The Scientist’s LabTalk

Exposed: Environmental Echoes in Health - Epigeneticist Turned Microbe Hunter

Welcome to Exposed: Environmental Echoes in Health, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Van Andel Institute, an independent biomedical research institute devoted to improving human health for generations to come.

While the human body’s cells all use the same set of instructions, they can end up with wildly different features and functions. Beyond the information stored in DNA, factors within a person’s environment, including chemicals, microbes, and their diet, change how cells work. In this series, Niki Spahich from The Scientist’s Creative Services Team talks to researchers from Van Andel Institute who investigate how the environment and behavior change cellular functions through epigenetic processes.

 

Microbes surround us, and they can have surprising effects beyond infection. In this episode, Nick Burton discusses his work discovering new environmental bacteria in backyards and how exposure to both bad or good bugs can affect an organism’s offspring.

 

The New Era of Neurodegeneration Research

The brain’s intractable nature makes neurodegenerative disorders challenging to study, but modern assays and technologies give scientists a fresh look at this complex organ. In this episode, Niki Spahich from The Scientist’s Creative Services Team spoke with Erdem Gültekin Tamgüney, a professor in the Institute of Physical Biology at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, about technologies driving modern neuroscience research and his own work exploring the link between ischemic stroke and Parkinson’s disease.

LabTalk is a special edition podcast produced by The Scientist's Creative Services Team, where we explore topics at the leading edge of innovative research. This month’s episode is sponsored by PerkinElmer.

Innovating Clinical Trials: Real-World Clinical Trial Design and Execution in Oncology

Cancer is one therapeutic area where patients cannot wait the conventional 10 or 12 years for a new therapy. For these patients, time is of the essence, and improved access to faster clinical trials can be the difference between receiving a new life-saving medicine and it being too late.

In this episode, we talk to David Raben, vice president of Global Development Oncology at Amgen, about the next generation of oncology trial design and execution.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Innovating Clinical Trials Q&A webinar discussion on September 28, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

Welcome to Innovating Clinical Trials, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Clinical trials are desperate for innovation. Speed and efficiency need to improve as many patients cannot wait over a decade for new, potentially lifesaving medicines, and trial participants often do not reflect the patient population. Because clinical trials are complex and multidisciplinary, there is not a single, simple solution for accelerating progress. In this series, Rob Lenz, senior vice president of Global Development at Amgen, explores the latest approaches in clinical trial design and execution and highlights real-world examples of how scientists can run trials better and faster to develop optimal medicines that benefit patients.

Innovating Clinical Trials: The Right Patients

With advances in genetics and other human data, researchers and doctors will one day be able to practice precision medicine. However, predicting how a patient will respond to a medicine is challenging in under-represented patients who are often not included in clinical trials. This is due in part to systemic issues that deter people from participating in research, especially those who have been historically excluded due to factors such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age.

In this episode, we talk to Ponda Motsepe-Ditshego, vice president and Global Medical Therapeutic Area head in General Medicine at Amgen, about the recognized differences in disease incidence among racial and ethnic groups and new approaches to increase representation in clinical trials. 

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Innovating Clinical Trials Q&A webinar discussion on September 28, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

Welcome to Innovating Clinical Trials, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Clinical trials are desperate for innovation. Speed and efficiency need to improve as many patients cannot wait over a decade for new, potentially lifesaving medicines, and trial participants often do not reflect the patient population. Because clinical trials are complex and multidisciplinary, there is not a single, simple solution for accelerating progress. In this series, Rob Lenz, senior vice president of Global Development at Amgen, explores the latest approaches in clinical trial design and execution and highlights real-world examples of how scientists can run trials better and faster to develop optimal medicines that benefit patients.

Innovating Clinical Trials: Real World Data in Drug Development

Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for evaluating the efficacy and safety of medicines, but they come with many drawbacks including high monetary and time costs, a lack of representation compared to the general public, and ethical limitations. Historically, these trials were the main mechanism to understand the effects of a medicine. But more recently, real world data from sources such as electronic health records, insurance claims and billing activities, disease registries, and wearable devices, is having a greater effect on understanding a medicine’s usage and effects. Although this information is collected outside of clinical trials, clinical researchers incorporate it during the earliest phases of clinical development to gain additional information and speed up the drug development process.

In this episode, we talk to Brian Bradbury, vice president of the Center for Observational Research at Amgen, about the increased utilization of real world data and its potential to revolutionize every stage of clinical research, from trial design to regulatory requirements to outcomes measurement.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Innovating Clinical Trials Q&A webinar discussion on September 28, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

Welcome to Innovating Clinical Trials, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Clinical trials are desperate for innovation. Speed and efficiency need to improve as many patients cannot wait over a decade for new, potentially lifesaving medicines, and trial participants often do not reflect the patient population. Because clinical trials are complex and multidisciplinary, there is not a single, simple solution for accelerating progress. In this series, Rob Lenz, senior vice president of Global Development at Amgen, explores the latest approaches in clinical trial design and execution and highlights real-world examples of how scientists can run trials better and faster to develop optimal medicines that benefit patients.

Innovating Clinical Trials: Operational Innovation

Welcome to Innovating Clinical Trials, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Clinical trials are desperate for innovation. Speed and efficiency need to improve as many patients cannot wait over a decade for new, potentially lifesaving medicines, and trial participants often do not reflect the patient population. Because clinical trials are complex and multidisciplinary, there is not a single, simple solution for accelerating progress. In this series, Rob Lenz, senior vice president of Global Development at Amgen, explores the latest approaches in clinical trial design and execution and highlights real-world examples of how scientists can run trials better and faster to develop optimal medicines that benefit patients.

