Nucleus Genomics launches embryo IQ and disease screening — the world's first consumer genetic optimization software for IVF

How you doing? Welcome to the show. That's a great intro. Their tweets are flying. Oh my god. You guys seeing this? Yes. You seeing this? Seeing this. Break it down for us. Explain what's happening. There's nothing like a launch day. I'm trying to figure out guys, is this is it data or is it Theronos?

Cuz people can't they can't make up their mind. Oh yeah. You know, they're trying to figure it out. They're trying to figure out what's going on. Let's give some context to the audience. Nucleus has launched Nucleus Embryo, the world's first genetic optimization software.

Basically, parents can, you know, give their children the best start in life. They can pick their embryo based off of physical characteristics like eye color, IQ. They can go to disease risk like cancers or heart disease.

Basically, we really believe parents can get old information that exists about their embryos and they can pick however they want. Um, for me personally, you know, it's been 10 years in the making.

The journalist actually covered it today in the Wall Street Journal was a journalist that covered my gene editing in a warehouse in Brooklyn 10 years ago. Yes. Let's Wow. Overnight success. It's uh you know it's long time in genetics. Yeah. So so so break down the state-of-the-art because like embryo screening exists.

I think most parents in America at least if they the means do some sort of screening uh while the embryo is growing. Is this purely for IVF? Is this just going a layer deeper? And then is I want to talk about the regulatory and FDA component as well. Yeah, let's talk about it.

So, oh, basically if you go to IVF clinic today, you're a couple. The vast vast vast majority of clinics. The first thing actually understand is that the IVF process is principally controlled today by clinicians or doctors. Honestly, couples don't have as much liberty in our perspective as they should. It's their baby.

It's their embryos. They should have the right to those that information and they should be able to pick off any vertical. However, today in the clinic, what generally happens is people test embryos for very rare and severe genetic conditions.

For example, like a chromosomal abnormality like Down syndrome for example or even a condition like cystic fibrosis or T-ax or PKU, right? These are conditions that are very rare um that maybe someone might have a carrier for cystic fibrosis but it's it's pretty rare.

Um then there are conditions that we've all heard of heard about things like breast cancer, things like coronary artery disease, the things that actually kill the vast majority of people today, right? chronic conditions kill a vast majority of people today.

Those conditions are just not tested for in the clinic even though we have very good science actually that can make those predictions. How do we know this as a as a DNA companies? Well, that's what we do, right? We build models that predict disease and the way you test those models in adults.

So, we go from adults to embryos is actually because we can basically well validate these models to show that they work in both the embryionic context and in the adult context.

And so, what we're really doing is we're going from okay, instead of just looking for really severe like down syndrome cystic fibrosis, why not do breast cancer? Why not do heart disease? Why not do colorectile cancer? Right? Why not do schizophrenia? Why do Parkinson's? But then why stop there?

And this is really the important thing because ultimately, you know, if you think about diseases and traits, the extreme version of any uh trait is actually a disease, right? Height is a good example of this. One extreme end is like, you know, John for example, he's like Markin syndrome almost.

Then the other end is like me, dwarfism, right? But on both ends, okay? So, so you know, so you know, IQ is another example of this. One end is like, you know, autism.

the other end it can actually be some sort of you know cognitive basically challenge that people have and so when you think about it when we start realizing that people have drawn a line in the sand saying you can get you know rare diseases you can't get common diseases but then they really said you can't can't get any traits like height even though the best predictor we have today actually in the world the best polygenic predictor is for height so as a company we've kind of completely reimagined this and said wait a second what's going on here you should have access to the entire stack rare diseases we do cystic fibrosis is common diseases like breast cancer and also traits all the way up to something like IQ.

Yeah. So I mean uh that test are you just giving people the data because I imagine that once you get into particular recommendations that's more what I would expect a a licensed doctor to need to do.

Well yeah my sense is that they you can allow people to get the data from their doctor and then and then feed it into Nucleus. Is that correct? So that's that is correct. And actually we have a couple there was like 10 announcements today. You know how we do it. We like to do 10 announcements in one day.

We are actually very very excited to announce uh a huge partnership with Genomic Prediction. So Genomic Prediction is actually the oldest uh embryo testing uh a company that exists. They've done genomwide test on embryos for almost a decade at this point.

