, which is you know, when I think big data was becoming really popular in medicine is actually a great context, I think, for where Big Hat ended up, and it's funny, because it's going to been kind of a long journey—it always happens when I look back, I'm like, yeah, that makes, that makes sense. Right? Based on where I was. We actually put a lot of our attention into integrating the wet lab with the dry lab. And this is actually, you know, with a goal of making big data into what I might call sort of smart data or agile data, which is that the idea of back in the day when first, I would say you got tons and tons of really large data sets. And you can sort of mine them, or you can look for trends. You can sort of just figure out something, you know, interesting relationship between gene expression and patient outcome. And I kept throughout my career feeling frustrated by being handed the dataset and sort of having to just mine it and not having kind of, you know, ownership of being able to say, “I want to look here, I want more data here.” Right? You're sort of handed a really large data set and you're, a passenger in this dataset that has already been generated. You cannot modify it. That's kind of the fixed dataset. And, you know, as a computational person, that, that you're often the second person, like a wet lab or experimental lab is making the data, then you kind of get it right. And so, you know, throughout I would say, especially in my time at Stanford this was very much the case, where I was felt kind of trapped in being given a data set that I didn't actually design, but I could sort of mine. And so at Big Hat we're basically trying to now put computation in the driver's seat and kind of change that paradigm. We're actually now, instead of just getting one large data set that you design up front, you acknowledge that biology and the science are very iterative, right? As as you said, you sort of start with an antibody sequence, but, you know, would you stop there? If you could just make one tweak, maybe you'd make it, you know, 10x better, 100x better with two. So how do you enable it? How do you want to enable that very rapid cycling? And so we view this as kind of the intersection of how closely can a lab and the computational side interact and how can they inform each other? How can you one learn from the other? And so we actually enabled a computational person to design an antibody on Monday and in a few days you synthesize, purify, characterize the antibody and kind of understand, are you moving in the right direction or are you not? And repeat, and then repeat it and repeat and repeat. So you don't get kind of stuck in the fixed data set again. So it's really attractive for a lot of ways, right? There are a lot of reasons you kind of can end up in a really good regime and it's big data or sort of area, but, you know, there's kind of a lot of lost opportunity in terms of being able to kind of be very agile and move toward something that looks promising and then iterate more. And the goal is that that will allow us to enable types of antibodies they don't even exist today because you can't engineer them that easily. You're kind of are stuck with a fixed format. So that's been really fun. And so we've been spending a lot of time designing the wet lab to kind of support the machine learning side and data science side from the ground up and, and vice versa.And so it's a pretty unique sort of set up. And I think I like to think of it as sort of smart data, right? You're thinking really closely about what should I generate that will be helpful and can use that to inform how you redesign the next dataset and improve your antibody every time in our case.Andrew Radin: Yeah, it's interesting to hear the different stories. You know, I think all of us are kind of taking the approach that, you know, what data sources and what artificial intelligence allows you to do is to take real world data and then make some prediction under uncertainty. You know, with the expectation that prediction is potentially better than what you could, what you could do with other methods.And so, you know, kind of tying this back to when I was student and thinking about where are the places I can make a big impact, it was very interesting to me that with very complex diseases there was really no single biomedical measurement that would help kind of unravel the mystery of the biology behind that disease. And therefore could, you know, explain something about pathogenesis that would lead to a new discovery or a new medication as a result. And, you know, part of that coursework in 2.17 was this concept of integrative genomics. This idea of using, you know, different data sources that are all keyed to the same thing, maybe a, a gene or a gene product, and kind of looking for that overlapping evidence.And there were some great papers that were shown. There was one, I think, by, by Eric Lander in particular, where he was using, GWAS and proteomics and maybe some gene expression microarray data, each of which would give you, you know, like hundreds of quote-unquote “answers” and the real answers in there buried with a bunch of false positives. But ultimately what would happen in this paper is he showed that there was one overlapping gene in all three of these datasets and he ran some assays and determined, indeed that was the key to unlock this mystery. And that certainly worked well if all of your data sets are sort of keyed to the same thing, but that's not the reality of biomedical data sets. There's genomics measures, there's chemistry measures, there's phenotypical measures, there's different patient measures. And unless you're conveniently measuring them all from the same patient population over time, which is very expensive and very, very time consuming to do, there's really no easy way to sort of key all these things together. And my thought was like, “Hmm, maybe, maybe there, there is a way.” And so the technology that I created and ultimately has been expanded upon is taking this concept, the concept that the answer to a very complex disease doesn't necessarily live in any one measurement or anyone biomedical data set. And if you have the ability to ultimately pull in lots of very diverse—and by diverse I mean statistically independent—data sets across a wide range of biomedical measures and integrate them as a single processing unit, you can ultimately uncover things that other people essentially haven't noticed before. And then use that, in our case, you know, to do lots of things, but in our case specifically to develop new therapeutics. So in all of our disease areas, ultimately what this means is we are working on new mechanisms of action. These are, these are new, if you will, new concepts or new understanding of biology in these disease areas and therefore what it means or what the impact is—to your earlier statement—is, we're going after biology that potentially has a disease modifying effect that others have not approached before. And therefore the promise of the opportunity is to make a significant dent in these very complex diseases. And so that's a kind of a high level view of what we do, but ultimately it's all about, you know, integration of these very different datasets. And then using that to ultimately come up with new experimental medicine that we would explore and experiment with and see what it can mean for patient impact.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I think that's one of the most exciting parts of when I talk to everybody. Assuming the system is designed well, and the data going in is actually good, it's like, “Wow, I didn't notice. I didn't know that that happened. I didn't know that pathway was involved or this little tweak could make this difference.” And so that's what I see when I talk to different people that are working in this area. “I just didn't know,” or “None of the papers talked about this,” or “That's not what I learned in school.” And so that's the most fascinating part of these systems where you can identify things faster, hopefully and more accurately, hopefully than you might normally do with a human being. No knock to human beings, all of them are valuable, but it seems the systems move at a different pace and can handle a much broader level of data being input into them. And so that brings me to the question that Andrew, you and I have talked about. If you had to put a timeframe around it or something is, is this shortening the time to discovery? And I think you and I, the last time we talked, you said to about three years where I can shave off on the front. And then at some point when I have to get to a mouse, I have to follow the normal trajectory of that mouse. But if that's changed and you you've, you're finding other areas, I'd love to hear it. But Peyton and Tim, where do you see the aha the speed or the financial impact of what you're doing? You're doing it because it's moving at faster or you're able to identify something that you haven't, but it's better than X or Y that's already being done in the marketplace.Peyton Greenside: For us actually, this is, I mean, we do do things faster. We do improve on a lot of metrics. But it's actually, at least for my companyl about designing antibodies that couldn't otherwise exist. So for example, the standard monoclonal IgG, there are many tools out there to sort of discover initial molecules and optimize them, but you start getting into these kinds of next-generation or kind of Frankenstein antibodies, antibodies that are a tenth of the size, or SCRBs which are these fragments that are part of car T therapies or other formats.They become more complex and people have trouble engineering them, and you can kind of run your imagination and say, well, if I had the ability to engineer things, what other formats would I conceive? Would I consider, tiny antibodies like cell-penetrating peptides that can get into cells and sort of have all sorts of characteristics? But they're difficult to engineer.And so we actually, instead of sort of doing the same thing faster we actually think more about how can we expand the universe of what could be a potential therapeutic protein and how would that solve current patient needs in ways that existing therapeutics do not. And we do that by doing things faster, sort of, and cheaper and, sort of. More smartly. But hopefully that's what we really care about. Tim Sweeney: I'd answer probably somewhat like Peyton's. But if you look at a diagnostics and biomarkers in particular, a lot of diagnostics are about, “Hey, you know, we found that if you measure this one protein that's useful for health.” So it's just a very slow process and it's not optimized. You tend to study things that are obvious because they're easy to measure. Or like in our field, there's one protein called procalcitonin that's sort of the current closest biomarker for whether or not somebody has a bacterial infection, but PCT, as procalcitonin is abbreviated, was discovered 30 years ago and it was originally basically by accident that someone even measured it in someone with bacterial infections, and then it worked pretty well. And you know what I mean, it's a sort of based on serendipity and it can't be improved upon it has. However good procalcitonin was yesterday, that's how good it's going to be tomorrow and how it's going to be the day afterwards.I think the benefit of data science and in diagnostics was really began with cancer, when you had sort of the wonderfully successful tests like Oncotype showing how you could measure signals across complex diseases by integrating things from multiple biomarkers. And a lot of those were designed and there, again, the problem was that they took a long time to develop. And of course they take a long time to actually run, right? I mean, most of them, if you've ever had one of those tests done, it's like a week to send out, you know, you send some tissue to a company, it gets processed. You get your answer seven days later. So one of the things we're doing differently, one, it has to do with the way that we gather and integrate data sets to empower faster discovery.And that's kind of like Andrew. The other is basically the ability to build new answers that haven't yet existed, sort of more like Peyton. And ultimately the hope is to create a feedback loop where you know, better and better versions of the tests can be slowly released. And so over time, it's not just that you're sort of stuck with, “Hey, you know, procalcitonin is as good as it is [going to get].” It's like, you know, you're on Insept version five in 2030, and it's now X percent more accurate. And I think that's a real benefit to patients.[musical transition]Harry Glorikian: I want to pause the conversation for a minute to make a quick request. If you're a fan of MoneyBall Medicine, you know that we've published dozens of interviews with leading scientists and entrepreneurs exploring the boundaries of data-driven healthcare and research. And you can listen to all of those episodes for free at Apple Podcasts, or at my website glorikian.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.There's one small thing you can do in return, and that's to leave a rating and a review of the show on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the best ways to help other listeners find and follow the show.If you've never posted a review or a rating, it's easy. All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for MoneyBall Medicine, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but it'll help us out immensely. Thank you! And now back to the show.[musical transition]Harry Glorikian: So you guys have been doing this for a while. Do you see the promise of big data and AI playing out the way that you thought and or is, or is it different than you thought now that now that you like jumped into the pool and you've been swimming in it for a while? Is it fulfilling the dream you had, is it more exciting than you thought?Andrew Radin: It's a funny question. Coming from very different industries, you know, looking at where I was 10 years ago, I think I was very naïve about what it actually takes to bring a drug to market. And I think in the very early days of the company, you know, my prior startups, you know, one of them I was in and out in a year and it exited. And there's no such thing in this industry, to do anything like that. And so, you know, part of it was biased by my prior experience, but I think part of it as well is, sometimes I think it's also hard to see how far things have moved along. And I think even in Tim's description is he was sort of talking about, well, you know, this, this was state-of-the-art science, you know, in decades past you know, the work he's doing today was impossible back then. So, you know, there's sort of these steady, incremental improvements.And I, and I think part of what really is happening in the industry is that the things to solve essentially are becoming exponentially harder. For example, for high throughput screening, which is maybe the old way of doing things, to find a hit is exponentially harder. For diagnostic tests or blood tests to sort of detect these nuances, you sort of have to bring in these technologies and these capabilities that are exponentially better at solving those things.And so I think what happens is, you can therefore characterize it in a different way, you know, is the time faster compared to the old way? Well, of course, because those old ways just don't have a chance of being able to do these things. Like, is it cheaper? Well, yeah, because those old ways, again, just don't have a chance. But I think part of it is what is the pace of innovation? And that's, I think kind of where the rubber meets the road and what is actually possible and what it's capable of. And so today, you know, we're, we talk about having, you know, 18 concurrent disease programs and we've got a very small team and we haven't raised very much money. You know, that would just be flat out impossible 10 years ago. And we still like raise some eyebrows around that, but now, it's okay. We recognize software is doing a lot of what used to happen in the wet labs. So this, you know, sort of fits within the expectation of what a modern technology company would do in this space.So I think there's that other angle of where expectations are kind of catching up with what's actually been produced. And therefore, you know, at, at some point we become the old technology. Thirty years from now, some next generation we'll be talking about, oh, those, those slow, painful people that, you know, tried this in the past kind of stuff. And so it's, you know, each, I think each iteration of innovation has its moment in the sun, if you will. And this is definitely the time for the work that we're collectively doing.Peyton Greenside: I think the promise is ahead of us. We're in an amazing time where I think things are starting to gain traction. We're starting to get tools and infrastructure, but if I were to say my conception of what machine learning and data science and generally computational power is going to do in biology and medicine, I think it's just starting.So I'm excited to see things like AlphaFold. I'm excited to see a lot of these kind of tools and capabilities to be unlocked. But I think, you're solving a complex problem, right? That protein that you're affecting is in a cell, it's part of the tissue, and it's part of a human, and there's so many more layers, I think, to consider.Yeah, we're making great progress. And I still certainly believe in the potential. That's why I'm here. But I do like to say, I think we're at the very, very early days. And as Andrew said, I think it's going to be fun to see what happens in 30 years. So I'm still very excited, but I wouldn't say we're at the accomplishments that I would consider as sort of really demonstrating the cornerstones of machine learning in, in biology and medicine.Tim Sweeney: I have to agree with Peyton, I think the best is ahead of us. So one of the courses we had to take at Stanford BMI, and I don't know if you two remember this, was Marc Musen taught this course on ontologies, but part of it had to do with sort of like the history of applications of sort of clinical data systems. And the oldest one, I forget the details, but it was in like, the '70s. And it was around sort of you know, clinical decision support for therapeutic prescribing. Obviously that system isn't around today and failed for its own reasons and he sort of walked through all of the failures of systems since then.And maybe one of the most remarkable things is how, how little AI and machine learning is actually employed in most clinical practice. You know, for all the buzz around computer vision, the AI that radiologists use most is probably their dictation. I mean, it isn't yet commonplace to have machine assisted radiography reads. And so will that be coming? Absolutely. But the interesting challenges in each successive generation of like, oh, you know, we got pretty close, but it turned out that X wasn't good enough, or it wasn't built in the right way to be integrated with workflow or is coming soon, but still needs some regulatory work or whatever else. There's plenty left to do. Peyton Greenside: I, I think that's probably one thing we all experience actually transitioning from academia to industry is, what's exciting in academia is not necessarily what's going to be reliable when you really want to make a good drug. So what you might think about it, you'd be like, “Oh man, that's a really cool model. I'd love to try that, you know, that's great.” And you kind of go right into industry and you're like, okay, well this is going to matter. This is, this is going to go to patients. It has to work multiple times. I think it is a very different standard. Right. And so I actually think it's the right thing. Just because you find something to be very, very cool and kind of, you know, I would say cutting edge, you really want it to work and want it to work over and over again. I think there's an unappreciated gap between when something is first proposed or conceived of or demonstrated and when you can really make it work at scale, over and over again in areas that matter.So I think we're basically in that transition, for, I would say, a lot of these techniques in biology and medicine. Now let's get to work and practice. Let's get to work and practice reliably. And now we can start sort of really seeing where we're going with the needle on really impactful problems. But it's funny, because I do think that's an important divide between sort of where we all started together.Andrew Radin: Yeah, no, I would, I would agree with that. I mean, look, most of our focus, these days is not on discovery. It is actually in the development of the therapeutics. It is about, you know, preparing for IND filings. It's all the regulatory work we need to do there. It's medicinal chemistry. It's a whole bunch of things that are outside of the discovery process. And as we proceed to the clinic, more and more of our overall effort as an organization has less to do about the core innovation that created all of these assets and more about the heavy lifting you have to do to ultimately get that product to market.And I think, to kind of tie it back to my previous comments, I think there's been a new generation of capabilities that has been created. To what these guys just said, it's gonna be a while until we actually see those things in the clinic. And to Tim's point about, you know, computer vision and radiology, like there's, there's a lot of good science that's already there and has been shown, experimentally to do a better job than obviously the, the human looking at those images. But yeah, it it's gonna take awhile until that becomes the standard. I am, you know, my daughter was born almost five years ago now, but I was shocked to observe, even back then, which is only five years ago, that medical records were being passed from clinic to clinic with a fax machine. It just blew my mind. Like you gotta be kidding me, a fax machine? I don't think I've seen a fax machine in all these years. And so, yeah, I think part of it is, if you want to take the place where innovation moves the slowest it's certainly got to be, you know, government, healthcare, or education. I'm not sure which of those might be the slowest, but there is a time for these new technologies to permeate the industry. And that is going to take time. And I think that's when, ultimately, patients and the people that are on the receiving end of all this innovation, like that's, when they're going to see that difference. And it is going to take many years for this stuff to kind of make its way through the process and ultimately into the hands of providers and ultimately to patients. And that big benefit is going to come in the years to come. It's obviously not in front of patients in many cases.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, well, maybe my brain is wired towards risk or innovation because I'm like, “well, if you're, if you wait till it's done to get involved, you're way too late,” right. You're going to be a dinosaur or you're going to be obsolete. And we've seen that in a lot of areas of tech compared to, you know, old standard industry.There was a great piece the other day about this engineer at Ford who had been working on the gas engine for 40 years and then wakes up one morning and he's like, I need to take early retirement because software and electric EV is the way it's going to go. And now I'm just in this sort of maintenance mode of what I'm doing.And I think about healthcare and I'm like any institution that isn't at least dabbling in using image analytics. for radiology or something and starting to  get used to this, I think they're way behind where they may want to be in the next five years, because technology doesn't follow just a slow curve on the way up. It has a way to go straight up at one point it before moving into an exponential curve. And I think the same for you guys. I mean, those companies that are not involved are partnering, investing in entities like you guys is, if you wait till it's finished, you're, it's already too late. Because Andrew, your system will keep kicking out new molecules and Peyton, you'll be making new antibodies and it'll be a little too late to catch up. I mean, that's, that's the way I think about it. Andrew Radin: I would temper that a little bit and the reason I would say that is because the companies that have been successful in the past in creating diagnostics and therapeutics…Products are on patent. They have long life cycles and they generate lots and lots of cash. And so, you know, big pharma, big diagnostics companies, they can kind of wait around and sort of see how things shake out with different younger companies and simply, buy or acquire, assuming that the companies are willing to be acquired. And so I think, large firms have been very successful in becoming, you know, acquisition and essentially manufacturing and marketing machines. So I don't necessarily think that some of these larger and established players that they're necessarily, their livelihoods are threatened. I think they will continue to acquire the best of the best with their, with their large cash reserves. I think some companies in this space will gather the momentum and break out. And I think in time we might see some changes over time as to what the big, you know, sort of players are in this space. But it's unlike other industries. Certainly software. It's like MySpace disappears and Facebook reappears the next day. And that's because you can deploy new technology and move users over in the course of an afternoon. And from a therapeutic perspective or a diagnostics perspective, that's just not that the pace at which those things move.So there's, there's lots of room for that. You know, and maybe similar in the automotive industry, you kind of have to build a factory and build some cars. It takes some times, right? So, so maybe there's some parallels there, I think in some cases, but. I don't see like a wholesale change happening overnight. At least from where I stand. Harry Glorikian: Not overnight, but we definitely have to have dinner and like have a discussion around this topic. Because I would love to bring some examples to the table about how I see things. Once you digitize something, the model itself doesn't have to stay the same way as it used to be. It is up for change. So I think those are the shifts that may change the dynamics of the market.But I'd love to have that discussion with a wonderful glass of wine. After having come from Napa this week, I can show up with a few nice bottles. Thank you so much for taking the time. Andrew, thank you for bringing this group together. Peyton, Tim, it was wonderful to meet both of you. I hope that we stay in touch and I'll keep watching the companies as they, progress. And I wish you guys incredible success. Peyton Greenside: Thanks so much. Tim Sweeney: Thank you Harry. Andrew Radin: It was our pleasure.Tim Sweeney: Andrew, Peyton, good to see you as always.Andrew Radin: Absolutely. Peyton Greenside: You too.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's show. You can find past episodes of MoneyBall Medicine at my website, glorikian.com, under the tab “Podcast.” And you can follow me on Twitter at hglorikian.  Thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon with our next interview.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Did you ever meet any of the Manhattan project spies? (Theodore Hall, Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May) - ​Did you have any interactions with Aaron Swartz? - Is it possible that while moving from the 20 original equations used by Maxwell to the 4 we use today we treated something as negligible by mistake because quantum theory was not around? - Did you meet Elon Musk or Steve Jobs? - What did you do and who did you meet at the Institute for advanced study (did not realise you went there until reading your article about Tini Veltman). - If you make fundamental breakthroughs in Homotopy type theory I bet IAS would be very interested - Did you meet any person related to the "Human Genome project"? Eric Lander, Craig Venter...? - Did you interact with Claude Shannon? - The french composer Erik Satie would only eat white food too - Any anecdotes about Ed witten or Leonard Susskind? - Are you familiar with the work of Roy Frieden about Physics from Fisher Information? What do you think about it? - What's a good place to get one genome sequenced? - Do you know how Joseph Fourier developed the math that lead to Fourier transformation? - ​IAS was the perfect place for Kurt godel Did you read godels Citizenship hearing? He pointed out logical inconsistencies in the American Constitution - Could you give us Feynman and Steve Jobs couple of anecdotes? - The Book "Faster than thought" (1953) has the following Leibniz quote "It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used". It seems that you have the same opinion as Leibniz.

