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TomorrowScale Podcast

TomorrowScale Podcast

By Justin Briggs

Conversations with the scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future.
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Life from Light - Prellis Biologics

TomorrowScale PodcastNov 20, 2019

00:00
33:19
NFTs and the Art of Drug Development - Molecule

NFTs and the Art of Drug Development - Molecule

On this episode, our guest is economist Paul Kohlhaas, co-founder and CEO of Molecule and co-author of the VitaDAO whitepaper. We’ll head to Berlin, Germany, where Paul and his team of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts who are designing new ways to advance medicines. In Molecule’s case, they’re using tools not from the lab, but from the web; specifically web3 blockchain tokenized assets called non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). 

The team at Molecule are leveraging these new methods to tokenize the intellectual property and then coordinate, collaborate, and even fund the conduct of scientific research and development by putting the entire process onto a blockchain. And since the intellectual property (IP) asset is digitized onto a distributed ledger, or tokenized on a blockchain, it is then very straightforward for them to be bought, sold, traded, and outlicensed on private and even public marketplaces. 

The decentralized ‘web3’ technologies that enable this functionality are incredibly new, but are by their nature designed and intended to private, efficient, and potentially more secure way to research, develop, and commercialize new medicines. Paul and the team at Molecule are working to democratize the process of new drug development down to the last little “i” in diligence. Is this the dawn of a brave new world? Listen to find out.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Molecule

VitaDAO

"IP-NFTs for Biomedical Research: A new Biomedical Funding Paradigm." -- Tyler Golato on Medium

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The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Dec 03, 202146:05
From Bile to Trial - Ochre Bio

From Bile to Trial - Ochre Bio

On this episode, Ochre Bio co-founders join us to discuss turning discarded organs into a goldmine of biological insight with deep phenotypics that enables the company to pan for fine-grained gene expression across millions of individual cells from different locations across an organ, and connect those signals to specific disease processes within cells.

The need Ochre Bio is addressing initially is literally piling up, but is still difficult to access. Every year, tens of thousands of organs are recovered for human transplantation, but a huge number—thousands of livers, kidneys, and other organs—are evaluated as unfit for use due to quality control issues: damage and/or disease. Two scientific entrepreneurs with lofty ambitions saw an opportunity to utilize those discarded livers as tools to accelerate drug discovery and development, and decided to join forces and co-found Ochre Bio.

Jack O'Meara, PhD is CEO, and Quin Wills, MD, PhD, is CSO of Ochre Bio, and their team includes teams across three labs on two continents. The Ochre team's aim is to improve the quality and number of eligible transplant organs through the use of siRNA therapeutics administered *ex vivo*, discovered through deep phenotyping on data derived from over a thousand rejected transplant livers and counting. Next, they hope to quickly translate those same compounds into human clinical trials for a wide range of liver diseases in patients with high unmet needs.

This episode is a ton of fun, and it was a blast to speak with both Jack and Quin about the company, founding story, and challenges and tips for success for scaling and solving hard technical problems for startup teams across multiple locations.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Ochre Bio

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The TomorrowScale Podcast showcases scientists and entrepreneurs building scientific ventures, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Oct 21, 202152:03
Human on a Chip - Emulate

Human on a Chip - Emulate

On this episode we'll meet Dr. Daniel Levner, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Emulate, a company commercializing technology to remake human biology from the ground up using small rubbery microfluidic chips.

Forged in a multi-year partnership between DARPA and Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Emulate develops organ chips for the lung, intestine, liver, kidney, and even the brain. Slotting in between cell culture dishes, organoids, and animal models, this burgeoning area is one in which startups must marry high design and fundamentally challenging biomedical engineering to recapitulate a human being on a chip reproducibly, at scale, and under budget. Their challenge, to simultaneously accelerate and improve outcomes while reducing costs in drug development, is immense. In response, Emulate's organ chips are elegantly engineered works of art that enable scientists to move beyond the dish and blur the lines between in vitro and in vivo.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Emulate

Dr. Daniel Levner on LinkedIn

Emulate's just announced $82M Series E

"Reconstituting Organ-Level Lung Functions on a Chip" (Huh et al 2010)

Additional Emulate Publications

Axial's Joshua Elkington recently published a backgrounder on Emulate.

