The Big Experiment
Ever wondered how technology start-ups, well, start-up? For most founder entrepreneurs, it is the biggest experiment they'll ever run. Like most experiments, the result isn't known beforehand and it often doesn't work first time. On a bigger scale, how do big tech companies turn innovative science into profit?
Mark Davison interviews founder scientists, executives, investors, communicators, and others in the technology start-up and corporate science ecosystems.
Learn how great ideas turned into thriving businesses (or not) from those who made it happen (or didn't). Get business tips, lessons learned, and life lessons straight from the people who know.
Inspiring, disastrous, funny: hear what life in a science-driven company is really like.
Straight-talking, no nonsense, but conversational style. All technical content is explained for the non-specialist - you don't need a PhD or fluency in jargon and technobabble.
The Big Experiment
Ovaries, Menopause, and Genomics with Dr Stasa Stankovic
This episode went live on World Menopause Day.
Menopause is an inevitable aspect of life for half of the global population, but one that requires far more study. New genomic insights could empower women with better reproductive choices and insights into likely future health.
In this episode, I talk with Dr Stasa Stankovic. She has a PhD in Genomic Medicine from Cambridge University, and is on a mission to reshape the future of women's health by developing, and eventually commercialising, prediction tools and next generation therapeutics for female reproductive disorders.
We discuss the complexities of female reproductive health, particularly focusing on ovarian ageing and menopause. We also explore the genetic factors influencing menopause timing, and the importance of understanding reproductive health beyond fertility.
Stasa shares her collaborative work on large-scale genomics, using samples from the UK Biobank to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWAS). These have highlighted many genes associated with menopause and thus pave the way for potential new diagnostic techniques and therapeutic interventions to give women greater control of their reproductive health.
Menopause affects every woman, but also indirectly impacts husbands, partners, colleagues and friends. The work Stasa and her colleagues are doing will have implications not just for women but for all of us.
“We need to empower women with knowledge.” – Stasa Stankovic
You’ll hear about:
01:37 - Stasa's area of research
04:14 - Why the science behind menopause is so important
07:36 - The ovarian reserve and what that means
12:26 - Contributing factors to menopause
17:24 - The key findings of the genome-wide association (GWAS) study
21:21 - Getting the right targets for intervention
27:05 - The challenge of finding animal models for menopause
28:22 - Turning lab science into commercial science
31:40 - Stasa on the choices that women have
38:38 - Is gene intervention possible?
Connect with Stasa:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stasa-stankovic-93723a137/
OvartiX - https://ovartix.com/
Connect with me:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdavison100/
If you need any lab equipment:
Grant Instruments: https://www.grantinstruments.com/
Grant Instruments on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grant-instruments-cambridge-ltd/