And I think they've done over 120,000 couples for PTA, which is specific kind of test. And so we're actually partnering with them. So we make it very easy for genomic prediction customers to request their files and actually port it over to Nucleus. But really, this isn't just for genomic prediction customers.

Anyone who's undergoing IVF can go to their clinic and say I want my embryo's data. You can take that data, you can upload it to nucleus and all of a sudden you know the application of your D of DNA makes this technology universally uh basically universally accessible.

Now, how much of how much of the benefit is is actual uh algorithmic analysis bringing in other data points to contextualize the data versus just better UI and better hydration of existing text because we we uh we we had we had a friend on the show who was talking about um getting some medical results from a doctor.

The doctor's office was closed. It took two days to until the doctor was going to be able to interpret the results. He was able to just take a photo, upload it to ChatGpt and say, "Hey, is this is this a you know, is this really really bad? Should I be panicking because it seems somewhat out of the range?

" And Chad GPT was able to say, "Hey, you still got to talk to the doctor, but this isn't this isn't the craziest thing I've ever seen. This isn't way out of distribution. " And so that's almost like a pure UI layer, but extremely valuable.

I know it might not be like the right narrative for some people that it's like not as innovative, but I think that like all that matters at the end of the day is giving people benefits, right? Always both. It's always both. You you you Yeah.

Fundamentally technology just for technologies sake is not what silicon is about, right? Silicon is about making something that people want. Okay. And people can actually use. So you think about the the nucleus innovation. It's it's it's twoprong. Okay. One is in the informatics, right?

You know, I've been building this for 5 years. I I almost I would argue to myself that I probably spent too much time, you know, developing the science, right? Because science in is in a nutshell isn't actually very useful. You need expanded access to it.

So on that point, we do multiple different kinds of analyses is they make it such that we can actually provide the most comprehensive analyses that exist today. But moreover, and this is really I think a key point to your point, John, is people understand them. People can see them. I mean, you can pull up the platform.

I'm not sure if you guys have shown it already, but it's very easy to sort compare your name embryos. You can stack rank your embryos. You can understand what the score means.

We lead with overall risk or we tell you for example instead of saying you're in the 99 percentile for genetic risk for a condition which you know what does it actually mean? We say hey you have you know 5% chance or the like of let's say schizophrenia or some other condition.

In other words by even overall risk people have much greater intuitive understanding of the results we're communicating to them. We have genetic counselors on hand. So this really is a what are we showing here? Are we showing we showed Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We pulled up here. That's another thing that's that's a fun one.

That's an Easter egg. That's an Easter egg. That's the that's the kind of approach that we're taking here. And I think consumers are responding to it, right? People want to have access to their data. The clinician, the doctor shouldn't decide what ambate implant. You should. Okay.

So, talk to me about what requires FDA approval. Obviously, uh new medical devices like if you were developing a machine to take in an embryo and sequence the DNA, I would expect that the FDA would want uh an approval for that medical device.

But if you are taking data and just showing it to a customer in a different UI, that feels like probably a very light FDA process and there's probably a continuum in the middle where once you're making a recommendation, they they have rules around that, right? We as a company do not tell you which embryo to implant.

You know, basically parents, the couple has complete agency to decide how they want to use the information to implant their embryo. Moreover, let's be clear, height, right?

I mean is can a height analysis be a medical device you know that doesn't even make sense right IQ height these traits for example we all you know traits are something that I don't think necessarily belongs in even the kind of infrastructure of think about medical care right these are things that go beyond medical care these are things like you know that that people just kind of intuitively know and that there are DNA tests done every single day TOC um for these analyses because they're not disease analyses right so we do both diseases and traits to be clear my point is many of these innovations you have to wonder like you know should should the government say if someone can or cannot pick their embryo based off height.

That doesn't seem right to me. I think it should be in the complete liberty of of the individual to decide that. Yeah.

But I mean, we're we're a democratic country and so if if you know a huge swath of the population says that the FDA should review that type of uh test or that type of analysis, analysis, it could happen. I mean, the the FDA reviews all sorts of different stuff.

And so I I guess the question shifts to like do you expect a change from FDA on uh the way these uh these analysis tools are regulated?

Um I think right now the most important thing is just putting these high quality rigorous scientific results in people's hands and then helping them basically have healthier children, helping them give their child the best start in life. Yeah.

Um, you know, I I think that generally speaking that, you know, people should have more liberty, more choice in in medicine. I think the broader longevity trend actually touches on that point as well. Yeah. Um, so that's what we're excited to do at Nucleus. Yeah.