The TomorrowScale Podcast showcases scientists and entrepreneurs building scientific ventures, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Sep 16, 202142:09
The Autonomous Lab - Arctoris

The Autonomous Lab - Arctoris

On this episode we'll meet Thomas Fleming, Oxford-trained engineer and co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Arctoris. Arctoris is a startup company developing a fully-autonomous drug discovery laboratory.

Founded in Oxford in 2016, Arctoris has staked their claim as the world’s first fully automated drug discovery platform. As the industry automates portions of the R&D pipeline, it will accelerate the development of novel medicines. Thomas and the team at Arctoris are working to accelerate that future.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Arctoris: https://arctoris.com

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The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

May 31, 202136:55
The Mind's API - Rune Labs

The Mind's API - Rune Labs

On this episode we'll take a walk, literally, with the founder and CEO of Rune Labs, Brian Pepin. Brian previously led electroceuticals development at GSK-backed Galvani, built a glucose-sensing contact lens at Verily, paid dues at Google X Labs, and built brain-computer interfaces at Berkeley. 

We discuss how Brian and his team at Rune Labs are trying to become the full-stack source, or the fabric, for neuroscience research. Their platform connects patient brain data to clinicians and researchers to help discover and develop novel diagnostics, devices, and even treatments for patients with various neurological disorder..

Note: When we caught up with our guest, he was on the move so forgive a bit of background and mic noise.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Rune Labs: https://runelabs.io

"Neurotech after the turning point" Rune Labs Blog

“Oscillotherapeutics - Toward real-time control of pathologic oscillations in the brain” (FrontiersIn Topic)

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale

Listen on Your Favorite Podcast App

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Apr 30, 202142:14
Virtual Recovery - Prof John Krakauer

Virtual Recovery - Prof John Krakauer

Strokes can have devastating consequences. Improving recovery outcomes will require new thinking. My grandmother's stroke years ago shook my family. I saw her in fits over the loss of precious skills—the simple joy of typing, gone. The road to recovery is difficult, but the future of rehabilitation is bright and very interactive.

On this episode we'll speak with Jon Krakauer, M.A., M.D., neurologist, director of the Brain Learning and Movement Lab and professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, and Chief Medical and Scientific Advisor to MindMaze, a company developing such telerehabilitation and digital therapeutics for neurologic conditions.

Dr. Krakauer is a scientist and entrepreneur at the forefront of virtual recovery research. He is the head of one of the most multidisciplinary laboratories you'll come across (the BLAM Lab at Johns Hopkins) in which his team conducts foundational neuroscience research. He and his team have developed digital medicines for stroke rehabilitation and other applications. And he is not afraid to challenge conventional approaches or thinking.

Researchers and entrepreneurs like Dr. Krakauer are building entire virtual worlds to help patients navigate recovery more interactively and effectively. A new wave of digital therapeutics leveraging software, devices, even robotics to deliver novel experiences to patients is coming online.

My grandmother never fully regained the ability to type. The work of Dr. Krakauer, collaborators, and other scientists working on this new type of digital neuropharmacology could potentially engage more of the brain to drive better outcomes for patients in the future. 

Virtual recovery is here, and this medicine cabinet is in the cloud.

If you like this episode of the TomorrowScale Podcast, please subscribe, write us a review, follow us Twitter, support us on Anchor and Patreon, or send us an email.

These are stories from the cutting edge of science and medicine.

This is TomorrowScale. Hosted by Justin Briggs (@briggsly).

BLAM Lab (http://blam-lab.org/)

MindPod Dolphin (formerly 'I Am Dolphin', https://www.mindmaze.com/healthcare/digital-therapies-for-brain-repair/#mind-pod)

MindMaze (http://mindmaze.com)

MSquare Healthcare (https://msquarehealthcare.com/)

@BLAMLab on Twitter (https://twitter.com/blamlab)

@TomorrowScale on Twitter (https://twitter.com/tomorrowscale)

Mar 30, 202155:07
Breaking the Synthesis Barrier - PostEra

Breaking the Synthesis Barrier - PostEra

How do you make a molecule? We’ve talked before on the TomorrowScale podcast about the challenges facing chemists–the “synthesis barrier.” The creation of novel materials and the discovery of small molecule drugs is a labor-intensive, iterative process. Exploring new chemical space requires chemistry know-how, ingenuity, and brute force experimentation. It was thought that the chemical space is too vast, and the problem too multifactorial for machine learning to make much headway to unlock nature’s recipe book.

