Mara Aspinall has long been a leader in precision medicine, championing diagnostics as vital to better treatments and saving lives. She built Genzyme Genetics into the nation’s top testing business, later acquired by LabCorp for $1 billion, and led Ventana (now Roche Tissue Diagnostics) in pioneering companion diagnostics. As co-founder of BlueStone Venture Partners and partner at Illumina Ventures, she continues shaping the field. She also publishes the Diagnostics Year in Review, serves on multiple boards, and co-founded ASU’s School of Biomedical Diagnostics. This episode explores both her vision for testing and her journey to becoming a transformative leader.

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Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David R. Liu, PhD, Harvard and Broad Institute professor, invented base and prime editing—gene editing tools now in 20+ clinical trials with early wins against sickle cell, leukemia, and more. Founder of Editas, Beam, and Prime Medicine, and winner of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize, Liu joins Behind The Breakthroughs to share how chemistry and evolution are driving the next wave of medicine.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Janice Chen, PhD, helped transform CRISPR from a lab discovery into a life-saving tool. As co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences with Jennifer Doudna, Trevor Martin, and Lucas Harrington, she’s driven efforts to harness CRISPR for human health and diagnostics. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Chen shares how she’s turning a once-theoretical gene editor into a medical revolution.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With recent safety setbacks in gene therapy underscoring the risks of genetic medicine, Amber Salzman, PhD, is charting a different course. After 25 years in big pharma, she now leads Epicrispr, where their Gene Expression Modulation System (GEMS) fine-tunes gene activity to tackle diseases too complex for traditional gene replacement, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Salzman shares how epigenomic modulation could open new frontiers in treatment.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Produced by Bill Levine

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Music provided by penguinmusic

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think Good Will Hunting—but in biology. Mike Previte, PhD, once at Illumina and now CTO and co-founder of Element Biosciences, is building tools to move beyond DNA and RNA sequencing toward a true 5D view of life. On Behind the Breakthroughs, he explains how technologies like AVITI 24 could unlock predictive precision medicine by revealing how cells behave across time and space.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Produced by Bill Levine

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Music provided by penguinmusic

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hervé Affagard, CEO and co-founder of MaaT Pharma, traded industrial engineering for medicine after cancer struck his family. Now, he’s pioneering microbiome-based therapies to restore balance in the gut, boost immunity, and tackle diseases from graft-versus-host to cancer itself. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Hervé shares how reimagining our inner ecosystem could transform treatment.

Want me to make this one lean even harder into the industrial-to-biotech transformation angle for extra contrast?

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Produced by Bill Levine

Audio mixed and mastered by David Mosely

Music provided by penguinmusic

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Michelle Werner, PhD, learned her son Caffrey had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, she left big pharma to lead Alltrna—a Flagship Pioneering company engineering tRNAs to tackle rare diseases with no treatments. On Behind the Breakthroughs, Werner shares her journey as both mother and CEO, and how Alltrna’s approach could unlock therapies for thousands of conditions caused by nonsense mutations.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Audio mixed and mastered by Jason Mack

Music provided by Artem Hramushkin

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Public health is greatly benefiting from population genomics screening, as it provides patients with risk education and treatment for symptoms of life-threatening diseases that they would not have been aware of through routine checkups. So, why hasn't population genomic screening realized its full potential? As an internist geneticist and Medical Affairs Director at Helix, this issue became all the more real for Cassie Hajek, MD, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer that evaded existing genetic testing procedures. In this earnest episode, Hajek shares how her experiences as both a cancer patient and a practitioner have helped her identify and build towards overcoming some of the barriers to maximizing population genomic screening for preventive medicine.

Stay up to date with the latest episodes of Behind the Breakthroughs by subscribing to the IPM eNewsletter here.

Produced by Bill Levine

Hosted by Jonathan D. Grinstein

Audio mixed and mastered by Jason Mack

Music provided by Artem Hramushkin

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.