pharmaphorum Podcast

In a new episode of the pharmaphorum podcast, web editor Nicole Raleigh spoke with Lance Baldo, CEO of Beacon Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company harnessing the transformative power of gene therapy to deliver meaningful outcomes for severe ocular diseases.

Baldo discusses the ocular disease landscape, as well as Beacon’s work targeting X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (XLRP) and geographic atrophy (GA), and what the future could look like in terms of innovation in this field.

You can listen to episode 253 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it – and subscribe to the rest of the series – on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podbean, and pretty much wherever else you download your other podcasts from.

In a new episode of the pharmaphorum podcast, recorded at BIO-Europe Spring in Lisbon, Portugal, web editor Nicole Raleigh spoke with Kashif Sadiq, founder and CEO of DenovAI Biotech, a company that believes humanity is on the cusp of a protein design revolution that stands to transform both human health and the world around us.

Sadiq discusses the company's springboard from AION Labs - with a first-of-its-kind alliance of AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, the Israel Biotech Fund, Amiti Ventures, and Amazon Web Services, powered by BioMed X with the support of the Israeli Government.

He also explores harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and computational molecular biophysics, developing foundational technology platforms that can design proteins de novo, and describes the trends and insights from the conference itself this year.

At BIO-Europe Spring 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal, web editor Nicole Raleigh spoke with Dr Olga Nissan, vice president of business development at Evogene, a computational chemistry company, specialising in the generative design of small molecules for the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.

Nissan discusses recent developments at Evogene, including its extended collaboration with Google Cloud to develop and integrate AI agents into Evogene’s ChemPass AI platform, as well as its collaboration with Queensland University of Technology in the non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) space. She also speaks to where industry is at in its integration of cutting-edge AI into scientific research.

In a new pharmaphorum podcast, web editor Nicole Raleigh was joined by Rob DiCicco, vice president of portfolio management at Transcelerate Biopharma Inc, for a conversation on the barriers and the breakthroughs in making AI work in drug development and clinical trials.

DiCicco discusses why AI adoption in clinical trials is so different from preclinical research and development, as well as how synthetic control arms and in silico modelling reshape trial design, and he touches upon the need for making AI solutions meet not just regulatory and scientific standards, but ethical standards, also.

You can listen to episode 250 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it - and subscribe to the rest of the series – on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podbean, and pretty much wherever else you download your other podcasts from.

Genetic diseases are notoriously challenging to treat, especially when each condition requires a tailored approach. With over 10,000 known genetic disorders, developing individual therapies for each one has been an immense hurdle, particularly for rare diseases affecting small patient populations. But what if there was a way to address multiple conditions simultaneously, using a single, universal approach?

In today’s episode of the pharmaphorum podcast, Michelle Werner, CEO of Alltrna, discusses her company’s approach of leveraging transfer RNA (tRNA) to shift the paradigm in genetic medicine. This approach has the potential to offer hope to millions of patients with rare and ultra-rare diseases, bypassing traditional one-disease-at-a-time models.

Werner discusses how engineered tRNA works, how this technology slots into existing regulatory frameworks, and why this could be a game changer for pharmaceutical development.

You can listen to episode 249 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it - and subscribe to the rest of the series – on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Podbean, and pretty much wherever else you download your other podcasts from.