Genetic Engineering and Society Center GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium GES Mediasite - See videos, full abstracts, speaker bios, and slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite Twitter - https://twitter.com/GESCenterNCSU Organized by the AgBioFEWS Cohorts For the first time ever, a genetic engineer, Eric Lander, is in a seat on the president’s cabinet—with social scientist Alondra Nelson as his deputy. The “evolutionary ringmaster” and Nobel prizewinner Frances Arnold chairs the council of science advisors—with NASA planetary explorer Maria Zuber as her co-chair. The Biden administration has proposed giving the NSF an additional $50 billion (over an annual budget of $8.5 billion), while it joins a bipartisan group of legislators in pressing scientific agencies for more emphasis on technology and jobs. What does it all mean for the future of research, biotech regulation, and their place in society? How will these people acting as individuals shape science policy? Link Jennifer Kuzma PowerPoint slides on OSPT and biotechnology policy Panelists Robert Cook-Deegan, PhD, Professor School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University Jennifer Kuzma, PhD, Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center Dave Levitan, MA, Science Journalist and author of Not A Scientist: How politicians mistake, misrepresent, and utterly mangle science GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology. Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

In this episode, Shobita and Jack talk about President Biden's plans for science and technology policy and his appointment of Alondra Nelson as Deputy Director for Science and Society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the United States and United Kingdom. And they chat with Maya Goldenberg, philosophy professor at the University of Guelph, about vaccine hesitancy and how it can be addressed.- Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to Dr. Eric Lander, “In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt….” Letter. January 15, 2021.- Maya Goldenberg, Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise, and the War on Science. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.- Maya Goldenberg, "The Coronavirus Vaccines are Here. Now What?" Impact Ethics. December 18, 2020.- Maya Goldenberg. “Vaccines, Values and Science.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 2019 April 8;191: E397-8.Maya Goldenberg, "A lack of trust, not of science, behind vaccine resistance." Toronto Star. November 9, 2017.- Maya Goldenberg, "Public Misunderstanding of Science?" Reframing the Problem of Vaccine Hesitancy." Perspectives on Science. 24:5 (2016): 552-581.- Maya Goldenberg, "Scientific Illiteracy is not the Tragedy of our Times." Impact Ethics. September 3, 2015. Study Questions:1. How is President Biden trying to re-imagine the US science and technology policy strategy?2. Why might marginalized communities of color be hesitant to take a COVID-19 vaccine?3. Why are the "war on science" and ignorance framings insufficient for understanding vaccine hesitancy?4. What are the best ways to respond to vaccine hesitancy, according to Goldenberg?Transcript available at threreceivedwisdom.org

On this week's show Joyce shares the story of how Erin Gore and Karli Warner created their California cannabis brand for women, Garden Society. Erin Gore is the founder and CEO who is a fearless advocate for women-owned cannabis businesses. Karli Warner is the co-founder and CMO whose own cannabis story includes being the wife to a cancer survivor. When these ladies joined forces they quickly built a well-recognized luxury cannabis brand in California that is moving into Massachusetts very soon. On today's show the ladies share the story of their bold visions in the cannabis industry, the importance of mentoring, and how women can really support each other.Topics Discussed(1:09) Tip O'Neill(2:00) Eric Lander, Science Advisor(2:32) MLK Day of Service(3:05) Daily Table (3:52) Guest Introduction(4:20) Northern California Cannabis(5:00) Erin Gore and Karli Warner(6:15) Erin's Story(10:39) High Holiday Cooking(11:00) Friendship and Joy(11:57) Karli's Story(14:03) Reconnecting(15:40) Mission: Product and Community for Women(15:52) The Epiphany(16:36) Awakening(18:41) First Products(20:31) Branding To Bring Women Into Dispensary(20:51) Garden Parties(22:50) Financing(24:00) What Is Wrong with Men in Money?(25:40) Women Slate of Investors(28:43) Sponsorship(29:00) Women of the Technicolor Cannabis Quilt(31:17) Garden Society ProductsBlissful : Bright Day: Calm and Focus(34:19) Chocolate Bomb(35:35) Sean the Infusionist(36:26) Licensing Agreement Opportunity(38:26) Tokeativity and WEIC(39:00) Mentorships: Women Founded and Women Led(40:19) Cage Free Cannabis (42:10) Connect with Garden SocietyFacebookInstagramTwitterThe Canna Mom Show wants to thank:Josh Lamkin and Bella Jaffe for writing and performing TCMS theme music Amie Searles for believing Kelly Dolan of Retail Results Inc Lori Lennon of Thinkubator Media Kim Kramer of McLane Middleton Cannabis Creative GroupPod617, The Boston Podcast Network

