Podcasts about langer lab

In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales from the front line, the lab, and the I.T. department. SOURCES:Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership management at Harvard Business School.Carole Hemmelgarn, co-founder of Patients for Patient Safety U.S. and director of the Clinical Quality, Safety & Leadership Master's program at Georgetown University.Gary Klein, cognitive psychologist and pioneer in the field of naturalistic decision making.Robert Langer, institute professor and head of the Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.John Van Reenen, professor at the London School of Economics. RESOURCES:Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, by Amy Edmondson (2023).“Reconsidering the Application of Systems Thinking in Healthcare: The RaDonda Vaught Case,” by Connor Lusk, Elise DeForest, Gabriel Segarra, David M. Neyens, James H. Abernathy III, and Ken Catchpole (British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2022)."Estimates of preventable hospital deaths are too high, new study shows," by Bill Hathaway (Yale News, 2020).“Dispelling the Myth That Organizations Learn From Failure,” by Jeffrey Ray (SSRN, 2016).“A New, Evidence-Based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated With Hospital Care,” by John T. James (Journal of Patient Safety, 2013).To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, by the National Academy of Sciences (1999).“Polymers for the Sustained Release of Proteins and Other Macromolecules,” by Robert Langer and Judah Folkman (Nature, 1976).The Innovation and Diffusion Podcast, by John Van Reenen and Ruveyda Gozen. EXTRAS:"The Curious, Brilliant, Vanishing Mr. Feynman," series by Freakonomics Radio (2024).“Will a Covid-19 Vaccine Change the Future of Medical Research?” by Freakonomics Radio (2020).“Bad Medicine, Part 3: Death by Diagnosis,” by Freakonomics Radio (2016).

Today on the podcast, we are joined by Robert Langer, scientist, inventor and entrepreneur - and one of the most cited researchers in history, often called the “Edison of Medicine”. What makes Dr Langer special is that he is not only an academic but also an entrepreneur: turning frontier science into groundbreaking companies. Langer Lab's research has given rise to over 400 companies, and is also the co-founder of multiple companies, including Moderna, which discovered the COVID-19 vaccine.Dr Langer is one of nine Institute Professors at MIT - the highest honour that can be awarded to a faculty member. Langer's MIT research laboratory is the largest biomedical engineering lab in the world, with over $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers. He has written over 1,600 articles, which have been cited almost half a million times. Dr Langer has also received over 220 awards and served as Chairman of the FDA's Science Board.Dr Langer's work specialises in biotech fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He was the pioneer of delayed release medicine, and it was calculated his work had impacted an estimated two billion lives, helping those with cancer, burns, heart disease, spinal injuries and more - even before the Moderna Covid19 vaccine was developed.In this episode we talk about what scientific founders should watch out for, why getting patents are so critical, why you should follow your passion, why he thinks science is better than ever in the US, why he's excited by brains built on chips, if Attention Deficit Disorder makes him a better founder, and why failure makes you better.Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING. Please note: The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial, legal, or investment advice. Always consult a licensed professional before making any investment decisions.

In this podcast, you will hear a keynote fireside discussion with Dr Robert Langer, MIT, and Dr Ester Caffarel-Salvador, Chiesi USA, from the 2022 PODD Conference regarding current projects in the Langer Lab, how COVID affected the lab's dynamics and collaborations, challenges in the drug delivery space, and exciting technologies in the pipeline,  To learn more about the PODD Conference, please visit PODDConference.com.  