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

PostEra uses machine learning to power a Chemistry-as-a-Service offering that hopes to accelerate drug discovery.

On this episode we’ll meet Dr. Alpha Lee, Chief Scientific Officer, and Aaron Martin, CEO, two of three founders of PostEra. We discuss their work developing novel machine learning models that have demonstrated significant step-change improvements in the state of the art on chemistry-related and binding prediction data science tasks. 

Dr. Lee’s research, starting from his lab at the University of Cambridge, includes a model that “speaks chemistry” [1], a graph neural network model that handles uncertainty in low data environments [2], and another that leverages the statistics of random matrices to tease the signal from the noise [3].

What is the future of chemistry? Listen to find out.

“We are in a position similar to that of a man who was provided with a bunch of keys and who, having to open several doors in succession, always hit on the right key on the first or second trial. He became skeptical concerning the uniqueness of the coordination between keys and doors.” - Eugene Wigner, “
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (1960)

This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

PostEra: https://postera.ai

PostEra COVID-19 Moonshot: https://postera.ai/covid

“Crowdsourcing drug discovery during a pandemic” letter in Nature Chemistry

[1] Molecular transformer (Schwaller et al 2019)

[2] Random matrix discriminant (RMD) (Lee et al 2019)

[3] Bayesian graph convolutional neural networks (GCNN) (Zhang and Lee 2019)

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale

Listen on Your Favorite Podcast App

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Oct 06, 202038:48
The Last Interface - Paradromics

The Last Interface - Paradromics

The development of brain-machine or brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) approaches an inflection point; not just the pace of BCI progress, but also the capabilities and willingness to explore the field of neurotechnology have accelerated dramatically in recent years.

1 ... 100 ... 3,072 ... 65,536 ...

On this episode of the TomorrowScale podcast, we speak with the scientist and entrepreneur leading a startup developing implantable connections between our brains and computers. Our guest is Dr. Matt Angle, CEO of Austin, TX based Paradromics. He and his team just announced the ARGO system: a brain computer interface consisting of an implantable microwire electrode array with over 10,000 channels per square centimeter. At 26 Gigabits per second they have demonstrated the largest ever electrical recording of cortical activity in preclinical studies. At 65,536 parallel electrode channels, Paradromics has opened the largest window into the senses and doorway into the brain to date.

In our conversation, we discuss the science of brain computer interface technology and look toward the potential clinical and consumer applications for melding humans and machines. Also, Matt candidly addresses the balance between the hype and hurdles that facing Paradromics and the neurotechnology field at large: Everything from the immense engineering and computation challenges, to the systemic issues holding back hard tech commercialization, a neurotechnology competitive playing field that now includes billionaire pet projects, and what it was like moving their company out of Silicon Valley.

This is the TomorrowScale podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Paradromics: https://paradromics.com

ARGO Announcement: https://paradromics.com/news/paradromics-unveils-the-largest-ever-electrical-recordings-in-cortex/

"The Argo: A 65,536 channel recording system for high density neural recording in vivo" (Sahasrabuddhe 2020, bioArxiv preprint): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.17.209403v1

Some of the labs mentioned on the show: 1, 2, 3

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The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Aug 14, 202001:01:31
On-Demand Biology - Tierra Biosciences

On-Demand Biology - Tierra Biosciences

How do you build biology? Simple: DNA to RNA to proteins, right? Not so fast. 

Each one of your trillions of cells are themselves little factories, constantly producing various peptides and proteins that your body needs from building blocks of amino acids encoded by our genes. Multiple industries use various forms of biological manufacturing wherein they've harnessed cells of some kind: yeast, E coli, animal, and human cell lines to manufacture proteins for us. But there are downsides to traditional cell culture methods; those same cells that protect also constrain. And some scientists want to leave the cell behind entirely.