Recently nominated as the first presidential science advisor with a seat in the cabinet, Eric Lander talks with Alan about his leading role of the Human Genome Project and how the insights it’s revealed into diseases as different as Covid-19 and cancer are leading to treatments, and even cures, that he never imagined possible. Support the show: https://www.aldacommunicationtraining.com/podcasts/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Analysis of hundreds of thousands of job searches shows that recruiters will discriminate based on ethnicity and gender, and the neural circuitry behind a brief period of forgetting.In this episode:00:47 Hiring discriminationA huge dataset has shown that widespread discrimination occurs in job hiring, based on ethnicity and gender. This backs up decades of research, showing that people from minority backgrounds tend to get contacted far less by employers.Research Article: Hangartner et al.09:31 CoronapodToday Joe Biden becomes the next president of the United States. We find out what this new political chapter could mean for the country’s immediate pandemic response, including the mass rollout of vaccines.News: Joe Biden’s COVID plan is taking shape — and researchers approveNews: Joe Biden names top geneticist Eric Lander as science adviser20:46 Research HighlightsA new way to study fragile helium pairs, and there’s no limit to how much exercise improves your heart health.Research Highlight: Taking tenuous helium molecules for a spinResearch Highlight: Feeling fit? A little more sweat could still help your heart23:17 Forgetful fliesEver had the feeling where you can’t quite remember what you were doing? While common, this sort of ‘tip of the tongue’ forgetting is not well understood. Now though, researchers have uncovered the neural process behind this feeling… in fruit flies.Research Article: Sabadal et al.29:49 Briefing ChatWe discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, the economics calculations of thieving monkeys, and how in certain situations electric eels will hunt together.The Guardian: Bali’s thieving monkeys can spot high-value items to ransomScience: Shocking discovery: Electric eels hunt in packs in Amazon riversSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joe Biden ha incaricato il genetista Eric Lander di gettare le basi di una strategia per la ricerca a lungo termine

On January 16, 2021, President Joe Biden introduced his picks for science advisors to the White House. Meet Drs. Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, Frances Arnold and Maria Zuber. For the first time, there will be a scientist on the President's Cabinet! Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris finishes the show. The full press conference can be viewed here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?508044-1/president-elect-biden-introduces-white-house-science-team Bench Talk is a weekly program that airs on WFMP Louisville FORward Radio 106.5 FM (forwardradio.org) every Monday at 7:30 pm, Tuesday at 11:30 am, and Wednesday at 7:30 am. Visit our Facebook page for links to the articles discussed in this episode: https://www.facebook.com/BenchTalkRadio/ Bench Talk | Meet the Biden Science Team | Jan 18 2021 by Forward Radio is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

On January 16, 2021, President-Elect Joe Biden introduced his picks for the science advisors in the next White House. Meet Drs. Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, Frances Arnold and Maria Zuber. For the first time, there will be a scientist as a Presidential Cabinet member. Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris finishes the show. The full press conference can be viewed here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?508044-1/president-elect-biden-introduces-white-house-science-team Bench Talk is a weekly program that airs on WFMP Louisville FORward Radio 106.5 FM (forwardradio.org) every Monday at 7:30 pm, Tuesday at 11:30 am, and Wednesday at 7:30 am. Visit our Facebook page for links to the articles discussed in this episode: https://www.facebook.com/pg/BenchTalkRadio/posts/?ref=page_internal

Eric Lander, the head of the Broad Institute and the host of the Pushkin podcast “Brave New Planet,” explains how big data helped scientists in the search for COVID-19 vaccines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can we come together to tackle big challenges in science and society? Dr. Eric Lander and Niala Boodhoo, veteran journalist and Axios Today host, talk about the importance of trust, humility, and skepticism in the worlds of science and media. Together, they ask how we can find the common ground we’ll need to make progress. For links to materials referenced in the episode, suggestions for further learning, and guest bios, visit bravenewplanet.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Lander is a geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician. He was a principal leader of the Human Genome Project and is the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Eric joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his work with the Human Genome project, the practical applications they’ve found, and how collaborative biology has become. Eric describes how the Broad Institute came to be, how their data is starting to uncover connections between different diseases, and that we have a lot of challenges ahead that are going to take science to solve. Dax takes a few swings and misses with his 25-year-old biology memory and Eric explains why humility has to be a part of every bit of science.

Eric Lander is a geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician. He was a principal leader of the Human Genome Project and is the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Eric joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his work with the Human Genome project, the practical applications they’ve found, and how collaborative biology has become. Eric describes how the Broad Institute came to be, how their data is starting to uncover connections between different diseases, and that we have a lot of challenges ahead that are going to take science to solve. Dax takes a few swings and misses with his 25-year-old biology memory and Eric explains why humility has to be a part of every bit of science.

Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into powerful technologies changing our world. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can’t ignore the serious risks. Hosted by Dr. Eric Lander, Brave New Planet is a partnership between the Broad Institute, Pushkin Industries, and the Boston Globe. In this episode, we're talking about how it's becoming more common to make convincing -- but false -- videos through artificial intelligence. These “deepfakes” can be useful in art, education, and therapy. But they can also be used to harm the reputation of an ex-partner or a stranger. Could they be weaponized to provoke international conflicts or swing elections? When seeing is not believing, who can we trust, and can democracy and truth survive? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Lander is president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and was a leader of the Human Genome Project. His new podcast Brave New Planet weighs the pros and cons of a wide range of innovations in science. You can subscribe to The Brave New Planet feed, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into powerful technologies changing our world. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can’t ignore the serious risks. Hosted by Dr. Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. This episode examines deep fakes. It’s getting easy to create convincing—but false —videos through artificial intelligence. These “deepfakes” can have interesting applications in art and education, but they can also cause great harm — from ruining the reputation of an ex-partner to provoking international conflicts or swinging elections. When seeing is not believing, who can we trust, and can democracy and truth survive?  For links to materials referenced in the episode, suggestions for further learning, and guest bios, visit bravenewplanet.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into powerful technologies changing our world. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can’t ignore the serious risks. Hosted by Dr. Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. This episode examines deep fakes. It’s getting easy to create convincing—but false —videos through artificial intelligence. These “deepfakes” can have interesting applications in art and education, but they can also cause great harm — from ruining the reputation of an ex-partner to provoking international conflicts or swinging elections. When seeing is not believing, who can we trust, and can democracy and truth survive?  For links to materials referenced in the episode, suggestions for further learning, and guest bios, visit bravenewplanet.org.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Malcolm Gladwell joins host Dr. Eric Lander for a conversation about science, society, and how the decisions we make today will impact generations to come. At a moment when science is becoming more important than ever for meeting the challenges ahead, can we solve the growing tensions between society and science? For links to materials referenced in the episode, suggestions for further learning, and guest bios, visit bravenewplanet.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into the powerful technologies changing our world. These technologies have amazing potential upsides, but if we’re not careful, some might leave us a lot worse off.  Brave New Planet is hosted Dr. Eric Lander, president and founding director of The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. To get the world we want, we’ll need to make wise choices. And, those decisions aren’t just up to scientists or politicians. We—all of us—are the stewards of a brave new planet.   Learn more at bravenewplanet.org. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Exciting Announcement: This week “DNA Today” won the Best 2020 Science and Medicine Podcast in The 15th Annual Podcast Awards! This is thanks to each and every listener who nominated and voted for the show. THANK YOU for being such loyal listeners for the past 8 years. We’ve been nominated for four years, and it’s incredible to win this year! For those that aren’t familiar, The Podcast Awards are the longest running podcast awards event open to shows worldwide, this year there was 250,000 people who nominated shows.Michael Schnall-Levin joins host Kira Dineen on this episode to explore genetic testing technology including next-gen sequencing, single cell sequencing and bioinformatics. This episode is part 6 of our ongoing direct-consumer genetic testing series, check out our previous episodes for other deep dives into DTC topics.Michael is the Senior Vice President President of Product, Research and Development and Founding Scientist at 10x Genomics. Before joining 10x Genomics, Michael was an NSF postdoctoral fellow with Eric Lander at the Broad Institute where he worked on developing novel applications of DNA sequencing technologies. Prior to that, Michael worked at Foundation Medicine, where he developed some of the early algorithms to accurately detect mutations in patient tumor samples. Michael earned his PhD in Mathematics from MIT with Bonnie Berger, where he was both a Hertz fellow and NDSEG fellow, and his BA in Physics from Harvard College.On This Episode We Discuss:Steps to Sequence DNA/RNASanger and Next Gen SequencingSingle Cell SequencingProcess, Accuracy, AdvantagesUltiziting in Cancer, ImmunotherapyBioinformaticsFuture of Genetic TestingLearn more about 10X Genomics on their website, Twitter and Facebook.Picture Genetics is our sponsor for this DTC genetic testing series and offers a unique DNA testing service. These tests are designed for every stage of life, from family planning and newborn health, to personal wellness and disease risk. Unlike other companies, this is actually a clinical grade test where physicians and genetic counselors are involved. The test sequences entire genes that are medically actionable. It’s easy to order and understand with good looking reports! To order your Picture Genetics go to picturegenetics.com and use code “DNATODAY” for 25% off and free-shipping! Get actionable genetic insights today to benefit your family of tomorrow.Stay tuned for the next new episode of DNA Today on October 23th where we continue our direct-to-consumer genetic testing podcast series! New episodes are released on the first and third Friday of the month. In the meantime, you can listen to over 130 other episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, streaming on the website, or any other podcast player by searching, “DNA Today”.See what else we are up to on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and iTunes. Questions/inquiries can be sent to info@DNApodcast.com.

Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into powerful technologies changing our world. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can’t ignore the serious risks. Hosted by Dr. Eric Lander, Brave New Planet is a partnership between the Broad Institute, Pushkin Industries, and the Boston Globe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NEB社の巨大な製品カタログの楽しみ方、多様な制限酵素の世界とその巧妙な仕組みについて話しました。 第123回　ポッドキャストで語るサイエンスとその魅力(実験医学) NEB…日本語のNEBウェブサイト。NEBはNew England BioLabsの略でした(BioScienceではありませんでした。)大変申し訳ございませんでした。 NEB Literature Portal…カタログのまとめページ。 NEB Catalog & Technical Reference…これがNEBが誇る400ページ超のカタログ！ Eric Lander (Wikipedia) DNA Structure and Classic experiments (Youtube)…Eric Landerの超おすすめなMITの授業動画。見よう！ 制限酵素の基礎知識 (ThermoFisher)…とてもわかり易いのでぜひ。 ファージ (Wikipedia) DNAトポイソメラーゼ (Wikipedia) ニック EcoRI…このエピソードで例として紹介しました。GAATTCという配列を認識して切断する。 回文配列(パリンドローム) DNA ligase…DNA断片同士を連結させることができる。 Gibson Assembly…配列の相補性を利用して２つ以上のDNA断片を試験管内で連結する方法。Dan Gibson博士が作ったのでみながそう呼ぶようになった。彼が自分でつけたわけではない。 DNAメチル化 Talen…ゲノム編集法のうちの一つ。 メタゲノム解析 (Online ISSN : 1881-6681) CasX enzymes comprise a distinct family of RNA-guided genome editors…地下水にすむバクテリアから単離されたCas-X オペロン (Wikipedia) IRES (Wikipedia)…Internal Ribosomal Entry Siteの略 REBASE…制限酵素のデーターベース。 IUPAC Codes - Bioinformatics.org…DNAの縮重塩基はこのように表現されます。 正規表現 Homing endonuclease I-SceI…ホーミングエンドヌクレアーゼの一種でとても長い認識配列を持つ。 I-SceI mouse model…ゲノム中にI−SceIサイトをもったマウスに対してI-SceIを発現させると二本鎖切断応答を誘導できる。この研究 (Nat. Comm 2016)など。 Miné-Hattab and Rothstein, Nat Cell Biol. (2012)…I-SceIを誘導して染色体動態の変化を観察した名論文 MmeI EcoP15I CAGE法…FANTOMの基幹技術。MmeIを用いたトリックが秀逸。 DpnI (NEB)…メチル化されたDNAのみを切断する DamID (DNA adenine methyltransferase identification) RNA splint ligase (NEB)…“SplintR LigaseはRNA splint上のDNAをライゲーションする” NEB podcast Science podcast Nature podcast iBiology デヴィッド・リンチ Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize マシュー・メセルソン ショ糖密度勾配法…初期分子生物学の重要技術。正直やったことがないです… DNAの半保存的複製 ep7. In the golden age of molecular biology…メセルソン先生とmRNA発見の話についても触れています。 Twitter @researchat_fm Researchat.fm Editorial notes 普段あまり考えずに使っていた制限酵素について、もともとの機能や精製方法を知りとても面白かった。みんなカタログを読もう！(soh) DNA修復はすでにノーベル賞が来ていますね。メセルソン先生の偉業の数々もいつかしっかりまとめて話したい。(tadasu)

