Best The Basic Bench Podcasts (2024)

1
Novel Translational Therapeutics With Linda Goodman 50:05

1y ago50:05

50:05

Episode Summary: Millions of people die every year from chronic diseases. Traditional drug discovery has failed in identifying solutions to many of these persistent health challenges. Functional genomics is offering a way forward by identifying gene networks and enabling the development of drugs with very specific targets. But, rather than just rel…

1
Building the DNA Oracle with Eeshit Vaishnav 55:29

1+ y ago55:29

55:29

Episode Summary The expression of genes in our genome to produce proteins and non-coding RNAs, the building blocks of life, is critical to enable life and human biology. So, the ability to predict how much of a gene is expressed based on that gene’s regulatory DNA, or promoter sequence, would help us both understand gene expression, regulation, and…

1
Demystifying Tech Transfer with Seth Bannon and Ashton Trotman-Grant 42:06

1+ y ago42:06

42:06

Episode Summary: In this very special episode of Translation, Seth is joined by Ash Trotman-Grant to demystify spinning out from academia. Much of this knowledge has so far only been available to select groups of academics and PhD founders are at a disadvantage – some potentially breakthrough technologies never saw the light of day and didn’t get a…

1
Cell Therapies of the Future with Dan Goodman 1:38:24

2y ago1:38:24

1:38:24

Episode Summary Chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, repurpose the build-in targeting and homing signals of our immune system to direct T cells to find and eliminate cancers. Although CAR-T cells have transformed the care of liquid tumors in the circulating blood, like B cell leukemia and lymphoma, CAR-T therapy has shown limited efficacy against s…

1
DNA Origami with Anastasia Ershova 38:35

2y ago38:35

38:35

Episode Summary: DNA is an ideal molecule for storing information in our genomes because it’s stable, programmable, and well understood. The same qualities make DNA a great building block or construction material for nanoscale biomolecular structures that have nothing to do with our genome, like molecular scaffolds created by folding DNA into 2D an…

1
Ep.12 Canceled already! Dang... 43:00

2y ago43:00

43:00

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Have your wife listen to the 1st few minutes, trust me you will thank us!! Might as well piss everyone off since it’s our last podcast before we get canceled... lol If you can’t drive, you can hold office. Wilson for 2024… He is your man for yo…

1
Ep. 11 Guess who’s back, Back again... We miss you all!! Now hold on 43:11

2y ago43:11

43:11

The crew is back, sorry for the hiatus… You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Shout out to my Eskimo Brothers! This one is for you!! LBZ lays down the brick, LBZ style… smooth and nasty… Then add water. DG “The in-laws kicked me out”. Look but don’t kill me. Being young isn’t all t…

1
Illuminating Biological Context with Josie Kishi 29:07

2y ago29:07

29:07

Episode Summary: Technologies like next-generation sequencing allow us to understand which RNA transcripts and proteins are expressed in biological tissues. However, it’s often equally important to understand how cells or molecules are positioned relative to one another! Whether it be a cell changing its shape, an organelle ramping up a metabolic p…

1
Peering Inside the Immune Response for Novel Antibodies with Nima Emami 54:01

2y ago54:01

54:01

Episode Summary: Antibodies are one of the greatest tools we have in our therapeutic arsenal and have transformed the way we treat cancer and autoimmunity. But we still largely develop these drugs using guess and check methods, massively slowing down the process. However, our own B cells are constantly making new antibodies against the pathogens an…

1
Powering the Biocomputing Revolution with LatchBio 59:56

2y ago59:56

59:56

Episode Summary Imagine if every graphics design company built its own version of Photoshop in-house. That’s exactly what’s happening today in biology research. Ten-fold increases in data every two years are forcing every biology team to build out their own, in-house bioinformatics stack to store, clean, pipe, and manage the massive volumes of data…

1
Irresistible Cancer Therapies with Nick Goldner 1:03:43

2+ y ago1:03:43

1:03:43

Episode Summary: Evolution is happening even at the cellular scale. Whether it's a virus, a bacterial pathogen, or a cancer cell, disease-causing agents are responding to the therapies we throw at them, updating their genes and molecular pathways to resist death. As a trained microbiologist, Nick Goldner and his co-founder Chris Bulow spent their y…

1
Screening for Enhanced RNA Vaccines with Kathrin Leppek, Gun Woo Byeon, and Hannah Wayment-Steele 49:07

3y ago49:07

49:07

Episode Summary: When COVID-19 hit and society decided to use mRNA vaccines for the first time, many questions remained about whether RNA itself was ready for the challenge. But three scientists at Stanford University who had barely worked with each other before the pandemic realized that RNA’s limitations were merely a design challenge and not an …

