Trends from the Trenches

In this month’s episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Joseph La Barge. La Barge trained as an attorney but has spent most of his career building biotech businesses and securing funding. He shepherded Spark Therapeutics through its acquisition by Roche and has since joined Apertura Gene Therapy as CEO. He and Stan talk about the entrepreneurship journey, gene expression and capsid engineering, and Apertura’s future goals and projects.  Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Bio-IT World Europe Apertura Gene Therapy Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Change can be scary, but it can also bring new opportunities and lead to growth and innovation. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss from BioTeam and Adama Ibrahim, VP of Digital Strategy & Change Management at Novo Nordisk, delve into a conversation about humanity’s natural resistance to change, why it is important to overcome that resistance, and how change is the key to making progress. Ibrahim also shares how Novo Nordisk is supporting research organizations through change management, as well as how to incentivize people to embrace change in an ever-evolving world. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT WorldBioTeam Bio-IT World EuropeNovo Nordisk Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

It’s no secret that the industry is drowning in data. That’s why data management strategies are needed now more than ever to speed up discoveries and bring new solutions to the market. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss discusses data management strategies with Becky Upton, Ph. D., President of Pistoia Alliance. Dr. Upton shares how her organization is maximizing data management efficiency, such as delivering data at scale and harnessing AI to expedite R&D, and her thoughts on the challenges of setting standards. She also talks about Pistoia Alliance’s history and mission—and where the Alliance is headed in the future. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Bio-IT World Europe Pistoia Alliance Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Going from one field to the next can be a tricky thing to navigate. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Tom Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of Iambic Therapeutics, about his journey from academia as a professor at the California Institute of Technology to getting B-Round funding as the CEO of his own start-up. Miller discusses why he started his company, what inspired him to turn his research into an entrepreneurial venture, and how combining physics and data can create more data-efficient AI algorithms that vastly improve accuracy in prediction models. Miller also shares advice and insights for academic researchers on taking their discoveries and bringing them to the market. Links from this episode:   Bio-IT World BioTeam Bio-IT World Europe Iambic Therapeutics  Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Heidi Rehm, PhD, Chair Elect of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), about data sharing policies and standards that can advance both genomics and health. Rehm discusses the benefits of data sharing on a global scale, how organizations can reduce friction of people’s usage and adoption of standards, and successful examples of implementation. She also shares her thoughts on the future of AI, “data citizenship,” and how the COVID-19 pandemic paved a hopeful road of new opportunities for researchers everywhere to work together and share data to help humanity.  Links from this episode:  GA4GH Broad Institute Center for Genomic Medicine, MGH Harvard Medicale School Bio-IT World BioTeam Bio-IT World Europe Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

In the latest episode of the Trends from the Trenches podcast, host Stan Gloss and Bryn Roberts, PhD, Global Head of Data & Analytics at Roche Information Solutions explore the Why and the How behind AI. What used to be “happily left a bit in the background” is now main stage thanks to everyone’s new interest in ChatGPT. Roberts recommends applying pharma’s Target Product Profiles (TPPs) to AI products as well: understanding what a tool or model should do, who its users are, how it will be delivered, and what biases to watch out for. This approach will help us develop, train, tune, monitor, and manage the AI models that he expects will bring significantly more products and better products at a dramatically reduced cost.Links from this episode:  Roche Information Solutions Submit a question for Bryn and Stan to cover at Bio-IT World Europe Bio-IT World BioTeam Bio-IT World Europe Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

After the “magical moment of hope” when the first human genome was sequenced, Jeanne Kehren switched from veterinary medicine to the pharmaceutical industry. Today, she is the SVP of Digital & Commercial Innovation and CIO at Bayer Pharmaceuticals and works in various areas, including sustainability, digital health, and digital transformation. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, host Stan Gloss speaks with Kehren about what drew her to pharmaceuticals, the potential future of digital twins, and what innovation means to her. Kehren also shares her thoughts about generative AI’s role in innovation and the impact it might have on the job market. Links from this episode:  Bayer Pharmaceuticals Bio-IT World BioTeam Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

A few years ago, artificial intelligence was in its developmental stages. Today, it is widely used by various industries and several companies are exploring new ways to utilize its tremendous potential. In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, Stan Gloss speaks with Jarrod Anderson, Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence at ADM, who discusses prioritizing projects, selecting the best team members, and overcoming the biggest challenges that companies encounter in the machine learning sphere. He also shares his thoughts on the future of AI, including its role in sustainability and environmental preservation, as well as its contributions on productivity among workers.  Links from this episode:  ADM Bio-IT World BioTeam Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

In this episode of Trends from the Trenches, Stan Gloss speaks with Efosa Ojomo, director of the Global Prosperity Group at the Clayton Christensen Institute (CCI) and coauthor of The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, about the parallels between consumption economy and life sciences research. Ojomo discusses how relying on data metrics does not necessarily provide full insight on what a consumer audience needs, why it is important to also look at non-consumers, how to overcome barriers of consumption—and how all of these questions can apply to research. He also delves into his experiences working with his late mentor Clayton Christensen, whose theories, models, and frameworks have pivoted the CCI’s mission of understanding the complex world of global development and, ultimately, achieving prosperity. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam  Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Bryn Roberts has spent thirty years in informatics and data, most recently at Roche and before that at AstraZeneca. Now as Global Head of Data and Analytics at Roche Information Solutions, Roberts applies his career-long learnings to the current era of data in life sciences, offering advice for building data citizenship, creating a FAIR data culture, and avoiding vendor lock-in.  Links from this episode:  Bryn Roberts: Reflections on Pharma’s Scientific Computing Journey Bio-IT World BioTeam Roche Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

