Podcasts about ncats

"Translational science is really general principles for how we take scientific discoveries and basic scientific information and translate that into implementable, viable, feasible health solutions for both the patient and the provider to be able to utilize," says Michael Kurilla, MD, PhD, of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). In this episode, Kurilla discusses his work as the director of the Division of Clinical Innovation at NCATS, and the role translational research and science plays in healthcare. Harvard Catalyst is a member of the NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program. Transcript: https://bit.ly/3OeJta1

This month on Talk About It, Greg is joined by the CEO of Vesalius Therapeutics and former director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), along with Phil Gattone, co-founder of Talk About It! This episode is all about collaboration, and how it's possible to make giant strides in the world of medicine through various fields coming together. As Dr. Austin describes, there is often times resistance to share information across fields or specialties, but in the past decade and especially through Covid, the world of medical science, especially as it pertains to conditions like epilepsy, has seen developments that show the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Plus, as a very special treat, don't miss Dr. Austin showcasing the other side of his expansive brain as he performs opera in front of a live audience! Greg is accompanying, of course! The Talk About It podcast is sponsored by Seizures Are Signs — dedicated to educating families on the importance of early and specific diagnosis by providing an assessment to help get the conversation started, educational information, stories from families who have found a diagnosis, links to advocacy groups, and more. For more information, go to SeizuresAreSigns.com. Seizures are Signs is made available by Jazz Pharmaceuticals

Emerging technologies are poised to greatly impact federal agencies. In health care and health research, this is unlocking tremendous opportunity for researchers advancing treatments, diagnostics and more. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences's five-year plan outlines how AI and machine learning will address big data and translational barriers. This plan aims to bridge the gap between scientific and operational challenges by improving engagement in the translational space as well as serve as a guide to other agencies when it comes to preparing for future health emergencies like COVID-19. NCAYS Branch Chief of the Office of Policy, Communications and Education Dr. Meredith Temple O'Connor briefs us on this plan plus the expansion of the N3C program comprising COVID clinical data, how AI is shortening the diagnostic odyssey for rare diseases and what's going on with its new partnership with ARPA-H.

Dr. Joni L. Rutter, Ph.D., ( https://ncats.nih.gov/director/bio ) is the Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences ( NCATS - https://ncats.nih.gov/ ) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she oversees the planning and execution of the Center's complex, multifaceted programs that aim to overcome scientific and operational barriers impeding the development and delivery of new treatments and other health solutions. Under her direction, NCATS supports innovative tools and strategies to make each step in the translational process more effective and efficient, thus speeding research across a range of diseases, with a particular focus on rare diseases. By advancing the science of translation, NCATS helps turn promising research discoveries into real-world applications that improve people's health. The NCATS Strategic Plan can be found at - https://ncats.nih.gov/strategicplan In her previous role as the NCATS deputy director, Dr. Rutter collaborated with colleagues from government, academia, industry and nonprofit patient organizations to establish robust interactions with NCATS programs. Prior to joining NCATS, Dr. Rutter served as the director of scientific programs within the All of Us Research Program, where she led the scientific programmatic development and implementation efforts to build a national research cohort of at least 1 million U.S. participants to advance precision medicine. During her time at NIH, she also has led the Division of Neuroscience and Behavior at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In this role, she developed and coordinated research on basic and clinical neuroscience, brain and behavioral development, genetics, epigenetics, computational neuroscience, bioinformatics, and drug discovery. Dr. Rutter also coordinated the NIDA Genetics Consortium and biospecimen repository. Throughout her career, Dr. Rutter has earned an international reputation for her diverse and unique expertise via her journal publications and speaking engagements, and she has received several scientific achievement awards, including the 2022 Rare Disease Legislative Advocates–RareVoice Award for Federal Advocacy and the 2022 FedHealthIT–Women in Leadership Impact Award. Dr. Rutter received her Ph.D. from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire, and completed a fellowship at NCI within the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Support the show

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health has leveraged cloud to create the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) — the largest repository of COVID data in the U.S. Over 70 health organizations contribute to the N3C Data Enclave, which cleans, secures and computes that data all in one place in the cloud. N3C's cloud infrastructure has also been instrumental in not only gathering data from various places but also bringing in different types of data such as mortality and viral variant data.  Dr. Kenneth Gersing, director of informatics in the Division of Clinical Innovation at NCATS, talks about how emerging technologies are helping researchers define long COVID in a more standardized way and how N3C is being used in treating non-COVID related diseases as well as preparing agencies to better handle future health emergencies.

The National Institutes of Health in November named Joni Rutter Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Rutter had served as acting director since April 2021. She succeeded Chris Austin, the first permanent director of NCATS, who stepped down after ten years on the job. NCATS is charged with developing technologies and approaches to accelerate the process of moving new treatments from the lab to the patient. As part of its work, it has several program and initiatives that are focused specifically on rare diseases. We spoke to Rutter about NCATS' priorities under her leadership, the challenges of translational science, and where she sees the biggest opportunities for accelerating the discovery and development of therapies for rare diseases.

(11/9/22) - In today's Federal Newscast: Boasting a 91% success rate, the IRS rakes in $31 billion dollars from tax cheats. A new director has been named at the NIH to run what's called, "NCATS." And a House committee moves to help VA employees concerned about the mishmash of state abortion laws.

NCATS is the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. It's an arm of the National Institutes of Health, and it funds entities nationwide, including the CTSI in our community. Discover how NCATS is where science goes to become health...inside this edition of CTSI Discovery Radio!

Dr. Don Marion and Dr. Anne Bunner discuss the use of neurocognitive assessment tests following sport-related concussions. Publication: Alsalaheen, B., Stockdale, K., Pechumer, D., Broglio, S.P., & Marchetti, G.F. (2017). A Comparative Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Concussion on a Computerized Neurocognitive Test and Self-Reported Symptoms. Journal of Athletic Training, 52(9): 834-846. doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-52.7.05 Journal link: natajournals.org/doi/full/10.4085…062-6050-52.7.05 CUBIST is a podcast for health care providers produced by the Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence. We discuss the latest research on traumatic brain injury (TBI) most relevant to patient care. For more about TBI, including clinical tools, go to www.health.mil/TBICoE or email us at dha.ncr.j-9.mbx.tbicoe-info@mail.mil. The views, opinions, and/or findings in this podcast are those of the host and subject matter experts. They should not be construed as an official Department of Defense position, policy, or decision unless designated by other official documentation. Our theme song is “Upbeat-Corporate' by WhiteCat, available and was used according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 license.