1
Illuminating Immunity to COVID-19 with Susanna Elledge 36:31

3y ago36:31

36:31

Episode Summary: COVID-19 tests have become synonymous with jamming a swab up our nose to find out whether we have an active infection. But as we progress through this pandemic, a test that tells us whether people have antibodies against the virus will be massively important to creating public health initiatives and deciding who to vaccinate next. …

1
Listening to Neurons with Sumner Norman 57:38

3y ago57:38

57:38

Episode Summary: Brain machine interfaces untangle the complex web of neurons firing in our brains and relay the underlying meaning to a computer. These devices are being adapted to help patients regain motor control, monitor our mental well being, and may one day even make us more empathetic. State of the art methods to do this have massive trade-…

1
Phage Evolved Medicine with Travis Blum 40:40

3y ago40:40

40:40

Episode Summary: Enzymes that break down other proteins, or proteases, could be used as a powerful therapeutic if they could specifically chew-up disease causing entities. However many proteases are non-specific, breaking any protein in their path, while the specific ones target proteins that would provide no therapeutic benefit. Travis and his col…

1
What boosts immune boosters? with Kevin Litchfield 49:06

3y ago49:06

49:06

Episode Summary: Novel drugs that boost the immune system to fight cancer have become pharma darlings in the few short years since their approval. These drugs, known as immunotherapies, have so far focused on improving T cell responses and can be used to cure a multitude of different cancer types. Yet more often than not, immunotherapies have no ef…

1
New CRISPR, New Function with Leo Vo 57:31

3y ago57:31

57:31

Episode Summary: In a single decade, CRISPR has made a dramatic impact on literally every facet of biotechnology. This game-changing system is traditionally programmed to make cuts at very specific parts of the genome, altering the code to cure disease. But a new class of CRISPRs discovered by Leo’s colleagues don’t simply cut DNA -- they integrate…

1
What Regulates the Regulatory T cells? with Jessica Cortez 41:05

3+ y ago41:05

41:05

Whether it's Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, or Crohn's Disease, autoimmunity is a rapidly growing problem that traditional pharmaceuticals have failed to completely cure. While these diseases have very different symptoms, they all have the same root cause -- the body’s immune system is attacking its own healthy organs. Lurking within o…

1
Why CAR T Therapies are Such a Headache with Kevin Parker 38:17

3+ y ago38:17

38:17

Engineered T cells that hunt and kill blood cancers have recently obtained three landmark FDA approvals, forever changing the way we treat this disease. Even with its massive clinical success, these cells come with life-threatening neurotoxicities. But is neurotoxicity a set feature of using T cell therapies or is our engineering accidentally targe…

1
Brewing a Life-Saving Drug in Yeast with Prashanth Srinivasan 53:26

3+ y ago53:26

53:26

Small molecules are a pillar of human health, making up a majority of the drugs we have in our healthcare arsenal. Many of these drugs are obtained by utilizing synthetic chemistry to modify the composition of some small molecule found in nature. Derivatives of tropane alkaloids, for example, alleviate neuromuscular disorders and are derived from a…

1
A New Era of Antibiotic Discovery with James Martin 36:45

3+ y ago36:45

36:45

Bacteria are rapidly evolving ways to resist antibiotics, causing minor infections to become life-threatening events. Compounding the problem, new antibiotics have been incredibly challenging to develop and pharma is economically disincentivized to invest in finding them. James Martin and his colleagues Joseph Sheehan and Benjamin Bratton took on t…

1
Engineering the Immune System to Kill Senescent Cells with Corina Amor Vegas 25:51

3+ y ago25:51

25:51

Hundreds of iterations of immune cells that are engineered to kill cancer have already been designed. Corina reached outside of this box to use the same synthetic biology principles to engineer T cells to attack senescent cells, a cell type that contributes to diseases of aging. Corina walks us through how her engineered T cells know the difference…

1
Episode 10. You don’t see any more snitching goats do you? 37:25

3+ y ago37:25

37:25

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Let the man have his countdown, dam it.. hahaha Lobotomies are no fun. LBZ secretly own his own moon! Count LBZ, at night is where it’s at. The family pet is blackmailing me, dam it Crack head marsupials on this show. I’ll do anything for a cok…

