Hard Drugs

Can we switch off diseases?

What if treating diseases was as simple as telling your cells to stop making a harmful protein? That’s the premise of siRNA, a technology that silences genes without chan

Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro have transformed the treatment of obesity as well as diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease, sleep apnea, and maybe even

Inventing the second malaria vaccine with Katharine Collins

Malaria is caused not by a virus or bacterium, but by a complex, shape-shifting parasite that has evolved alongside us for millennia. This has made vaccine development a

Should everyone be taking statins?

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but it’s also one of medicine’s biggest success stories. Since the 1950s, the risk of dying from cardiovascular dis

The first cancer vaccine

Hepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestone

The history of vaccines

Before vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms”

Will AI solve medicine?

Artificial intelligence is transforming how we discover and develop new medicines. But how far can it really take us? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni trace the path of

The art of protein design with AI

What if you could design a protein never seen in nature? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and Pr

Hacking proteins with AI

Nature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping r

100 years of insulin in 15 minutes

A hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug developme

Proteins: Weird blobs that do important things

This episode kicks off a mini-series on proteins, drug development and AI. Saloni and Jacob explore the world of proteins, including how proteins fold into complex shapes

Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDS

Lenacapavir is a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and it could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide. Saloni and Jaco

Coming soon: Hard Drugs

Hard Drugs is a new podcast about medical innovation: how to speed it up, how to scale it up, and how to make sure lifesaving tools reach the people who need them the mos