Anne Pariser, MD, Director of the NCATS' Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR), provides an overview of the ORDR and the research they are involved with. The ORDR is focused on multiple programs to improve the efficacy of rare disease research. Their two largest programs are the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) and the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD).RDCRN provides support for clinical studies and facilitates collaboration, study enrollment and data sharing. Through the RDCRN consortia, researchers work with patient advocacy groups to study over 200 rare diseases at sites across the nation.GARD provides the public with up-to-date health information on many rare diseases. It has a hotline that people (often parents) can call and ask questions about a particular rare disease.Numerous other programs are led but the Office of Rare Diseases Research, including the annual “Rare Disease Day at NIH” event held the end of February. To listen to more interviews with leaders in the rare disease community, sign up for our newsletter at checkrare.com/sign-up-for-our-newsletter/

While there is a steady stream of new gene therapies expected to be approved in the next decade, there are hundreds of diseases that could benefit from gene therapies but are not pursued by drug developers because they affect too small a population to be considered commercially viable. In an effort to change the economics of gene therapy for ultra-rare diseases, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is establishing the Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium under its Accelerating Medicines Partnership program. The proposed five-year, $102.5 million program involves the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and a group of commercial gene therapy developers. We spoke to P.J. Brooks, deputy director of the Office for Rare Diseases Research at NCATS and one of the architects of the program, about the need it is trying to address, why it is looking beyond translational science to issues including manufacturing and regulation, and how it hopes to accelerate the development of gene therapies for rare diseases. This episode is part of our ongoing Platforms of Hope series that explores advances in gene therapy and gene editing.

Special discussion with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) on 3D Bioprinting during the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Meeting Week 1. Moderated by Dr. Sophia Ononye-Onyia, Founder and CEO, The Sophia Consulting Firm. Featuring Mr. Sam Michael, Chief Information Officer and Director, Automation and Compound Management at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and Dr. Marc Ferrer, Director of NCATS' intramural 3-D Tissue Bioprinting Laboratory. The NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, investing about $37 billion annually in medical research and the AACR Annual Meeting highlights the latest discoveries from across the spectrum of innovative cancer science and medicine. For full transcript, please visit: https://sophiaconsultingfirm.com/blogs-and-articles/f/amplifying-scientific-innovation-nih-3d-bioprinting-aacr-2021

Join us as Alex Hanlon, Ph.D. (Director of the Center for Biostatistics and Health Data Science at Virginia Tech,  Professor of Statistics and works closely with researchers on the Health Science and Technology Campus in Roanoke, adjacent to Carilion Clinic and the VTC School of Medicine) and Richard Bendis (Founder, President and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, Inc. and a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, innovation and technology-based economic development leader, international speaker and consultant in the technology and healthcare industries and host of BioTalk) discuss how ‘Big data requires team science.’ Additional show notes:Who funds the N3C initiative and what goes into it?The N3C is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which is part of the NIH or the National Institutes of Health. A key component of the initiative is data harmonization, which translates the differing ways that contributing hospitals store patient data into a single, common format to facilitate analyses. Participating sites add (or they will add) data on demographics, symptoms, medications, lab test results, and outcomes over a five-year period. This will enable both short- and long-term study of the impact of COVID-19 on health outcomes.Who has access to the N3C enclave data?Data access is open to all approved users, regardless of whether they contribute data. Details for gaining access can be found on the NCATS website (see link below). Researchers can request access only after their home institution has secured a data use agreement with NCATS. For those who are not associated with an institution, they will need to complete their own DUA with NCATS.https://ncats.nih.gov/n3c/about/applying-for-accessWhat kind of tools are available in the N3C enclave to support data analyses? The platform is built to support machine learning and rigorous statistical analyses using Python and R. The idea is to provide the necessary tools to address research questions using contemporary data driven techniques along with classical methods. To tackle such projects with large scale observational data requires collaboration within a team science environment, including expertise in statistics, informatics, medicine, engineering, and so on.

A few days ago we brought you an interview with a Naval Research Lab scientist who used nano-structures to help discover how the coronavirus binds to and infect human cells. Now, for the other half of the story, the scientist at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. NCATS took the Navy-developed structures and did the tests on cells. Joining the Federal Drive with those details, Dr. Kirill Gorshkov.

Chris Austin, director of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, on the power of collaboration for translating basic science into the cures and therapies that benefit society.

Did you know that NCATS issued over 45 patents in eighteen months? Listen as Lisa and guest, Lili Portilla, discuss the different parts of NIH, what NCATS is and what it does, and their work with small businesses and much more on this episode of Tech Transfer IP. Lili is the Director of Strategic Alliances of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, also known as NCATS at the National Institutes of Health. Lili has worked in the areas of strategic alliances, technology transfer at NIH since 1999, joining NCATS in December 2011. Before coming to NCATS, Lili served as Senior Advisor to the Director of National Center for Research Resources and as the Director of the Office of Technology Transfer and Development at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Lili discusses the functions her office performs, how NCATS is structured, and the most prominent programs that NIH is focused on. She speaks about NIH's data enclave and how it can help physicians with COVID-19 procedures, their work with rare diseases, and the data directory they have to connect people that have been diagnosed with others like themselves. Listen as Lili shares the BrIDGS Program and what it does, and other services her office provides. Lili discusses how the SBIR and STTR are structured and the clinical research management tools that NCATS funds. Listen as Lili speaks about the challenges her office faces, and how much she loves her job, especially now during the pandemic. In This Episode: [02:31] Welcome to the show, Lili! [02:51] Lili shares her journey to tech transfer and what led her to NIH. [04:50] Lili speaks about how much she loves working at NIH and the different parts. [05:55] Lili discusses what the NCATS center is and what it does. [07:33] Lili speaks about the functions that her office performs and their work with small businesses. [08:46] Listen as Lili shares how NCATS is structured. [12:23] Lili discusses some of their most prominent programs that NIH focuses on. [16:22] NIH's data enclave is a resource that allows physicians to see how to treat COVID-19. [17:09] Lili shares their focus on rare diseases; they have a directory for people to connect with people who have been diagnosed with rare diseases. [20:05] Lili speaks about some internal programs they have now. [22:19] She talks about the BrIDGS program that helped launch 13 INDs. [26:06] Lili shares some additional services her office provides. [28:16] They had 45 patents issued over 18 months. [29:54] Lili speaks about some interesting information about their patent portfolio. [31:45] With COVID, they have done some agreements that were finalized in two days. [33:55] Lisa points out that if they didn't have good relationships with people, they wouldn't have repeat customers. [35:18] Lili speaks about how SBIR and STTR are structured. [38:41] Lisa speaks about the difficulty of finding an animal model. [40:23] NCATS also funds clinical research management tools. [42:38] Lili shares how NCATS engages with women entrepreneurs in the program. [44:19] Lili discusses how NCATS will take part in the Applicant Assistance Program. [46:11] Lili says that being an SBIR or STTR grantee comes with resources that they can apply to. [48:26] Lili shares some of her office's biggest challenges. [51:26] How challenging is it to have to pivot anytime day today? [52:29] Lili speaks about how much her job means to her, especially now with the pandemic. [54:35] Lisa talks about how important the organizations are when there are situations like we are facing now. [56:07] If you had three wishes, what would those wishes be for your office? [58:27] Lili, thank you so much for being on the show! Find Lili: NIH NCATS  

Chris Austin calls himself an evangelist for collaboration when it comes to rare disease drug development. The director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences said it is essential for rare disease advocates to look beyond their own diseases to recognize commonalities between their conditions and others to find opportunities to collaborate. We spoke to Austin ahead of his keynote address at this year’s Global Genes Rare Drug Development Symposium June 11, about why collaboration is critical to accelerating research, how broadly organizations should think about collaborations, and how patient groups can best work with NCATS to leverage the resources it has.