Carl Schoellhammer is co-founder and president of Suono Bio, a preclinical-stage company focused on the ultra-rapid delivery of novel therapeutics to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This technology is super cool - essentially using ultrasound devices to deliver drugs through the skin. This is game-changing for people with, for instance, colitis and other inflammatory issues in their gut. We talk about the technology and its future capabilities, as well as how Carl and his partner Gio developed the invention and spun it off into a company. It's this cross-disciplinary collaboration (Gio a gastroenterologist, Carl a chemical engineer with experience in pharma) that allowed them to solve the problem - a feature of Robert Langer's lab which is emulated in research labs around the world. Carl was a post-doc in Langer Lab along with Gio and he describes the process of discovering the invention and working with Bob and MIT to commercialize it. For those who don't know, Bob Langer is the most cited engineer in history. He's a modern day Thomas Edison. He's published/developed something like 800 papers, 500 patents, thousands of researchers have passed through his lab, he's spun off dozens of startup companies, 100's of licensing deals and more. It was really interesting to hear what it's like to work in Bob's lab and co-found a company with him. Just read this quote from Bob on the website of one of their investors, The Engine - “Suono Bio exemplifies what I've observed is required for a successful company: a platform technology with potentially broad utility, proof that it works in animal models, powerful patents, and publications in top-tier journals,” says Professor Langer. “The ability to deliver unformulated therapeutics with this technology is a tremendous achievement in the field of drug delivery and has potential for widespread applicability in a range of diseases. Carl is highly driven, extremely brilliant, even by MIT standards, and really wants to make a difference in the world.” More about Carl Carl received his B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in Chemical Engineering, and completed his Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in the lab of Professor Robert Langer at MIT. His work has been published in Science Translational Medicine and Gastroenterology, and has been featured by Forbes, Popular Science, CNET, and The Atlantic, among others. He was the recipient of the 2015 Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Inventors Prize, the 2016 National Collegiate Inventors Competition top prize, and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Healthcare. Find Carl on LinkedIn and Twitter More about Suono Suono Bio is developing a platform technology to enable the ultrasonic, targeted delivery of drugs and macromolecules, proteins, DNA, RNA, and even the gene-editing tool CRISPR, directly to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, their first use case. This enables them to “push” virtually any therapeutic class, including temperamental molecules, like nucleic acids, directly into cells with astounding efficacy and accuracy, affecting historically "undruggable" targets. They harness the power of ultrasound-induced cavitation to achieve this delivery and are applying it to creating new treatments for a variety of diseases, starting with inflammatory conditions. Learn more about Suono on their website. Join the Bountiful community today and realize your power to save the world. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn if you haven't already.

In this episode, I converse with Dr. Ritu Raman, a Bioengineer and a Postdoc in the renowned Langer Lab at MIT, funded by a Ford Foundation Fellowship and a L'Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship. Prior to that, Ritu completed her Undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Biomedical Engineering, from Cornell University and received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering as an NSF Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ritu is a member of the MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 Class of 2019 and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018. Her upcoming book on Biofabrication, published by MIT Press, will be out in Fall 2021. Ritu currently focuses on designing responsive materials and devices for translational medical applications. We indulge in a terrific conversation on her fantastic journey in science; growing up in a family of engineers and initial interests of becoming an astronaut; fantastic mentors like Rashid Bashir and Bob Langer; confronting the ubiquitous imposter syndrome; integrating novel responsive biohybrid materials into implantable devices and prosthetics; translatability and quickness being antithetical to each other in medicine; and many more things!!

