“We’re going to be rewriting the textbooks on how tissues work.”

In this compelling reunion with spatial biology pioneer Joe Beechem and a first-time visit from Oliver Braubach, we explore the rapid evolution of spatial technologies at Bruker, a legacy instrumentation company newly resurgent in the spatial space. Following Bruker’s acquisition of Nanostring and Canopy, the company has emerged as a unifying platform where whole-transcriptome discovery meets translational assay development—under one roof.

* 0:00 Red alert: we don’t yet understand how tissue biology works, and don’t let anyone tell you we do.

* 5:12 Customer of spatial turned toolmaker

* 10:00 What do you want researchers to know about Bruker Spatial?

* 14:24 How do you go from discovery to assay?

* 18:09 How has AI impacted spatial?

* 22:41 The ongoing question of reductionism

* 31:00 What’s your biggest challenge?

Beechem, known for launching the first high-plex spatial platform at Nanostring, returns to Mendelspod to declare that spatial biology may be more consequential than genomics itself. “If somebody tells you they understand how tissue biology works, you can just cut them off. They don’t,” he says, describing the dramatic leaps from 84-plex in 2019 to 20,000-plex subcellular imaging today.

Braubach, a neuroscientist turned toolmaker, shares his journey from early customer to R&D leader, developing user-friendly platforms that empower researchers with flexibility and speed. “We want researchers to assume again a degree of power over their assays,” he says, outlining Bruker Spatial’s mission to integrate discovery and translation.

Together, the two leaders discuss how AI is accelerating the power of spatial, with foundational models that can identify patterns humans can’t. Beechem recounts feeding high-plex images into a GPT model: “It came back and told me where to look. And it was right.”

They also reflect on the philosophical shift spatial enables—moving beyond genomics' reductionist lens toward a more holistic view of biology in situ. “The hype around spatial is not hype,” says Beechem. “It’s real.”

In this episode of Mendelspod, Theral sits down with Rob Neely, co-founder and CSO at Tagomics, to discuss how his company is fusing genomics, epigenomics, and fragmentomics into a single, assumption-free assay for early cancer detection. The conversation begins with breaking news: Tagomics has just received a new grant from the UK’s Innovation Agency a…

In this premium episode of Mendelspod, we’re joined by one of the few people speaking clearly and globally about biosecurity in the era of synthetic biology and AI: Sophie Peresson.

A consultant and leader in responsible innovation, Sophie brings an unusually broad and grounded perspective. With experience spanning international law and governance, she p…

As artificial intelligence continues to influence the life sciences, some researchers are questioning not just what it can predict, but what it can explain. On this episode, Mike Kiebish, VP of Platform and Translational Sciences at BPGbio, discusses the company’s “biology-first” approach to drug discovery—one that begins not with models or literature, …

In this episode of Mendelspod, we plunge into the shape-shifting world of RNA with Dr. Gavin Knott, associate professor at Monash University and alum of Jennifer Doudna’s lab. Knott is part of a new generation of researchers setting structural biology ablaze with AI, decoding RNA-guided systems and expanding the CRISPR toolbox far beyond its original scope.

Knott introduces the listener to RNA not just as code, but as living language. He discusses how AI now allows scientists to see molecules in 3D at the beginning of a project rather than years into it: “You can take that protein sequence, run it through something like AlphaFold, and there it is, looking at you.”

* 0:00 RNA - the shapeshifting paradox of a molecule

* 4:05 Using AI: here’s an idea—maybe we know enough about biology

* 6:50 The ARC Institute, and that one paper

* 9:05 Structural biology at everyone’s fingertips

* 18:10 Why are gene therapy companies going so slow?

* 23:40 The grammar of RNA

With infectious curiosity, Knott explains how protein design is entering an era of intent, not just discovery. “Maybe we understand enough about the rules of biology,” he posits, “that we can design the proteins we need.” He describes his lab’s twin tracks: mining microbial genomes for novel RNA-guided machines and using generative AI tools like RosettaFold and BindSpace to build bespoke editors of DNA and RNA.

The conversation touches on emerging efforts to mitigate off-target effects in gene editing using AI, the data limitations holding back RNA-protein modeling, and a powerful metaphor comparing static protein images to photos of horses.

