Mendelspod Podcast

32:54

Gary Schroth on Connecting Cellular Behavior to the...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/06/11

For decades, biology has been driven by the powerful notion that if we could sequence enough genomes, transcriptomes, epigenomes, then we could finally explain the cell. On today’s show, Gary Schroth, the Chief Scientific Officer at Cellanome, argues that something essential was still missing.Schroth spent nearly two decades at Illumina helping build the sequencing revolution. He has now joined Cellanome to pursue an expanded vision of biology that connects transcriptomics with live-cell imaging.

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27:06

Two-Thirds of High-Risk Breast Cancer Patients May...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/06/09

Today on the show, we’re discussing a new study just presented at ASCO 2026 that could change how chemotherapy decisions are made for a large group of breast cancer patients.During ASCO we spoke with Phil Febbo, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at Veracyte, and John Leite, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, looking at the results from the OPTIMA study, a large prospective trial involving roughly 4,500 patients with clinically high-risk ER-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. The study

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31:31

Building the Diagnostic Layer of Modern Cancer Care...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/29

For years, precision oncology has largely been discussed through the lens of breakthrough drugs. But there’s another story running underneath modern cancer care: the quiet rise of companion diagnostics. These tests are increasingly deciding who receives those therapies in the first place. In many cases, the real bottleneck is no longer discovering a drug target. It’s building a reliable system for identifying the right patient at the right moment in the disease. That challenge sits at the center of

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44:22

Mapping the Multi-Omic Era with Eric Green of Illumina

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/28

Dr. Eric Green returns to Mendelspod in a new role: Chief Medical Officer of Illumina. After more than three decades at the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he helped guide genomics from research initiatives to clinical reality, he now joins one of the industry’s most influential companies at a moment when the field is expanding beyond DNA alone.Green takes us on a tour around the world of multi-omics, which he says is not a branding exercise but a practical response to the limits of

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4:34

Inside Proteomics at Thermo Fisher with Yan Zhang

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/21

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.comFor years, proteomics was described as the missing layer of biology. Why missing? Because measuring proteins at scale turned out to be vastly harder than sequencing DNA.That may finally be changing.In today’s episode Theral speaks with Dr. Yan Zhang, President of Proteomic Sciences at Thermo Fisher Scientific, about the rapid evolution of large-scale p…

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23:19

Separating Epigenetic Signals Improves Early Cancer...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/19

We’ve gotten very good at reading DNA. We’re just beginning to understand how to read its state.On today’s show, Rob Osborne, Senior Vice President of R&D at Biomodal, discusses new evidence that separating two epigenetic marks—5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine—can improve early cancer detection from liquid biopsy. In a recent Nature Communications Medicine study, his team showed that analyzing these signals independently in circulating DNA significantly enhanced detection of Stage I

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4:23

Digital Controls for Cancer Drug Trials? Irina...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/15

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.comOn today’s show, a fascinating discussion about digital twins for medical research— leading to the 64 million dollar question of how much of the current AI wave in healthcare may eventually prove real.Drawing on her background in cancer research and now as CEO of Concr, Dr. Irina Babina joins us to argue that the future of oncology may depend less on g…

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37:59

Solexa Co-Inventor Shankar Balasubramanian on...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/05/07

An inventor of Solexa sequencing by synthesis has a new idea.On today’s show, Sir Shankar Balasubramanian revisits the accidental origins of Solexa sequencing, born not from a sequencing project at all, but from curiosity-driven experiments watching DNA polymerase at work. What followed helped transform DNA sequencing from a specialized pursuit into a routine engine of modern biology. But as Shankar makes clear, the biggest surprise may not have been genomics itself—it was how next-generation

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35:29

The Case for a 6-Base Genome with Peter Fromen, CEO...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/28

You’ve heard of 5-base genomics. How about 6-base? It turns out that separating 5-methylcytosine (mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (hmC) is pretty important.Peter Fromen has had a front-row seat to the evolution of sequencing, from the rise of high-throughput genomics at Illumina to long-read technologies at PacBio. Now, as CEO of Biomodal, he’s focused on integrating genetics and epigenetics into a single workflow—and showing that the regulatory layer of the genome may be where the next

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32:55

The Next Frontier in Biology: Physics? Erdinc Sezgin...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/24

There’s a famous line attributed to Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” It’s still provocative. But it’s unfair to biology. Long before today’s omics era, biologists were uncovering causality everywhere from evolution and natural selection to Mendelian inheritance. They have never merely catalogued life. They have explained it. But modern biology has also generated extraordinary inventories of genes, proteins, and pathways, and

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39:36

The Eligible But Under-Tested: Genomic Medicine in...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/14

