Bio, Tech & Beyond: Recent Episodes
Joseph Jackson
We discuss the intersection of Biomedical Innovation with Society, Economics, and Technology. Each episode we examine a new approach to big challenges facing humanity, such as access to affordable medicines, personalized therapy for rare disease and Cancer. Other topics include the science, social implications, and economics of human life extension/longevity. Bitcoin, the future of energy production, distribution, and more.
Early Bitcoin adopter Dan Held joins us to talk about the energy economics of Bitcoin, the halving, and much more. Always a pleasure to with Dan as he is one of the most important original thinkers in this space. See his essays, especially the 4 part series Planting Bitcoin, about the origins of Bitcoin in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Now, in world wide economic depression, Bitcoin is poised to emerge as a new monetary standard. https://medium.com/@danhedl
Danielle joins us to talk about her experience running the Thiel Foundation 20 under 20 program which funded young entrepreneurs to take time out from college and pursue their own ideas. She went on to found 1517, a fund that specializes in working with young founders.
Gerald joins us to talk about the history of the Pharmaceutical industry in the Unite States. His new book is told from the perspective of the infamous Sackler family, who were almost single-handedly responsible for the Opioid crisis. Over many decades, the family was instrumental in pioneering new marketing tactics which pushed ethical and business limits. However, they were far from the exception in an industry which has lost its focus on innovation and embraced the temptations of ultimate greed. As the COVID 19 pandemic sweeps the world it is critical to understand the historical commercial forces which shaped the US Pharma industry and have left us in such a vulnerable position today.
A few years ago, Ono Faber had successfully launched a start up in Silicon Valley when suddenly he lost hearing in one year. After many doctor visits and scans, he got the worst news possible, he had a rare disease NF2 which caused tumors to grow in his nerve tissue and brain. He might lose hearing in his other ear and become completely deaf, or his optic nerve could be affected, causing blindness, or motor nerves could grow tumors which cause paralysis.
He got to work building a platform RD-MD (Rare Disease MD) to help organize other patients with his condition and enable to them to share data. 5 yrs later he is going strong, expanding the platform to help patients search for treatments for all sorts of rare diseases, of which there are more than 7000. He lives each day to the fullest and takes nothing for granted, as his tumors may grow at any time, even though he has found some treatments to slow them.
Howard Letovsky is an inventor with an amazing life story. He developed many key technologies in missile defense, licensed by the DOD, and also built the first virtual reality amusement park ride--Back to the Future at Universal Studios in 1991. Along the way he did plenty of other crazy things, like construct a road in Belize when there was no other way to get his equipment from the airport.
For years now, Howard has worked on a long neglected area at the intersection of biology and physics. Despite FDA approval of Novocure's device for treating Glioblastoma a few years ago, for the most part, the use of tumor treating fields remains underutilized in America and much of the West. Howard has conclusively demonstrated the ability to selectively kill specific tumor cell types in vitro, by targeting them with precise acoustic frequencies that cause them to self destruct. He shares his life story and the difficult process of commercializing his ideas in this realm, despite having successfully sold many other inventions in other industries.
Joseph is interviewed on a local San Diego business podcast to talk about the Bio, Tech & Beyond incubator in North County San Diego.
We cover a variety of topics from anti-aging, human life extension, to the broken business models in biomedical innovation and how the system needs to change to empower inventors and small business innovators.
Rich Horgan set out to find a treatment for his brother's rare form of muscular dystrophy. Harnessing the power of precision medicine, for the first time it is possible individuals to sequence their own mutation and design a personalized gene therapy using tools like CRISPR.
We live in unprecedented times when it is becoming possible to go from identifying the genetic mutation underlying a disease, to implementing a clinical trial, in only 24 months, and under $3 million dollars, as Rich set out to do in 2018. The path has not been easy, and it is Rich's hope that an infrastructure can be built out to allow many more patients to do this, bringing costs down and accelerating timelines. This is extremely ambitious, as there are many bottlenecks around gene therapy, such manufacturing vectors like AAV, which only a few sites have the capacity to do.
Still, what was unheard merely a few years ago is becoming feasible with this exciting first in man, N-of-1 CRISPR therapy.
Join us to listen to Dr. David Fajgenbaum discuss his battle with Castleman's Disease, a deadly auto-immune condition which causes multiple organ failure. During medical school, Dr. Fajgenbuam suddenly became deathly ill. What followed was a multi-year ordeal of chasing a diagnosis and eventually, finding a treatment that can keep the disease at bay.
David wrote about his extraordinary experience in a memoir that shares many life lessons and key insights on how to reform our biomedical system to more rapidly search for cures for those who need them most--rare disease patients. As we continually explore on this podcast, "rare is not rare"--all of us suffer from one rare condition or another--thus these lessons are key for everyone. There is no Santa Claus. It is up to us collectively as patients, doctors, and family members, to find faster solutions and cures.
In November 2018 the first genetically engineered babies, Lulu and Nana were born in China. The world reacted in shock to the surprise announcement from scientist He Jianku. Almost one year later we discuss the coming revolution in human reproduction. Join Joseph Jackson in discussion with Bryan Bishop and Max Berry about their ambitions to enable parents to utilize germline genetic engineering technology to shape the children of the future. Many ethical, technical, legal, and regulatory questions remain unsettled as new techniques like CRISPR become less expensive and potentially available in IVF reproductive health clinics in coming years.