Pharmacology podcasts

Alexandra Delbot échange avec Karine Clément et Christophe Magnan sur les médicaments analogues du GLP-1. L’épisode retrace leur développement contre le diabète, leur utilisation dans le traitement de l’obésité et les mécanismes de réduction de l’appétit. Les intervenants discutent les bénéfices, effets et risques associés, ainsi que le détournement à visée esthétique et ses conséquences pour la santé.

Hosted by Alexandra Delbot

Rafael Rosengarten talks with NVIDIA’s Stacie Calad-Thomson about connecting AI-driven drug discovery to physical laboratory work. They examine why consistent experimental data is essential, how agents and robotics could coordinate experiments, and how scientists’ responsibilities may change as laboratories automate. The discussion distinguishes proposing molecules or experiments from executing them, validating results and deciding the next research step.

Hosted by Rafael Rosengarten

Anna Truzzi and Luca Pellegrino discuss experiments on a historical antibacterial preparation and the sources of bias in AI systems. An external segment with Ian Scott and Ilaria Zanardi explores elephant communication, including low-frequency sound, long-distance signalling and the evidence for individually distinctive calls.

Hosted by Anna Truzzi, Luca Pellegrino

Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen discuss siRNA medicines that suppress production of harmful proteins without changing DNA. They examine the long path from discovery to treatment, why existing drugs concentrate on liver diseases, programmable and long-lasting effects, and prospects and limitations for treating infection, cardiovascular disease, rare disorders and cancer.

Hosted by Saloni Dattani, Jacob Trefethen

Jennie Erin Smith discusses research on noninvasive brain stimulation in women’s health, including postpartum depression, menstrual pain and fertility-related questions. Liisa Galea reviews the evidence on hormone therapy during perimenopause and associations between menopausal symptoms and later health outcomes, including dementia and cardiovascular disease. The discussion concerns research findings and open questions rather than individual treatment recommendations.

Hosted by Sarah Crespi

Francesca and Ilaria discuss taste-receptor research, mitochondrial biology and a reported ALS case study involving an antisense oligonucleotide treatment. Giuliana Galati interviews University of Padua physicist Francesco Recchia about nuclear phenomenology. The episode links these discussions to the underlying research papers and distinguishes a clinical case report from established treatment evidence.

Hosted by Francesca Cecilia Lauta, Ilaria Zanardi

Melissa and Jam answer questions about household natural gas, organic-chemistry careers, topical pain-relief gels and pharmaceutical crystal forms. The episode also revisits previous explanations and discusses chemistry education and the history of the field.

Hosted by Melissa, Jam

Rafael Rosengarten and BioPharmaTrend co-founder Andrii Buvailo discuss how to assess progress in AI-assisted drug discovery. They trace the move from individual computational tasks to connected research workflows and question whether counting AI-associated drug candidates captures the technology’s value. Topics include research productivity, trial design, biomarkers, human expertise and the use of patient-derived data, organoids and other representative biological systems to improve translation. The conversation also considers why AI has become polarising and how specialised models may fit into pharmaceutical research.

Mariana Kneppers, Neil Withers and Phillip Broadwith discuss molecular glues and efforts to target cancer-related proteins previously considered difficult to drug. They also explore how analysis of fibres and dyes helps researchers investigate and conserve the Bayeux Tapestry.

Hosted by Mariana Kneppers

Jonathan Long discusses the expanding scientific study of peptides, from improved methods for discovering molecules in the body to the success of GLP-1 medicines. The conversation distinguishes research progress from untested wellness claims and examines the search for compounds that reproduce aspects of exercise biology.

Hosted by Nicholas Weiler

Tim Wahlberg of CAS speaks with Rafael Rosengarten about the role of curated chemical knowledge in AI-assisted drug discovery. They examine scientific data quality, harmonisation and expert curation, and consider how reliable information can help researchers formulate questions and evaluate answers from large language models.

Hosted by Rafael Rosengarten

Scientific American's Science Quickly examines an early pilot trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for people with long-term anorexia. The episode carefully discusses reported changes in symptoms and motivation, possible neuroplasticity mechanisms, the small uncontrolled sample and the need for larger randomized studies and clinical safeguards.

Nature staff discuss how a newly approved orexin-targeting narcolepsy drug could enable therapies for other neurological conditions, and examine human brain organoids that have remained viable for more than five years. The episode connects sleep medicine, therapeutic neuroscience, and long-term models of human brain development.

Daphne Koller of insitro discusses the differences between finding predictive patterns and identifying interventions that improve disease outcomes. The conversation examines biological data scarcity, structure and causality, failures in drug development and the limits of speeding up wet-lab work with AI agents. It also considers foundation models for biology, generalization beyond observed data, human evidence and scientific discovery. Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv and Allen Roush. Watch the full conversation on the publisher’s YouTube channel.

Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv, Allen Roush

Jacob Hooker of Sensorium Therapeutics speaks with Rafael Rosengarten about investigating plant-derived compounds for psychiatric and neurological drug development. They discuss ethnobotanical records, knowledge graphs and AI as tools for generating hypotheses, alongside the medicinal chemistry and clinical testing needed to turn potential leads into medicines.

Hosted by Rafael Rosengarten

Nature examines the booming market for unregulated peptides and asks whether scientific evidence supports the health and wellness claims driving their popularity.

This episode examines vanadium compounds as potential medicines and the obstacles separating promising studies from practical treatments. It then turns to the environmental footprint of research laboratories, considering changes in water use, plastics, energy, solvents and other materials. The discussion connects medicinal chemistry with practical questions about making laboratory work more sustainable.

Hosted by Mariana Kneppers

Charlene Lancaster speaks with Cesar de la Fuente about using artificial intelligence to discover novel antibiotics from organisms and genetic sources spanning spiders, archaea, woolly mammoths, and humans.

Surya Ganguli and Bowen Liu join Vijay Pande to examine how machine learning can support biological discovery and drug development. They compare physics-based modelling, learned molecular representations and self-supervised foundation models; discuss protein structures, target identification and generative molecule design; and explain why experimental validation and generalisation beyond training data remain difficult. The conversation also considers interpretable cellular representations and the potential role of AI in clinical-trial recruitment and prediction. The publisher provides an accompanying transcript.

Hosted by Vijay Pande

Tor-Morten Kvam discusses research into psychedelic-assisted treatment of mental illness and the history of this field. Conversation in Norwegian.