#33 Brian Naughton - Mining Fungi DNA for New Drugs

In this episode, I talk to Brain Naughton who’s the founder and head of data at Hexagon Bio. He is a Ph.D. in biomedical informatics from Stanford University and before starting Hexagon Bio, he was the founding scientist of 23andMe - the company that brought genetic testing into mass awareness.

At Hexagon Bio, Brain and the team are taking a refreshing new approach to discover new medicines. They’re sequencing the DNA of thousands of microbes and then using machine learning to predict which molecules could those microbes be making that will turn out to be effective medicines.

This approach of studying genomes of a wide variety of organisms at once is called metagenomics. What it is and how it helps in discovering new medicines is the topic of today’s podcast.

== What we talk about ==
0:00 - Introduction
1:11 - How did you get interested in genomics?
2:57 - How does traditional drug discovery work & what do you do differently at Hexagon Bio?
8:54 - Why would a plant have a small molecule that could treat cancer in humans when there is no evolutionary pressure on plants to do that?
12:55 - How are you discovering the right natural molecules from fungi out of the almost infinite number of natural products they produce?
15:37 - Are you sequencing genomes by yourself or are using public databases? How are you targeting which species of fungi to start with?
16:48 - From the time you have DNA sequence until mapping what drugs they are producing, what is the hardest problem you're tackling?
18:57 - Many genes are involved in making a molecule. How can you predict which molecule will be produced from a set of genes?
24:52 - There may be some gene clusters that we have no idea about what they do. How do you tackle them?
30:35 - At what stage are you in terms of discovering drugs that might proceed to clinical trials?
34:27 - Are you also trying to explore a much simpler way for producing some molecule that’s very hard to make synthetically?
38:29 - Since you are a big fan of automation are you experimenting with any lab equipment or protocol at Hexagon Bio?
42:45 - At Hexagon Bio, do you prefer doing all the work in-house or do you outsource it to other organizations?
50:04 - Thoughts on biotech startups
51:58 - How important are the grants for you?
54:45 - Can you give some tips for biotech entrepreneurs?