Biotech conversations past the headline.
Mendelspod Podcast is a measured interview show about the tools and decisions reshaping biology. Recent conversations move from genomic testing access and spatial transcriptomics to peptide drug discovery, sequencing platforms, rare disease diagnosis, cancer models, epigenetics, and aging research.
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Mendelspod Podcast is a long-running interview show about genomics, biotechnology, and genomic medicine. It works best as a guided technical conversation. Recent episodes follow the practical life of new biology, from the promise of genomic testing to the hard questions of access, equity, workflow, and interpretation. Damon Hostin of Illumina discusses eligible but under-tested patients and the business case for finding them across communities. Fei Chen talks through spatial biology, slide tags, tissue architecture, cancer immune states, and the discovery value of seeing where biology happens. Charlie Johannes and Tomi Sawyer trace why peptides have returned to the center of drug discovery, especially as noncanonical chemistry, structure-function knowledge, pharmacology, and AI begin to meet. Mark Kokoris explains Roche’s SBX technology and the flexibility promised by faster sequencing runs, tumor-normal workflows, and high-throughput use cases. Stephen Ostad brings aging research back to evolution, metabolism, body size, safer environments, and the striking differences in lifespan across species. Other episodes focus on Illumina genome mapping for rare disease, AI forecasting in cancer models, and five-base sequencing for cancer epigenetics. The show’s shape is consistent: define the tool, place it in context, press on what changed, then ask where the real-world bottlenecks remain. It is technical without being sealed off. The host’s questions often pause over a comparison or analogy until the practical meaning becomes clearer. There is enthusiasm, but it is earned through explanation rather than hype. Listeners hear scientists, company leaders, and clinicians talk about what their methods can do, what they still cannot do, and how adoption may actually happen. The strongest episodes connect molecular detail to patient care, research design, hospital incentives, and translational decision-making. This is not casual science chat. It is for people who want to understand the machinery behind modern biotech as much as the headline result.
Made for: For genomics watchers, biotech operators, clinical researchers, science journalists, investors, and curious specialists who want technical context without promotional gloss.
What sets it apart: Mendelspod Podcast stands out by connecting molecular tools to adoption: clinical workflows, community access, reimbursement logic, research design, and platform tradeoffs. It gives guests room to explain the mechanism before judging the impact.
Offering a front row seat to the Century of Biology, veteran podcast host Theral Timpson interviews the who's who in genomics and genomic medicine. www.mendelspod.com
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tharrell Timpson makes emerging genomics legible by asking how new methods perform, fit laboratory workflows, and reach patient care.
Mendelspod Podcast follows the tools and decisions moving genomic research toward clinical use, with Tharrell Timpson conducting direct interviews with researchers and biotechnology leaders.
Genome mapping gets a spaghetti analogy, and suddenly you have a reason to care about the noodles.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear look at how genomic testing is moving into routine care.
The piece treats genomic medicine as something that has been looming for years and is now moving into practice, with Tharrell Timpson asking Damon Hostin of Illumina where testing really sits today: rare disease, oncology, reproductive health, pharmacogenomics, and the space…
Spatial biology is framed as a way to make tissue location part of the research question.
Spatial biology is presented as a needed correction to genomics: activity matters, but so does position inside tissue. The discussion moves from slide tags to the broader challenge of placing gene expression back into tissue architecture, then into a brain case and, later,…
A peptide-drug conversation that moves from GLP-1s and older peptide work to non-canonicals and multi-target modalities.
The episode gives peptide drug discovery a practical, wide-ranging treatment, with Charlie Johannes and Tommy Sawyer connecting GLP-1s to the field's longer history and noting Tommy's work on peptides since the 70s.
A practical look at SBX as a workflow story, not just another sequencing announcement.
Mendel's Pod treats Roche's SBX sequencing as a workflow story first: faster turnaround, more flexible lab operations, and a wider way to think about scale.
A careful tour of why animal lifespans diverge, anchored by clear examples and biological logic.
Mendel's Pod gives a careful, grounded look at aging, using Stephen Ostad's work to move from longevity quotients to the forces that make some species age faster or slower than others.
A grounded look at how spatial genome information could sharpen rare-disease diagnosis and support highly precise therapies.
Whole genome sequencing has changed rare-disease diagnosis, but some of the hardest cases still depend on seeing genome structure more clearly.
A steady, practical look at why precision medicine still needs bridges from discovery to patient care.
Precision medicine comes across here as a field with real scientific momentum, but also with a stubborn last-mile problem: turning promising discoveries into care that patients can actually receive.
A measured look at how population-scale protein data may guide future drug targets.
Large-scale proteomics comes through as a practical test of what population genetics can add to drug development. Therrell Timpson's conversation with Chris Whelan starts from the late-2023 Nature work on plasma proteomic profiles from more than 54,000 UK Biobank participants,…
Neurotech conversations with the builders themselves.
Biotech strategy from the people building it.
Nature Biotechnology's editors, in conversation with the field.
Dr.
Theral Timpson interviews Chris Whelan, Director of Neuroscience at Janssen and Chair of the Pharma Proteomics Project.
Ed Abrahams, retiring president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, reflects on 20 years in precision medicine.
Nick Banovich of TGen explains that bulk RNA-seq on pulmonary fibrosis tissue mostly captures fibroblast signal, while single-cell methods allow cell type by cell type comparisons between diseased and unaffected lungs.
Damon Hostin of Illumina discusses the current state of genomic testing in healthcare, from rare disease to oncology and reproductive health.
Fei Chen discusses how spatial transcriptomics maps gene expression back into tissue context, addressing the gap in traditional genomics.
Charlie Johannes and Tomi Sawyer discuss the resurgence of peptide drug discovery, driven by GLP-1s and decades of research.
Interview with Mark Kokoris, inventor of Roche's SBX sequencing technology, discussing its history and recent world record in rapid genome sequencing.
Steve Austad discusses his book Methuselah's Zoo, exploring the diversity of lifespans across the animal kingdom and the evolution of aging.
This Mendelspod episode covers a new proximity-mapped read sequencing technology from Illumina, called TruePath Genome, that adds structural and haplotype information to standard short-read sequencing on the NovaSeqX platform.
CEO Peter Ellman discusses Sirtis Oncology's AI-powered cancer models and their newly issued patent for predicting drug response.
Dr.
Three colleagues remember the life and work of Dr.
Raju Rayavarapu discusses how regulatory informatics remains fundamentally unchanged despite AI and high-throughput biology, focusing on tools for managing regulatory data submissions.