On a recent episode of The Genetics Podcast, Patrick spoke with Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London and co-founder of Zoe. They discuss surprising insights on heritability from decades of twin research, the profound impact of the microbiome on health and disease, and the effect of diet on the gut microbiome.
Biomarker testing is foundational to precision medicine. It determines eligibility for targeted therapies and immunotherapies, informs treatment selection, and increasingly defines who can participate in clinical trials. But running a study with biomarker or genetic testing is operationally demanding, especially when operations span countries, labs, and logistics partners. What seems like a straightforward requirement can quickly snowball into bottlenecks, delays, and patchwork solutions, all of which add up to unexpected costs.
As the demand for personalized therapies continues to grow, trial designs must evolve to reflect the biological variability between patients. Traditional models often overlook subtle, yet important, differences in how individuals respond to treatment. Conversely, patient stratification into different subgroups based on shared characteristics can greatly improve trial efficiency and effectiveness.
On a recent episode of The Genetics Podcast, Patrick spoke with Daniel Geschwind, Senior Associate Dean and Associate Vice Chancellor of Precision Health at UCLA and Professor of Human Genetics, Neurology, and Psychiatry. They discussed how autism genetics has evolved over two decades, what makes neurodevelopment so complex, and how emerging technologies like RNA therapeutics could transform care for rare genetic forms of autism.
News of a ‘CRISPR baby’ broke this week, almost seven years after the first CRISPR baby scandal unleashed a media frenzy and years of ethical debates. But this time, the story marks a very different chapter in the evolution of human gene editing. Rather than an unregulated experiment carried out in secrecy, this new case involved a safe, custom-designed CRISPR therapy, developed with clinical oversight, to treat a life-threatening genetic disorder in a newborn. The therapy targeted a disease-causing mutation in the infant’s DNA and was administered after birth, not at the embryonic stage.
Although long COVID cases have surged in recent years, the genetic factors that influence who develops the condition remain poorly understood. Traditional genome-wide association studies have struggled to identify reproducible genetic signals in long COVID, in part because of limited cohort sizes and inconsistent phenotype definitions.
We’re proud to share that Sano Genetics plays a key role in the newly announced Lupus Nexus Foundational Analyses, a groundbreaking initiative led by the Lupus Research Alliance (LRA) to accelerate personalized treatments for people living with lupus.
Site disengagement can be a major barrier to successful and timely trial execution. A significant contributor to disengagement is overloading sites with redundant processes and technologies that are not cross-compatible. Accordingly, careful consideration of systems and tools can enhance site adoption and subsequent engagement.
Clinical trial recruitment is notoriously difficult – and nowhere is this more acute than at the referral stage. When a participant who looks potentially eligible is referred by a patient advocacy group, HCP, or site, it is not uncommon for them to fall out of touch before enrolling. Manual handoffs, scattered systems, and limited visibility are common culprits.
In the most recent episode of the Genetics Podcast, Patrick spoke with Helen O’Neill, a molecular geneticist who is the founder of Hertility Health and an associate professor at University College London (UCL). They discuss how Helen’s experience as an identical twin sparked her interest in genetics, her firsthand account of the CRISPR baby controversy, and why stubborn perceptions and sensational headlines continue to cast a shadow over the gene editing field, despite major scientific progress.