科学論文の探し方、読み方とその楽しみ、そして理想の論文について三人で熱っぽく話しました。Shownotes Nature Review Cancer…Natureが出版しているレビュー誌の一つで、がん研究に関連する論文を取り扱う。 Nature Review Genetics…Natureが出版しているレビュー誌の一つ、遺伝学に関連する論文を取り扱う。 Boston Chromatin Club Blog Karl Deisseroth (Wikipedia)…光遺伝学の開祖 DNA microscopy, researchat.fm…これについては、エピソード16で解説しています。 物体にデータをエンコードできる「モノのDNA」の時代が、小さなウサギのフィギュアから始まった (WIRED) Eric Lander (Wikipedia)…Genomicsを作った重鎮のうちの一人。 Leonard Adleman (Wikipedia)…AdlemanはDNA computingという分野を作った。これについては、エピソード24で紹介しています。 Researchmap OCRID…研究者に固有のidを付与することで業績と人物を関連させるためのIDシステムとそのwebサイト。 Gene to Cells…日本分子生物学会の発行する論文誌 Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press ABC予想の京大 望月先生のホームページ abc予想の主張を理解する (Youtube)…教育系Youtuberヨビノリさんのこの解説動画はとてもわかり易くてよかったです。 Cell Press, STAR Methods ripgrep-all (Github)…“rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.”とのこと。めちゃ便利そうですね。 fzf（fuzzy finder）の便利な使い方をREADME, Wikiを読んで学ぶ…コマンドラインから曖昧検索をするツール エスペラント語…一般社団法人日本エスペラント協会なんてものがあるんですね。 形式言語の構文と意味 Unix哲学 (Wikipedia) Betweenness centrality…グラフにおけるノードの重要性を評価する指標の一つ。 researchat.fm ep4 … 情報収集について話しました。 Editorial notes 名言？が多い回でした。論文に貴賎なしとはとてもいい言葉だと思いました (soh) きれいごとを話しすぎた感があります。自分の行動にも矛盾ありまくりなのがよくわかりました。論文に貴賎なしですが、いい/おもしろいと思う論文があるのも事実です。立川談志師匠の落語論について思い出しました。(tadasu) 色々熱が入ってしまいました。全然関係ないですが最近sfvでスーパーゴールドになりました(coela)

Christiane Amanpour is joined by historian Anne Applebaum and executive editor of New Yorker online David Rohde to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic is fueling a rise in autocratic leadership. Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht, co-directors of "Crip Camp", speak to Christiane about their new Netflix documentary, which tells the story of a historic summer camp for the disabled community which launched a generation of activists. And our Walter Isaacson talks to Eric Lander, a pioneering mathematician and geneticist, who was a principal leader of the Human Genome Project. Lander explains how and why in just two weeks he has transformed his lab at the Broad Institute (MIT & Harvard) into a coronavirus testing facility.

On this week’s episode of Stay Tuned, "Playing God," host Preet Bharara answers your questions about loyalty, congressional hearing practices, and naturalization ceremonies. Eric Lander is the President and co-founder of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a biomedical and genomic research lab that's played a central role in the development of CRISPR, and the leader of the Human Genome Project.   Sign up to receive the CAFE Brief, a weekly newsletter featuring analysis of politically charged legal news, and updates from Preet. As always, tweet your questions to @PreetBharara with hashtag #askpreet, email us at staytuned@cafe.com, or call 669-247-7338 to leave a voicemail.

2019年よかった本とマンガ、映画やドラマについて紹介し、2020年の展望について3人で話しました。Show notes RTA … Real Time Attack. 同一ゲームの攻略速度を競う。 GDQ (Games Done Quick) … RTAを行う大きなイベント Pokémon Red race in 1:54:28 - SGDQ 2016…ポケモン赤バージョンのバグなしタイムアタック。ニドキング無双が見られる。KEIZARON選手の魅せプレイがすごい。 Donkey Kong Country 2 by V0oid in 1:32:51 - Awesome Games Done Quick 2016 … ドンキーコング2の102%最速攻略を目指す。 Kirby Super Star in 1:18:17 - Awesome Games Done Quick 2017…星のカービィスーパーデラックス最速レース。 The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask by MajinPhil…ゼルダの伝説ムジュラの仮面のRTA。日本語版がプレイされている。 (1080p)1992年の東京の日常風景…1992年の東京。泣ける。 Japan 1940’s in HD…” このフィルムは、ハンフリー・ボガートが主演した映画「東京ジョー」のために撮影されました。1948年冬の東京が記録されています。 “ (YouTubeのコメントより引用) 1991 新宿散策散歩 Shinjuku Walkabout 910410…1991年新宿。この動画をあげている Lyle Hiroshi Saxonの動画はおもしろい。 1991 新宿 東口と西口の散策散歩 Shinjuku Lunchtime Walkabout East and West 910523 1992 日曜日の池袋散策散歩など Sunday Ikebukuro Walkabout 921025 1991 夜の秋葉原と新自動改札口 Akihabara at Night 910105 1991年4月21日日曜日　秋葉原へ 1991年頃？の高松駅前でのバス…コトデンバスのデザインが古すぎて泣ける。 いつかの高松 勝つために戦え！〈監督ゼッキョー篇〉…押井守監督が映画監督の勝利条件とは何か？を定義し、古今東西の映画監督を評価する。 怪獣生物学入門 (インターナショナル新書)…理研 倉谷滋先生が描く、怪獣デザインとは何か。SF作品に登場する架空の生物のリアリティーについて第一線の発生生物学者が解説する。 空の思想史　原始仏教から日本近代へ (講談社学術文庫) 松岡正剛の千夜千冊(空の思想史) 石つぶて…外務省機密費流用事件を題材にしたドラマ。sohのおすすめ。 MERU…人類で初めてメルー峰の登頂に成功した登山家たちのドキュメンタリ映画。6,000m級の直立に切り立った崖のようなメルー峰に挑んだその映像が凄まじい。sohのおすすめ。[Amazon Video] 王子様のくすり図鑑 DNA Structure and Classic experiments, excerpt 1, MIT 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology…Eric Lander先生による授業 YouTuberから学ぶデータサイエンスまとめ。海外チャンネル多め。…白金鉱業.FMにもでてらしたHyperionさんの記事。これの生物版をやりたい！ アオイホノオ…炎尾燃 ~ タマキ論 銀河の死なない子供たちへ スペクトラルウィザード エルフを狩る者たち 水曜どうでしょうとガメラ2 researchat_fm in Twitch…Twitchで配信しながら収録しました。コメントいただいた方、リアルタイムで視聴してくださった方、ありがとうございました。 2019年 Researchat.fm で紹介した関連論文まとめ…今年紹介したたくさんの論文をブログにまとめました。ぜひなにかの参考に。 Editorial notes 2019年、ありがとうございました。60本を超える論文を紹介できるとは思ってもいませんでした。(soh) 煩悩の数を数えろ (tadasu) DDDは懇親のネタだったのですが…。来年も楽しく収録できたらなと思います！(coela)

Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, joins the show to discuss human genetics and computational biology.

kyonさんをゲストに迎え、生涯学習、トランスポゾンを抑制するpiRNA研究の最前線の動向、ハムスターなど動物を用いた研究の醍醐味とその難しさ、コーヒー豆の焙煎、モノクローナル抗体の自作、美しい実験結果を求める姿勢などについて話しました。（ゲスト：kyon）Show notes The ALLPATHS-LG assembly of Golden Hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) (ハムスターゲノム)… MIT (Broad institute) でシークエンス、アセンブルされたゲノム情報。結構高品質に繋がっているが、約20%がギャップ (N) であるため解析には向いていない。kyonは共同研究を通してゲノムを決め直している。 CHO細胞…Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO)細胞はタンパク質の発現などで頻繁に用いられる細胞株の一つ。 SUZUKI DRZ400SM ヤマハ・ビラーゴ/YAMAHA Virago250 生涯学習 Harvard extension school…生涯学習向けのハーバードの講座。様々なレベルの授業が用意されている。多くの授業がオンラインで受けられる。 アメリカのChild careの価格…これはボストン周辺の価格であり、他の都市では異なる。例えば2-3歳児については週5日、フルタイムで預けると月$2,135、23万円程度である。 2-body problem…夫婦などのパートナーがともに科学者としてのキャリアを形成する際、同じ場所（大学や研究所など）でともに職を得ることが非常に難しい場合が往々にしてあり、これを2-body problemと呼ぶ。日本ではほとんど聞かないが、北米などでは夫婦でアプライできるPIポジションなどがある。 制限酵素の自動販売機…写真のように酵素が自販機で買えるの羨ましい。 やなか珈琲…今日はここのエチオピア シダモ・アラングァディの浅煎り (ミディアムロースト) と深煎り (フレンチロースト) の豆を頂いた。次回にレビューします。 コーヒーの保存法 藤本健二…北朝鮮の最高指導者・金正日の元・専属料理人。今はピョンヤンに日本料理屋があるらしい… フィッシャーの正確確率検定 ゴールデンハムスター… ハム太郎はゴールデンハムスター。 ジャンガリアン ハム太郎 PIWIタンパク質…生殖細胞特異的に発現し、piRNAとpiRISC複合体を形成してRNAサイレンシングに寄与する。主な標的はトランスポゾン。ちなみにPiwi遺伝子を人工的に欠損させると不妊の表現型を示す。 piRNA…昔はrasiRNA (Repeat associated small interfering RNA) と呼ばれていた。2001年にハエの生殖細胞でトランスポゾンをRNAサイレンシングする因子として最初に見つかった。論文: Double-stranded RNA-mediated silencing of genomic tandem repeats and transposable elements in the D. melanogaster germline. Current Biology 2001 RNAサイレンシング機構…小さなRNA (20-30塩基) とArgonauteタンパク質から成る複合体 (RISC) が中核となって起こる遺伝子発現制御機構 PIWI-Interacting RNA: Its Biogenesis and Functions. Annual Review of Biochemistry 2015 miRNA トランスポゾン バーバラ・マクリントック…トランスポゾンの発見で1983年にノーベル賞受賞。染色体・遺伝学分野における女性研究者の草分け的存在。 ヘテロクロマチン ヒストンの機構について ハエOSC細胞 (Ovarian Somatic Cells, Saito et al., Nature 2009 モノクローナル抗体 (Wikipedia) ハイブリドーマ…kyonはこのハイブリドーマ(細胞)からモノクローナル抗体を産生させ、精製することで実験に使用することができた。 免疫沈降法 イエロールーム フリーザ Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Biology…最近流行りの細胞内におけるphase separation (相分離)について。 不完全性周期…マウスは４～５日の短い性周期をもつため不完全性周期動物に分類されます。一方、ヒトは３～４週の長い周期のため完全性周期動物に分類されます。ハムスターは4日です。 ウェスタンブロット法 MAX鈴木…大食い系最強YouTuber、フードファイター。 今日ヤバいやつにあった (Youtube)…kyon紹介のYoutuber Eric Lander (Wikipedia) Constructing and Screening a Recombinant DNA Library. MIT 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology. Eric Lander (Youtube)… Eric Lander先生による超楽しいベーシックなMIT分子生物学の学部の授業。板書の美しさ、英語の聞き取りやすさ、ジョーク、小さな実験からライブラリを用いた大規模実験までを一気通貫で説明するストーリー、どれをとっても素晴らしいのでぜひ見てほしいです。 Basic Mechanisms of Cloning, excerpt 1, MIT 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology. Eric Lander (Youtube)… こちらはクローニングの基礎編。制限酵素やライゲースの説明。おなじみのNEBのカタログも登場する。こんな授業を受けたかったなー。 NEBのカタログ…素晴らしいリソース。NEBが売り出している酵素やそのスペックを眺めているだけで楽しいし、知らない酵素や何気なく使っているバッファーに詳しくなれるし、新しい実験を思いつくヒントになるかもしれない。 Editorial notes お声掛けいただいてありがとうございました。初めてのゲスト出演、しかもトップバッター。とっても嬉しかったです！身構えてカンペ作ったけど、皆さんが話題を広げてくれて助かりました。ちなみにちょうど来週、学位審査の中間発表があるのでとても良い練習になりましたｗ (kyon) ゲスト回も楽しく収録できてよかったのと二人以上で収録する際、オーディオのルーティングの知見が溜まってよかった (soh) kyonさんありがとうございます、とても勉強になりました！これを機にyoutuberさんの動画を観てみようと思う (coela) 初期ドラえもんは尻尾を引っ張ると透明になっていたことを思い出しました。そしてcoelaさんがいきなりマウスのシメ方を話し始めて本当にサイコパスで、怖いなと思いました (tadasu)

In the 20th century, America led the world in scientific and technological innovation, with federally funded basic research leading to breakthroughs ranging from the Internet to the Human Genome Project, with many positive impacts on society. More recently, possibilities ranging from autonomous weapons to eugenic application of genetic editing tools have made it clear that the rate of discoveries has outpaced our ability to predict their moral and ethical consequences. How the scientific community addresses these essential questions could mean the difference between societal benefit and dystopia. Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a principal leader of the Human Genome Project, and Maria Zuber, MIT Vice President for Research and the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, will be joined by Communications Forum director Seth Mnookin for a wide-ranging discussion on the ethical issues entangled in innovation and the real, and sometimes devastating, effects of invention without culpability. Speakers: Dr. Eric Lander is the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he has played a pioneering role in the reading, understanding, and biomedical application of the human genome and was a principal leader of the Human Genome Project. Dr. Maria Zuber is the MIT Vice President for Research and the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics. Dr. Zuber was principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), the first woman to lead a NASA spacecraft mission, and the first woman to lead a science department at MIT. In her role as Vice President for Research, Dr. Zuber oversees research administration and policy for more than a dozen interdisciplinary research laboratories and centers. Moderator: Seth Mnookin is the director of the MIT Communications Forum and director of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, won the “Science in Society” award from the National Association of Science Writers. All Communications Forum events are free and open to the general public. Seating is given on a first come, first served basis. There are no tickets. This event is co-sponsored by Radius at MIT.