On this episode, we'll speak about the potential of cell-free manufacturing "bits to biology" with Tierra Biosciences CEO Zachary Sun, PhD, who co-founded Tierra with leading synthetic biologists in Harvard's George Church and CalTech's Richard Murray. Their vision is to "break free of the cell and fundamentally change how scientists approach discovery." Launched just last month, Sol by Tierra is a cell-free manufacturing system that serves as a biological synthesis-as-a-service layer for R&D scientists. And it could play a key role enabling an on-demand biological future, where the protein of interest is just a click away.

This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Tierra Biosciences: https://tierrabiosciences.com

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale

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Join our mailing list: https://tomorrowscale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Jun 26, 202039:14
Nature's Nuclear - Oklo Inc

Nature's Nuclear - Oklo Inc

On this episode Oklo co-founders Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran join us to discuss what it took to get their startup to this point in development of the first advanced nuclear fission power plant; how a chance meeting with Sam Altman (OpenAI, YCombinator) changed their path; and how to think big, by starting small, even in nuclear.

This year, Oklo became the first company to submit a combined construction and operating license application to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or NRC) for what is called an "advanced fission power plant." (Update 6/15/20: Oklo's application has been accepted and docketed for review by the NRC.)

Their design, the Aurora "powerhouse" centers around the concept not of a traditional reactor, but of a small, modular fission battery hundreds of times smaller than traditional reactors. Listen as Jake and Caroline take us through the fascinating founding story of Oklo and their big vision for the small future of clean energy. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

Oklo Inc: https://oklo.com/

Aurora Powerhouse Press Release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191202005499/en/Oklo-Announces-Aurora-Advanced-Fission-Clean-Energy

Aurora's NRC Application Accepted for Docketing: https://www.ans.org/news/article-269/auroras-docketing-marks-dawn-for-advanced-reactor-licensing/

http://TomorrowScale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Jun 12, 202001:36:04
Trials to Your Door - Sanguine Biosciences

Trials to Your Door - Sanguine Biosciences

At the center of every clinical trial is a group of patients; each with a medical condition that we seek to understand more about through interacting with those patients directly. Startups like Sanguine Biosciences are part of a clinical services innovation layer, connecting population health, clinical research, and healthcare delivery in new ways using new technologies. On this episode, our guest is Brian Neman, CEO of Sanguine Biosciences, and adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy. We discuss how recent technological advancements enable new way to make clinical research more patient-centric, better efficiency, and—critically in the time of COVID-19, ensure continuity of care and the advancement of medical research. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs

Sanguine Biosciences: https://sanguinebio.com

https://TomorrowScale.com

Disclosures: The host and guest have no conflicts to disclose. Mr. Briggs and companies he is affiliated with are not current or previous clients of Sanguine Biosciences. The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

May 29, 202034:33
Your Digital Twin - UnlearnAI

Your Digital Twin - UnlearnAI

On this episode we'll meet biophysicist, machine learning researcher, and CEO of UnlearnAI Dr. Charles Fisher. He and the team at Unlearn have the goal to build the entire biomedical machine learning stack, from scratch. Their strategy is that with a fit-for-purpose biomedical machine learning infrastructure and novel deep learning techniques, along with enough data about patients, that they can generate synthetic versions of actual patients, entirely in the data, with the goal to make them “computationally indistinguishable” from real patients. A “digital twin” that could help to better understand the impact of medicines before they’re used in a patient, or in clinical trials to be used alongside real patients in what they call “intelligent control arms.” Unlearn believes that we can obtain the same rigorous, statistically-powered clinical evidence but with fewer subjects. A fascinating approach to the problem of how to make clinical trials more efficient, and understand more about what may be possible with more and better patient data. This is the Tomorrow Scale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs (@briggsly).