What is the value of someone’s genome over their life? Is a genome today what it was 10 years ago? How does the adoption of genomic testing compare to other areas in medicine, such as imaging or electronic health records?Today we take a pretty comprehensive look at genomic testing in practice with Damon Hostin, Head of Market Access, Clinical Solutions at Illumina. Damon brings a rare perspective to this conversation. He’s been in the field since the Celera era, when sequencing was helping define

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31:43

Spatial Transcriptomics Is Changing How We Do...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/09

Fei Chen of the Broad Institute describes the original problem simply: genomics gave us powerful inventories of gene expression, while microscopy gave us structure—yet the two lived in separate worlds. “You could either have your structure or you could have gene expression, but you couldn’t have both.”In this conversation, Fei walks us through how Slide-tags—now commercialized as Takara Bio Trekker technology—set out to close that gap. Instead of mapping gene expression onto a grid, his team flipped

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44:06

Beyond GLP-1: Why Peptides Are Back at the Center of...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/07

Peptides are having a moment. But beneath the market excitement and the GLP-1 headlines, something more interesting is going on. A field that for years seemed technically promising but perpetually constrained is becoming wide open.To see into that open terrain, we’re joined by Charlie Johannes, founder of EPOC Scientific and president of the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium, along with Tomi Sawyer, a founder of the Consortium and founder of Maestro Therapeutics. We asked them for a high-level look at

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35:51

From the Archives: Inventor Mark Kokoris Debuts...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/04/02

It was the biggest story in sequencing last year: Mark Kokoris, head of SBX sequencing at Roche and inventor of the technology, joins Mendelspod to talk about how Sequencing by Expansion (SBX) works and why it may redefine the limits of genomics.* 0:00 A long journey inspired by PCR* 7:20 What is sequencing by expansion?* 14:00 On scale and accuracy* 19:40 Multi-omics vision?* 24:40 What will be the killer app?* 30:00 Biggest challenge for launchKokoris recounts the long path from co-founding

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38:22

Why Do Some Animals Live Ten Times Longer? Pursuing...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/03/17

Why do some animals live ten times longer than others?That question opens today’s interview with Steve Austad, Distinguished Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and one of the leading thinkers in the biology of aging. It quickly becomes clear why he’s been such an important voice in bringing aging research from the margins into the center of science. As he puts it, the field was once “where scientists went to die,” but with modern genetic and molecular tools, it has become one of

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33:33

MRD Testing: From Residual Disease to Real Decisions...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/03/10

Molecular residual disease, or MRD, has been part of oncology’s vocabulary for decades. But knowing something is there and being able to measure it precisely are two very different things. In today’s show, we explore how MRD testing moved from a long-standing clinical suspicion to one of the most consequential tools in modern oncology.Joining us on the program are Chris Hourigan, Director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center (DC) at Virginia Tech, bringing the

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4:06

Early vs Late Recurrence: How Multimodal AI Is...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/03/05

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.comFor two decades, tests like Oncotype DX have helped oncologists decide which early-stage breast cancer patients should receive chemotherapy. But those tools were designed mainly to predict early recurrence, leaving physicians with far less clarity about the risk that cancer might return years later.For today’s program, George Sledge, Chief Medical Officer at Caris Life Sciences, discusses new findings from the TAILORx

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37:17

The Dark Genome with Author Sudhakaran Prabakaran

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/03/03

We began this podcast back around the time the ENCODE project announced that much of the genome was biochemically active. The big science project was undoing the tidy idea of “junk DNA,” and not without controversy. But activity is not the same as purpose. On today’s show, we move past the question of whether the non-coding genome does something and ask a more ambitious one: why has evolution retained so much genomic material unless it carries adaptive potential?Theral speaks with Sudhakaran

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27:15

Illumina's New Mapped Read Technology Provides...

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/02/26

“We have been talking now for 15, 20 years about the diagnostic odyssey. That shouldn’t exist anymore. The new odyssey is the therapeutic odyssey.”That’s Stephen Kingsmore, president and CEO of Rady Children’s Hospital (he just announced his retirement), explaining the impact of a new genome mapping technology from Illumina.Whole-genome sequencing has transformed diagnosis, but some of the hardest pediatric cases persist because the structure of the genome has remained difficult to resolve. Today on

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5:28

CareDx’s Second Act with CEO John Hanna

Mendelspod Podcast ·

2026/02/17

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.mendelspod.comCareDx is a company on the move. For years, they have been a bellwether in molecular diagnostics. Their early bet on gene expression testing in transplant medicine, their bruising fight over Medicare coverage, and their pivot into cell-free DNA monitoring have all reflected the growing pains of precision medicine itself.Now, under CEO John Hanna, the company looks less like a single-test diagnostics firm and more like a

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