In the course of his fascinating career, physician-scientist Amalio Telenti has had the opportunity to work in two imiscible centers of excellence in genomics: Eric Lander’s Broad Institute and Craig Venter’s Human Longevity Institute (HLI); on today’s show, we’ll learn what he’s taken away from these two exceptional and distinct organizations – and why he’s […]

Richard Resnick began his career working on the Human Genome Project as a software engineer under Eric Lander. Since then, he has gone on to bridge the research and commercial worlds as a serial entrepreneur. Most recently, he led GQ Life Sciences, a company that focused on innovation in genomics and how industry players could best create competitive advantages using genomics. GQ Life Sciences was successfully acquired in late 2016. Prior to GQ, he was the CEO of Harmony Line, Inc., an MIT Media Lab company, where he partnered with the famous composer/technologist Tod Machover to develop and commercialize music software and technology. Prior to Harmony Line, Resnick was the CEO of Mosaic Bioinformatics which he sold to NetGenics in 2000. Beyond his success in business, Resnick consistently speaks to audiences about the history and promise of genomics. Link to episode: http://bit.ly/2izhbpz Transcripts, blogs, and more: www.gdapodcast.com For booking info: www.gdaspeakers.com or call (214) 420-1999 twitter: @gdapodcast instagram: @gdapocast fb: facebook.com/gdapodcast

In episode sixteen of season two, we get an introduction to Restricted Boltzmann Machines, we take a listener question about tuning hyperparameters,  plus we talk with Eric Lander of the Broad Institute.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death among adults in the US and cancer care costs $125 billion a year. In this episode we hear from medical experts who have researched, written, and made progress in the fight against cancer. Ronald DePinho, president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, says it’s an exciting time because research has shed light on the instigators of the disease. With the knowledge we have now, he says, up to half of all cancers can be prevented. He’s featured in the podcast along with Eric Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

In this lecture clip, Eric Lander discusses Mendel's second law, independent assortment, and then explains the discovery of chromosomes, mitosis, and meiosis.

In this lecture clip, Eric Lander discusses Mendel's experiments with pea plants.

Writer/director Dominic H. White of the newly released motion picture DSKNECTD, discusses  the various ways technology may be profoundly changing the way we interact with others, and also discuss the pros and cons.Also, Jim and Dave host a World Cup Fan Roundtable with Thom Craver (Internet Marketing Ninjas), Simon Heseltine (AOL) and Eric Lander ( D50 Media).

Writer/director Dominic H. White of the newly released motion picture DSKNECTD, discusses  the various ways technology may be profoundly changing the way we interact with others, and also discuss the pros and cons.Also, Jim and Dave host a World Cup Fan Roundtable with Thom Craver (Internet Marketing Ninjas), Simon Heseltine (AOL) and Eric Lander ( D50 Media).