Unlearn AI: https://unlearn.health

Charles Fisher CV, Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MQlhMlwAAAAJ&hl=en

Boltzmann Encoded Adversarial Machines (BEAM) paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.08682.pdf

“The FDA needs to set standards for using artificial intelligence in drug development” by Dr. Charles Fisher in StatNews, 11/7/2019: https://www.statnews.com/2019/11/07/artificial-intelligence-drug-development-fda-standards-needed/

Dr. Fisher’s presentation at a recent FDA Meeting (begins on page 175; linked here since we didn't end up discussing each point after all): https://www.fda.gov/media/136577/download#page=175

Photocredit: Dr. Fisher’s headshot, augmented based on the blue binary background image, using a neural style transfer model found here: https://git.io/Jf4a6

http://TomorrowScale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

May 14, 202053:29
The Measure of Medicine - Prof. Frank Lichtenberg

The Measure of Medicine - Prof. Frank Lichtenberg

On this show we talk a lot about the opportunity and the promise of innovation. It is incredibly difficult, however, to study the actual impact of those new technologies. In healthcare, we do have some chance to measure the impact of new medicines. But! What data do we use? What metrics are used? and why are they used? Today’s guest is Dr. Frank Lichtenberg, the Courtney C. Brown Professor of Business at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. Dr. Lichtenberg has taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Penn, worked for the Department of Justice, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Census Bureau, and has conducted several large studies on the impact of pharmaceutical innovation across diseases and geographies over the last 25 years. Right now, billions are sheltering in place from a pathogen that we must fight with drugs and vaccines. The purpose of this conversation is to gain a little bit better understanding of an important topic, relayed in the voice of a leading researcher, so that we may, in the future, invent and develop safer, better technologies to fight disease. To do that, we must measure medicine’s impact not only on the patient, but also the patient population, the healthcare system, and the entire economy. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

Dr. Lichtenberg’s Columbia Page: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/frl1

Dr. Lichtenberg’s Publications via Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=t3NSVwoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

http://TomorrowScale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

May 08, 202049:58
Computing the Universe - Jonathan Gorard, Wolfram Physics

Computing the Universe - Jonathan Gorard, Wolfram Physics

On this episode, we’ll speak with one of the principal researchers on the Wolfram Physics Project, Jonathan Gorard. We'll discuss how they plan to actually implement their “fundamental theory of the universe” and build these computational universes.

Jonathan Gorard is a theoretical mathematician, researcher at the University of Cambridge, and consultant to Wolfram Research. He is ostensibly the scientist tasked with doing the maths to demonstrate these concepts to the scientific community and the public. Actually proving these ideas out in the open, over the din of more than a few detractors, may be one of the most difficult parts of this highly complex project.

Along with a call for scientists everywhere to contribute and critique the project in an open-source manner, the team published nearly a thousand pages and over 500 hours of video. All since Wolfram’s announcement on April 14th titled, “We may have found a fundamental theory of the universe… and it’s beautiful.” The Wolfram Physics team, consisting of Stephen Wolfram, Jonathan Gorard, and theoretical physicist and competitive programmer Max Piskanov, are literally live-streaming the entire thing. Scientific discovery, open collaboration, and peer review happening in real-time, and anyone can get involved. Now that is beautiful. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

Wolfram Physics Project Website: https://www.wolframphysics.org/

Announcement by Stephen Wolfram: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/

Registry of Notable Universes: https://www.wolframphysics.org/universes/

Jonathan Gorard, Cambridge University Center for Scientific Computing: https://www.csc.cam.ac.uk/academic/MPhilSciComp/directory/gorard

http://TomorrowScale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Apr 29, 202001:09:51
Accelerating Evolution - Prof. Chang Liu

Accelerating Evolution - Prof. Chang Liu

Dr. Chang Liu, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, has transformed traditional yeast culture methods into an engine to accelerate evolution in order to understand the drivers of selection and gain the ability view fitness not as a crossroads, but a landscape--a mutational topology that he and his collaborators are able to navigate. ACE, or automated continuous evolution, combines the Liu Lab’s orthogonal replication system, OrthoRep, with the robotic culturing system eVOVLR, developed by the Khalil Lab at Boston University, to automate evolution. Together, they can synthesize new biology; build novel enzymes and proteins to serve multiple industries; and, even help us fight not just today’s pandemic but tomorrow’s pandemics as well. A story of discovery in the fast-paced world of synthetic biology. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

ACE pre-print on bioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.21.960328

Liu Lab at UC Irvine: https://liulab.com/

Khalil Lab at BU: https://www.bu.edu/khalillab/

http://tomorrowscale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Apr 16, 202045:27
Chemification - Prof. Lee Cronin

Chemification - Prof. Lee Cronin

In the beginning, there was chemistry. Well, not exactly. From those primordial reaction conditions … life emerged. But how? What separates chemistry from biology? How do we study the origin of life? What can we do with a Chemputer?