At Pfizer, AI plays a key role in every step of the drug discovery process, Anastasia Christianson, Global Head of AI, ML, Analytics, and Data at Pfizer, tells Stan Gloss on the latest episode of the Trends from the Trenches podcast. Christianson lists the areas at Pfizer where AI is in play and for which she has AI/ML responsibility: research and discovery, clinical development, manufacturing supply chain, commercial, medical affairs, human resources, financial departments, and more. Pfizer doesn’t have a digital strategy, Christianson says, turning that buzzword on its head. “Instead, we have a business strategy for a digital world.”  Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Pfizer Christianson’s Plenary Presentation at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Kjiersten Fagnan is an applied mathematician enamored of biology’s messy datasets. Now, as chief informatics officer at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI), located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, she finds bioinformatics' computational and data challenges very different from applied math or partial differential equations. Fagnan is the newest guest on the Trends from the Trenches podcast, speaking with host Stan Gloss of BioTeam about JGI’s Genome Citation Service, a new offering that connects the broader community with the organization’s massive data resources and infrastructure. Fagnan talks about the centralized data management system JGI deployed 10 years ago in response to exponential data growth and the questions it forced the organization to ask about the quality and utility of the data it produces and manages. “One of our goals is to see… the impact of the data generated amplified through reuse of the data,” she says. Fagnan also discusses JGI’s strategic collaboration with NamesforLife to create a unique global identifier to help researchers link work on the same microbe even as naming conventions change over time. Additionally, she talks about why perfection is the enemy of reality and JGI’s immediate and long-term plans for the Genome Citation Service. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute 2023 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Kjiersten Fagnan’s direct email The Role of Data Management in Advancing Biology JGI’s Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes (IMG/M) system JGI’s Genomes OnLine Database Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

The steel industry is not a common birthplace of biotech companies, but Andrew Hopkins traces the ideas that became Exscientia back to his time there. New technologies and new processes replaced nearly 90% of the steel workforce, and Hopkins kept those market lessons. He says, “When I ended up in pharma and biotech, I had a very different perception of the power of commerce and markets and what they can potentially drive, and the power of new technology to position oneself in those markets.”  In this episode, Andrew Hopkins, CEO and Executive Director of Exscientia, speaks with host Stan Gloss of BioTeam about his desire to fundamentally change drug creation mechanics and processes with technology, his graduate experience working in human immunodeficiency virus drug design at Oxford University, and his stint at Pfizer. He also discusses Exscientia’s machine learning-based and model-driven approach to drug design, the connection between knowledge and efficiency in drug optimization projects, and its fourth platform-designed drug launch into the clinic.  Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Exscientia 2022 Bio-IT World story: Building AI for the Drug Discovery Learning Problem 2006 Nature Paper: Global mapping of pharmacological space Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