Precision medicine will be available to everyone because of Tissue Chips. Hear the fascinating story of the most important technology you have never heard of before. In this episode of the Amazing Things Podcast, brought to you by United For Medical Research, we take you inside the Tissue Chip program - an NCATS collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and FDA to support the development of bioengineered devices to improve the process of predicting whether drugs will be safe or toxic in humans.

“Are we going to require the same level of evidence for a vaccine … before it is approved? Could we potentially begin to use it at the same time we're still studying it? Normally we would never do that, but it's this kind of translational innovation that this COVID crisis is making not only possible, but needed.” How do simple scientific observations – from the laboratory, clinic, or the community – become therapies and cures? It's called translation, and since 2012, one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health has been dedicated to doing just that. As director of NCATS, Christopher Austin oversees a vast ecosystem of research, analysis, and innovation to accelerate cures and therapies to those who need them most. Austin sees the current pandemic as a turning point for greater data sharing and team science. “We are seeing that on a scale I have never seen across NIH, across government agencies, and with the pharmaceutical and biotech industry,” he tells Mike. “We have a singular moment when everyone realizes the need for faster cures and the limitations of the current system to deliver them.”

How does remote lab work change during a pandemic? How can we facilitate open science while maintaining experimental rigor and reproducibility? How come chemists keep drifting into biology later in their careers? Join Matt Hall, Biology Group Lead at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) intramural program at the U.S. National Institutes of Health as he and Mike discuss how screening and assay biology can be used to improve the world and address unmet medical need.Registration is now open for the 2022 AI Data Pipelines for Life Sciences Symposium in Seattle, WA, September 26-27.This two-day symposium will allow participants to explore how AI data pipelines are integrated into the life sciences. Attendees will learn about MLOPS, applications, techniques, and architectures of data and their uses in the life sciences. The SLAS 2022 Bio Entrepreneurship Symposium will allow emerging bio entrepreneurs, start-up companies, academics and those considering bio-entrepreneurship to explore the start-up ecosystem. Register by visiting: https://www.slas.org/events-calendar/slas-2022-bio-entrepreneurship-symposium/attend/register/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgUJQtQUrEs IDEA Pharma: A Conversation with Dr. Menelas Pangalos of AstraZeneca Mike Rea:                          Just a quick note this is Menelas Pangalos, can I have your official title? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I am EVP of Innovative Medicines and early development. I’m at Biotech Unit and also Global Business Development. Mike Rea:                          Okay, we’ll get on to innovative medicines. This is obviously one of the series of Idea collider interviews with people with actually very interesting thoughts on innovations. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Hopefully. Hopefully interesting. Mike Rea:                          Definitely interesting and hopefully very useful for the viewers. So, actually let’s starts with our first question, what does AstraZeneca means by innovative medicine? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yes that's probably the most difficult question because innovation is different things to many people, & I’m sure - I remember when first joined the company & was walking around the site’s; looking at project’s & people were telling me about their innovative programs & they actually - you know, if you think about this as a competitive sport, I think our view of innovation when I first joined was personal best versus world records, And when I think of innovation, I think of world records. You know, you’re cutting edge, the cold face of innovation in terms of whatever area you’re in, whether it’s a technology or whether it’s a therapy area. Disease understanding is actually - you’re making the discoveries rather than following discoveries. Mike Rea:                          So, that was an almost an internally referenced versus external referenced. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, so exactly they were very inwardly as an organization we were incredibly inwardly focused & we were getting better internally but when your benchmark is very low, you’re getting better on a very low benchmark actually it’s isn’t getting you anywhere near where you need to be. So, one of the big shifts in our culture which I think is helpful in our innovation is being much more outwardly focused. Seeing what’s happening as a consequence, understanding where we should be pushing ourselves to be even better & who we should be working with to enable us to build on whatever it is that we choose to do. Mike Rea:                          That’s interesting & the innovative medicines group is focused on forward looking pipeline -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, So I run everything from the first target ideation all the way to proof of concept. So, we have to hand over to our latest [inaudible 02:28] organization programs that are ready for phrase III. So, everything from - you know the basic disease understanding – to therefore give you the new targets so you identify & optimizing those programs to generate molecules that are ultimately suitable for phrase III investment. So, there’s therapy area-based research, then we also have our technology platform group to support the therapy areas  Mike Rea:                          And you’re essentially then combining ways of doing that with choices that you’ve made along the way of which areas to focus on itself. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Choices all the way & one of the things - the big shifts that we made, which actually we made when Pascal joined the company at the end of 2012 is really focus down on the areas where we thought we could be globally competitive or we could be setting world records not personal bests, & so, we really focused organization down on to sort of oncology, cardiovascular, metabolic & renal disease. Which there’s a lot of overlap & than respiratory disease & there’s couple of areas that we not dabbled in but we have small – relatively small investments, less than 5% of our budget goes on there in neuroscience & infections where we tend to pawn all those program with other companies where that’s their core area of competence & where they want to be leading from an innovation perspective. Mike Rea:                          ok, that’s interesting. So, it’s more like the British Olympic teams approach the winning gold medals. where we can win gold and…  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Go deep & yes, it’s been very interesting because, as we’ve gone deep and as we’ve got more & more focused in those areas. You see that actually you’re starting to build a depth of knowledge & a depth of pipeline that really does make you quite competitive in that space, & the quality of the partnership – you can create the quality of the people who you recruit – the quality of the decision making it all gets better because the commercial organizations also lined up the same way. For me it was like the organization was never all - but I always thought of us as iron filings all going in different directions. When we focus organization on those three core areas, everyone’s thoughts then point in the same direction & they understood, well good looking [inaudible 04:44]  Mike Rea:                          Yeah, & it’s been interesting. you mentioned when Pascal took over but it seems to be in a purposeful shift at AstraZeneca, because for a long time it wasn’t my favorite company. But this certainly - your publications & the kind of pursuit of a kind of directed improvement Has been clear from the outside. Do you have the room to do that? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, look I mean - I was hired by the CEO before Pascal joined, a guy called David Brennan who was a super smart guy, very commercially driven. They’ve built a great company with an amazing brand Seroquel, Nexium, Crestor. And what’s interesting is most of those were me too or me better drugs, but nevertheless, very successful in their time & what David realized when he hired me was that the R&D organization wasn’t where it needed to be & they had to try & re-invent themselves & I was the one of the first recruits to try & help with that reinvention.  Mike Rea:                          What was the first thing that you had to do under that new regime? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, it was a challenging [blank] - activity wasn’t particularly high so one of the things that I tried to really get the organization bought into reasons why we need to change, to learn from what we’ve done before. So, we looked at all of the projects that were run from 2005 - 2010. We were spending about 5 million dollars a year on R&D. And really trying to look at what differentiated a successful project from a non-successful project. obviously, we had a lot more unsuccessful projects. Mike Rea:                          What was your definition of successful? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Launch.   your medicine launching or moving into late stage of development at least. But actually, launching is the most important one & looking at what data – what information we have & how programs actually progressed from candidate nomination all the way through to phase III. And what we saw was – actually when we did the analysis, if you measured us by the number of things that we were doing, the numbers of candidates that we’re putting into the clinic or the number of R&D's that we were filing. We were one of the most productive companies in the industry. Secondly only to Pfizer after it had acquired Wyeth. But if you measured us by the number of launches that we had – we were the second least productive company in industry. So clearly there was a disconnect. Our science was getting rewarded, but there were no medicines coming out at the other end & that’s what we had to fix it.                                          The take-way message from all of this work was quality over quantity. It’s the quality of what you work on not the quantity of what you do. And then as we dug further there were five things or we call a five R framework that we thought, based on the data that we analyzed would improve your probability of running a successful program and they’re pretty obvious I have to say, pretty intuitive & yet actually quite difficult I think to execute on consistently.                                          So, the first of the five R's is around the right target. How well do you understand the biology of the target that you work on? how well do you understand the disease pathophysiology? How it connects – relates to path whether you’re trying to modulate? What genetic validation do you have either in pre-clinical animal models or in human genetics & how do your scientists consequently try to prove or importantly disapprove Your hypothesis. are they asking those killer questions to try and invalidate, not just validate there’s something for hypothesis? Mike Rea:                          Yeah. So how important is that almost adversarial nature? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s really important actually rewarding your scientists for disapproving things as much as approving things & making good decisions – good kills is actually something that we’re very passionate about and very proud about & we celebrate as well.  