In this episode, we’ll head to the lab of Dr. Lee Cronin, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and perhaps one of the most provocative chemists in the field today. We'll discuss his lab's view into the origin of life, the balance between theory and reality, and how the Chemputer could be an important component to the future of chemistry. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

The Cronin Lab: https://croninlab.com
Dr. Cronin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/leecronin
Chemify.org: http://chemify.org

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs (https://twitter.com/briggsly) to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Apr 03, 202047:11
Building a Brain - Rain Neuromorphics

Building a Brain - Rain Neuromorphics

What does the future of scientific computing look like? Labs all over the world are racing to build chips based on our brains. But what can it do? And what will it be used for? On this episode, we’ll meet a company that built an actual analog neural network in order to solve this problem. Gordon Wilson, CEO of Rain Neuromorphics. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs. 

Rain Neuromorphics (https://rain.ai) 

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs (https://twitter.com/briggsly) to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building science-based businesses, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Mar 26, 202052:54
Engineering the (Immune) System - DistributedBio

Engineering the (Immune) System - DistributedBio

On today’s episode, we’ll sit down with DistributedBio co-founder and CEO Jacob Glanville, and Centivax program lead and director of contract research Sarah Ives. We’ll hear more about the company's founding story, get perspective on bootstrapping a biotech company, and learn more about their internal and client development programs that cover everything from vaccines, antibodies, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies, and which target diseases as varied as influenza, HIV, cancer, and even the SARS-CoV2 Coronavirus. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

DistributedBio (https://distributedbio.com)

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The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us. Thank you for listening. Please science responsibly.

Mar 16, 202057:16
Information Therapeutics - Oisin Biotechnologies & OncoSenX

Information Therapeutics - Oisin Biotechnologies & OncoSenX

Drugs are getting smarter. A new wave of companies, including those founded by our guest, Matthew Scholz of Oisin Biotechnologies and OncoSenX, ride on recent advances in drug and gene delivery that are enabling what could be considered intelligent therapeutics. That is, they are able to both identify target cells (not visibly, but genetically) and then selectively destroy those cancerous or senescent cells. Novel medicines that include a diagnostic targeting system right within them, to potentially treat everything from cancer to aging. This is the TomorrowScale podcast.

Oisin Biotechnologies: https://www.oisinbio.com/

OncoSenX: https://www.oncosenx.com/

Follow Us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomorrowScale

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future, and to hear their stories from the benches and in the trenches of research & development. 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. Thanks for listening. Please science responsibly.


Feb 27, 202042:56
Reading Between the Scans - AIQ Solutions

Reading Between the Scans - AIQ Solutions

The ability to visualize disease is vital to many parts of patient care. On this episode, we’ll meet AIQ Solutions, a company that is taking a long-term view of a patient’s response to cancer treatment using computer vision and artificial intelligence. In doing so, they might change not just how we visualize cancer, but how we treat cancer.

Our guest is a former GE executive turned entrepreneur Eric Horler, the CEO of AIQ Solutions, based in Madison, Wisconsin. This is the TomorrowScale podcast, hosted by Justin Briggs.

AIQ Solutions: https://www.aiq-solutions.com/

Follow Us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomorrowScale

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future, and hear stories about how to build the future. 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. Thanks for listening. Please science responsibly.

Feb 18, 202040:16
Generating Discoveries in Days - InSilico Medicine

Generating Discoveries in Days - InSilico Medicine

Drug discovery is changing. Deep generative models, as being pioneered by our guest Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of InSilico Medicine, are able to generate entirely new molecules and even, as we’ll hear, can discover new targets altogether. Within days.

This fall, InSilico and collaborators published an application of their generative reinforcement learning (GENTRL) to generate tens of thousands of novel compounds, synthesized only the 6 best, and identified a selective and nanomolar-potent candidate among them. We discuss deep generative drug discovery models, promise and criticism on these new methodologies, and dive into new research from their pending publications on NASH and we hear about a breaking new contribution by the InSilico team regarding a potential treatment for CoronaVirus. This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. I’m Justin Briggs.