Robert Langer is an acclaimed chemical engineer, professor, and investor in biomedical technology. He is one of 10 Institute Professors at MIT, which is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written more than 1,500 articles, with 1,400 patents issued and pending worldwide that have been licensed to over 400 companies. He is the most cited engineer in history with an H-index of 283 and over 331,000 citations according to Google Scholar. His inventions are estimated to have affected over 2 billion lives, and his most recent public work involves the coronavirus vaccine created by Moderna, which is the biotech company he co-founded. In this interview, Arjun, Michael, and Tiger discuss with Prof. Langer his early career struggles as a freshly minted graduate student, his groundbreaking postdoc research on blood vessel growth for Judah Folkman that few believed could become reality, the future of tissue engineering technology, why the mRNA vaccine is safe and has withstood the test of time, the success of Langer Lab in spurring dozens of biotech companies, and the future of medicine amongst many other topics. Prof. Langer was first offered 20 traditional chemical engineering jobs after he graduated from Cornell’s PhD program. Instead of taking those offers, however, he fought an uphill battle to find a position in medical research, eventually working with Judah Folkman at the Boston Children’s Hospital. Prof. Langer recalls that he didn't know too much biology about chemistry in his early career, so a lot of times he felt he was in the dark. For the years that Prof. Langer has run his lab, the Langer Lab, he and his team have focused on two broad areas in biomedical engineering: tissue engineering and drug delivery systems. Both research areas lie at the core of many modern medical revolutions, from advanced drugs to synthetic organs. Another drug delivery breakthrough that Prof. Langer describes more in-depth are star-shaped pills. The guiding principle behind the design is the following: standard pills are only able to deliver their encapsulated drug for a day. There are more crude ways to design pills that can administer drugs for longer periods, but the bulkier design could cause harm to the host, or block part of the digestive system. The star-shaped design solves for this: it is a pill that is small when ingested, expands inside the body, and leaves a large hole in its center for the digestive track to act normally. This kind of pill would make delivering some drugs, like insulin, much easier. Prof. Langer then goes on to describe some of the broader aspects of these research fields. What are the most promising future applications for tissue engineering and drug delivery research? What are the current obstacles/limitations in research for tissue engineering and drug delivery systems? What capacity does AI have to further push the frontier in research for these fields? Prof. Langer attributes two reasons to the amazing speed of the mRNA vaccine development process: the superior nature of the technology itself in comparison to previous vaccinat technologies, and the U.S. government’s “Operation Warp Speed” that invested a lot of capital into the private sector while providing regulatory support. He explains the mRNA vaccine to us: DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein. While classically people focused on the protein part when producing vaccines, the process takes too long, and Moderna directly started with the mRNA part. The beauty of mRNA is that one can make it very quickly, give it to the body, and start testing for efficacy. A key pillar of the mRNA vaccine technology is drug delivery, however. To a patient, the mRNA would get destroyed immediately if not properly encapsulated and protected by nanoparticles when being injected into the body. But once it’s successfully injected into the muscle, mRNA will trigger the body to start making antibodies and immunize the patient.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Padmini Pillai, an Immunoengineer and CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellow in the legendary Langer Lab at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Padmini completed her undergrad at Regis College and then worked as a Research Technician in Prof. Charles Serhan's lab at Harvard Medical School before earning her PhD in Immunology at the renowned Iwasaki Lab at Yale. Padmini is also a very accomplished musician who has performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Newport Jazz Festival, singing backup for Grammy Award-winning singer Angelique Kidjo!! A Delegate to the American Academy of Achievement and a former Convergence Scholar at MIT, Padmini works on designing diverse biomaterial strategies to boost antitumor immunity, resolve chronic inflammatory disease, and elucidate pathways involved in allergic inflammation. We indulge in a terrific conversation on her fascinating journey in science; incredible inspirations like her parents and older brother, themselves accomplished academicians, who fostered her interest in science; fantastic mentors like Bob Langer and Akiko Iwasaki who've guided her along; her groundbreaking research that's on the frontiers of the intersection of engineering and immunology; a life-changing experience during grad school battling a rare and deadly liver disorder, Acute Intermittent Porphyria; deep interest in music, a familial trait, and how it has transformed her as a person and scientist; making science a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive space; and many more things!!

What do Forbes 30 Under 30: Science, MIT Tech Review 35 Innovators Under 35, and L’Oreal USA for Women in Science all have in common? They’ve all spotlighted Ritu Raman for her incredible accomplishments in STEM. And now Empowered Women Series has joined the club! Ritu Raman is a biohybrid engineer and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Langer Lab at MIT, and she brings a fresh new perspective to the typically male-dominated STEM field of biology. Ritu’s innovation and critical thinking have set her apart in her field, and we here at EWS are particularly impressed by Ritu’s self-branding and powerful presence. This intelligent and well-spoken scientist discusses her background in STEM, how she grew up immersed in science and research, and how she would love to see more females in STEM. She also gets candid with us, sharing barriers and why she feels there are fewer females in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.Having strong female proponents within STEM is one of the first steps towards achieving equality in the field, and we extend a huge thank you and congratulations to Ritu for all that she has accomplished. She’s definitely someone to keep your eye on and learn from… she’s working hard to continue her successful career path!

Compelling discussion with Ritu Raman, a passionate biohybrid designer, her goal is to build machines powered by biological materials. She is the recipient of MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 Class of 2019 and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018. A postdoctoral fellow in the renowned Langer Lab at MIT. In this episode, we spoke about why biohybrid design is important? Can we design a biohybrid muscle stronger than the biological one and enhancing its functionalities? What are the challenges of interfacing biological and synthetic materials? Is there any other living creature more inspiring than the human body structure? To which level the engineered biohybrid materials are intelligent? Can they feel the pain? To which level you have to deeply understand the biology for designing biohybrid materials and her message for inclusivity. I hope you would enjoy it.

