In this episode, Nicole Novroski, PhD, examines the up-and-coming field of forensic genomics, covering everything from current and controversial forensic genomics research topics to mistakes and misconceptions about the field brought on by television and film and to some of the field’s ethical quandaries.

Dr. Nicole Novroski is a forensic biologist in the Forensic Science Program, housed within the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Mary Anne Liebert journal Forensic Genomics.

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Cued by the Mary Anne Liebert journal Human Gene Therapy, serial entrepeuneur and investor Nessan Bermingham, PhD, examines the state of human gene therapy, its future, and the technical, financial, and regulatory obstacles.

Nessan has founded multiple companies in the Life Sciences space, most notably, Intellia Therapeutics. Currently, Nessan is an Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures. He focuses on companies with an emphasis on nucleic acid editing, novel delivery systems, gene & cell therapy, novel target identification and data analytics for drug discovery and development. Nessan is trained as a scientist. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Imperial College London and was a Howard Hughes Associate Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine.

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Martha Clokie, PhD, is focused on finding and developing bacteriophages that kill pathogens to make new antimicrobials. As a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Leicester, Dr. Clokie is focused on finding and developing bacteriophages that kill pathogens to make new antimicrobials. She is currently developing an alternative, phage-based treatment for Lyme disease and Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can infect the bowel and cause diarrhea. Dr. Clokie is also studying how phages affect bacteria in the gut and how phages can be used to treat Salmonella in animals. She is also the editor in chief of the Mary Anne Liebert journal Phage.

In this episode, Dr. Clokie chews over what makes a phage a good candidate for a therapeutic, how genomics has changed the phage research landscape, and what challenges remain or stand in the way of making phage therapy accessible and routine.

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This episode sees biotechnology through the eyes of George Church, PhD. In the academic world, Dr. Church is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and MIT, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. As a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Church has founded dozens of companies, and some of his most recent corporate endeavors include: de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences, personal genomics company Nebula Genomics, age-related disease company Rejuvenate Bio, xenotransplantation company E-genesis, and a newly unveiled astrobiology company named Copernicus Space Corporation.

In this episode, Dr. Church focuses on the reversal of age-related diseases, gene drives and other biotechnology ethical concerns, the potential of organismal DNA-based flight recorders, and what it takes for the visionary to get behind a project and take it from the lab and into the biotech industry. We also discuss Dr. Church’s recent review in the Mary Anne Liebert Journal Astrobiology on sending biological probes to space.

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