 

Our understanding of human biology and disease is progressing at an unprecedented pace, and clinical trial development and execution needs to evolve just as quickly to deliver potentially lifesaving medicines to patients who can't wait. We also need to recruit underrepresented patients into trials, which requires us to think differently about how we identify and recruit patients.

In this episode, we talk to Cynthia Verst, president of Design and Delivery Innovation for Research & Development Solutions at IQVIA, a global provider of advanced analytics, technology solutions, and clinical research services. We discuss the drivers for applying innovation in the trial execution space and how the clinical trials model is evolving across the industry thanks to modern innovations.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Innovating Clinical Trials Q&A webinar discussion on September 28, 2022. Register for the event here.

The Generative Biology Revolution: Accelerating Drug Discovery with Protein Design

The ability to design proteins to perform desired functions will transform drug development. In particular, with AI and machine learning, scientists gain the ability to engineer antibody-based drugs, including multispecifics which engage multiple targets. By altering existing protein structures or developing proteins de novo, biologics will become more effective and specific.

In this episode, we talk to Suzanne Edavettal, the executive director of Protein Engineering at Amgen. We discuss how protein design affects drug development and success rates in the clinic today and in the future.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Generative Biology Q&A webinar discussion on July 20^th, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

The Generative Biology Revolution is a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team.

This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Generative biology is a revolutionary approach to drug discovery and development that leverages machine learning and AI to design novel protein therapeutics. It holds the potential to enhance the speed and efficiency of discovery. In this series, Ray Deshaies, senior vice president of Global Research at Amgen, discusses how generative biology is transforming drug discovery to make it more predictable, shorten timelines, and increase success rates of bringing life-saving medicines to patients who need them most.

The Generative Biology Revolution: Protein Design from Scratch

Naturally-occurring proteins have evolved over millions of years to perform specific functions based on their sequences and folded structures. As our understanding of science advanced, researchers began designing proteins from scratch to solve new challenges that modern societies face. 

In this episode, we talk to David Baker, director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington and one of the creators of the RoseTTAFold protein structure prediction tool. We discuss how to design proteins with sequences and structures that impart novel functions and how designed proteins will revolutionize drug development.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Generative Biology Q&A webinar discussion on July 20^th, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

The Generative Biology Revolution is a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team.

This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Generative biology is a revolutionary approach to drug discovery and development that leverages machine learning and AI to design novel protein therapeutics. It holds the potential to enhance the speed and efficiency of discovery. In this series, Ray Deshaies, senior vice president of Global Research at Amgen, discusses how generative biology is transforming drug discovery to make it more predictable, shorten timelines, and increase success rates of bringing life-saving medicines to patients who need them most.

The Generative Biology Revolution: The Protein Structure Prediction Problem

To build better biologic drugs, researchers need to understand exactly how amino acid building blocks interact with one another and fold into functional proteins. This knowledge provides insights into how to engage a drug target or develop an optimal therapeutic. Determining a protein’s structure is a laborious process in the wet lab, but thanks to machine learning, scientists can now use various algorithms to predict structure. 

In this episode, we talk to Mike Nohaile, chief scientific officer at Generate Biomedicines. Since early 2022, Amgen and Generate Biomedicines have been collaborating to discover and create protein therapeutics across several therapeutic areas and multiple modalities, including monoclonal and bispecific antibody drugs. We discuss the challenge of predicting a protein’s structure from its sequence and the steps drug developers are now taking to create novel structures with therapeutic potential using generative biology.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Generative Biology Q&A webinar discussion on July 20^th, 2022. Register for the event here.

The Generative Biology Revolution is a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team.

This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Generative biology is a revolutionary approach to drug discovery and development that leverages machine learning and AI to design novel protein therapeutics. It holds the potential to enhance the speed and efficiency of discovery. In this series, Ray Deshaies, senior vice president of Global Research at Amgen, discusses how generative biology is transforming drug discovery to make it more predictable, shorten timelines, and increase success rates of bringing life-saving medicines to patients who need them most.

The Generative Biology Revolution: The Cresting Wave of Transformational Science

In 2021, the world changed for drug research and discovery when researchers published advances that used AI and machine learning to predict the structure of human proteins from their sequences. With discoveries like this, scientists are launching the generative biology revolution where they strive to leave the guesswork behind and instead use computers to quickly tailor biological molecules for therapeutic purposes. In this episode, we speak with Alan Russell, vice president of Biologics at Amgen and review what generative biology is and how it helps scientists understand proteins from their amino acid building blocks to their folded, three-dimensional structures. We also discuss how this new field improves the quality and complexity of biologic drug candidates and the speed with which researchers generate them.

To dive further into this topic, please join Amgen scientists at the Generative Biology Q&A webinar discussion on July 20^th, 2022. Register for the event here.

 

Welcome to The Generative Biology Revolution, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Amgen, a pioneer in the science of using living cells to make biologic medicines. They helped invent the processes and tools that built the global biotech industry, and have since reached millions of patients suffering from serious illnesses around the world with their medicines.

Generative biology is a revolutionary approach to drug discovery and development that leverages machine learning and AI to design novel protein therapeutics. It holds the potential to enhance the speed and efficiency of discovery. In this series, Ray Deshaies, senior vice president of Global Research at Amgen, discusses how generative biology is transforming drug discovery to make it more predictable, shorten timelines, and increase success rates of bringing life-saving medicines to patients who need them most.