Guests: Dr. Ana Jaklenec, MIT Langer Lab & Dr. Kevin McHugh, Rice University Vaccines save lives. Yet, despite concerted global efforts more than 1.5 million children die each year from vaccine preventable diseases. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are at the center of this massive endeavor, and have enlisted labs around the world to help solve intractable problems in the developing world, including work was recently published in Science Translational Medicine. The technology involves a microneedle patch that can administer a standard vaccine, painlessly, but also leave an invisible vaccination record right on the skin. Meaning those who need vaccines can get them, even in the most remote locations, and those who don't need them, can prove they are protected without the need for paper or even digital records. You could carry the proof of prophylaxis with you, invisibly, as long as the vaccine protects you. On this episode, we'll meet two of the paper's co-authors, out of the Langer Lab at MIT: Dr. Ana Jaklenec and Dr. Kevin McHugh. This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs. Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale TomorrowScale Website: http://TomorrowScale.com Publication (McHugh 2019): https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aay7162 The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase technology companies building the future. Interviews may be with old friends or were cold-contacted by Justin directly to be on the show. The views expressed by the host and guests are their own, and the content of this show should not be considered legal, tax, or investing advice. Thank you to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. And thank you for listening. Please science responsibly. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tomorrowscale/support

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Syndicates Seasoned entrepreneur Nancy Briefs on her startup’s daring swing at Type 2 diabetes. AltrixBio is creating a pill that simulates the benefit of the best gastric bypass surgery: remission of diabetes in 80 percent of cases. With co-founders Jeff Karp and Ali Tavakoli, she is re-purposing an existing treatment with a great safety profile to address this daunting problem. Highlights include: Nancy Briefs, co-founded 7 companies and managed, or been on the board of, several others. Together with Dr. Karp and Dr. Tavakoli of Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Nancy co-founded AltrixBio to emulate the results of gastric bypass in a pill. Sal saw Nancy pitch at MIT Angels and Walnut Ventures and was impressed. Ali Tavakoli, M.D. performs the Roux-en-Y procedure which is the gastric bypass operation with the best record of success. Tavakoli and others observed that diabetic patients who experienced the procedure had their Type 2 diabetes go into remission about 80 percent of the time. Seven and a half years ago, upon observing this phenomenon, Dr. Tavakoli approached Jeff Karp, PhD, who trained at MIT’s renowned Langer Lab and works on new ways to deliver treatments to the body, wondering if the results could not be duplicated using a pill. The Roux-en-Y is irreversible and has considerable side effects. Drs. Karp and Tavakoli set to finding a reversible and benign way of mimicking the results of the procedure. Needless to say: Type 2 diabetes is a huge problem that currently eats up one in four dollars spent on healthcare. It a global problem. The team zeroed in on Sucralfate, a drug presently used to treat peptic ulcers that could be modified to produce the desired outcome. Sucralfate is designed to stick only to the ulcers. The modified Sucralfate can be made to adhere to the healthy lining of the digestive tract. The re-engineered drug, called LuCITM, thus, in theory, could be used to coat strategic parts of the intestine to control the uptake of sugar by the patient’s body. LuCITM was tested on mice with encouraging results. There is at present no drug that can cause diabetes to go into remission reliably. The treatment is expected to make part of the digestive system unavailable to nutrients only part of the day. The dosage would permit absorption of critical nutrients the rest of the time. An interesting quality of LuCITM is that it is easy to tune how long it stays in the gut. It is a platform that could be adapted, due to its versatility, to treating other diseases such as NASH or for the targeted delivery of biologics which are highly perishable in the body. Sal loves platforms. SQZ Biotech, Savran tech etc. Nancy says: it gives you more shots on goal. Plus: Sucralfate has a 30-year safety record, which could simplify the approval process. It has an expedited FDA approval path, given the history. It’s possible there could be a signal that it works in humans with the investment of five to seven million dollars. Sal talks about portfolio company SQZ Biotech. Nancy explains how an angel can make money investing in an early stage company. Hint: value creation needs to outpace fundraising by a lot. Nancy Briefs mentions the acquisition of Tilos Therapeutics by Meck for $773 million as an example of the type of exit possible. Silicon Valley Bank study reveals that 80% of companies are acquired at Phase II trials. She believes AltrixBio could be through Phase II trials in four years. Repurposing a drug such as Sucralfate that has a 30-year record of safety with the FDA can greatly shorten and the time to approval and reduce the cost from hundreds of millions to tens of millions The FDA has the files from the five generic suppliers of Sucralfate that show no heart risk, no cancer risk etc. The near-term inflection points for AltrixBio is (1) moving the compounding of the drug from the lab to an outside supplier, Catalant, and (2) once there is usable formulation of the drug AltrixBio will have a “pre-IND” meeting with the FDA to get initial guidelines for the approval process such as how many subjects will be required and what they acceptable endpoints might be in the first clinical trials. This information is expected to de-risk the investment substantially and to allow a sharper focus on how much money will be needed to fund clinical trials through Phase II. At the end of 2020, AltrixBio will already be at first-in-human trials and to have enrolled 15 to 20 patients. Nancy recalls pivotal times in her career. As a young sales rep for Pfizer she was impressed by a heart valve surgery she witnessed and realized at that moment that she wanted to spend her life in healthcare. Nancy’s decision to work in healthcare was reinforced by getting her MBA. Nancy recollects the various positions she had and what she got out of it. Nancy’s father ran a Pillsbury plant. Her mother was a small banker. Nancy discovered leadership early. She was student body president at her high school. Innovation = Invention X Commercialization, Ed Roberts from MIT/ Sloan Nancy says that in order to have a business in biotech you need a platform technology. Nancy talks about the work patent attorney Peter Fasse of Fish & Richardson is doing for AltrixBio. Nancy’s decision to found her first company came from the conviction that all the work she had done as an executive and board member had prepared her to take the leap. Taking a company through an IPO with Goldman Sachs back in the 1990s taught Nancy the importance of being able to convey a compelling narrative about the company. Speaking of the daring required to start a company, Sal recalls his business partner Bob Smith’s audacious but well-founded belief that he could build his business in competition with big Wall Street names. Nancy’s views on de-risking startups is consonant with Jeff Arnold’s. Being an entrepreneur is wonderfully fun. Nancy finds Massachusetts a great place to build a biotech company. Sal notes that Boston is a big exporter of ideas and a big importer of capital. Two third of Series A funding of Boston companies is from outside Massachusetts.