1
Episode 9. Nature you scary and you are the chooosen one. 46:03

3+ y ago46:03

46:03

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. What’s that sonny… Bluetooth thingy magija transistor radio contraption… How recycling works… unplug before you cut shred it… How was your day, Fine… that’s all I got. Time to pass the torch, move over old man. Birthday month for Mr. W at Big B…

1
Designing A Better COVID19 Vaccine with Nikolai Eroshenko 38:49

4y ago38:49

38:49

Could all the leading COVID19 vaccines have a fatal flaw in their design? A dizzying number of vaccines are being developed to protect society from the dangers of COVID19, each with its own benefits and pitfalls. At HelixNano, Nikolai Eroshenko and his team are designing a special type of vaccine with increased attention to ensuring that this prote…

1
Evolving AAVs for Gene Therapy with Pierce Ogden 51:14

4y ago51:14

51:14

Powered by synthetic biology, Pierce Ogden makes ALL possible mutations to an adeno-associated virus (AAV) outer shell and rapidly screens them to dissect their attributes. Pierce discusses the technological advances that make this breakthrough screen possible and the novel properties that were discovered. AAVs are rapidly becoming the prefered way…

1
Evolving Enzymes to Create Unnatural Compounds with Tina Boville 44:24

4y ago44:24

44:24

Commodity molecules are vital ingredients for everything important to our modern world including food, energy, and medicine. However, creating these molecules still largely relies on old processes that suffer from low yield, laborious methods, and unsustainable inputs and byproducts. Tina envisions a world where all molecules are created quickly, e…

1
Episode 8_CleanHome_Transformer_AntiMasker_JoeRoganMediator_Tyson 37:34

4y ago37:34

37:34

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Love long quiet peaceful bowl movements, don’t have kids Pandas don’t like making sweet love in front of strangers, what freaks… Chemical burns are a lot like a mix of STD’s according to the guys… haha 1.21 Gigawatts!!... Just my luck… Bird sto…

1
Episode 7_Alimony_AirConUnit_400Z_YardWork_Crocs 1:01:53

4y ago1:01:53

1:01:53

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. DG could be a great abstinence commercial in the 90’s!! Albeezy got T-boned? Mr. Wilson got his crocs on!! More house AC issues… It’s never were I left it… House remodeling in the day is for babies, men remodel at night DG loves that alimony, n…

1
Episode 6_Camping_BlackPanter 22:53

4y ago22:53

22:53

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Indio vs Death Valley, Dual Devils Anus’s?? Try saying that three times… Two Folds afraid of ICE? Get him TRUMP… Camping or Glamping? Screw the RV, that’s too rough of an outing… Shitty RV’s are the way to go One-liners are not as easy as they …

1
Episode 5_Coffee_Bikes_AuntBecky_Chimps 54:29

4y ago54:29

54:29

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Shitty or shittier coffee, Folgers or NesCafe pick your poison Mr. Wilson goes sheep herding with a senior Horny zoo animals D.A.R.E , drugs are baaaad M’Kay Cruising down the street in my BMX, slapping the b!tches, Jacking the hoes… Grease the…

1
Low-N Protein Engineering with Surge Biswas 29:34

4y ago29:34

29:34

Protein engineering has been dominated by two opposing paradigms; directed evolution, a massive screening technique, and rational design, a completely computational approach. Surge has fused these two paradigms by developing a machine learning technique that discovers an optimal protein design by training on a low number of engineered proteins. Her…

1
Episode 4_Fight to the bitter end... 34:34

4y ago34:34

34:34

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. How old is too old to fight? As long as the money is right, any age is good to go. Don’t mess with the Irish, unless you’re willing to fight. Wonder what Mr. Wilson looks like? Find out. 39 is the new senior age? Ask Mr. Wilson. Curious about t…

1
Episode 3_Double PP's!! 20:12

4y ago20:12

20:12

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Double DD’s nah, The show kicks off with Double P’s!! Penis & Prenups!! Lost your penis? Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia, one on your Arm. Learn how to make it grow. Already got a working penis? We tell you how to customize it to the Max!! Two folds gets his 15 …

1
Episode 2_Dirty Rat 38:11

4y ago38:11

38:11

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. Coin Shortage, car washes, short shorts, a short rant on crazy nonsense and man card revoke. Quarter vending machines, suckered out of hundreds of dollars for cheap Chinese childhood memories. Tall tales of getting old, Gardening, new tires and…

