Tech on Drugs with Shai Shen-Orr

CytoReason
Tech on Drugs with Shai Shen-Orr

In a big-data age, drug development needs to be reinvented. The data revolution is already taking place in finance and commerce, in agriculture and transportation. There’s no reason for pharma to stay behind. “Tech on Drugs” is a podcast about the future of pharma. From novel targets to novel biomarkers. From disease models to population models. From clinical trials to synthetic trials. It’s a show about the doctor in the clinic who needs to build on molecular features and about the bioinformatician in the lab who needs to build on clinical endpoints. In each episode, our host, Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, gets to do what he loves to do most. He gets to speak with some of the world’s top scientists and healthcare executives about the industry's digital transformation.

Episodes

  1. TOD - 2025_04_17 - Nir Hacohen

    MAY 11

    TOD - 2025_04_17 - Nir Hacohen

    We’re kicking off Season 3 of Tech on Drugs with Prof. Nir Hacohen — Director of the Center for Cancer Research at MGH, founding director of the Broad Institute’s Cell Circuits Program, and a distinguished member of CytoReason's Science Advisory Board. Shai and Nir cover everything from the rise of antibodies and the promise (and pitfalls) of STING agonists, to the future of personalized cancer vaccines and a mysterious immune cell that appears only in patients with sepsis — a “cell that doesn’t exist” in healthy individuals. This is a candid look at how deep biology, smart computation, and persistence can reshape how we treat cancer.

    1h 2m
  2. Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep4 - Dr. Tom Bumol

    11/21/2024

    Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep4 - Dr. Tom Bumol

    Tom Bumol's career spans major roles at Eli Lilly, the Allen Institute, and beyond. He is also a distinguished member of CytoReason's Science Advisory Board.In this episode, Tom shares insights into drug development's successes, failures, and future direction, including: Lessons from lupus - the story of a failed lupus trial that revealed the critical importance of understanding disease heterogeneity and inspired new approaches in immunology.From trial and error to predictability - how AI and systems biology can transform drug development by embracing human complexity.Combination therapies and beyond - designing drugs with precision to improve patient outcomes and broaden therapeutic reach.All this and much more in a captivating discussion with our Chief Scientist Shai Shen-Orr. Enjoy!

    44 min
  3. Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep3 - Dr. Yair Benita

    10/14/2024

    Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep3 - Dr. Yair Benita

    This episode was recorded in the beautiful Island of Crete, at CytoReason's employee conference, the CytoSummit. CytoReason's Co-founder Shai Shen-Orr hosts AION Labs CTO Yair Benita.  Yair is a computational biologist who spent more than 20 years studying biology through omics and clinical data in an effort to piece together mechanisms of human disease. He’s been leading computational teams in drug discovery at CytoReason, Compugen, and Merck.  In this candid conversation with Shai, Yair reflects on the highs and lows of his professional journey over the past two decades, as well as the broader industry landscape. Key questions discussed include: What major shift did Keytruda's development introduce to the industry?How did pharma's 'Kodak moment’ come about?What needs to happen in pharma R&D so data is no longer JUST supporting decisions, but actually driving them?And plenty of other industry gems. Enjoy!

    31 min
  4. Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep2 - Prof. Asya Rolls

    06/20/2024

    Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep2 - Prof. Asya Rolls

    While most neuroimmunologists try to understand how the immune system affects the brain, Prof. Asya Rolls has taken the road less traveled in her lab at the Technion. She and her team try to understand how the brain affects the immune system.  In this episode of Tech on Drugs, Asya and Shai talked about the power of placebo and how brain activity, particularly in the reward system, can influence the immune system.  They discussed the immense potential of harnessing brain-immune pathways for new treatment approaches. For example, research that shows that stimulating certain brain areas can boost immune responses and even reduce tumor sizes. But it's not so simple; as Asya put it, this is "complexity on steroids." To better understand the brain-immune connection and develop more holistic treatments, future research will require advanced computational models for different diseases and tissues, as well continuous data integration.

    23 min
  5. Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep1 - Prof. Eran Segal

    03/21/2024

    Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep1 - Prof. Eran Segal

    This one was fun. In the latest episode of Tech on Drugs, Shai met with Prof. Eran Segal from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Eran heads a multidisciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists working in the area of Computational and Systems biology. His lab at Weizmann aims to develop personalized nutrition and personalized medicine using machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic modeling, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic and clinical data. Among other things, Eran and Shai talked about precision nutrition and preventative medicine, and the importance of large-scale, longitudinal health data for advancing personalized medicine and improving drug development efficacy.

