The Life & Science Podcast

In this episode of The Life & Science Podcast, we talk with Malte Kuhnemund about why spatial biology is flat, and whether it should be.

Malte came to Sweden on an Erasmus exchange in Lund and stayed for his PhD in Uppsala. The in situ technology from his lab became CARTANA, which he co-founded and 10x Genomics acquired, and it fed into the Xenium platform. After 10x closed the Stockholm site, he helped start CubaseBio and Haga Bio.

We discuss:

• What pulled him to Sweden, from family summers to open professors' doors
• Building CARTANA when spatial RNA imaging was still "science fiction"
• Why 10x Genomics, and what signing the papers felt like
• The Stockholm closure: anger first, then hindsight
• A break with his kids, then starting CubaseBio and Haga Bio
• Why spatial tools have been flat all along, and how sequencing rebuilds tissue in 3D
• The experiment showing molecular crowding is no limit for in situ
• Sacrifice, founder pressure and advice: "Nothing's safe today"

If you are a scientist thinking about turning research into a company, a founder rebuilding after a reorganisation, a researcher curious about spatial biology in 3D, or a PhD or postdoc weighing academia against industry, you'll recognise yourself in this conversation.

Chapters

0:00 Meet Malte Kuhnemund
1:51 Erasmus in Lund, then a PhD in Uppsala
5:24 A mobile phone microscope and the road to CARTANA
7:47 Reagent kits and spatial biology taking off
8:33 Owning your IP in the Swedish system
9:52 Founder, coffee maker and team cheerleader
11:15 Early investors and a market that did not exist
14:19 Why 10x Genomics was the right partner
15:17 An acquisition from the start
16:24 Signing the papers and letting go
18:17 What the CARTANA team brought to the Xenium platform
20:01 Starting again
21:15 When 10x closed the Stockholm site
24:25 Why most of the team stayed in Europe
28:26 Time with his kids and a fresh perspective
31:45 Founding CubaseBio and Haga Bio in 2024
32:18 Two companies with opposite aims
34:45 Haga Bio: taking spatial biomarkers to the clinic
36:40 Why spatial biology has been flat
39:14 "We should have done this in three dimensions"
41:12 Sequencing DNA to see tissue in 3D
42:46 "A billion piece jigsaw puzzle"
45:17 Cells, proteins and the latest preprint
46:29 Computing 3D samples on a workstation
47:22 Organoids and personalised medicine
53:26 Whole transcriptome versus targeted 3D readouts
58:09 Proteins, chromatin and the sequencing cost limit
59:01 Adding time: is 4D next?
1:01:33 Milestones for CubaseBio and Haga Bio
1:04:58 Spatial RNA pathology and a first diagnostic
1:06:50 What changed his mind about in situ
1:13:21 "We're still at the start of spatial biology"
1:22:43 Dutch Courage: sacrifice, balance and delegation
1:25:19 Carrying the pressure of a founder
1:27:02 Being wrong about an R&D decision
1:29:51 Regrets and fears: AI and tool funding
1:32:44 Advice for PhDs, postdocs and founders
1:36:11 "You will find people that can help you" 

Where should spatial biology go next: low-cost assays for the clinic, full 3D for discovery, or both?

Tell us in the comments, and follow The Life & Science Podcast for the next episode. 

#SpatialBiology #SpatialTranscriptomics #BiotechFounders #Organoids #LifeSciences #SRC-Search

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In episode 2 of The Life & Science Podcast, we sit down with Joe Beechem for a celebration of four decades in science: why he left a tenured academic career to “build a box that people around the world can use”, and what it took to bring spatial biology to the world.

Joe’s path runs from a commuter school to Johns Hopkins, a physics postdoc, and a tenured chair in a medical school. From there he went to Molecular Probes, Life Technologies and NanoString, where he led R&D through the launch of GeoMx and CosMx. He lived through a very public patent fight, a Chapter 11 and the sale to Bruker. And he’s still not done: his next project is spatial proteomics.

We discuss:

• The Friday-night phone call that made him leave academia, and why he has no regrets
• How a cold call to Johns Hopkins got him into grad school
• The masking-tape and pipette experiment that became GeoMx, and the pathologist survey that nearly killed it
• Living through litigation and bankruptcy
• The two paths to the clinic: discovery-first biomarkers and foundation models
• Why big companies lose their innovation engine, and his next move in spatial proteomics
• The Socratic play he’s writing for non-scientists, with Darwin, Rosalind Franklin and Carl Sagan

If you build or buy spatial tools, run a lab, or wonder what a long career in this field looks like from the inside, this one is for you.