1
Episode 1_Next Topic 38:11

4y ago38:11

38:11

You waited long enough, but trust us; you will only be mildly disappointed. Here is the gist of the show. It’s our Nations B-Day, let’s celebrate this great country by killing some brain cells. Learn who is the Cheech and Chong of the group. Future plans to rock at the age of 80? Time to let loose and party on. Insane in the brain? More like Intern…

1
A deep breath in 4:40

9y ago4:40

4:40

Asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) are common conditions that affect the lives of many people. Dr Mona Bafadhel studies the pathophysiology of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). There are broadly two inflammatory phenotypes of COPD that are clinically indistinguishable but have different treatment responses. Dr Bafad…

1
Chemistry, epigenetics and drugs 3:57

9y ago3:57

3:57

Alteration of gene expression is fundamental to many diseases. A better understanding of how epigenetic proteins affect diseases provides a starting point for therapy development and the discovery of new drug. Professor Paul Brennan research focusses on epigenetics: the mechanisms that control gene expression. He studies how chemical probes interfe…

1
The genetics of metabolic diseases 4:51

9y ago4:51

4:51

A missing step in a metabolic pathway leads to the build-up of toxic compounds, and the lack of materials essential for normal function. Professor Wyatt Yue explores how genetic defects lead to disease at the molecular level, by determining 3D structures and biochemical properties of enzymes and protein complexes linked to congenital genetic errors…

1
Biological imaging 7:25

9+ y ago7:25

7:25

Video microscopy aims to improve target discovery and drug development and to do so generates large volumes of data. Professor Jens Rittscher has a joint appointment between the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the Target Discovery Institute and the Department of Engineering Science. His research aims to enhance our understanding of complex bi…

1
Pharmacogenomics 4:27

9+ y ago4:27

4:27

Dr Sebastian Nijman develops new approaches to study signalling networks in cancer cells and uncover specific weaknesses, particularly in breast and lung cancer. This can be used to develop more effective drugs and to better guide treatment decisions. In the context of cancer, genetic diversity means that we respond differently to various treatment…

1
The Global Health Network 5:00

11y ago5:00

5:00

Dr Trudie Lang tells us how the Global Health Network facilitates collaboration and resource sharing. Clinical trials establish the evidence base for prevention and treatment of disease and are critically important in the field of Global Health. Dr Trudie Lang leads the Global Health Clinical Trials group, which aims to promote and improve the cond…

1
Respiratory Medicine 5:48

11y ago5:48

5:48

Dr Najib Rahman talks about his research on respiratory medicine. The Pleura are thin membranes that cover the surface of the lungs. Dr Najib Rahman specialises in areas of respiratory medicine including pleural disease and the conduct and analysis of respiratory trials. Dr Rahman is currently conducting clinical studies in malignant and infectious…

1
Development of chemical probes 7:09

11y ago7:09

7:09

Professor Stefan Knapp tells us how the development of chemical probes helps us to find new drugs. The role of proteins in cellular signalling and disease is best studied through the development of highly specific chemical inhibitors, which can serve as a tool molecule for functional studies. Professor Stefan Knapp works to determine the structure …

1
Membrane proteins and drug development 5:01

11+ y ago5:01

5:01

Dr Liz Carpenter talks about her research on membrane proteins and drug development. Membrane proteins are the gateways to our cells - with nutrients, waste products, and even DNA and proteins entering and leaving cells via these tightly controlled proteins. Drugs often target membrane proteins; therefore, understanding their molecular structure he…

1
Clinical Trials in Gastroenterology 4:11

11+ y ago4:11

4:11

Dr Simon Travis tells us how clinical trials bring tomorrow's treatments to patients today. Before translating basic research into the clinic it is important to first undergo clinical trials in order to identify safe treatments and therapies for disease. Led by Dr Simon Travis, the Gastroenterology Clinical Trials Facility at Oxford University work…

1
Proteomics and Biomarkers 8:32

13y ago8:32

8:32

Dr Benedikt Kessler tells us how proteomics helps find biomarkers. Biomarkers are molecular features that give us clues about underlying biological processes. They are typically used to monitoring a disease or predicting the outcome of a treatment. Modern analytical equipment allows us to measure thousands of molecules at the same time. Dr Benedikt…

1
Drug Discovery 5:25

13+ y ago5:25

5:25

Professor Chas Bountra explains how new drugs can offer novel treatments for neurodegenerative and gastrointestinal diseases, as well as pain disorders. Professor Chas Bountra is interested in identifying and validating target proteins for drug discovery. Various technologies and strategies have allowed him to progress promising clinical candidates…

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