    25 min
  6. Tech On Drugs - Episode 5 - Prof. Ido Amit

    09/28/2023

    Tech On Drugs - Episode 5 - Prof. Ido Amit

    Our guest this time was Prof. Ido Amit, whose lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science pioneered single cell transcriptomic analysis and its application to the immune system. Amit’s research focuses on some of the most important questions in immunology – specifically those relevant to novel targets for immunotherapy in autoimmune diseases, neurodegeneration, and cancer. A fascinating discussion between two leading scientists about the potential of single cell RNA analysis to revolutionize target discovery and drug development.

    29 min
  7. Tech On Drugs - Episode 4 - Dr. Emanuele de Rinaldis, Sanofi

    04/28/2023

    Tech On Drugs - Episode 4 - Dr. Emanuele de Rinaldis, Sanofi

    What will the future of precision medicine look like 5-10 years down the line? And how will AI accelerate this future? I asked Dr. Emanuele de Rinaldis to answer this and many other questions. Emanuele is VP, Global Head of Precision Medicine & Computational Biology at Sanofi R&D. He believes that AI will help us define new taxonomies of diseases. We will identify different types of Asthma, different types of Fibrosis. And AI will help us create a new textbook – not one driven by just clinical observations, but a textbook driven by genetics and gene expression, together with real world evidence. This will take drug development and precision medicine to a level we have never seen before.

    27 min
  8. Tech On Drugs - Episode 3 - Prof. Yanay Ofran

    03/16/2023

    Tech On Drugs - Episode 3 - Prof. Yanay Ofran

    Our guest this time is serial biotech entrepreneur Yanay Ofran. Yanay is a renowned computational biophysicist and the CEO and Co-founder of Biolojic Design. More importantly, Yanay, together with his stellar team, developed the first AI-designed antibody. He shared with Shai his (strong) opinions about: The barriers to precision medicine (and how to overcome them).The potential of AI-designed antibodies (and how, just a few weeks ago, a cancer patient in North Carolina became the first American to receive treatment with such an antibody).The reasons why even in this golden digital era drug development is still insanely expensive (and how - to use a battle metaphor - we've mastered the intelligence phase, we have great ammunition, but we need to seriously up the ante in execution!).Enjoy!

    35 min
  9. Tech on Drugs - Episode 2 - Prof Yehuda Chowers

    02/13/2023

    Tech on Drugs - Episode 2 - Prof Yehuda Chowers

    The doctor in the clinic must build on molecular features and the bioinformatician in the lab must build on data from the clinic. Prof. Yehuda Chowers, a leading gastroenterologist, has been harping on this point for years. It's a two-way street that will benefit both drug makers and drug consumers. In this episode of TOD, Chowers talks to host Shai Shen-Orr about immunogenicity, clinical trials, and population models.

    28 min
  10. Tech on Drugs - Episode 1 - Ran Balicer

    01/16/2023

    Tech on Drugs - Episode 1 - Ran Balicer

    Our first episode features world renowned epidemiologist, Prof. Ran Balicer, Chief Innovation Officer at Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest healthcare organization. We talked about the mining of real-world data and how it guides healthcare policy. The impact on Covid is pretty mind-boggling!

    28 min

  11. SEASON 1 TRAILER

    Introducing - Tech on Drugs

    This is a podcast about the future of pharma. From novel targets to novel biomarkers. From disease models to population models. From clinical trials to synthetic trials. In each episode, our host Prof. Shai Shen-Orr talks to world-leading scientists and healthcare executives about the future of pharma.

    1 min

Trailer

About

In a big-data age, drug development needs to be reinvented. The data revolution is already taking place in finance and commerce, in agriculture and transportation. There’s no reason for pharma to stay behind. “Tech on Drugs” is a podcast about the future of pharma. From novel targets to novel biomarkers. From disease models to population models. From clinical trials to synthetic trials. It’s a show about the doctor in the clinic who needs to build on molecular features and about the bioinformatician in the lab who needs to build on clinical endpoints. In each episode, our host, Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, gets to do what he loves to do most. He gets to speak with some of the world’s top scientists and healthcare executives about the industry's digital transformation.

Information

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada