When I’m eating blueberries from Chile here in California, I assume that they arrived by air after being picked a couple of days ago. That isn’t necessarily true. Delivery by sea could take weeks from the time they are picked by the grower until they arrive on the shelf at my local grocery store. In this episode, I talked to Tristan Kaye, Director of Global Marketing and Business Development at It's Fresh about the challenges of shipping fresh produce across the planet while avoiding waste and spoilage. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, up to 45 percent of all fresh produ ..read more

If you have a PhD in life science, are working toward one, or just considering it with an eye toward getting an academic job, the math is not in your favor. There are way more PhDs than the number of academic slots available. How that gets resolved with respect to your career was the core of my discussion with Ali Divan, Founder of Trulitica, where he is helping life science PhDs get into biotech. Don’t miss the SPECIAL OFFER at the bottom of this post. For many, there is a mismatch between expectations of what a career in life science might look like and where you end up working. But it’s not ..read more

Reduce. Refine. Replace. These are the three Rs of animal research. The intent is to reduce the number of animals used, refine methods to be efficient and humane and replace animals with other models where possible. This cc: Life Science episode is sponsored content, courtesy of MediLumine. I talked to Stephen Marchant, Founder and CEO of MediLumine about the importance of animal research, how imaging in small animals is different from humans and innovations that support the 3Rs of laboratory animal sciences.     While the FDA no longer requires the testing of all new drugs ..read more

AgBio, sustainability and DoE all come together in this episode. Tim Cuthbertson is the Chief Science Officer at VelociGro where they are using Design of Experiments to optimize plant growth media for vertical farming. I was curious to learn about the concept of vertical farming and how it can make an impact relative to the massive acreage involved in traditional agriculture. There are scenarios where it makes a lot of sense. First of all, greenhouse-grown produce is nothing new. Tomatoes are the most commonly grown crop in what is known as protected agriculture. And overall, in 2019, 55% of v ..read more

Thomas Farb-Horch is the CEO of Thrive Bioscience. He has founded 18 companies. Seven of those turned out to be unicorns (sold at a valuation of >1 billion dollars). I was curious to know how he had identified so many opportunities correctly. BTW, Tom is not a scientist and has no advanced degrees in case you were thinking that was a requirement. He credits his success to being observant and inquisitive. That means keeping your eyes open for problems and asking why things are the way they are. The most attractive problem is one where people have been working the same way for a very long tim ..read more

I went to SLAS this spring to talk to old friends, meet some new ones and learn whatever I could. I met Maggie Vantangoli, the Director of Marketing at Araceli Biosciences in their booth where we chatted about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for high content analysis (HCA) in drug discovery and development. She was kind enough to join me on this podcast and fill in the (large) holes in my knowledge of cell biology. HCA is basically automated microscopy and analysis of fluorescently-stained (or otherwise) cells to identify changes caused by various compounds. This rich phenotypic inform ..read more

According to their website, IQVIA holds over 60 petabytes (60 million gigabytes) of proprietary data used to provide insights and inform decisions across the healthcare industry. Think market dynamics around a disease, demographics and site selection for clinical trials or pricing for a new therapeutic. How does one pull the insights out of that mountain of data? Chris Steel was brought on board to drive AI and machine learning into all their products, standardize on platforms and unify the message. Our conversation went from things AI can do to how to manage AI projects across the enterprise ..read more

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Sell him the hook, line and rod and get a higher valuation.” - Unknown ;-) KromaTiD™ is in the business of helping researchers working on cell and gene therapies make sure, for example, that their CRISPR edits are going to the right places and not causing unwanted structural variations. Those cells ultimately go back into patients and safety is a top concern. KromaTiD had been a service business. Customers sent their cells for analysis and KromaTiD sent back a report. They have transitioned to a product (and service) business, selling kits to allow sci ..read more

Jeffrey Kiplinger is the co-founder and partner at Selling Science, a consulting firm dedicated to helping life science, contract research, and tools companies boost revenue by building and optimizing their scientific sales teams. He is also the author of the book "Expert to Entrepreneur." Jeff shared his personal journey from obtaining a PhD in organic chemistry in the late '80s to his corporate experience with Pfizer. He highlighted the frustrations he faced being siloed in his role and the desire to take his expertise on the road. I appreciate his perspective on the disconnect many scientis ..read more

Imagine a capsule whizzing by some 200 miles overhead. It’s just big enough to hold a medium size dog (curled up and sleeping) but there is no life onboard. Instead, there is an automated laboratory designed for manufacturing pharmaceuticals. That is the vision of Varda Space Industries. Do they really envision a future where drugs are manufactured in space at scale? Yes. I talked to Mark Herbert, VP of Biopharma Business Development at Varda, about their plans. My two big questions were 1. What is special about microgravity for this application? and 2. Why does pharmaceutical manufacturing ma ..read more