Lurking among cell culture facilities across academia and the biopharmaceutical industry is an invisible threat. Microscopic organisms, no more than 2-3 micrometers in length and approximately 25 times smaller than a spec of dust floating in the air or hiding behind your couch, may creep into cell culture dishes, infiltrate cells, and propagate, causing lasting cellular effects and dangerous consequences for biopharmaceuticals. In this episode we discuss how to detect and measure mycoplasma, a bacterial pestilence that experts estimate infects approximately 30 percent of cell lines across the globe. More on this podcast Drug Discovery News Talks Science is a podcast where we discuss the latest news in preclinical and translational research. Behind every medical and scientific advancement lies a harrowing story of mystery and discovery. Come with us as we share these stories and connect you to the scientific minds behind them.  This podcast episode is sponsored by Bio-Rad. Bio-Rad is a global leader in developing, manufacturing, and marketing a broad range of innovative products for the life science research and clinical diagnostic markets. With a focus on quality and customer service for over 65 years, Bio-Rad products advance the discovery process and improve healthcare.

Gene therapy promises the possibility of replacing damaged and faulty disease-causing genes with functional copies, essentially rescuing disease-causing phenotypes and restoring individuals to health. At the heart of this technology are viral vectors, little vessels that leverage the evolutionary power of viruses to penetrate and shuttle genetic information into cells. Manipulating viruses to carry genetically-modified gene copies and then producing large quantities of these viral carriers for gene therapy is no easy task. Before any gene therapy can make it to the clinic, its feasibility and success largely hinges on critical early steps in viral vector optimization and production. In this episode, we will explore the hurdles that researchers face in viral vector development and how one team overcame these challenges to produce a groundbreaking gene therapy for hemophilia. More on this podcast Drug Discovery News Talks Science is a podcast where we discuss the latest news in preclinical and translational research. Behind every medical and scientific advancement lies a harrowing story of mystery and discovery. Come with us as we share these stories and connect you to the scientific minds behind them.  This podcast episode is sponsored by Mirus Bio. Mirus Bio revolutionized transfection more than 25 years ago with the introduction of its flagship product, TransIT®-LT1. Pioneering new delivery solutions, such as TransIT-X2®, Mirus is a critical supplier of novel transfection reagents. With the introduction of TransIT-VirusGEN®, Mirus expanded expertise to virus manufacturing, supporting researchers from discovery to clinic.

In an increasingly digital world, many scientists still work with basic paper and pen. Often, critical information gathered during clinical trials gets buried in laboratory notebooks or overly complex excel documents. Unearthing this information and creating a central hub for big scientific data is more than simply a technical advancement; it is critical to uncovering new scientific discoveries. In this episode, we speak with Grant Roesler, a systems analyst at Oregon Health & Science University about how his team unearthed vital information across 50 disparate oncology-based research studies into a centralized hub, breathing new life into buried samples and opening the door for future research possibilities.  More on this podcast Drug Discovery News Talks Science is a podcast where we discuss the latest news in preclinical and translational research. Behind every medical and scientific advancement lies a harrowing story of mystery and discovery. Come with us as we share these stories and connect you to the scientific minds behind them.  This episode is supported by LabVantage, which delivers the first Laboratory Information Management System preconfigured for biorepositories. It includes all the functionality needed for biobanking, but deploys at a fraction of the time, cost, and risk of a traditional system.