As I’ll say in a moment the reason why we’re failing now the most is actually because of lack of efficacy in phase II, which means we still don’t understand the targets and the pathways well enough. But we’re getting better, so that’s perhaps the most important of all of the 5 R's. Mike Rea:                          Okay. I think we talked about this a little bit before that we’ve reframed this role and we're calling it failure; we call the process of early phase – development asymmetric learning. Can you learn faster & better than the other guys? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Exactly. Mike Rea:                          And if you call it learning it’s not trying to failing anymore. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s exactly right & making sure that you fail, you haven’t spent too much money & you don’t just keep on - cause what we were very good at what we saw as we had – our science was very creative. Finding ways of getting to the next hurdle & just for the sake of getting the next hurdle, cause that’s where we're being measured on. So right target, second one right issue. When you have a molecule whether it’s a monoclonal antibody or small molecule or the drug modality, demonstrate first of all in the preclinical models that you can engage the target & understand what your PK / PD relationships are. So, understand you’ve got to inhibit a kinase in a tumor? Do you have to inhibit that kinase for 24 hours? Do you have to inhibit it at 50%, 80%, 100%? Really understand what the relationship is in order to generate the efficacy you are after & then even more importantly you have to have a way of measuring that in the clinic. If you can’t demonstrate target engagement in a clinic, we have a big problem, because then if you fail you have no idea if it’s your molecule is cramp or lousy - excuse my French - or if your hypothesis is wrong. So, a good failure is for me is ones who I know have demonstrated target engagement but the molecule didn't work so biology is wrong. Right. And we hardly had any ways of demonstrating proof medicines – so a number of phase II that we were running. where the molecules failed and you asked the question – I remember these first six months in project meeting, so it didn't work – did we engage the target? Did the receptor antagonist get into the brain? If it’s a schizophrenia program and quizzical blank stares from everybody saying - we have no idea.  Mike Rea:                          Oh, so you weren't learning well.  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, you weren't learning anything, not well, you weren't learning anything actually because you had no idea why you are failing, so that doesn't happen anymore. The third one is right safety, so again because our scientists were being rewarded for number of candidates, they were remarkably good - working how to lower the doses to the minimum amount, where they now – because they're not measuring target engagement, engaging the target but they still get the candidate through. And what we saw was that when you had early safety signals, they invariably came back to bite you somewhere during early development or even worse later stage development. So, waiting out your safety signals early, making sure you are working on the right series, on the right scaffolds, that you understand both your target-based toxicity and your molecule-based toxicity, really, really important. So, we spent a lot of time developing our safety models. Fourth of the five R's right patient. To find the patient population in which your medicine is most likely to work. Because if It doesn't work in that patient population, it's not going to work on a broader patient population, and we were again very good at going into broad patient populations. What we saw actually was that as the programme moved through the clinic, the commercial organization got into full steam ahead and wanted to go into broader bigger. Of course AstraZeneca was very much a primary cadre of an organization and so what we saw actually in the data was that the scientists were becoming less confident about their projects and the commercial folks were becoming more confident because the big yourselves the number is getting bigger, but you know a 100% of nothing is not a very big number. So that was the other pieces - to find the patient population and do that experiment first and develop it there and then other things will happen. This is not different, advanced for example we have been doing for quite some time, and then finally the last of the 5R’s is right commercial. By right commercial, I don’t mean is it going to be a billion dollar pick yourselves - what I mean is why would anyone want to take or prescribe the medicine and why would anyone want to reimburse it. So, understanding what your comparators need to be, understanding what the standard of care will be in the time frame that you are going to be launching. It’s a very difficult thing to do, often 10 - 15 years ahead but really challenging the teams to think about where that puck will be when the programmes moves through the clinic or when it launches to make sure they are being ruthless about the comparisons they do. This now goes back to the conversation around being outward looking versus inward looking. And then it was interesting, when we submitted the paper for review, one of the comments that came back from one of the reviewer's was - well if you do all of this you need to add a 6th R which is the right culture. Because what you are actually doing is changing the culture of the company and so you need to talk about how it back ships and he was actually, he or she was actually right because as we start to implement  the 5 R's to every governance meeting we have, through  every project review that we do, what you start to see is is the culturing shifting from one where science is being rewarded for just numbers of candidates, to they are being rewarded for proof of mechanism, for proof of concept, for launches, for diagnostic strategies and for publishing great research papers and it has shifted the culture from one that's being very inwardly focused, personal best to one that's outwardly focused, more collaborative and hopefully setting a few world records. Mike Rea:                          Which is interesting. So, we, did you use incentive structure as a lever or was that a kind of after effect of getting people to focus in the right place? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So the incentives changed and our global incentives in the company actually changed when Pascal joined where we didn't just have R&D incentives, we had incentives around R&D - which were phase 3 investment decisions, launches, phase II starts, and there's assessing of commercial goals which are around the growth drivers of the company which you can land everybody up in oncology, cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory etc. and then  some financial goals and we were thrust to meet our objectives, we have to get all of these things - not just the R and D ones. So, the whole organizations actually got very well lined up. But for us the things that we rewarded scientists on were:- the quality of the work they were doing, so these good kills, or good moving forward in a CD package, coming forward you know a lot less candidates coming forward every year than we ever had, we were no longer the most prolific, but the quality was much higher and the teams had to be able to cover every aspect of the programme including what the developing plan looks like going forward to proof of concept. And then the successes, their rewards came and they demonstrated proof of mechanism, demonstrated proof of concept, when they get the phase III investment decision because I don't get to decide what goes into phase III, someone else has to put that through and so that you can’t game the system in that way. Mike Rea:                          Yes. Interesting. We have always quoted the Brazil Germany World Cup final, cause as you look at the goals, clearly very big divide, but actually Brazil won the game on all of the surrogate metrics. They shot some goals, shot some targets, possession Brazil won.   Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       But the goals count. Launching drugs count. So, the launching drugs counts and of course the challenges is, when you are in a research team launching a drug somewhere away. We were lucky that we had a few drugs that moved quite fast through the whole process. So, people got a sense that we could actually do this and then the other piece that was a very important measure actually for us is actually just the quality of the publications coming out of the organization. And if you look at where we were, I had an organization of about 5000 people when I joined and we were publishing about 200 papers and one nature or science paper. Today we are half that size, we are about 2500 people, we are publishing between 40 - 50 nature science sell papers a year. So even those, and of course when I first joined it was impossible, you couldn’t do drug discovery and good science, now it’s part of our DNA. Mike Rea:                          It’s all the same thing. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah and people don't even question that, and of course what happens as a consequence of doing it is, people want to come and work with you, whether it is an academic collaborator, whether it is Biotech or whether it’s someone who actually wants to be a part of AstraZeneca.  Mike Rea:                          Of course  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So it’s made a huge shift to us and of course our move down to Cambridge is all part of that shift, it’s part of being close to an academic hotbed where there is amazing science because we have become much more open than we ever were, which for me again it’s part of my DNA in terms of being collaborative. Being collaborative in Cambridge is really, really easy because there is so many people you can collaborate with. And of course we have Oxford, London in our doorstep and the rest of the UK and the rest of the world, we have tried to join UK and Sweden together to try and create a European hub and the partnerships we have now which when we have many and some quite unusual, we actually have AstraZeneca scientists work in the same lab as an academic scientist, shared goals and they are working on basic research as well as drug discovery programs. It’s made us much, much more porous than we have ever been. Mike Rea:                          The thing I mentioned to you before was, we have been doing the pharmaceutical innovation index for 9 years now. And if you look where AstraZeneca started to where Astra Zeneca came number 1 this year. It’s been a rapid turnaround. I think because all the things that you recognize and our index measures, did you launch and did you launch successfully? Did you get reimbursement?  So clearly you have gone from that period when you were doing a lot of internal R&D anywhere to suddenly getting somewhere. