Behind the Genes

Tamsin Berry: The world of life sciences

"The big realisation for me working in life sciences is if we didn't have [this] industry, to translate this amazing science that comes out of academic institutions into usable products, then we wouldn't be able to benefit as individuals."

We join Chris Wigley and special guest Tamsin Berry in today's episode of, The G Word. Tamsin is Partner at Population Health Partners, and former Director of the UK government’s Office for Life Sciences.

They discuss the importance of Life Sciences and what it is, focusing on the impact this particular research has on individual lives. They discuss how Tamsin became a part of the life science world and her journey to becoming Director of the Office of Life Sciences. They also discuss the importance of research funding and genome understanding.

Sir Patrick Vallance: The evolution and future uses of genomics

“The whole area is going to be crucial for everything from monitoring waste, you can think about its use in monitoring biodiversity, such a key area for the future. You can think about the impact of the environment and on the changes in species across the world over time. This is going to be a ubiquitous area of societal discussion.”

In this week’s episode of The G Word, our CEO Chris Wigley is joined by Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and the Head of Government Science and Engineering.

They discuss Sir Patrick Vallance’s role and work in the government, the areas that genomics is starting to touch on beyond healthcare and the use of genomic data. They also discuss the role of legislation and societal dialogue, they touched on the impact of the pandemic and how genomic sequencing is crucial to understand the spread of COVID-19. Sir Patrick Vallance also raised the importance of monitoring biodiversity and the impact on the environment.

Dr Stanley Crooke: Advancing the health of human beings around the world

“Let's talk about patients. That's where we have to always begin. This is about patients. I was tremendously impressed with how much the patient advocacy groups had accomplished, that helped us make judgments that are really complex and very dangerous judgments. All that played into the success. Then, of course, it was very rapidly approved around the world.”

In this week’s episode of The G Word, Dr Richard Scott, our Chief Medical Officer, is joined by Dr Stanley Crooke, M.D., Ph.D., the founder, chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer of n-Lorem.

In this episode, Dr Scott and Dr Crooke discuss the foundation of n-Lorem, the importance of patient advocacy groups and the spinal muscular atrophy treatment Spinraza. They also discussed the value of whole genome sequencing in newborn screening.

Amanda Pichini: Genetic counselling

“It's not just talking about a genetic test, testing parents to see if they're carriers after their child's been diagnosed or talking about reproductive options when people want to have another child - it's a lot more than that. It's navigating those difficult decisions in a situation where there’s a genetic risk or someone has been diagnosed with something and they need to know if it's going to have an impact on their life and future.” 

In this week’s episode of The G Word, Chris Wigley is joined by Amanda Pichini, Clinical Lead for Genetic Counselling at Genomics England.  

They discuss genetic counselling, The 100,000 Genomes Project and uncertainty in genomic medicine. They also discuss the impact of genomics on young people and her early career.

Charles Swanton: The evolution of cancer

“The tools that we have at our disposal now are just mind blowing - in terms of what we can do now compared to what we could during my PhD back in the mid 90s, when it would take you about three days to sequence the best part of 1000 base pairs. Now the number of genomes we can use every day, it's just extraordinary.” 

In this week's episode of The G Word, Parker Moss is joined by Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK’s Chief Clinician and Senior Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute.  

They discuss the evolution of cancer, eureka moments and cell cycle machinery. They also talk about The Francis Crick Institute and his early career. 

Catherine Pollard: Why data is important in making things better for patients

“Clinicians are holding people's lives in their hands, and so for me data is about making sure they have all the information they need about where an individual comes from, their living circumstances and their family history, whilst also having the benefit of what clinical best practise will tell you to do or some of the large pattern analysis you can only do in very large populations.” 

In this week's episode of The G Word, Chris Wigley is joined by Catherine Pollard, NHSX Director of Tech Policy and Curator of One Health Tech Cambridge Hub.  

They discuss NHSX, involving patient groups in decision making and digital development in health and social care. The also talk about One Health Tech Cambridge and equality and diversity in health innovation.  

Dr Misha Kapushesky: Human vs machine learning

“There are problems that we as humans have tackled that are extremely amenable to machine learning approaches, challenges like classifying things or, given a lot of data, making a prediction about the next step in that data. I am super excited about machine learning being able to tackle these challenges.”

In this week's episode of The G Word, Chris Wigley is joined by Misha Kapushesky, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Genestack.  

They discuss making data more accessible, his work with Genestack and data mining. They also talk about AI and machine learning and building trust.

Dr Neil Rajan and Dr Ruth Murphy: Dermatology and genomics

“The first step in the identification of any rare condition is recognising the features that lead to the diagnosis, something that’s easy to do if the person sitting in front of you has classic symptoms. However, in dermatology things are never that simple - somebody’s clinical presentation can be very, very subtle.” 

In this week's episode of The G Word, Vivienne Parry is joined by Dr Neil Rajan, Honorary Consultant Dermatologist at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary and Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, and Dr Ruth Murphy, Consultant Dermatologist and former President of the British Association of Dermatologists. 

They discuss undiagnosed skin conditions, cracking unsolved cases and the value of genomics. They also talk about how clinicians and patients can get involved and what the future holds.

Bilal Mateen and Evan Tachovsky: Diverse data

“We have huge imbalances in our data in the world of genomics, and datasets all over the world are dominated by individuals of European ancestry. By the time we get to the point where a dataset is imbalanced, its actually built on years if not decades of individual decisions and processes."

In this week's episode of The G Word, Maxine Mackintosh is joined by Bilal Mateen, Clinical Technology Lead at the Wellcome Trust, and Evan Tachovsky, Director and Lead Data Scientist at the Rockefeller Foundation.  

They discuss funding and funders, the world of health and data science and imbalanced datasets. They also talk about their backgrounds and equity and diversity.  

Dr Ellen Thomas, Arzoo Ahmed and Cassandra Smith: A celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

“Although there is this sense where you don't really find as many women in science, and when we get missed out of science, I think we have been really lucky and fortunate to work with incredible women in large numbers. We're quite lucky to find the experiences that we have.” […] “Life is so precious, we really shouldn't be spending any time doing things we don't enjoy.”

In this week's episode of The G Word, Dr Ellen Thomas, Clinical Director and Director of Quality at Genomics England, is joined by Arzoo Ahmed, Ethics Lead of the Newborn Genomes Programme, and Cassandra Smith, Senior Bioinformatician, both at Genomics England. Ellen worked on the delivery of the 100,000 Genomes Project and Cassie did her PhD using bioinformatics to study parts of mitochondria before joining the operations team at Genomics England. Arzoo completed her MPhil in Mediaeval Arabic Thought before moving onto the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and then joining the Ethics Team here at Genomics England.

In this discussion, these three brilliant women talk through their roles and what inspired them to pursue a career at Genomics England. In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, they also discuss the challenges they have faced along the way and how being a woman has impacted their career.