David Charlot: Charlot Biosciences

A bioengineering startup tries to commercialize a new tool that might totally change the way we identify and treat disease.

We have tools to look inside the body without killing the patient, so why should we have to kill cells to understand disease? It’s hard to believe that only a hundred years ago, scientists mostly studied disease by dissecting cadavers. Doctors didn’t have tools like blood tests, imaging, molecular biology, and other diagnostics to see what was going on inside a body while a person was living. So our knowledge of anatomy and our ability to identify illness was limited to the dead body. That seems incredibly primitive today, but that’s what we’ve been doing at the cellular level until now.

David Charlot and his startup Charlot Biosciences is changing that. I was curious to learn more about their technology and what that means for the future of diagnosing and treating disease. Also, since I’m definitely not an expert in the life sciences, I wanted to learn about the existing techniques we hear a lot about, like flow cytometry, PCR, gene sequencing, immunotherapy, and the latest hot thing, CRISPR. It’s exciting to see him in action at the cusp of growing the business. We talk about commercializing university research, and he shares his lessons learned, which are transferrable to a broad range of businesses.

Links and social handles:

Website: http://cbio.io

Facebook: @cbiosciences

Twitter: @c_biosciences

LinkedIn: @cbiosciences

 

For more information, bios, and links, check out the show notes at http://makeitinla.org/davidcharlot.