Chapters
0:00 Meet Joe Beechum
0:35 20,000 miles in one tour
1:32 Mr. NanoString, Mr. Spatial
4:16 The idea behind high-plex microscopy
6:30 A tenured professor who couldn't stop building
8:35 The call that led to leaving Vanderbilt
11:15 No regrets: Vanderbilt and tenure
13:26 Cold-calling Johns Hopkins
16:30 First from northern Kentucky in an Ivy League grad school
18:49 From biology to physics
23:28 Walking into med school
25:33 Molecular Probes and the Alexa Fluor dyes
27:55 The Invitrogen acquisition
30:17 Life Technologies: AGBT plenary, Starlight, Ion Torrent
32:29 Leaving Life Tech and joining NanoString
34:54 A lunch at JP Morgan, a $50M investment
37:22 The engineer who said "it could work": birth of GeoMx
42:06 "Think big, act small"
47:18 "No one will want this": the board says no to GeoMx
49:33 Proving it works: the 84-gene assay
51:51 CosMx: imaging thousands of transcripts
56:38 Best Buzz at AGBT, again and again
57:21 Lawsuits and the road to Chapter 11
58:12 Holding the lab together through Chapter 11
1:01:06 "We're not going anywhere"
1:03:32 Bidding war
1:04:34 The payoff: saving the microscopes
1:06:22 Did he maximize his impact?
1:09:00 Socrates in a black box theater: Joe's play
1:15:03 Anti-science world
1:18:33 The next chapter: proteins
1:20:17 Spatial in the clinic: two paths
1:27:30 Is 3D the next frontier?
1:30:08 RNA or protein? Dinner with Carl Sagan?
1:33:45 Would he do it all again?
1:35:45 The one regret
1:38:06 What he's afraid of
1:39:25 Final advice: look inside, look outside

Does the path to the clinic run through discovery-first biomarkers, foundation models, or both? Tell us in the comments, and follow The Life & Science Podcast for the next episode.

#SpatialBiology #SpatialOmics #Genomics #Proteomics #LifeSciences
#SRC-Search
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In the first episode of The Life & Science Podcast, we talk with Luciano Martelotto about benchmarking with honesty: how we compare spatial technologies, why the current approach falls short, and what it will take to get these tools in front of patients.

Luciano's career has crossed continents and disciplines. He trained in biotechnology in Rosario, Argentina, at a time when he sometimes had to buy his own Taq polymerase out of his teaching salary to finish his experiments. He moved from plant genetics into cancer biology, built labs and methods in Australia and the US, and became one of the most-cited and most candid voices in single-cell and spatial -omics. More recently, he moved from academia into industry, a step he describes not as leaving science but as "changing how I play the game."

We discuss:

• What changes when a KOL moves into industry, and why "nobody cares how many papers you have if the things don't actually work"
• Why benchmarking in -omics remains so difficult
• A different way to compare platforms: what if we started looking at how much biology you can get for a fixed budget?
• Why single-cell has still not reached the clinic, let alone spatial, and his view that "if it breaks in the hands of a non-expert, it is not ready"
• How funding priorities favour new discoveries over the less visible work of making tools reliable and usable
• The personal cost of an international research career
• What he regrets in his scientific career

If you run a lab, lead a core facility, build or sell life science tools, or you're a researcher weighing the jump to industry, you'll recognise yourself in this conversation. You may not agree with all of it.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:13 Doing science in Argentina with no budget
09:35 The DNA moment and the cancer book he read five times
14:19 Academia to industry
15:44 "Nobody cares how many papers you have"
23:36 The price of being honest
25:34 Benchmarking is a swamp
33:31 How much biology does $10K buy?
37:04 Young researchers: your tools will be outdated before you graduate
44:12 Why single-cell still isn't in the clinic
49:39 Flashy science vs usable technology
54:02 Dutch Courage: was it worth it?
1:01:12 The statement he'd take back
1:04:44 Lightning round
1:13:31 "This is not a race"

Is benchmarking in our field broken, or just hard? Tell us in the comments, and follow The Life & Science Podcast for the next episode.

#SingleCell #SpatialOmics #Genomics #Benchmarking #LifeSciences
#SRC-Search
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Welcome to The Life & Science Podcast, powered by SRC-Search.

This is the show where we talk with the people shaping life sciences, from researchers and founders to executives and the talent behind them. Each episode covers careers, leadership, innovation and what it really takes to build a career in science and biotech.

Hosted by Bert Trentelman, Founder of SRC-Search.

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