Ritu Raman is an engineer, writer, and educator with a passion for introducing bio-hybrid materials into the toolbox of every inventor. She grew up in India, Kenya, and the United States and has learned to appreciate and thrive in diverse and dynamic environments. Her life experiences have shown her that technical innovation can drive positive social change, and this inspires her to help democratize and diversify STEM education around the world. Ritu is currently a L’Oréal USA postdoctoral fellow in the renowned Langer Lab at MIT and a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018. Listen in as Ritu chats with Aaron Kominos-Smith about how she navigated the US college process and learned "the Ivy League is a good thing," how she originally picked Cornell because of her aspirations to be an astronaut, how her successes in life not only resulted from her hard work but also some luck, and what she's currently working on at MIT. Check out WiSDM (Women in STEM Database at MIT), which Ritu mentions at the end of the episode at http://wisdm.mit.edu/. “We all get value out of something when we see that it impacts other people” Created and produced by Amanda Massa. Music by Kia Albertson-Rogers '13, koa3@cornell.edu. Artwork by Chris Kelly. *The views expressed by Fresh from the Hill hosts and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Cornell University.

Robert Langer is the David H. Koch Institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also runs the Langer Lab and is co-founder of more than 40 biotech companies. His talk with Nature Biotechnology covers the death of his father, his experience teaching high school science and math, and the requirements for launching a successful biotech. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today's episode, Igor Luzhansky discusses his work at the Langer Lab at MIT working on implantable diabetes treatments made with an extract from seaweed. Edwin Murenzi explains how injecting rat brains into frog eggs has helped him understand the impact of pesticides on mammals. Comedian Gabe Sklan joins as co-host. This episode is chock full of surprises, don't miss it!