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And it’s been - the wins are important. Celebrating the wins when you get them is actually one of the things that galvanized the organization. But you know, I think that are the three key things, being really focused on high quality science, being really collaborative and open, and then executing flawlessly when it comes to moving through the pipeline and launching. Mike Rea:                          When you said, you came up with the five R’s. Was that a process to come up with or were those the five things that mattered the most or did you go in with -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       No actually look, you know Pfizer had published their three pillars,  these things are very intuitive and most interesting is people ask me about - because these are you know, they're bleeding obvious, you’d think everybody would do it, people ask me - why do you publish this, because it’s like a trade secret. They're not! Everybody should be doing this and I think many companies do, but Actually many companies don’t and when I ask people that join us from other companies about what's different about the way that we do it versus others, it’s that we really do practice this. I don't let well not I; we don't let programs come forward if the odds don't look good, and if they do come forward with a gap, let’s say we’re not sure about right safety, we have a question mark about whether we’re going to have the right dose versus safety liability. It’s the first question we ask in the clinic. So, do you really understand the proof of mechanism, the PKPD and workout the margins, so it really focuses the attention is you understand where your liabilities are in a program to go there first and workout whether you can flip a red to an amber or green –  Mike Rea:                          So, it’s okay to go at risk as long as you –  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       As long as you know what the risk is and you're very clear about what the killer experiment is. Mike Rea:                          Hoping it’s not there. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah and then of course the first few years projects will come and you say no once, you say no twice, you take teams through it and teams change their behavior. Mike Rea:                          Oh, you do mean it? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t make a difference. It’s kind of important, right. There's got to be some tease to it. Mike Rea:                          So, is there a definition of innovation at AstraZeneca? Because one of the things we always find is that everyone has a different approach to what it is and what it means. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       As I said earlier, it means so many things to different groups. So, for my precision medicine group, innovation would be developing the first plug-based DNA test for EGFO - it’s very different to my oncology therapy, it should be looking to identify a new target or pathway and get the first molecules or the first crystal structure that target with the molecule. So I think innovation really is different things to different groups, I think as I said earlier the most important thing is that whatever we choose to do and whichever areas we’re focusing, whether its Crispr or whether its Protacs or whether it’s a new – some other drug modanity or something around new safety models that improve our prediction, that we are aware of what's out there, so we’re not re-inventing the wheel. We’re working with the very best people and we’re pushing the boundaries of science so that when hopefully we’ve cracked something, when we publish it, people aren't saying ‘so what’. I’d really like us to be viewed as driving science forwards and not just helping ourselves but actually helping the fields that we work in also get better at what they do, and that culture piece is really important because it’s one of the things that I think can make us a little bit different. When we moved to Cambridge, our new building in Cambridge is right in the Addenbrookes campus, the Addenbrookes hospital, its next to the Papworth hospital and then on the other side we’re opposite the laboratory for microbiology, the MRC microbiology. More Nobel laureates than any other institution in the world and an incredibly, if you want high powered science that's one of the places to go in the world and I was talking to John Savalo at the time, he was the CEO of the MR center, ‘wouldn’t it be great, given that we’re going to be in Cambridge to see if we can start working with the MRC, with the LMB’ and so we put a small pot of money together that we co funded and I went and saw Hugh Pelham who was the director at the time and I said, let’s try and do something and of course his natural first inclination was well you know, we’re all very, very smart and you're from industry and we don't want you to suck our brains dry and us get nothing back. Which I think is – I think pharma has moved on a long way over the past few years but I think still in some circles the [inaudible 23:55] of what we do and how we work – and so we worked really, really hard to build a strong relationship with the LMB and to actually make it a very easy way to get – we created this pot of money that basically PI’s from AZ and the LMB, to come and apply for, and they can get a post doc and it’s a two pager and it would be very, very quick and easy and not bureaucratic and Hugh and myself would review this and we’d say yes or no. Based on the quality of the science. Mike Rea:                          Together? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Together, we did it together. And it was – of course the first round was not particularly well subscribed but today we work with more than half the PI’s in the LMB, collaboratively, and they get back as much as – because they can see that we can do things, we can create molecules for them, we have certain capabilities and technologies that they don't have access to, but more importantly there's actually a lot of overlap in terms of our common interest. And so, when you put us both together, we actually get more powerful because we’re obviously quite plad in our thinking, they're quite basic in their thinking, we put it together and actually magic happens, and we've got some amazing stuff that's going on working with them.  Mike Rea:                          Which is an interesting – I think your comfort with ‘open’ is an interesting differentiator for you in that way that you described this long-term approach, proof of concept if you like of going in. Have you found it easy to have your scientists behave the right way in the collaboration? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s been an evolution right, because initially we were incredibly closed. We didn't want to share anything. Everything was proprietary and you just do it in baby chunks and you chip away, you chip away and eventually people get comfortable and there's many examples, of course we had to do it – because if you think of where we were and having to try and change the culture quickly, one of the best ways of changing the culture is actually bringing external scientists in that can show you what world records they'd make. So for example, we did another collaboration with the MRC, we made lots of our molecules, clinical molecules available to MRC scientists to try and find new indications for which then spurred the - NCATs was happening as well, and we’re one of the companies that has the most molecules, both clinical and preclinical in those types of things, you know when we set up the bio park in [inaudible 26:17], park, we had this huge site that was half empty and I used to wander through the corridors going from one group to the other and there would be those empty laboratories, they used to call it tumbleweed labs where you could hear the winds rushing through and it was a demoralizer and from the era when everyone was investing in bricks and infrastructure, bricks and mortar and infrastructure, because they thought they could just industrialize R&D and find out the very hard way that you couldn't, so then the organization shrank and we had these huge buildings. And so, what we did was we said – lets collapse our footprint on the building and let’s bring biotech’s in. So that was actually our first bio park and in contrast to other bio park cities, let’s not have the biotech’s that come in partitioned and walled off. Let’s have them using our cafeteria, our coffee shops, our shared spaces, let’s have them potentially using our equipment if they want to, so they have to buy capital, and we can really try and share our infrastructure, make ourselves good partners, help give them advice when they need it, if they need some regulatory advice some clinical advice, without asking for anything in return, it does start to encourage biotech’s to come in, it makes us again start to forge relationships with other companies and probably most importantly it starts to fill the space up and make you feel vibrant and energetic and full. Mike Rea:                          Which is an interestingly human approach – there's this great book called Obliquity which talks about getting what you want but approaching it in an oblique way and you're described a lot of internal and external signals about your readiness to embrace the future instead of the past. How important is that -? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And treat people like grown-ups, the other thing is treating people like grown-ups, because again when we first set this up they were like – what do you mean they're going to be wandering around – everyone signs a CDA, if they don't follow what they should be doing they’ll get kicked off the side, so I think if we go in with the assumption that everybody is going to behave themselves and actually follow the appropriate principles, then actually you're pretty safe. You don’t have to have barriers and passes and everything else, and actually we’ve done it in Boston, in Wharton and actually created – we had a half empty building in Boston which is now packed and actually has a waiting list for biotech’s to come in and in Gothenburg as well. Now in Cambridge it’s a little bit different because we’re already in the middle of the biotech cluster so it’s a little bit less important, but for those sites it’s a little bit more isolated and not right in the midst in Kendall square or not in England for example, in Sweden. It makes quite a big difference having this sort of vibrant environment.  Mike Rea:                          Kendall Square has almost become a hiring hub rather than an innovation spreading hub, because people aren’t necessarily collaborating there, just hiring the folks from –  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Well the nice thing about this – what I find about us being in Cambridge is you know–  you go to a coffee shop or you drop your kids off into school, and you bump into someone, happens to be a hematologist who has just come over, is working and you can start to talk about things that we couldn’t talk about when we were in Cheshire, because the environment is just different. So, it’s actually amazing, how many collaborations and relationships have been initiated through these informal connections. So one of the things that I've been trying to do over the years is try and generate as many opportunities for our scientists to have informal connections, whether it’s with people in the bio houses where the collaborators were, you're just making it easier for the serendipitous to happen and then again innovation can happen. Mike Rea:                          Yeah planning for serendipity. Absolutely. So, one of the things that's been apparent from the outside is the way that you've approached innovation as an active process and five hours is a very good illustration of that. Do you measure it year on year?  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, we measure lots of things. I have got a great portfolio management group. I measure it but don’t necessarily incentivize on it. So, I think we measure how many proof of mechanisms we have done, we measure our proof of concepts, so obviously we get rewarded for things like phase III investment decisions and launches. We measure how many publications are coming out, from which groups. But I try not to get to, we tend to do - first full three-year holding averages, so no one is ever pressured into doing something in one year and getting a number. And actually, the focus really is on the quality of what people are doing, and how innovative is it, how inventive is it. Is it going to lead to hopefully to break through in the therapy area in terms of capability? Mike Rea:                          So, you have got trendlines rather than timelines. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Yeah so, we are quite careful about that because I just think it drives the wrong behavior if you are not careful. Mike Rea:                          Right, People start gaming whatever they are given as a target. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Sounds so brilliant doing that. You know you give whatever target you give them they are good at hitting them. Again, the CD one, it’s amazing what behave - in 2005 - 2010 period, because there were [inaudible 31:30] the number of backups we had in the pipeline. Backup number 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, then of course all the backups had exactly the same probability as the lead molecule. So, we don’t do backups anymore. Mike Rea:                          Right, I remember sitting in Sweden once, listening to the team saying that it doesn’t matter if this one doesn’t work because you have got a backup - how does that not matter? Just because you are in a job for another couple of years, but -  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Exactly right. Now unless it’s a really, really important program they know they are going to get one shot so they've got the time, they have got to work out the quality of the molecules versus taking a bit more time to get rid of a few more of the work. So, it’s a real balancing acta and for some plans we will have backups, but they are unusual. Less than 5% of our pipeline now has backups.   Mike Rea:                          Interesting times, and what’s been the biggest learning for you as a director of all of this activity over the period? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       You know I've worked in different companies now, there's not a lot I would have done differently. I have seen Wyeth go through - before it was acquired by Pfizer, go through relatively similar transformations of what [inaudible 32:45] said of R&D, time was much more focused on a number of things. But he had a leadership team that was very passionate about science. And so, we were all very much focused on the quality of the science. I think the biggest piece is celebrating the wins, but also celebrating the good failures and then exemplifying them - constantly exemplifying the individuals, teams, projects. You know we were lucky that we had to grow in [inaudible 33:15] in particular, which came from our teams in Orderly Park actually which went from – you know we put the resources behind it and there was a new generation when I arrived and we moved it in the CD and then it went from CD to launch and in about three years, now that was a brilliant thing to have coming along because it was an example of what you can do.  And of course having a quick win, that also made the organization feel better about itself, Limpasa which was written off, we resurrected and brought back to line, even though we’ve never really stopped working on it and the Imed, when Pascal joined me asking me why is this not in phase III, suddenly pumped everyone's chest up and then everything we’ve been doing at Astra has been about rebuilding and then [inaudible 34:04] really well your artistic molecule. So, there's lot of really cool stuff in every area that we’re working in, of course that makes it easier to walk on and keep going.  Mike Rea:                          So, with what you described sounds like the early stage of an exponential growth rather than just seeing the results -  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I hope so. So, the other piece I love about our company is I think we are a humble company, starting with Pascal and his leadership team all the way through our leaders and our scientist. You know once we got better, I think - I have said this to you previously, we are still failing 80% of the time. Right so we have got lots of room for improvement and very few companies that have been able to continuously in 5 years cycles continue to be at the top end of the productivity chart. So, we have had a good 5 years. That is one set of 5 years so for me the huge chance is making sure we continue to do this. So, the pipeline continues to fuel new launches and new medicines, that No one in the organization gets complaced in any way- shape or form. They remain humble collaborative, open and porous to ideas whether they are from inside or outside. Mike Rea:                          Which has been an interesting characterization of the change I think and having that humility seems – adds more to AstraZeneca, in my external perception to where it is today. So, what drives you personally in this space? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       I have always been - it’s difficult now not to think of myself as a leader, but I always used to get really upset when people called me a line manager or a leader versus scientist. I'm a scientist first and foremost. I get excited about seeing people’s data. Not the bullet points from the power points, the actual data. The graphs the –  Mike Rea:                          And a scientist in your approach to the day job as well, I guess. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       There's a keenness, so I still have a couple of students and I don't spend anywhere near enough time with them but I’ve tried to keep my academic links, but more importantly it’s just to encouraging science, constantly encouraging science, constantly speaking to our scientists. Going and seeing their projects, seeing them present their posters, seeing and encouraging the next generation of science and scientist just to come through. To me that's the first driver is just the quality of the science and being an organization that you can say and be really proud is doing good science. Second one is about being collaborative. I’ve always been quite collaborative by nature and I get irritated actually by people that hoard data or think that they can't share things and so –  Mike Rea:                          Yeah, I’ve noticed cause you're active on twitter too that that's – how do you feel about that as a collaborative exchange. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       It’s good so we’ve got this new thing called Workplace which is a spinoff from Facebook and its actually working really well, where you can start to post – so someone will post a bit of scientific data and then you can ask questions and you can generate – Twitter is a great place for – I see it more for news and getting people’s opinions on things that are coming out., particularly if they're from outside of AZ. But this being open to ideas wherever they come from and being porous and you can talk about being collaborative and then you can be collaborative and I really want it to be collaborative. So, I am probably being too open rather than less open. If I ever have to choose if it works for us, I think the risks are relatively small and the upside is huge. And then – there is two things, and then the other piece that I'm incredibly passionate about which – actually Katherine in the room here, was an example is developing our talent. So really I’ve seen it happen all through my career actually as I’ve grown through the industry, but surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you are, but also pulling people up more rapidly, and I kind of think about my career journey and I’ve been lucky to have some managers that were quite – leaders that were prepared to take risks on me and sort of propelled me up the line, probably more quickly than I was ever expecting, not probably, a lot more than I was ever expecting, but some people getting there – you're sure about that? And I kind of have this same conversation with my leaders and their leaders about take risks on people. If you haven't got people in places that are a little bit uncomfortable and really pushing themselves and finding out they can really swim versus sign, you'll never accelerate people’s careers. So that's something that we spend quite a little time, with my team and their team. So, I spend a little time doing talent development and really trying to pull out the bright sparks faster than they would otherwise have moved Mike Rea:                          That's interesting. I’m going to ask Katherine; do we have two more minutes? I'm going do the 2-minute timeline. Okay so, within a spurt of a 2-minute rule, so what – you clearly read a lot, what books do you go back to as your core – which books do you recommend? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       So, the one that's probably closest to my heart from a heartstring’s perspective is probably Roy Vagelos’s autobiography around Science, Medicine and Merck. Mike Rea:                          That was a great period. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       And for me he was – apart from [inaudible 40:04] obviously a Greek heritage like I am, I’ve never had a scientist in my family, so reading his – I just read his book and it was just amazing what he did and Merck for me, as you know I was doing my PhD, that was the prototypical, what a great R&D organization looks like and I actually did a PhD that was sponsored by them and Roy was like a hero. He was one of the first science led CEO’s and he took a company and really to me he epitomized the science at organizations and so – that's probably one of my favorite discovery books that I read in kind of a – I’ve never actually met him, but I would love to meet him and I just think he did an amazing job and actually it so happened when Merck lost that science focus – they got it back now and I think it made a huge difference, that for me has been one of my guiding lights. All through my career. And then when I was at Wyeth actually I met Bill George for the first time and we’ve met him – I’ve been at AstraZeneca a few times, he’s written a book called Discover your True North and that's about what are your guiding principles, what are your true norths and sticking to them, well actually not sticking to them, knowing what they are so you can stick to them and that has been something that again I have used, when I first joined the company I wrote down my list of four or five things that were the most important things for me, but I never should have talked about over the past few minutes and sticking to those principles and not ever letting them go, because they're what define you, and have been really important. Mike Rea:                          Fantastic. And what are your ambitions for the next five years? Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       To do this. I think we have the best jobs in the world honestly. Scientists in the organization, we’re able to turn science into medicine and really see the impact of what we do and for me, I’ve completed part one of my journey at AstraZeneca, we now need to show that we can do it again, and that we can hopefully improve even further. It was something that we can continue through, I want to just keep doing that, I love doing what I'm doing. Mike Rea:                          Fantastic, and one thing that you wished that I’d ask you that I haven't asked you. That's the last question. Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       How do you relax? As I'm sure you know, you know from speaking to – these are pretty intense jobs, and so my family probably are the thing that brings me down to earth and you're talking about your kid being a guitarist, my kids they're young, they're nine and ten, my wife’s a scientist but they're all very good at when I come home to making me silly daddy and just bringing me completely down to earth and I find that the most relaxing thing out there, being with my family. Mike Rea:                          Excellent, well thank you so much and I know there's a thousand questions I could have continued to ask you. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again. Thanks.  Dr. Menelas Pangalos:       Thank you very much. 

