Business Trip

Matias interviews James (Jim) Gorman MD PhD from the Wyss Institute. Jim is Principal Investigator on the Wyss Institute Brain Targeting Program (BTP). Jim leads a team developing new approaches to transport drugs through the blood brain barrier (BBB) into the CNS. In this episode, we discuss: Why the BBB blocks most modern drugs from entering the brain, creating the biggest bottleneck in neuroHow brain shuttles hijack natural transport pathways like the transferrin receptor to move drugs acr...

Greg and Matias interview Luis Voloch, CEO and Co-Founder of Jimini Health, an AI behavioral health company. He previously co-founded and served as CTO of Immunai, where he applied machine learning to immunology and drug discovery. In this episode, we discuss: How LLMs expand the scope of machine learning from rule-based tasks to open-ended reasoning and dialogueWhy healthcare adoption is tiered, beginning with clinician-facing AI scribes and moving toward patient-facing companies...

Matias interviews Rob Malenka. In this episode, we discuss: Why progress in psychiatry is slow because the brain is the most complex organ and many disorders are highly heterogeneousThe bottlenecks including weak replicability in research, academic politics, perverse incentives, and pharma’s avoidance of neuropsychiatryHow breakthroughs require early detection, rigorous science, and bridging academia with biotech through venture philanthropyHow success depends on mission-driven, ethical peopl...

Greg and Matias interview Brendon Boot of Skin2Neuron. Brendon is a neurologist at Harvard and Mayo Clinic with prior experience as Medical Director at Biogen overseeing their Phase 1b Alzheimer’s trials. In this episode, we discuss: How skin-derived cells can be turned into neurons to repair the brain.Why replacing lost neurons may succeed where drugs have failed in Alzheimer’s.What makes autologous (self-derived) cell therapy safer and more effective.How testing in dogs brought stronger pro...

Greg and Matias interview Natalie Yivgi-Ohana of Minovia. Natalie is a life science entrepreneur with twenty years’ experience in mitochondrial research and received her PhD in Biochemistry at The Hebrew University in 2007, after which she performed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science until 2010. In this episode, we discuss: How mitochondria impacts health by not just regulating energy, but also hormones, cell survival, and overall cellular functionWhy mitoc...