Mendelspod Podcast

We’ve all heard of and perhaps worked with data from The Cancer Atlas Project. Now, with the help of new spatial biology tools, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing what they call The Cancer Immunome Project. This is a comprehensive effort to fully characterize the immune system and how it interacts with and fights off cancer. Today we talk with J C Villasboas, a physician-scientist at Mayo who co-started the project. He’s also Director of Mayo’s Immune Monitoring Core Facility.

We’ve all heard of and perhaps worked with data from The Cancer Atlas Project. Now, with the help of new spatial biology tools, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are developing what they call The Cancer Immunome Project. This is a comprehensive effort to fully characterize the immune system and how it interacts with and fights off cancer. Today we talk with J C Villasboas, a physician-scientist at Mayo who co-started the project. He’s also Director of Mayo’s Immune Monitoring Core Facility.

A discovery here. A paper there. An important paper gets passed over. A fortuitous encounter in a coffee shop among two ambitious scientists. A yogurt company just being a yogurt company. Science moves forward in fits and starts. By the time we read the headline in the paper, “breakthrough of the year,” it can have an inevitable quality about it. Then, in a few years, the historian comes and shows us just how random, messy, and, yes, how beautiful is the business of science.

A discovery here. A paper there. An important paper gets passed over. A fortuitous encounter in a coffee shop among two ambitious scientists. A yogurt company just being a yogurt company. Science moves forward in fits and starts. By the time we read the headline in the paper, “breakthrough of the year,” it can have an inevitable quality about it. Then, in a few years, the historian comes and shows us just how random, messy, and, yes, how beautiful is the business of science.

At the beginning of the year, we were all holding our breath for the future of PacBio. And by all, I mean all. It seems everyone has been rooting for this sequencing technology company. And why? It’s simple. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that they have the highest quality reads on the market.

We speak directly with the Oracle today. It's Keith Robison, blogger at Omics Omics. Your All Knowingness, we ask, what has happened in the world of sequencing technology this year? “The companies may need a mulligan,” he quips and laughs.

We speak directly with the Oracle today. It's Keith Robison, blogger at Omics Omics. Your All Knowingness, we ask, what has happened in the world of sequencing technology this year? “The companies may need a mulligan,” he quips and laughs.

Our October Review show is a Halloween special this year. Join us around the campfire amidst the sounds of howling wolves as Nathan, Laura, and Count Theracula recall some of their creepiest and spookiest times in the world of genomics. It's Mendelspod's own Haunted House of the Genome.

There’s an urgency about Stephen Kingsmore. Which is not to say he’s in a rush. He’s the CEO of the Rady’s Children’s Genomics Institute. He and his team have two world records to their name for the incredible speed of diagnosing a rare disease using whole genome sequencing. The latest is 19.5 hours. Dr. Kingsmore feels they can even shave time off that. They’re shooting for a new record of somewhere around 12 hours.

Diversity’s in the news these days. It's not just political correctness. Let’s look deeper into our field at how limited diversity in genetics is affecting all of us. If you are a member of a minority population and you go into a cancer clinic seeking help, some of the genetic tests on offer may not work for you because of your ethnic background. Not only is this wrong on a social justice level. It turns out it's just bad science.