Behind the Breakthroughs

Janice Chen, PhD, helped transform CRISPR from a lab discovery into a life-saving tool. As co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences with Jennifer Doudna, Trevor Martin, and Lucas Harrington, she’s driven efforts to harness CRISPR for human health and diagnostics. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Chen shares how she’s turning a once-theoretical gene editor into a medical revolution.

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With recent safety setbacks in gene therapy underscoring the risks of genetic medicine, Amber Salzman, PhD, is charting a different course. After 25 years in big pharma, she now leads Epicrispr, where their Gene Expression Modulation System (GEMS) fine-tunes gene activity to tackle diseases too complex for traditional gene replacement, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Salzman shares how epigenomic...

Think Good Will Hunting—but in biology. Mike Previte, PhD, once at Illumina and now CTO and co-founder of Element Biosciences, is building tools to move beyond DNA and RNA sequencing toward a true 5D view of life. On Behind the Breakthroughs, he explains how technologies like AVITI 24 could unlock predictive precision medicine by revealing how cells behave across time and space.

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Hervé Affagard, CEO and co-founder of MaaT Pharma, traded industrial engineering for medicine after cancer struck his family. Now, he’s pioneering microbiome-based therapies to restore balance in the gut, boost immunity, and tackle diseases from graft-versus-host to cancer itself. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Hervé shares how reimagining our inner ecosystem could transform treatment.

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When Michelle Werner, PhD, learned her son Caffrey had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, she left big pharma to lead Alltrna—a Flagship Pioneering company engineering tRNAs to tackle rare diseases with no treatments. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Werner shares her journey as both mother and CEO, and how Alltrna’s approach could unlock therapies for thousands of conditions caused by nonsense mutations.

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Public health is greatly benefiting from population genomics screening, as it provides patients with risk education and treatment for symptoms of life-threatening diseases that they would not have been aware of through routine checkups. So, why hasn't population genomic screening realized its full potential? As an internist geneticist and Medical Affairs Director at Helix, this issue became all the more real for Cassie Hajek, MD, w...

Three biotech trailblazers—Patrick Hsu (co-founder of the Arc Institute), Serge Saxonov (co-founder and CEO of 10x Genomics), and Gilad Almogy (co-founder and CEO of Ultima Genomics)—join forces to discuss their groundbreaking collaboration on the virtual cell. This ambitious project leverages advanced AI and cutting-edge genomic technologies to model and predict cellular behavior, a leap forward in understanding complex biological...

For years, Tempus operated in mystery—its website sparse on details while headlines announced massive funding and high-profile partnerships. The claim? AI-enabled solutions for personalized healthcare. Intrigued, I sought answers. In this episode, Kate Sasser, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus, shared insights into how the company uses AI to analyze unstructured clinical data to develop patient-derived organoid models for the...

At just 25, UPenn dropout Kian Sadeghi is betting big on personalized genomics. As founder of Nucleus Genomics, he’s offering affordable whole-genome sequencing direct to consumers and rethinking how patients, clinicians, and insurers engage with genetic data. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Sadeghi unpacks the fall of 23andMe, the rise of patient agency, and why he thinks genomics needs its own Bill Gates.

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Imagine a future where your ancestry not only tells a story about your past but also holds the key to your health. That's the vision drives Carlos D. Bustamante, PhD, population geneticist and founder of Galatea Bio, as he embarks on an ambitious mission: building a biobank of 10 million genomes to transform drug development and healthcare across Latin America. With thousands of founder populations scattered across the region—from ...

Josh Denny, MD, turned a family tragedy with cystic fibrosis into a lifelong mission to transform medicine. Now CEO of the NIH’s All of Us Research Program, he’s leading one of the largest precision medicine efforts in history—850,000 participants strong with 400,000 genomic profiles and counting. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Denny shares how this unprecedented dataset could rewrite the future of healthcare, from rare disease to ev...

The sage-like Uli Stilz, PhD, Vice President of Novo Nordisk, provides insight into the inner workings of Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub, which he founded in Boston, to tackle complex, multifactorial diseases that impact billions of people, such as diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases.

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Produced by Bill Lev...

Despite advances in screening, only one in six U.S. cancers is detected early. Tomasz (Tom) Beer, MD, left most of his clinical practice to join Exact Sciences and push the frontier with blood-based multicancer early detection (MCED) tests. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Beer explains how these tests could transform cancer screening and catch disease before it’s too late.

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Katy Rezvani, MD, PhD, turned her fascination with immunology into a career engineering allogeneic immune cell therapies. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Rezvani explains why NK cells—unlike T cells—hold promise for safer, more accessible cancer treatments, and how her work at MD Anderson is shaping the future of cell therapy.

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"Are we close to curing diseases like ALS and Alzheimer's?" In recent years, several academic and industry endeavors have given reason to be hopeful. Toby Ferguson, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer at Voyager Therapeutics, which develops genetic medicines and delivery tools to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). In this episode, Ferguson explains the current state of therapeutics for neurological and neurodegenerative disease...

Tomi Pastinen, MD, PhD, is transforming pediatric medicine through genomics. As Director at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, he’s pioneered pharmacogenetic testing and 5-nucleotide genomic sequencing, bringing precision medicine to children. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Pastinen discusses the promise—and challenges—of turning genetic diagnoses into real treatments, from rare inherited diseases to complex conditions like autism.

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Tom Whitehead, father of Emily Whitehead—the first pediatric CAR T patient—turned a harrowing journey into a mission to help families navigating life-threatening illness. On Behind the Breakthroughs, he shares the emotional story of Emily’s treatment and the challenges patients face when cutting-edge research intersects with real-world care.

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Harry Clifford, PhD, Digital Biology Lead at NVIDIA, discusses how the computer manufacturing and AI computing leader is building a technology platform to address data bottlenecks in drug development and healthcare to advance precision medicine.

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Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

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Michael Severino, MD, discusses the approaches for developing "genome writers" at Tessera Therapeutics, where he joined as CEO in 2022, and the advantages of performing in vivo genome editing over ex vivo approaches. Severino explains where the company is in utilizing its genome writing platform to perform edits in vivo on its journey toward the clinic.

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