Dr. Don Marion and Dr. Anne Bunner discuss the use of neurocognitive assessment tests following sport-related concussions. Publication: Alsalaheen, B., Stockdale, K., Pechumer, D., Broglio, S.P., & Marchetti, G.F. (2017). A Comparative Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Concussion on a Computerized Neurocognitive Test and Self-Reported Symptoms. Journal of Athletic Training, 52(9): 834-846. doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-52.7.05 Journal link: natajournals.org/doi/full/10.4085…062-6050-52.7.05 CUBIST is a podcast for health care providers produced by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. We discuss the latest research on traumatic brain injury (TBI) most relevant to patient care. For more about TBI, including clinical tools, go to dvbic.dcoe.mil or email us at dha.DVBICinfo@mail.mil The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this podcast are those of the host and subject matter experts. They should not be construed as an official Department of Defense position, policy or decision unless so designated by other official documentation. All music in this podcast was used according to Creative Commons licensing. Our theme song is "Dog Wind" by Skill_Borrower, and our credit music is "Esaelp Em Xim" by Pitx, both from CCmixter.org. All music in this podcast was used according to Creative Commons licensing.

We discuss how the National Center For Advancing Translational Studies, (NCATS), warns that rare diseases constitute a public health issue. Also, SMA News Today forums moderator DeAnn Runge shares her perspective about going with the flow and living with SMA. Are you interested in understanding gene therapy? ExploreGeneTherapy.com has helpful information about gene therapy, including its history and how it is being investigated for the treatment of genetic diseases. Visit www.exploregenetherapy.com