Knott makes a striking point: “We’ve known the spelling of RNA for a while, but now we’re trying to learn its grammar.” This, he explains, means understanding not just RNA’s sequence but its shape, movement, and silent punctuation marks—an effort he sees as the next frontier.

For decades, drug discovery has followed two main roads: small molecules that can slip into cells but often lack precision, and biologics that offer specificity but struggle with delivery and manufacturing. In this episode, Christian Schafmeister introduces us to a third path: spiroligomers—synthetic, fused-ring molecules designed to combine the best of…

What if drug design didn’t depend on pre-existing biological data?

In this episode of Mendelspod, Theral sits down with Aridni Shah, co-founder and CEO of Immunito AI, a Bengaluru-based biotech startup reinventing how we develop antibody therapies. Shah and her team are using artificial intelligence to design antibodies from scratch, bypassing traditional animal-based and data-heavy methods. “We no longer need to rely on pre-existing data,” she explains. “We’ve gone to the fundamental atomic level and learned basic physics, chemistry, and maths—why do two proteins interact?”

* 0:00 Discovering new antibodies without relying on biological processes

* 4:45 The platform - a structure first approach

* 10:00 The business model

* 15:05 Bringing mathematics and physics to biology

At the heart of Immunito’s innovation is a proprietary mathematical transformation that translates raw 3D structural data into rich, generative models capable of designing antibodies for even “undruggable” targets. It’s an ambitious approach to rational drug design that prioritizes data efficiency, leveraging physics-based complementarity rather than brute-force sequence matching.

Still early in development, Immunito is already seeing promising lab results and aims to partner with pharma while building its own pipeline. “We should have signed a few multimillion-dollar multi-target deals,” Shah says of their goals over the next few years, “and be looking to progress towards IND.” This conversation opens a compelling window into how AI, when grounded in mathematical and physical intuition, may radically transform biology.

Yes, the Trump economy has been tough on life science tools—but according to today’s guest, the business model was failing us anyway. It’s time to go back to rethinking the basics.

Today we’re joined by Stephane Budel, founding partner at DeciBio, one of the leading market research and consulting firms focused on life science tools and precision medicine…

On today’s episode of Mendelspod, Theral sits down with Giovanna Prout, CEO of Scale Biosciences, to explore a how the company is achieving new orders of magnitude of scale in the single cell space.

"In the past, single cell was one cell per well—maybe 96 cells per experiment," Prout explains. "Now, with our Quantum Scale platform, we can scale from 85,…

What if you could step inside a molecule? On today’s episode of Mendelspod, we talk with Steve McCloskey, founder and CEO of Nanome, the company bringing virtual reality into the world of drug discovery and molecular modeling. A former nanoengineering student at UC San Diego and a self-described futurist, Steve founded Nanome to create what he calls the "ultimate scientific interface"—a way for scientists not just to visualize molecules, but to interact with them naturally in 3D space.

* 0:00 The ultimate science app

* 2:15 A use case

* 7:15 How does VR interaction change things?

* 12:47 Intuition at the nanoscale

* 23:10 Can VR redefine biological models and become the norm?

* 35:15 Hard to give career advice now with rapid rise of tech

Nanome’s VR platform enables researchers to grab, rotate, and manipulate proteins, explore molecular dynamics, and even collaborate remotely inside a shared molecular environment. Built with both scientific rigor and the playful spirit of a 3D gamer, Nanome is already being used from classrooms to major pharmaceutical firms.

One of the most compelling ideas discussed today is the possibility that VR can help biologists build intuition at the nanoscale, much like space exploration and science fiction helped earlier generations develop intuition about the cosmos. "Ninety-nine percent of people have no intuition for the nanoscale," McCloskey says. "You look at molecules on a 2D screen, and it's like a ball of spaghetti. But in VR, you pretty much instantaneously get it."​

This new kind of "nano-intuition" could, McCloskey argues, open doors for faster discovery, better communication, and broader scientific literacy. As he puts it, "Space is fascinating because it's so vast and mysterious. But the nanoscale is even denser with phenomena—and we’re just beginning to explore it."​

Looking ahead, Steve sees VR as becoming a normal part of the scientific workflow. Though today's headsets are still bulky, future versions could be as light as eyeglasses, embedding a whole new layer of spatial computing into everyday research.

As Steve says: "If we can give scientists—and even the general public—intuition for the nanoscale, it might radically change how we approach biology, drug development, and science education itself."​