After ten years of working on a specific disease, Chris Gibson’s graduate school lab tested their treatment theory on an animal model. It not only didn’t work, it actually made the animals worse. The experience prompted Gibson to look into how other tools and techniques could be brought to bear on biological programs. And so he quit medical school to co-found Recursion Pharmaceuticals where he is now CEO.  In this episode, Gibson sits down with host Stan Gloss of BioTeam, about Recursion’s mission to decode biology, radically improve lives, and set big goals to innovate across every stage of drug discovery. “If you set goals that are easily achieved, you default to using tools that have been used in the past. The only way you can force yourself to use new tools is if you set goals that are very hard to achieve if not seemingly impossible,” Gibson said. He talks about the company’s use of ’omics technologies to answer the industry’s present and future questions, their highly automated wet lab with robots, and Recursion’s use of machine learning to understand biology as a complete system. Gibson also discusses the company’s purpose-built datasets and the culture-first approach that helps foster more agility relative to larger, older pharmaceutical giants.Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Recursion Recursion’s Vision for the New Shape of Drug Discovery    Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Terry Lo has been in healthcare for almost 25 years, with business and commercial roles across pharma, diagnostics, and life sciences, but his most recent role—CEO at Vizgen—connects him with what he calls, “without a doubt the most exciting space I’ve been involved with.” In this episode, Lo speaks with BioTeam’s Stan Gloss about spatial biology, why it matters, and how he imagines the technology changing healthcare’s future.  Lo details how a science that explores the intersections between visual histology and molecular markers creates more complete images or maps of healthy and diseased tissues to better understand disease onset and progression. He explains, “The challenge has always been that these two have been very separate fields of science and technology. Now we have this ability to bring them together. And that’s really how you get spatial biology.” He also talks about Vizgen’s MERSCOPE platform powered by MERFISH (multiplexed error robust fluorescence in situ hybridization) technology, its origins at Harvard, and the company’s collaboration with the Allen Brain Institute to create detailed brain maps. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Vizgen Vizgen Launches Data Release Program, Shares Spatial Genomics Mouse Brain Map Spatial Surge: AGBT Updates On Single-Cell and Spatial Genomics, In Situ Analysis, More Allen Institute for Brain Science Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Host Stan Gloss, founder of BioTeam, talks with Aaron Friedman, HealthAI Principal Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, about the launch of Amazon Omics. This new purpose-built service helps healthcare and life science organizations store, query, and analyze genomic, transcriptomic, and other omics data to generate insights that improve health and advance scientific discoveries. The platform simplifies and accelerates the process of storing and analyzing data for research and clinical applications. On the day of the announcement, Friedman discusses why Amazon Omics will best suit small and large biotech companies and make it easier for various organizations to mine their data. He also outlines its key features, how it combines data with other modalities, and why it lends itself to top-tier multi-omics and multimodal analysis. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Amazon Web Services AWS Omics Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Host Stan Gloss, founder of BioTeam, invites Mike Tarselli, chief scientific officer at TetraScience, to chat about data and how the life sciences industry thinks about our primary product. They discuss the tech sector’s influence on pharma in switching from a project mindset that yields outputs to a product mindset that yields outcomes and why the industry should use traditional supply chain mechanics as the blueprint to generate and package data. Tarselli also advises biotech companies experiencing a data transformation—as opposed to a digital transformation—to start small and resist the urge to make sweeping changes. “If everybody did these little 1% and 5% hacks here and there, you would have a 20x better laboratory in two years. Data transformation initiatives tend to fail when they go too big,” he says. Lastly, Tarselli shares his hopes for a global and highly collaborative environment that fosters data exchange and readiness in the pharmaceutical space. Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam TetraScience TetraScience Announces GxP Solution, $500M Investment in Scientific Data Cloud "I, Pencil" Essay by Leonard E. Read Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Graphene has quickly become a biotech buzzword as scientists aim to better connect with biology and usher in a new wave of technological advancements. Outperforming silicon at nearly every turn, graphene is one of the most biocompatible tools for extracting valuable information without disrupting biological systems. “Graphene is a single layer of carbon molecules. Everything in our body is made of carbon. It’s the most compatible material we can find that has amazing electronic properties. You can build electronics and conjugate with biology without impacting the biology and without biology impacting it,” says Dr. Kiana Aran, chief scientific officer at Cardea Bio, Keck Graduate Institute associate professor of bioengineering, and founder of the Aran Nebula Foundation.  In the latest episode of Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast, host Stan Gloss, founder of BioTeam, speaks with Aran about the scientific advantages of merging graphene with modern technology. She also discusses her work in creating graphene-based biological transistors for pathogen detection, CRISPR-based gene editing, and plant genotyping. Finally, Dr. Aran provides an update on the Aran Nebula Foundation, an organization designed to help women in science build their scientific skill sets in preparation for leadership roles. Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

In the latest episode of Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast, host Stan Gloss, founder of BioTeam, talks with Fernanda Foertter, director of developer relations at Voltron Data, about her AI experiences in the past few years, whether we’ve made any real progress, and if she thinks AI is a pipe dream. “It feels like it’s a pipe dream to be able to get these things right [today]... I think as we get the ability to regularize and get data in a way that looks as harmonized as possible, things will improve. But the problem is getting to that point.”  Foertter also shares her thoughts about imputation, why most companies should stop buying AI startups and hire a statistician, and why sharing data is one of the most critical components of industry progress. “What’s going to change the world is when we start learning how to share data with one another. The differentiator is going to be how you do the service, and not necessarily the data that you hold. People who understand that and see that will actually benefit far more than people who are thinking that their data is gold, and they have a lot more than the next person.”   Links from this episode:  2021 Trends from the Trenches Presentation Bio-IT World BioTeam Voltron Data    Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.

Victoria Gamerman’s love of analytics and math came from her grandmother—the first mathematician she knew. And in her nearly decade at Boehringer Ingelheim, she’s been putting that love to use as the Global Head of Data Governance and Insights.  In the latest episode of Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast, host Stan Gloss, founder of BioTeam, talks with Gamerman about real world data, why it’s important for drug discovery, and the shifts happening around how we think about data. “Historically what I have seen and observed in terms of industry trends and trends from regulators is… a culture of data collected for a very specific purpose. Therefore, the design of a clinical trial is very specific to address the scientific question at hand,” she says.  Gamerman speaks openly about how shifts in technology help real-world data make a significant impact on precision and public health, the challenges that varied data sources present to scientists, and how those same challenges present useful information regarding a patient’s health journey. “The trifecta of information that ultimately comes out of those data sources is what will give us the huge opportunity to better understand and create really powerful medicines for future generations.” Links from this episode:  Bio-IT World BioTeam Boehringer Ingelheim Trends from the Trenches boiler: Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders. BioTeam co-founder Stan Gloss brings years of industry experience in science, data, and technology to conversations exploring what is driving data and discovery, and what’s coming next.