The Genetics Podcast

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Glenn Cohen, Professor at Harvard Law School. They discuss the evolving legal and ethical landscape of reproductive genetics, why regulation in areas like embryo selection remains limited, and questions arising around the use of AI in healthcare.
Show Notes: 
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
00:59 Welcome to Glenn
01:35 An overview of the courses Glenn teaches at Harvard Law School
02:29 Glenn’s areas of expertise across biomedical ethics
03:20 Ethical considerations around reproductive medicine and polygenic risk scores
10:37 Regulatory uncertainty and limited oversight in reproductive genetics
13:18 Liability, regulation, and real-world implementation challenges for AI in healthcare
14:52 Risk–benefit framework for evaluating AI use in clinical settings
17:19 Glenn’s experience contributing to landmark Supreme Court cases in biotechnology and health law
20:09 Glenn’s perspective on mitochondrial replacement and its regulatory divide between the UK and US
22:20 Closing remarks
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This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Andrea Ganna, Associate Professor at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM). They discuss the promise and limits of polygenic risk scores for disease prediction and clinical trials, how large-scale electronic health records and AI models could transform medical research and healthcare planning, what Finland’s national health data infrastructure enables for population-scale studies, and how genetics can be used to strengthen trial emulation in observational data.
Show Notes: 
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
00:59 Welcome to Andrea
01:51 Andrea’s research focuses, including polygenic scores in biobanks and AI applications 
03:02 Complementarity between polygenic scores and electronic health record–derived risk signals across biobanks
04:47 Using polygenic risk scores for prognostic versus predictive enrichment in clinical trials
10:28 Limitations and opportunities of using AI models on large-scale electronic health records
15:47 Legal, data infrastructure, and privacy barriers to building AI models on health records
18:04 Choosing model architectures for healthcare AI 
19:47 Using AI and multi-omics data to integrate biological knowledge and the challenge of learning causality
21:43 How removing genetic effects from proteins improves disease prediction and highlights the role of environment
24:42 Finland’s health data ecosystem and national biobanks
28:11 Using genetics to improve trial emulation in biobank data and observational studies
33:42 Closing remarks
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Trial emulation study

Polygenic scores study

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This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Anna Lindstrand, Professor and Consultant in Clinical Genetics and Genomics at the Karolinska Institute. They discuss how Sweden has scaled whole genome sequencing as a first-line test for rare disease, what long-read sequencing adds to clinical diagnostics, how national genomic infrastructure can accelerate translation into precision medicine, and where prevention and adult genomic screening may fit into the future of healthcare.
Show Notes
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
00:59 Welcome to Anna
01:34 Choosing between whole genome, exome, panels, and long-read sequencing in clinical practice
04:05 Evaluating long-read sequencing in the clinic 
06:37 What long-read sequencing adds to diagnostic yield
09:15 The role of RNA sequencing, proteomics, and methylation profiling as complementary tools in clinical genomics
13:07 Building a coordinated national infrastructure for clinical genomics and rare disease research in Sweden
18:20 The shift toward precision therapeutics and new standards for clinical actionability
23:18 Using national genomic data and registries to make Sweden trial-ready for precision therapies
27:01 Moving beyond monogenic models to capture polygenic and borderline signals in clinical genomics
30:44 Genomics for prevention including adult screening and pharmacogenomics
36:23 Anna’s research priorities for the next phase of genomic medicine and structural variant discovery
38:32 Closing remarks
Find out more:
Long-read sequencing study

Moving beyond monogenic disease paper

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This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Matthew Goldstein, CEO of jscreen. They discuss his journey from physician-scientist and biotech founder to leading a national nonprofit focused on preventive genetic screening, how a personal tragedy reshaped his mission around carrier screening and access, and what it will take to close the gap between the promise of genomics and its real-world implementation in healthcare.
Show Notes: 
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
00:58 Welcome to Matthew
01:41 Matthew’s path from an MD-PhD to founding a personalized cancer vaccine biotech
09:06 From personal tragedy to leading jscreen to expand access to reproductive carrier screening 
17:11 Purpose, grief, and how Matthew has led jscreen in honor of his daughter
20:38 The implementation gap between genomic potential and real-world preventive screening 
23:33 Nonprofit models, reimbursement barriers, and building sustainable access to preventive genetic screening
28:27 Lessons from the Jewish community’s experience with Tay-Sachs and gaps in understanding
33:05 Preconception carrier screening and the role of community in preventive health
38:04 Closing remarks
Find out more: jscreen

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Ryan Dhindsa, Assistant Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and PI at Texas Children’s Hospital, and Dr. Caleb Lareau, PI at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Computational Biology and Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. They discuss how a Twitter DM sparked a multi-year collaboration to extract Epstein–Barr virus signals from large-scale human genomic datasets, how measuring viral persistence in UK Biobank data reveals insights into autoimmune disease risk and host genetic control, and what this work means for understanding the long-term impact of chronic viral infections on human health.
Show Notes: 
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
00:59 Welcome to Ryan and Caleb
01:58 How a Twitter DM led to a long-term collaboration
03:10 Rescuing Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) sequences from human whole genome data 
04:45 Quantifying EBV persistence in UK Biobank, validating the signal, and uncovering links to autoimmune disease
12:00 Computational virology, chronic viral effects on human disease, and extending the approach to the broader human virome
16:59 Design considerations for population genomics programs to better capture chronic viral effects on human disease
21:30 Genetic, viral strain, and environmental factors that shape EBV persistence and immune control
26:09 Future directions for EBV research and expanding beyond European ancestry cohorts
29:46 Focus areas of Ryan’s research including rare variant genetics, neurological disease mechanisms, and pediatric population genomics
33:49 Focus areas of Caleb’s research including the human virome and expanding sequencing technologies to detect uncharacterized nucleic acids
37:03 Where genomic “dark matter” may underlie unexplained cancer and severe disease
38:46 Gaps in non-coding variant interpretation and incomplete penetrance in unsolved genetic disease
42:01 Closing remarks
Find out more:
Ryan’s research group

Caleb’s research group