Michel Maharbiz & Daniel Cohen. Michel is an Assoc Prof with EECS-UCB. His research is building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms: bio-derived fabrication methods. Daniel received his PhD from UCB and UCSF Dept of Bioengineering in 2013.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Hello and good afternoon. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'm the host of today's show. Today we present the final of our two interviews with Michelle Ma Harbas and Daniel Cohen. Michelle is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. His [00:01:00] current research interests include building micro nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring the bio derive fabrication methods. Daniel Cohen received his phd from the Joint UC Berkeley U CSF Department of Bioengineering Program in 2013 together they have been working on the fronts project funded by the National Science Foundation. Fronts is an acronym for flexible, resorbable, organic nanomaterial therapeutic systems. In this part [00:01:30] two of our interview, we discussed the current limits of instrumenting the human body, the ethics that swirl about bioengineering and the entrepreneurial urges of engineers. Here's part two. Yeah. Speaker 3: What sort of limits do you think there might be with these kinds of interfaces? Do you foresee any limitations on the technology or is it off we go, we don't have Saturday that work well in the body right now we don't have a sense of what to do with a lot of the data. It's not clear what you'd put in and out [00:02:00] getting the thing in. You're not going to do that on your own for most implants to put designs and so I think the limitations are huge, especially for electrical stimulation. There are very few safe ways of stimulating with DC fields inside the body. You need very special materials, short time periods. From an engineering perspective there are enormous challenges. Then people aren't going to be running around doing this anytime soon, but I think the data deluge is probably the biggest one we'll wind up with cause we'll eventually solve the technology side and then it's what do you do with all of this stuff? Speaker 3: [00:02:30] I think there are an enormous engineering challenges, but I think of course for us it's exciting because we are engineers. I think that people see something like this and immediately we're very good at linear extrapolation, right? So, oh that means in five years we'll all look like terminator or something. So I think there's a lot of work to be done, as Daniel said, in building things that robustly survive in the body for very long periods of time, if that's what's required. You know we were talking about resorbable stuff, but you're talking about adding therapeutics or things that have a therapeutic function that are electrical in nature at some level. A lot of the there is, you actually want Speaker 4: [00:03:00] them to last a long time in there and do their business and that's a very, very big open challenge. I would also say if you wanted to put on the futurist hat, you know in the end you're also limited by the substrate, right? You have a certain genetic code in your cells are predisposed to do certain things. So you know you're working with those base materials and what those cells are doing. And so I think there's a lot of future for this type of instrumentation, but you know, we're not going to look like the Borg anytime soon. I don't think. Are there any challenges that we haven't really gotten [00:03:30] to in developing these electronics so that they interact with biological systems in specifically technical stuff, environmental stuff, even legal and ethical things. Are there questions you guys wrestle with? We've had a lot of these cars, agent Daniel smiling because we've had conversations by often, not just with Daniel, with Peter [inaudible], who's another student that just graduated from the group. Speaker 4: It does neuro. It started back when we were doing some of the bug work. I think for this project, I'm pretty comfortable. You know, we're working on very fundamental things. [00:04:00] I don't know that I could address them in intelligently today, but I think that there are interesting ethical concerns, societal concerns as we instrument ourselves more and more and they've been discussed. I mean, this is something that if you're interested in this topic, you can find quite a bit of discussion on the web or in various talks. When I started instrumenting my body to some extent. Where's the line, for example, between traditional FDA approved devices and consumer gadgets that you buy with your iPhone, where should that data go? You know, what are you going to do with it? Who's gonna do what with it? Is [00:04:30] it all yours? You know, there's an interesting argument that came, a friend of mine, David Lieberman, who's doesn't do this kind of work, but he's very interested in sensors and he's recently been interested in genetic screening and he brings up the fact that a lot of this extra information sometimes isn't very actionable and so it just adds noise. Speaker 4: But from our perspective, I think what we're doing is pretty exciting and I think it has a chance to help people and it's early days, Speaker 3: there's a lot more transparency than there used to be too. So the maker movement and just people are much more interested in trying things on themselves, [00:05:00] not cutting their arms up in, but instrumenting, looking at heart rate, looking at salinity of the skin, just different things that various startup companies are playing with and that you can look up schematics for on the Internet and so there's more of a culture of what you can get out of it. The enhancement side I think is somewhat behind right now because it's not even clear what we're doing with any of these. So ethically we haven't run into that issue quite yet. Speaker 4: And in terms of the group that fronts contains all the different disciplines [00:05:30] that are working on it, it's a rather interdisciplinary project. Do you feel that your training taught you how to do interdisciplinary work or did you learn it on the job? I think I've always been in interdisciplinary environment in my work. I think it's always been accepted. I think it's been encouraged. I think that's the name of the game. Interestingly enough, I was just having a conversation with Edward Lee from our department two days ago where I was joking. I said the days of monastic academia are largely ending or, but interestingly enough, a lot of us choose academia [00:06:00] because we want to go live in a monastery. So it's say it's a very interesting sort of thing these days. I think certainly in a place like Berkeley, you want to make sure you're deep in your competence to, you're making contributions in a meaningful and deep way, but the nature of everything is very interdisciplinary.Speaker 4: Do you ever feel like, Oh, if I'd had more of this or more of that, if I'd had more exposure than I would just be so much more comfortable in this invited more money. No, I'm kidding. Now we're well funded. You know, you've only have so much time to spend in your field and to get competency. It's hard to do everything [00:06:30] and know everything. You can't really, you can't, but you should know who to talk to. Right. Interdisciplinary stuff is not trained and it's not easy to train someone in per se. It's a mindset and the environment is important. And in undergraduate work, you tend to be a specialist in something. And in Grad school you're expected to completely specialize, but I think you really miss out on a lot. So what's Nice, at least in Berkeley is it's very easy to transition across. Labs, talk to different people, set up collaborations, but at the end of the day, you're not going to be an expert in those things, [00:07:00] but you're going to know who to talk to and that creates a very nice network that is very innovative at the end of the day. Speaker 4: So sub specialty in a way, or you're familiar with it, you can do the work if you need to, but you know people who really know that and that's the most important part. You put a good team together and that's where most of the innovations today are coming from. Not from single disciplines. Yeah, I think Berkeley is great for this. You have the freedom to go and you have brilliant people around that can inform and willing to participate with visibility and guide and mentor. I mean it's the freedom to do this and the mentors [00:07:30] to do it. I think all the top American institutions do this. But in engineering that's the modern approach. Speaker 5: Mm MM. Speaker 6: Spectrum is a public affair show on k a l ex Berkeley. Our guests are Michelle Maha [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley. They went to build a smart badge for wounds. In the next segment they talk about multidisciplinary work and [00:08:00] science fiction. Speaker 4: Well, you started a company, you took research out of the lab and started a company and then sold it. And what did you learn from that process? Is there something, it's fun. Do you have an Aha moment of like, is this how to do it kind of a thing? No, no. I have a great deal of respect for people who make it their business to make money in the private sector in, in technology. I mean, of course these days that's a trivial thing to [00:08:30] say, right? Cause in the bay area, that's what we live off of. But I was fortunate enough that I met a number of individuals that were already in the private sector and we're interested in commercializing and I wanted to go off and be an idealist professor. We developed out the this company and the day came where I decided to go be a professor and they said, you know, if you stay, we'll give you a bigger piece of the pie. Speaker 4: And I said, no, I'm going to go. I literally said, no, I want to go off and you know, do all these other crazy things and if this company has more than 50% market [00:09:00] share on this little narrow part of a, that'll be good enough for me. Right. It's a very famous last words. And that would have is when it was sold, I was happy with what, but my wife will never forgive me. Right. And so she's like, yeah, what are you, how do you feel now? No, I find the whole process of thinking about how what you're working on in academia might be commercializable to be very sanguine about it. I find it fascinating. I think that that process, understanding that a lot of what you do is not relevant to that field of endeavor. Working with people, valuing academics, sometimes people tend to [00:09:30] under value the contributions of the non technical people, which is silly is ridiculous actually. Speaker 4: And so valuing all of the components at a great time doing that. And I've done this a couple times and we have lots of little things bubbling. My cofounder of Cork, Tara Neurotech, I'm co founder of a company called tweedle tech, which builds hardware for games. I went often for a year, worked at a startup in San Francisco and energy startups. So I'm a big fan of this type of thing. I think it actually for engineers in certain fields, it's very useful because it calibrates you to reality to be honest with you on [inaudible], something you [00:10:00] can help mentor people with and you see that as a, a role for you. I mean, there's always a role, but I'm always very modest about it because I certainly haven't made $100 million out of any of these companies. Right. You have to be humble, humble, or I mean, and also there's an opinion of, for every person that thinks about this, there's a very um, neat quote I read, I think it was Eric Lander who said that we live our lives prospectively, but then we reconstruct our history is retrospectively, right? Speaker 4: So effectively we pick and choose and create a narrative, right? And so [00:10:30] for all of this stuff, like let's mentor how to have a great startup, the people mentoring or giving you a story, they are doing a pattern fit to whatever they experienced to tell the story, how they feel comfortable telling it. Right? And there's a billion different versions of this narrative. How is it you should transition your company or your idea to a company. But it's a lot of fun. That's the main thing I would say. Anybody out there that's interested in, I think it can be a lot of fun. It's very humbling and it forces you to change directions constantly and reevaluate what you're doing. And it works. A set of mental muscles [00:11:00] that are very different, I think in some cases from the academic ones. So it's, it's overall, just very good. Speaker 4: Michelle, you commented that science fiction was a source of inspiration. Sure. Dune. Is that the key one I was going to ask, are there any stories or themes that stick out? Oh, there's tons, but I mean, I, I have to say maybe this will be disappointed to people that like thinking about cyborgs and putting stuff, but honestly it's, I mean the, I think the single piece of science fiction that impacted me the most was doing, when I read it in [00:11:30] early high school or high school, what are doing his blown up and continues to blow my mind. Like I just, every 10 years I read and it just makes me happy. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all of the, I certainly love all the traditional stuff and more recently for me in the late eighties all this cyber punky kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of something more recent that I've read. Oh, and then Vernor Vinge would probably be the last big phase of my science fiction Aha moment. I Speaker 3: love [inaudible] stuff. I consider science fiction to be particularly hard. Sai FYS, [00:12:00] they take the last three data points and they take a ruler and they extrapolate it out to infinity. Right? And so you read it and you particularly very good hard science fiction. It just feels like, oh, I'll definitely turn out this way. Right? It must turn out this way. If there's no doubt, how can I ever, right. We're all gonna upload ourselves or whatever. Right? And that's the beauty of the really good one that I'm a big fan, Daniel, for you, any allure of science fiction? You were waxing wonderfully about Frankenstein and I actually only just read Frankenstein for the first [00:12:30] time in the last year and it's amazing. Everyone should read it and it perfectly captures the mindset of being a scientist, especially a graduate student. But I grew up with drastic park. I also read Dune periodically and the golden compass and things that aren't even traditional Scifi things where any sort of alternate reality where people have to come up with a way of how something would be done. Speaker 3: Authors tend to be very good at coming up with strange things. And that was more the fun part. So there wasn't any direct inspiration, [00:13:00] but there's this synthesis and putting together a different ideas. And so that's where you get a lot of the ethical discussion too. I mean ethical education and especially for bioengineering, most of it probably comes from the media and [inaudible] really mean we all know these concepts now, not because we were formally taught them, but because it's in a movie somewhere or we read about some world where people are engineered or something like that. So you get a pretty good perspective actually. And then you go to Grad school thinking you're going to build those things out that it [00:13:30] takes a little bit longer. So you figured out in Grad School. So that's my problem. I haven't figured it out. I, I'm aware of the problem I can't solve. Speaker 3: I'm still subject to it. But uh, I also just enjoy reading all over the place. These ideas came from old science papers. I have to say. Daniel is amazing in that regard. Daniel shows up and he's like, ah, I was just reading a 13th century manual for rhinoplasty. Where do you even, how do you, what's, you know, like it's awesome. And then he's, and you're right, like was it 13th century, 16th century? [00:14:00] And there's all these digresses like, look, he figured out right away I'll do this. So I have to stay voracious. Appetite in reading is a big plus if you want to join my group. And as the Internet, what's unleashing your ability to find these old documents? It certainly helps with things like the databases. So Frankenstein was recently just fully released. In fact, facsimile with Mary Shelley's own handwriting and the preface and everything, but also just library libraries. Speaker 3: So some of the earliest medical engineering books are from the, actually the late 17 hundreds it [00:14:30] was already starting in those you only find in the library in manuscript form and you can just go pick them up. The hard library is still actually quite useful for this, but the Internet certainly a great place to get lost. Also, just reading papers from different fields and looking through the bibliographies. That's really just a good way to backtrack and find where these things really started. And even with the history of bioelectricity, most people cite back to one particular person and it turns out that there's a second person before him and then there's this story. It's just fun to bounce all [00:15:00] over the place. And I think that's something that at least in bioengineering you do a ton of because there's no one discipline, no one knows what bioengineering means. Speaker 3: You go all over the place. And so for any of this stuff and interdisciplinary stuff, that's really one way to find out is just started reading tons of things including science. And so the history of science comes to life absolutely with a lot of these pioneering efforts and it's exceptionally humbling too. So if you look at the materials they used in the first rhinoplasties to help seal people's noses off after they'd [00:15:30] been chopped off and duals that material on a microscopic level. But then electron microscope is very, very similar to cutting edge medical technology today that we use for similar treatment. And they had no idea what they were doing, they just knew what worked. It is pretty humbling when you come across things like that. And it also puts a lot of stuff in perspective and there's a lot of stuff that's been lost as well. So when you come across it from either a different field or it just hasn't been looked at in a while, that's always exciting. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 7: [00:16:00] You're listening to spectrum a science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen bear research in the electric field that is generated by wounds and mammals. In the next segment they talk more about ethics and their work Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 4: Do you want to talk a little bit [00:16:30] more about your insect work that dated this? No bugs, but now we can talk about the, like the bugs is a, I say this is sort of my peewee Herman idea. You know, peewee Herman could never unfortunately ever not be peewee Herman. He tried very hard. I felt like the bugs is my peewee Herman curse. The brief version is we demonstrated that you can put very small electronics with neural in your muscular stimulators into insects and control their flight remotely via signal sent to the transmitter on the electronic package. And that would then control what signals [00:17:00] were sent to the insect. So what we do now is we have these incredibly small atronix weighs less than 200 milligrams such that these grasshoppers can carry it happily. We have these new systems that bias the way the insect receives certain information and we use that to affect how it's flying. Speaker 4: So we're still very interested in that. I find it a very interesting area. To me it's one of these places where you can most acutely demonstrate how much electronics has actually miniaturized. People have very visceral reaction [00:17:30] to the work because it takes these insects and incredibly small electronics that most people really don't think about usually and builds this sort of compound construct, right? That does something, the thing that isn't doing what an insect normally wants to do but isn't really a robot in the traditional sense of being made out of plastic and metal. For me, that's really why I do it. And I think it's right at that bleeding of what you can show you can do. And one of the side things that interests me profoundly is sort of the ethics of this. And most people like their initial reaction is either, oh [00:18:00] that's horrible. Speaker 4: How could you do that to an insect or at an insect? I swapped them against the wall all the time. Right. So there's usually, cause we like to be in quickly. So it's an interesting question. So let's say we get very good at putting these little packages on it such that almost anybody can do it as a hobby. Would you find it permissible to have, just like you have the San Francisco chapter of the RC helicopter flying hobby, would you find it permissible to have the San Francisco chapter of the Cyborg insect? Where do you go find yourself a grasshopper and you slap some stuff on its back or inside [00:18:30] it and use little pins to make holes to the right nerves and you let it go and then you start doing stuff. Our, what we normally consider to be animals, fair game, a spare part. Are they machines? Speaker 4: Are they not machines? I think this is fascinating. I think that we don't have very good ethical tools. In my opinion. I'm not an ethicist. I'm certainly not a philosopher, but I don't think we have very good ethical tools for dealing with this issue in the way we usually think about stuff. What is the argument against doing that? You usually fall back to things having to do with minimizing suffering and so on, but if you really spend some time [00:19:00] thinking about it, it's a lot of those become very murky very quickly with things like insects, things that are to our interpretation from our frame of reference are very distant from our cognitive function. It's the old argument that bad to hurt a dog, fine. Is it bad to hurt a fly? Is it bad to hurt a bacteria where, where in the spectrum of things do you fall? I think that this insect work really tickles that, whatever that is really struggle. I've had very interesting conversations after my talks and is that part of any of the engineering training? Speaker 3: Well, all [00:19:30] graduate students do ethical training and this sort of stuff is disgusting. It's more or less field dependent, but especially in bioengineering, you do a full seminar at the beginning where everything from this to genetics I adjustment and children and things like that, it's discussed. So that doesn't mean there are good tools for it, but everyone's very aware of it and I think maybe more effort should be made to derive those tools. But it's something people are working on at least. When you refer to a tools, are you talking of procedures and protocols, halls? Speaker 4: [00:20:00] What are you imagining as a tool in the ethics realm? I was thinking methods, algorithms, heuristics to think about this and come to conclusions. So for example, what I think of a tool I think of philosophical, philosophical tools, right? Thinking about what should I use as a basis for making a judgment? Should I just work to minimize singer style work to minimize suffering? That should be it. Is there something more complex or show you something else? So that's what I meant by tools. But of course there's another interpretation which is simply teaching students. They are in fact functional tools you use to determine ethical kind of in a narrower sentence, [00:20:30] right? Of for example, don't drop data points, you know? Right. If you have 43 data points in 42 of them look like you want the 43rd one doesn't, you should not get rid of the 43rd one. That kind of stuff. Sure. I mean I think we're very good at teaching that to the extent that it's well understood. I think it's just trickierSpeaker 3: when you do any animal work or bioengineering work where you have this utilitarian calculus, which is pretty much what most engineering revolves around. You're taught that you need to improve society. You have this idea that utility [00:21:00] is a valuable way of thinking about things, but it leaves too many questions open for bioengineering type stuff where utility comes at the cost of working on some living system that everyone is very aware of and very careful with and we have all sorts of protocols and procedures when we work with any living things, but it's still something that is very difficult to pin down when you talk to different people. And how they think about it. The consensus varies. Yes, sure, sure. Everyone has a good sense of like we're all sort of aligned, but where [00:21:30] you might draw the line or what types of experiments you personally might want to do is very different. Speaker 3: So some people fully support the idea of medical research but would never do it themselves for the reason that they don't want to work on the living system. And some people like myself say, if you are gonna work on a living system, you should do it. The courtesy of being in the room with it and at least seeing what you're doing. So there are different standards, but there's no formal approach to that. Yeah, there are lots of opinions. I mean, I think even in our larger super [00:22:00] set of people that work on this effort, there's lots of different comfort levels. The different researchers that run the whole gamut. Even calling it a living system, I think some people would say, well, it's out. Let me system. It's a, it's an animal. It's an organism. Your de de emphasizing its identity by calling it living, stuff like that. I mean, I think these things are all very interesting and we're all in the middle of it. It's an interesting area. Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link to get you there. The link is [00:23:00] tiny, url.com backslash and Kaa LX spectrum. We hope you can get out to a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kornacki joins me Speaker 8: presenting the calendar this Sunday. The ninth call, HUD ash is hosting a Darwin Day celebration Brunch at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin avenue from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM [00:23:30] eat bagels and lox while hearing about looking for Darwin's footprints in the world of zombies, ucs f professor John Halfer. Nick is also the interim director of the Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and trustee and president of the California Academy of Sciences as an entomologist professor, half or nick, studies of the Zombie fly and its relationship to bees. He will also discuss how Darwin's ideas were influenced by his knowledge of the insect [00:24:00] world. The event is $10 per person and more information is available@coladash.org Speaker 1: as average temperatures continue to rise due to human changes to the composition of the atmosphere, cases of extreme weather are very likely to occur. On February 12th come join expert Michael F Wainer, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and learn about the science of climate change, current areas of research and some possible implications [00:24:30] for the future. Tickets are free for UC Berkeley Students, faculty and staff, and $10 to the public. Once again, this event will take place on February 12th from 1230 to 1:30 PM at the freight and salvage in Berkeley. The Bay area skeptics present Kernan Coleman for a personal recollection. He has titled Escaping. We've Vale a journey out of magical thinking, a telling of his 10 year journey out of magical thinking, alternative [00:25:00] medicine, new age, and fear-based denialism and learn how the woo woo bill still affects them even though he knows better. This takes place February 13th at La Penea Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, seven 30 to 9:00 PM admission is free on February 15th the science of cow lecture will be given by Professor Marty Hearst and his entitled Natural Search User Interfaces. Speaker 1: What does the future hold for search user [00:25:30] interfaces? Can there be a natural user interface social rather than solo usage of information technology? More integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large scale knowledge basis. Marty Hurst is a professor in the school of Information at UC Berkeley with an affiliate appointment and the computer science division. She wrote the first book on search user interfaces. The lecture will be presented Saturday, February 15th and Stanley Hall Room One oh five at 11:00 AM [00:26:00] Stanley Hall is on the east side of the UC Berkeley campus. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Rick Curnutt ski and I present our news. Speaker 8: Science now reviewed an article appearing in January 2nd proceeding of the National Academy of Science that suggests the black death left a mark on the human genome. Me. Hi, Natalia from Rad bough university and colleagues analyze the genomes from three populations. [00:26:30] The first population consisted of a hundred Romanians of European descent, Speaker 8: the second of a hundred Roma or gypsies that had migrated to the same region from India a thousand years ago. The third population was 500 people from Northwestern India, where the Roma were originally found. Genetically. The Roma are still quite similar to the Northwestern Indians, but 20 jeans have differences that could be explained by the environmental pressures the Europeans [00:27:00] and aroma have shared over the last millennia. Some jeans controlled skin pigmentation and others control immunological responses. The team found one such set of differences on chromosome four they code for proteins that latch onto bacteria initiating a defensive response. They showed the genes, help respond to the bacteria that caused the black death and speculate that it was this evolutionary pressure shared by the people living in the same area at the [00:27:30] same time. To exhibit these genomic differences, Speaker 1: researchers from the California State University Long Beach and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have launched Kelp, watched 2014 a scientific campaign designed to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's Kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant initiated by long beach biology professor Steven Manley and the Berkeley labs head of applied nuclear physics, Kai vetter. The project were ally on [00:28:00] samples of giant Kelp and bulk help from along the California and Mexico coast lines. The project includes the participation of 19 academic and government institutions. These participants will sample kelp from the entire west coast as far north as del Norte, Tay County, and as far south as Baja California. Sampling will take place several times in 2014 and processed kelp samples will be sent to the Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Low background facility for detailed radionucleotide analysis. As data [00:28:30] becomes available, it will be posted for public access. Professor Manley says at the present time, this initiative is unfunded by any state or federal agency with time and costs being donated by participants. So those interested in taking part in the project can contact Manley at California State University. Long Beach Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us at eight nine days. Speaker 9: Hey, email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michel Maharbiz & Daniel Cohen. Michel is an Assoc Prof with EECS-UCB. His research is building micro/nano interfaces to cells and organisms: bio-derived fabrication methods. Daniel received his PhD from UCB and UCSF Dept of Bioengineering in 2013.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Hello and good afternoon. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'm the host of today's show. Today we present the final of our two interviews with Michelle Ma Harbas and Daniel Cohen. Michelle is an associate professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley. His [00:01:00] current research interests include building micro nano interfaces to cells and organisms and exploring the bio derive fabrication methods. Daniel Cohen received his phd from the Joint UC Berkeley U CSF Department of Bioengineering Program in 2013 together they have been working on the fronts project funded by the National Science Foundation. Fronts is an acronym for flexible, resorbable, organic nanomaterial therapeutic systems. In this part [00:01:30] two of our interview, we discussed the current limits of instrumenting the human body, the ethics that swirl about bioengineering and the entrepreneurial urges of engineers. Here's part two. Yeah. Speaker 3: What sort of limits do you think there might be with these kinds of interfaces? Do you foresee any limitations on the technology or is it off we go, we don't have Saturday that work well in the body right now we don't have a sense of what to do with a lot of the data. It's not clear what you'd put in and out [00:02:00] getting the thing in. You're not going to do that on your own for most implants to put designs and so I think the limitations are huge, especially for electrical stimulation. There are very few safe ways of stimulating with DC fields inside the body. You need very special materials, short time periods. From an engineering perspective there are enormous challenges. Then people aren't going to be running around doing this anytime soon, but I think the data deluge is probably the biggest one we'll wind up with cause we'll eventually solve the technology side and then it's what do you do with all of this stuff? Speaker 3: [00:02:30] I think there are an enormous engineering challenges, but I think of course for us it's exciting because we are engineers. I think that people see something like this and immediately we're very good at linear extrapolation, right? So, oh that means in five years we'll all look like terminator or something. So I think there's a lot of work to be done, as Daniel said, in building things that robustly survive in the body for very long periods of time, if that's what's required. You know we were talking about resorbable stuff, but you're talking about adding therapeutics or things that have a therapeutic function that are electrical in nature at some level. A lot of the there is, you actually want Speaker 4: [00:03:00] them to last a long time in there and do their business and that's a very, very big open challenge. I would also say if you wanted to put on the futurist hat, you know in the end you're also limited by the substrate, right? You have a certain genetic code in your cells are predisposed to do certain things. So you know you're working with those base materials and what those cells are doing. And so I think there's a lot of future for this type of instrumentation, but you know, we're not going to look like the Borg anytime soon. I don't think. Are there any challenges that we haven't really gotten [00:03:30] to in developing these electronics so that they interact with biological systems in specifically technical stuff, environmental stuff, even legal and ethical things. Are there questions you guys wrestle with? We've had a lot of these cars, agent Daniel smiling because we've had conversations by often, not just with Daniel, with Peter [inaudible], who's another student that just graduated from the group. Speaker 4: It does neuro. It started back when we were doing some of the bug work. I think for this project, I'm pretty comfortable. You know, we're working on very fundamental things. [00:04:00] I don't know that I could address them in intelligently today, but I think that there are interesting ethical concerns, societal concerns as we instrument ourselves more and more and they've been discussed. I mean, this is something that if you're interested in this topic, you can find quite a bit of discussion on the web or in various talks. When I started instrumenting my body to some extent. Where's the line, for example, between traditional FDA approved devices and consumer gadgets that you buy with your iPhone, where should that data go? You know, what are you going to do with it? Who's gonna do what with it? Is [00:04:30] it all yours? You know, there's an interesting argument that came, a friend of mine, David Lieberman, who's doesn't do this kind of work, but he's very interested in sensors and he's recently been interested in genetic screening and he brings up the fact that a lot of this extra information sometimes isn't very actionable and so it just adds noise. Speaker 4: But from our perspective, I think what we're doing is pretty exciting and I think it has a chance to help people and it's early days, Speaker 3: there's a lot more transparency than there used to be too. So the maker movement and just people are much more interested in trying things on themselves, [00:05:00] not cutting their arms up in, but instrumenting, looking at heart rate, looking at salinity of the skin, just different things that various startup companies are playing with and that you can look up schematics for on the Internet and so there's more of a culture of what you can get out of it. The enhancement side I think is somewhat behind right now because it's not even clear what we're doing with any of these. So ethically we haven't run into that issue quite yet. Speaker 4: And in terms of the group that fronts contains all the different disciplines [00:05:30] that are working on it, it's a rather interdisciplinary project. Do you feel that your training taught you how to do interdisciplinary work or did you learn it on the job? I think I've always been in interdisciplinary environment in my work. I think it's always been accepted. I think it's been encouraged. I think that's the name of the game. Interestingly enough, I was just having a conversation with Edward Lee from our department two days ago where I was joking. I said the days of monastic academia are largely ending or, but interestingly enough, a lot of us choose academia [00:06:00] because we want to go live in a monastery. So it's say it's a very interesting sort of thing these days. I think certainly in a place like Berkeley, you want to make sure you're deep in your competence to, you're making contributions in a meaningful and deep way, but the nature of everything is very interdisciplinary.Speaker 4: Do you ever feel like, Oh, if I'd had more of this or more of that, if I'd had more exposure than I would just be so much more comfortable in this invited more money. No, I'm kidding. Now we're well funded. You know, you've only have so much time to spend in your field and to get competency. It's hard to do everything [00:06:30] and know everything. You can't really, you can't, but you should know who to talk to. Right. Interdisciplinary stuff is not trained and it's not easy to train someone in per se. It's a mindset and the environment is important. And in undergraduate work, you tend to be a specialist in something. And in Grad school you're expected to completely specialize, but I think you really miss out on a lot. So what's Nice, at least in Berkeley is it's very easy to transition across. Labs, talk to different people, set up collaborations, but at the end of the day, you're not going to be an expert in those things, [00:07:00] but you're going to know who to talk to and that creates a very nice network that is very innovative at the end of the day. Speaker 4: So sub specialty in a way, or you're familiar with it, you can do the work if you need to, but you know people who really know that and that's the most important part. You put a good team together and that's where most of the innovations today are coming from. Not from single disciplines. Yeah, I think Berkeley is great for this. You have the freedom to go and you have brilliant people around that can inform and willing to participate with visibility and guide and mentor. I mean it's the freedom to do this and the mentors [00:07:30] to do it. I think all the top American institutions do this. But in engineering that's the modern approach. Speaker 5: Mm MM. Speaker 6: Spectrum is a public affair show on k a l ex Berkeley. Our guests are Michelle Maha [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen of UC Berkeley. They went to build a smart badge for wounds. In the next segment they talk about multidisciplinary work and [00:08:00] science fiction. Speaker 4: Well, you started a company, you took research out of the lab and started a company and then sold it. And what did you learn from that process? Is there something, it's fun. Do you have an Aha moment of like, is this how to do it kind of a thing? No, no. I have a great deal of respect for people who make it their business to make money in the private sector in, in technology. I mean, of course these days that's a trivial thing to [00:08:30] say, right? Cause in the bay area, that's what we live off of. But I was fortunate enough that I met a number of individuals that were already in the private sector and we're interested in commercializing and I wanted to go off and be an idealist professor. We developed out the this company and the day came where I decided to go be a professor and they said, you know, if you stay, we'll give you a bigger piece of the pie. Speaker 4: And I said, no, I'm going to go. I literally said, no, I want to go off and you know, do all these other crazy things and if this company has more than 50% market [00:09:00] share on this little narrow part of a, that'll be good enough for me. Right. It's a very famous last words. And that would have is when it was sold, I was happy with what, but my wife will never forgive me. Right. And so she's like, yeah, what are you, how do you feel now? No, I find the whole process of thinking about how what you're working on in academia might be commercializable to be very sanguine about it. I find it fascinating. I think that that process, understanding that a lot of what you do is not relevant to that field of endeavor. Working with people, valuing academics, sometimes people tend to [00:09:30] under value the contributions of the non technical people, which is silly is ridiculous actually. Speaker 4: And so valuing all of the components at a great time doing that. And I've done this a couple times and we have lots of little things bubbling. My cofounder of Cork, Tara Neurotech, I'm co founder of a company called tweedle tech, which builds hardware for games. I went often for a year, worked at a startup in San Francisco and energy startups. So I'm a big fan of this type of thing. I think it actually for engineers in certain fields, it's very useful because it calibrates you to reality to be honest with you on [inaudible], something you [00:10:00] can help mentor people with and you see that as a, a role for you. I mean, there's always a role, but I'm always very modest about it because I certainly haven't made $100 million out of any of these companies. Right. You have to be humble, humble, or I mean, and also there's an opinion of, for every person that thinks about this, there's a very um, neat quote I read, I think it was Eric Lander who said that we live our lives prospectively, but then we reconstruct our history is retrospectively, right? Speaker 4: So effectively we pick and choose and create a narrative, right? And so [00:10:30] for all of this stuff, like let's mentor how to have a great startup, the people mentoring or giving you a story, they are doing a pattern fit to whatever they experienced to tell the story, how they feel comfortable telling it. Right? And there's a billion different versions of this narrative. How is it you should transition your company or your idea to a company. But it's a lot of fun. That's the main thing I would say. Anybody out there that's interested in, I think it can be a lot of fun. It's very humbling and it forces you to change directions constantly and reevaluate what you're doing. And it works. A set of mental muscles [00:11:00] that are very different, I think in some cases from the academic ones. So it's, it's overall, just very good. Speaker 4: Michelle, you commented that science fiction was a source of inspiration. Sure. Dune. Is that the key one I was going to ask, are there any stories or themes that stick out? Oh, there's tons, but I mean, I, I have to say maybe this will be disappointed to people that like thinking about cyborgs and putting stuff, but honestly it's, I mean the, I think the single piece of science fiction that impacted me the most was doing, when I read it in [00:11:30] early high school or high school, what are doing his blown up and continues to blow my mind. Like I just, every 10 years I read and it just makes me happy. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all of the, I certainly love all the traditional stuff and more recently for me in the late eighties all this cyber punky kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of something more recent that I've read. Oh, and then Vernor Vinge would probably be the last big phase of my science fiction Aha moment. I Speaker 3: love [inaudible] stuff. I consider science fiction to be particularly hard. Sai FYS, [00:12:00] they take the last three data points and they take a ruler and they extrapolate it out to infinity. Right? And so you read it and you particularly very good hard science fiction. It just feels like, oh, I'll definitely turn out this way. Right? It must turn out this way. If there's no doubt, how can I ever, right. We're all gonna upload ourselves or whatever. Right? And that's the beauty of the really good one that I'm a big fan, Daniel, for you, any allure of science fiction? You were waxing wonderfully about Frankenstein and I actually only just read Frankenstein for the first [00:12:30] time in the last year and it's amazing. Everyone should read it and it perfectly captures the mindset of being a scientist, especially a graduate student. But I grew up with drastic park. I also read Dune periodically and the golden compass and things that aren't even traditional Scifi things where any sort of alternate reality where people have to come up with a way of how something would be done. Speaker 3: Authors tend to be very good at coming up with strange things. And that was more the fun part. So there wasn't any direct inspiration, [00:13:00] but there's this synthesis and putting together a different ideas. And so that's where you get a lot of the ethical discussion too. I mean ethical education and especially for bioengineering, most of it probably comes from the media and [inaudible] really mean we all know these concepts now, not because we were formally taught them, but because it's in a movie somewhere or we read about some world where people are engineered or something like that. So you get a pretty good perspective actually. And then you go to Grad school thinking you're going to build those things out that it [00:13:30] takes a little bit longer. So you figured out in Grad School. So that's my problem. I haven't figured it out. I, I'm aware of the problem I can't solve. Speaker 3: I'm still subject to it. But uh, I also just enjoy reading all over the place. These ideas came from old science papers. I have to say. Daniel is amazing in that regard. Daniel shows up and he's like, ah, I was just reading a 13th century manual for rhinoplasty. Where do you even, how do you, what's, you know, like it's awesome. And then he's, and you're right, like was it 13th century, 16th century? [00:14:00] And there's all these digresses like, look, he figured out right away I'll do this. So I have to stay voracious. Appetite in reading is a big plus if you want to join my group. And as the Internet, what's unleashing your ability to find these old documents? It certainly helps with things like the databases. So Frankenstein was recently just fully released. In fact, facsimile with Mary Shelley's own handwriting and the preface and everything, but also just library libraries. Speaker 3: So some of the earliest medical engineering books are from the, actually the late 17 hundreds it [00:14:30] was already starting in those you only find in the library in manuscript form and you can just go pick them up. The hard library is still actually quite useful for this, but the Internet certainly a great place to get lost. Also, just reading papers from different fields and looking through the bibliographies. That's really just a good way to backtrack and find where these things really started. And even with the history of bioelectricity, most people cite back to one particular person and it turns out that there's a second person before him and then there's this story. It's just fun to bounce all [00:15:00] over the place. And I think that's something that at least in bioengineering you do a ton of because there's no one discipline, no one knows what bioengineering means. Speaker 3: You go all over the place. And so for any of this stuff and interdisciplinary stuff, that's really one way to find out is just started reading tons of things including science. And so the history of science comes to life absolutely with a lot of these pioneering efforts and it's exceptionally humbling too. So if you look at the materials they used in the first rhinoplasties to help seal people's noses off after they'd [00:15:30] been chopped off and duals that material on a microscopic level. But then electron microscope is very, very similar to cutting edge medical technology today that we use for similar treatment. And they had no idea what they were doing, they just knew what worked. It is pretty humbling when you come across things like that. And it also puts a lot of stuff in perspective and there's a lot of stuff that's been lost as well. So when you come across it from either a different field or it just hasn't been looked at in a while, that's always exciting. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 7: [00:16:00] You're listening to spectrum a science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen bear research in the electric field that is generated by wounds and mammals. In the next segment they talk more about ethics and their work Speaker 2: [inaudible].Speaker 4: Do you want to talk a little bit [00:16:30] more about your insect work that dated this? No bugs, but now we can talk about the, like the bugs is a, I say this is sort of my peewee Herman idea. You know, peewee Herman could never unfortunately ever not be peewee Herman. He tried very hard. I felt like the bugs is my peewee Herman curse. The brief version is we demonstrated that you can put very small electronics with neural in your muscular stimulators into insects and control their flight remotely via signal sent to the transmitter on the electronic package. And that would then control what signals [00:17:00] were sent to the insect. So what we do now is we have these incredibly small atronix weighs less than 200 milligrams such that these grasshoppers can carry it happily. We have these new systems that bias the way the insect receives certain information and we use that to affect how it's flying. Speaker 4: So we're still very interested in that. I find it a very interesting area. To me it's one of these places where you can most acutely demonstrate how much electronics has actually miniaturized. People have very visceral reaction [00:17:30] to the work because it takes these insects and incredibly small electronics that most people really don't think about usually and builds this sort of compound construct, right? That does something, the thing that isn't doing what an insect normally wants to do but isn't really a robot in the traditional sense of being made out of plastic and metal. For me, that's really why I do it. And I think it's right at that bleeding of what you can show you can do. And one of the side things that interests me profoundly is sort of the ethics of this. And most people like their initial reaction is either, oh [00:18:00] that's horrible. Speaker 4: How could you do that to an insect or at an insect? I swapped them against the wall all the time. Right. So there's usually, cause we like to be in quickly. So it's an interesting question. So let's say we get very good at putting these little packages on it such that almost anybody can do it as a hobby. Would you find it permissible to have, just like you have the San Francisco chapter of the RC helicopter flying hobby, would you find it permissible to have the San Francisco chapter of the Cyborg insect? Where do you go find yourself a grasshopper and you slap some stuff on its back or inside [00:18:30] it and use little pins to make holes to the right nerves and you let it go and then you start doing stuff. Our, what we normally consider to be animals, fair game, a spare part. Are they machines? Speaker 4: Are they not machines? I think this is fascinating. I think that we don't have very good ethical tools. In my opinion. I'm not an ethicist. I'm certainly not a philosopher, but I don't think we have very good ethical tools for dealing with this issue in the way we usually think about stuff. What is the argument against doing that? You usually fall back to things having to do with minimizing suffering and so on, but if you really spend some time [00:19:00] thinking about it, it's a lot of those become very murky very quickly with things like insects, things that are to our interpretation from our frame of reference are very distant from our cognitive function. It's the old argument that bad to hurt a dog, fine. Is it bad to hurt a fly? Is it bad to hurt a bacteria where, where in the spectrum of things do you fall? I think that this insect work really tickles that, whatever that is really struggle. I've had very interesting conversations after my talks and is that part of any of the engineering training? Speaker 3: Well, all [00:19:30] graduate students do ethical training and this sort of stuff is disgusting. It's more or less field dependent, but especially in bioengineering, you do a full seminar at the beginning where everything from this to genetics I adjustment and children and things like that, it's discussed. So that doesn't mean there are good tools for it, but everyone's very aware of it and I think maybe more effort should be made to derive those tools. But it's something people are working on at least. When you refer to a tools, are you talking of procedures and protocols, halls? Speaker 4: [00:20:00] What are you imagining as a tool in the ethics realm? I was thinking methods, algorithms, heuristics to think about this and come to conclusions. So for example, what I think of a tool I think of philosophical, philosophical tools, right? Thinking about what should I use as a basis for making a judgment? Should I just work to minimize singer style work to minimize suffering? That should be it. Is there something more complex or show you something else? So that's what I meant by tools. But of course there's another interpretation which is simply teaching students. They are in fact functional tools you use to determine ethical kind of in a narrower sentence, [00:20:30] right? Of for example, don't drop data points, you know? Right. If you have 43 data points in 42 of them look like you want the 43rd one doesn't, you should not get rid of the 43rd one. That kind of stuff. Sure. I mean I think we're very good at teaching that to the extent that it's well understood. I think it's just trickierSpeaker 3: when you do any animal work or bioengineering work where you have this utilitarian calculus, which is pretty much what most engineering revolves around. You're taught that you need to improve society. You have this idea that utility [00:21:00] is a valuable way of thinking about things, but it leaves too many questions open for bioengineering type stuff where utility comes at the cost of working on some living system that everyone is very aware of and very careful with and we have all sorts of protocols and procedures when we work with any living things, but it's still something that is very difficult to pin down when you talk to different people. And how they think about it. The consensus varies. Yes, sure, sure. Everyone has a good sense of like we're all sort of aligned, but where [00:21:30] you might draw the line or what types of experiments you personally might want to do is very different. Speaker 3: So some people fully support the idea of medical research but would never do it themselves for the reason that they don't want to work on the living system. And some people like myself say, if you are gonna work on a living system, you should do it. The courtesy of being in the room with it and at least seeing what you're doing. So there are different standards, but there's no formal approach to that. Yeah, there are lots of opinions. I mean, I think even in our larger super [00:22:00] set of people that work on this effort, there's lots of different comfort levels. The different researchers that run the whole gamut. Even calling it a living system, I think some people would say, well, it's out. Let me system. It's a, it's an animal. It's an organism. Your de de emphasizing its identity by calling it living, stuff like that. I mean, I think these things are all very interesting and we're all in the middle of it. It's an interesting area. Michelle [inaudible] and Daniel Cohen. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link to get you there. The link is [00:23:00] tiny, url.com backslash and Kaa LX spectrum. We hope you can get out to a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Rick Kornacki joins me Speaker 8: presenting the calendar this Sunday. The ninth call, HUD ash is hosting a Darwin Day celebration Brunch at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin avenue from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM [00:23:30] eat bagels and lox while hearing about looking for Darwin's footprints in the world of zombies, ucs f professor John Halfer. Nick is also the interim director of the Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies and trustee and president of the California Academy of Sciences as an entomologist professor, half or nick, studies of the Zombie fly and its relationship to bees. He will also discuss how Darwin's ideas were influenced by his knowledge of the insect [00:24:00] world. The event is $10 per person and more information is available@coladash.org Speaker 1: as average temperatures continue to rise due to human changes to the composition of the atmosphere, cases of extreme weather are very likely to occur. On February 12th come join expert Michael F Wainer, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and learn about the science of climate change, current areas of research and some possible implications [00:24:30] for the future. Tickets are free for UC Berkeley Students, faculty and staff, and $10 to the public. Once again, this event will take place on February 12th from 1230 to 1:30 PM at the freight and salvage in Berkeley. The Bay area skeptics present Kernan Coleman for a personal recollection. He has titled Escaping. We've Vale a journey out of magical thinking, a telling of his 10 year journey out of magical thinking, alternative [00:25:00] medicine, new age, and fear-based denialism and learn how the woo woo bill still affects them even though he knows better. This takes place February 13th at La Penea Lounge 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley, seven 30 to 9:00 PM admission is free on February 15th the science of cow lecture will be given by Professor Marty Hearst and his entitled Natural Search User Interfaces. Speaker 1: What does the future hold for search user [00:25:30] interfaces? Can there be a natural user interface social rather than solo usage of information technology? More integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large scale knowledge basis. Marty Hurst is a professor in the school of Information at UC Berkeley with an affiliate appointment and the computer science division. She wrote the first book on search user interfaces. The lecture will be presented Saturday, February 15th and Stanley Hall Room One oh five at 11:00 AM [00:26:00] Stanley Hall is on the east side of the UC Berkeley campus. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting. Rick Curnutt ski and I present our news. Speaker 8: Science now reviewed an article appearing in January 2nd proceeding of the National Academy of Science that suggests the black death left a mark on the human genome. Me. Hi, Natalia from Rad bough university and colleagues analyze the genomes from three populations. [00:26:30] The first population consisted of a hundred Romanians of European descent, Speaker 8: the second of a hundred Roma or gypsies that had migrated to the same region from India a thousand years ago. The third population was 500 people from Northwestern India, where the Roma were originally found. Genetically. The Roma are still quite similar to the Northwestern Indians, but 20 jeans have differences that could be explained by the environmental pressures the Europeans [00:27:00] and aroma have shared over the last millennia. Some jeans controlled skin pigmentation and others control immunological responses. The team found one such set of differences on chromosome four they code for proteins that latch onto bacteria initiating a defensive response. They showed the genes, help respond to the bacteria that caused the black death and speculate that it was this evolutionary pressure shared by the people living in the same area at the [00:27:30] same time. To exhibit these genomic differences, Speaker 1: researchers from the California State University Long Beach and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have launched Kelp, watched 2014 a scientific campaign designed to determine the extent of radioactive contamination of the state's Kelp forest from Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant initiated by long beach biology professor Steven Manley and the Berkeley labs head of applied nuclear physics, Kai vetter. The project were ally on [00:28:00] samples of giant Kelp and bulk help from along the California and Mexico coast lines. The project includes the participation of 19 academic and government institutions. These participants will sample kelp from the entire west coast as far north as del Norte, Tay County, and as far south as Baja California. Sampling will take place several times in 2014 and processed kelp samples will be sent to the Lawrence Berkeley national labs. Low background facility for detailed radionucleotide analysis. As data [00:28:30] becomes available, it will be posted for public access. Professor Manley says at the present time, this initiative is unfunded by any state or federal agency with time and costs being donated by participants. So those interested in taking part in the project can contact Manley at California State University. Long Beach Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show was written and produced by Alex Simon. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us at eight nine days. Speaker 9: Hey, email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same [00:29:30] time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this month's Cell Podcast, we learn about the challenges of applying genetics to human mental health, with Trevor Robbins (0:00), a game of vesicular cat and mouse between bacterial lipids and the immune system, with Michael Brenner (10:48), and the shifting identities of stem-like cells in breast cancer, with Eric Lander (17:18).

Google Described as Organized Crime in the recent blog post by Eric Lander entitled "Google: The Internet’s Organized Crime Family". Jim and Dave analyze the post from their applications to their acquisitions

Google Described as Organized Crime in the recent blog post by Eric Lander entitled "Google: The Internet’s Organized Crime Family". Jim and Dave analyze the post from their applications to their acquisitions