I mean, the the fact that you're partnering with a company on on actual on the actual like medical device side, like they are doing the sequencing of the embryos, like that really takes it out of the Theronos question entirely. In my mind, I think feel like you should beating the drum there a little bit more.

It's like like we didn't say we created some new device, but I don't know if we ship. That's the difference. We ship. It's locked, baby. Go look at it. Go use it. That's that's the evidence. Why is there a footing? Okay. Um I love the visual of John and his wife selecting between embryos and it's like 610 or 72.

Tough choice. Well, if we go with the 610, uh, he has, you know, potentially fly commercial once in his life. We could actually, we could actually play this game right now. Okay, here we're going to play a game right now. I'm going to put in the chat. Pick your embryo. com. Okay, everyone listening to this.

Pick your embryo. com. I'm going to go to it. Oh my god. Here we go. Little Easter egg here. Okay, let's see. What's more important to you, John? Intelligence or muscle strength? Come on. Oh, absolutely. Muscle strength. Let's go. We're the future bodybuilding. Let's go. Okay.

John would John would take a He would He would happily have a 52 son if he had, you know, top . 001% bodybuilding genetics. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So, here lifespan or height? Uh, come on. Lifespan. Lifespan. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Maybe low depression. You got to be golden retriever mode.

You got to be uh You need low depression. You need low depression. Let's go low OCD. I don't mind bouncing around a bunch. Okay. What's taking anxiety? Uh, let's go. High risk takingaking. There we go. Okay. Wait. This is some generative stuff going on. This is great. I got Nadia, too. Enduring athlete. Let's go.

Physically strong, cautious, built to last. Yeah, this is great. Is this driving a lot of uh a lot of attention, a lot of downloads? Is this going viral yet? This seems like something that's designed to be shared. We just dropped it right now. Technology Brothers, we got you the exclusive. Let's go. There you go.

Let's put it out there. You can go and pick your embryo. People say, "What's it like? Maybe not doing IVF yet. No problem. Funny. Only only 9% of people choose Nadia. Okay. Well, we're we're we're contrarian. We like that here. That's fun. Yeah. It's great. Oh. Well, uh congratulations on the news.

Congratulations on the launch. Um yeah, the pace is wild. Last last thing, what's going on with uh Have you seen these just blood billboards? Oh, yeah. They're all over LA.

So, so there is there's someone who's running a campaign right now, Justice for Elizabeth Holmes, claiming that Theronos was not the scam people think it was. And there's a there's a documentary coming out and there's billboards all over LA for Just Blood. Like, it's just blood. It's not that big of a deal.

And John, to be clear, there's an exclusive on Technology Brothers next week about from this person, right? They they're going to tell their story next week. Just to make sure you you invited them already. We're we're we are we are toying with the idea. They someone reached out to kind of connect us.

We're we're thinking about doing it, but we're not we're not 100% sure that it would be appropriate for the based on the website. I don't know if it I don't know if it's appropriate. Yeah, it doesn't look like it was designed with Figma. So, I don't know. We can't quite do it.

It's a little bit The team definitely doesn't use linear. Yeah, but they they they claim that uh that Elizabeth Holmes has been proven innocent. And so, it's a bold claim. We we like we like to see people making bold claims. By what? Uh jury is my question. The jury of someone who knows HTML.

Keon uh always a great time. Energy is fantastic. Electric. Electric. Thank you for coming on. Firing us up. Congratulations on the launch. We will talk to you soon on Twitter for sure. Okay. So, we'll see you there. Bye, guys. Bye.

He's going through launch day right now, which is just like, you know, 40 notifications every minute forever. I love it. Well, next up, we have Kathleen from Valos coming into the studio. Welcome to the stream. How you doing, Kathleen? Nice to meet you. Good. Thanks for having me on, guys. Great to have you.

Uh, would you mind kicking it off with just a little bit of an intro for those who might not know? Yeah, absolutely. So, I have been at Palunteer for the last seven years. I built our life science practice there.

So taking some of the same platforms that Palanteer uses in defense and intelligence and a bunch of industries and then bringing those primitives over to pharma and biotech and researchers who need to study uh biomedical data in a secure and collaborative way.

So really building out end to end uh drug development workflows all the way from early discovery. But then I left a couple months ago and now I'm working on