In this podcast we discuss the evolution of science that is driving the increasing focus on rare indications with Anne Pariser, the Director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). Anne is a noted international expert or rare diseases, and has been involved in numerous collaborations within the FDA, as well as with drug developers, governmental agencies, patient groups and other stakeholders in the development of treatments for rare indications. Dr Pariser comes to NCATS from the FDA, where she had worked since 2000 on the development of drug and biological products for orphan and rare conditions. Dr Pariser also served as an associate director in the FDA’s Office of Translational Sciences, which is part of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).

In this episode, Austin and Ben interviewed Dr. Eric Sid at the NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in the Office of Rare Disease Research. His team has been busy working on a toolkit that rare disease patients or patient groups can use as a guide while navigating their course in developing a registry for their communities. This is a valuable resource for advocacy groups of any size and is worth checking out! The toolkit went live on Rare Disease Day 2019 and can be found here: https://registries.ncats.nih.gov. Thanks for listening, and enjoy this episode of CoRDS Cast!

On the second episode of the PMS Pathways Podcast, Jackie interviews Megan O'Boyle, mom to Shannon and the Principal Investigator of the PMS International Registry. They spend this episode talking about the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH institutes that are most relevant to PMS, and Megan's role in advocating for our community on a national platform. Megan has been appointed to serve on the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Advisory Council and she has been appointed to represent NCATS on the Council of Councils. So what is translational medicine, exactly, and why should our families care? Tune into this episode to get those answers. Shortly after this episode was recorded NCATS released an updated "Translational Road Maps" an interactive map of drug discovery, development, and deployment.  If you have questions or suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to Jackie Jacobs, the Family Engagement Specialist, at jackie@pmsf.org. PMS Pathways Podcast is written, produced and edited by Jackie Jacobs and is a production of the Phelan McDermid Syndrome Foundation. For more information about the Foundation, our programs, and initiatives, please visit our website at www.pmsf.org. Simply click on the player below to listen. You may also select one of the subscribe options below the player to stay up to date with podcast episodes as they are posted.

2011 Aug Part 1- Montreal NASCAR Nationwide Prerace Plus NCATS Race Time Radio Access To Race Time Radio: Live Stream Via: http://racetimeradio.com/live_stream.htm        Web: http://www.racetimeradio.com               Twitter: https://twitter.com/Racetimeradio            Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/race.timeradio         iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/race-time-radio/id1368707581       Free App For Easy Listening: http://instantapp.com/racetimeradiolive/ 

2011 Aug Part 2 - Montreal NASCAR Nationwide Prerace Plus NCATS Race Time Radio Access To Race Time Radio: Live Stream Via: http://racetimeradio.com/live_stream.htm        Web: http://www.racetimeradio.com               Twitter: https://twitter.com/Racetimeradio            Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/race.timeradio         iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/race-time-radio/id1368707581       Free App For Easy Listening: http://instantapp.com/racetimeradiolive/ 

Dr. Don Marion and Dr. Anne Bunner discuss the use of neurocognitive assessment tests following sport-related concussions. Publication: Alsalaheen, B., Stockdale, K., Pechumer, D., Broglio, S.P., & Marchetti, G.F. (2017). A Comparative Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Concussion on a Computerized Neurocognitive Test and Self-Reported Symptoms. Journal of Athletic Training, 52(9): 834-846. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-52.7.05 Journal link: http://natajournals.org/doi/full/10.4085/1062-6050-52.7.05 CUBIST is a podcast for health care providers produced by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. We discuss the latest research on traumatic brain injury (TBI) most relevant to patient care. For more about TBI, including clinical tools, go to dvbic.dcoe.mil or email us at info@dvbic.org. The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this podcast are those of the host and subject matter experts. They should not be construed as an official Department of Defense position, policy or decision unless so designated by other official documentation. All music in this podcast was used according to Creative Commons licensing. Our theme song is "Dog Wind" by Skill_Borrower, and our credit music is "Esaelp Em Xim" by Pitx, both from CCmixter.org.

Dr. Kristin Fabre of NCATS at the National Institutes of Health speaks to CHI on September 3, 2014. Dr. Fabre will be a keynote speaker during the Engineering Functional 3D Models and Organotypic Culture Models for Toxicology conferences at the FAST Congress, November 17-19 in Boston, MA. Topics include NCATS’s Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Program, increased government support for tissue and organ chips, the benefits of these models for drug research, opening the drug discovery bottleneck through human surrogate technology and more.