Sources:

“Deep learning enables rapid identification of potent DDR1 kinase inhibitors” (Zhavoronkov 2019)

“Reply to: Assessing the Impact of Generative AI on Medicinal Chemistry” (Zhavoronkov 2020)

https://insilico.com

https://tomorrowscale.com

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future, and hear stories about how to build the future. 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. Thanks for listening. Please science responsibly.

Feb 06, 202037:44
Medicine from Microbes - Lodo Therapeutics

Medicine from Microbes - Lodo Therapeutics

Guests: Dr. Dale Pfost, CEO & Dr. Steven Colletti, SVP R&D - Lodo Therapeutics

On this episode, we'll hear about Lodo and their plan to discover medicine from microbes. This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

Lodo Therapeutics is a drug discovery company based in New York City. Founded based on work by Dr. Sean Brady at Rockerfeller University to discover, develop and even produce medicines by exploring the uncultured microbiomes in our environment. Lodo’s platform could potentially unlock therapeutic molecules encoded within the genes of these bacteria by sequencing the microbial DNA. By doing so first, and at massive scale, they’re able to bridge next-generation sequencing with high-throughput screening to discover what they call “genetically-encoded small molecule” therapeutics. Armed with hit-producing microbes and mountains of data, they then leverage machine learning and synthetic biology to optimize and even produce these drug candidate compounds rather than relying on traditional synthesis approaches. It’s modern drug discovery and development from the ground up.

To guide us through this complex technology stack, we’ll meet two guides. Dr. Steve Colletti spent 24 years building multiple discovery pipelines across Merck, and currently leads R&D at Lodo. Dr. Dale Pfost is a five-time biotechnology CEO and former General Partner at venture firm Advent Life Sciences, who recently joined Lodo Therapeutics as CEO and Chairman.

Lodo Therapeutics: http://lodotherapeutics.com

TomorrowScale Website: http://TomorrowScale.com

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tomorrowscale

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future, and hear stories about how to build the future. 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.  Thanks for listening.

Jan 14, 202037:23
Proof of Prophylaxis - MIT Langer Lab

Proof of Prophylaxis - MIT Langer Lab

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.


Jan 03, 202032:04
Life from Light - Prellis Biologics

Life from Light - Prellis Biologics

On this episode, we’ll meet Melanie Matheu, Ph.D., a scientist turning light into life. Her company, Prellis Biologics, has developed what may be a defining technology for the bioprinting industry: A method to print biology on the cellular level. They're shipping printed vasculature and organoids now, and have a plan to be in the clinic with printed organs within 3 years; that's right, some day you might walk around with a Prellis Biologics bioprinted organ inside you. Another interesting startup with huge potential. This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs.

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.

 Visit us at http://TomorrowScale.com

Nov 20, 201933:19
Harnessing Photosynthesis - Zeakal

Harnessing Photosynthesis - Zeakal

Unanticipated results can lead to great discoveries. Zeakal is a company founded by turning such an unexpected outcome into a promising biotechnology company. We conducted multiple interviews between 3 cities, two hemispheres, and a dozen time zones. We have one of the co-inventors, Dr. Greg Bryan, CTO, take us through the science behind the PhotoSeed and the genetics of photosynthesis. Then, stateside, we dig into the agricultural biotech industry and how Zeakal the company is approaching it, with CEO Han Chen. This is the TomorrowScale Podcast. Hosted by Justin Briggs. 

The TomorrowScale Podcast was created by Justin Briggs to showcase fascinating technology companies building the future. Interview 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.

Visit us at http://TomorrowScale.com

Oct 20, 201952:37
Serial (Hard Science) Entrepreneurship - Sensulin
Oct 01, 201942:44
TomorrowScale Podcast Preview

TomorrowScale Podcast Preview

The TomorrowScale Podcast is a series of conversations with the scientists and entrepreneurs who are building the future.

We explore cutting edge technologies with huge potential, and go deep to understand how these founders and inventors must chart entirely new territory to bring their technology to market. We'll learn - quite literally - how science fiction becomes reality.

Jul 12, 201900:55