The Chain: Protein Engineering Podcast
The Chain explores the lives, careers, research, and discoveries of protein engineers and scientists, the impact their work is having on the field, and where the industry is headed. Tune in to stay up-to-date on the newest advancements and to hear the stories that are impacting the world of biologics.
- Update frequency
- every 20 days
- Average duration
- 29 minutes
- Episodes
- 80
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Episode 37: Flashback Friday: COVID-19 Science-Sequence-Structure for Pandemic Preparedness
The Chain looks back to earlier this year when researchers virtually convened on the one-year anniversary of the first documented case of COVID-19 in the United States. This episode brings you a pane…
Episode 36: Quality Control from Molecule to Organization
Nancy Sajjadi joins The Chain to share her quality control knowledge and experience of adopting a quality-by-design approach for assays. We discuss how the focus of her QC work has changed through th…
Episode 35: NK Cells and the Science of Innate Immunity w/ Éric Vivier
In this episode, Dr. Willem Overwijk returns for a conversation with Dr. Éric Vivier. Dr. Vivier is a professor of immunology at Aix-Marseille and a hospital practitioner at Marseille Public Universi…
Episode 34: Antibody and Vaccine Development for COVID-19 – Panel Discussion
This episode of The Chain features a live panel discussion moderated by Erica Ollmann Saphire, PhD of La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Expert panelists from academia and government assess the COVID…
Episode 33: Tackling COVID-19 Drug Discovery with Structural Genomics
The Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University was prepared for COVID-19 long before the United States economy shut down. Now over a year since COVID-19 was firs…
Episode 32: Young Scientist Spotlight: Cryo-EM to Uncover Structures of Coronavirus Spike Glycoproteins
Linoleic acid is an essential free fatty acid in the human body and its metabolic pathway is central to immune regulation and inflammation – which are also key symptoms in COVID-19. Using cryo-electr…
Episode 31: The Role of Tags in Your Purification Toolbox w/ Dennis Karthaus
In this episode we talk with Dennis Karthaus of IBA Lifesciences about his early science interests and pursing his PhD. His passion for marine biology eventually led him on a path to study biotechnol…
Episode 30: Recombinant Methods to Generate Antibodies Against COVID-19 – Roundtable Discussion
In a roundtable discussion, three experts bring perspectives on different methods for generating antibodies, including generating antibodies from naive libraries, patients, and immunizations. They di…
Episode 29: Efficient Chromatography Devices for Purification Requirements
The purification requirements in the biopharmaceutical industry will be even more demanding in the coming years due to increased awareness of product-related impurities like oligomers, variants, posi…
Episode 28: Chasing Interleukin-2 from Academia to Industry w/ Willem Overwijk
On this episode of The Chain, Dr. Willem Overwijk shares his personal experience of his recent transition from academia to industry, and the differences between the two. Dr. Overwijk moved to industr…
Episode 27: Human VH Domains – Finding Antibodies to Treat COVID-19 and Beyond
Dr. Dimiter Dimitrov, Director of the Center for Antibody Therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh, sits down with The Chain to discuss his research and its relevance to the current pandemic. His…
Episode 26: Science Commune: Role of Regulation in an Age of Acceleration
Dan Chen returns for the Science Commune segment and speaks with Dr. Peter Marks, Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Dr. Marks reflects on his fortuitous path …
Episode 25: Innovations in Antibody Engineering to Generate Novel Cancer Immunotherapies
Christian Klein is a longtime and key member of the protein and antibody community. In this episode, he speaks with Executive Conference Producer, Christina Lingham, on how the field has changed sinc…
Episode 24: Taking Risks and Setting Precedent in Bioanalytical Assays for Cell & Gene Therapies
There are no bad ideas in developing bioanalytical testing, says Jim McNally, CSO of BioAgilytix. Not all ideas will work, of course. But he has found that it is the outside-the-box ideas that often …
Episode 23: Undruggable No More - Biologists & Engineers Unite to Successfully Deliver Potent RAS-Cleaving Enzyme
There are some proteins that still evade scientists in the race for better therapeutics. Some of the most elusive drug targets in cancer research are RAS oncoproteins. In a paper published this July,…
Episode 22: Science Commune: Embracing the Complexity of Glycobiology
Carolyn Bertozzi grew up in a science family with a physicist father. But it was organic chemistry that “clicked” for Carolyn and started her down the path of understanding biology at a molecular lev…
Episode 21: Science Commune: Inspiration and Growth from the Early Days of Microbiology
What was science like before the shift to big data technology? How did biologists learn about cells before we could do high throughput gene analysis? What we can learn about how to problem solve from…
Episode 20: Science Commune: Problem-Solving and Innovation at the Intersection of Science and Engineering
In this Science Commune segment, Dr. Daniel Chen and Dr. Pablo Umaña discuss what it means to be both a scientist and an engineer while utilizing principles from both disciplines to solve problems an…
Episode 19: Developing a Novel Self-Cleaving Tag Technology while Learning From Both Success and Failure
Dr. David Wood is working on novel technology with self-cleaving tags, but he knows the importance of failure in the grand scheme of success, as well as mentorship, making your own way, and going you…
Episode 18: Courage & Creativity: Entrepreneur of the Year Shares her Journey from Academia to Industry
Sara Mangsbo is Entrepreneur of the Year, but her journey to success is much more than one title or one year. She shares the process and her biggest takeaways of building a company that is developing…