The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business, tax,

or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed

at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see A16Z.com

slash disclosures.

Hi, I'm VJ Ponday, journal partner A16Z. This episode of the A16 podcast is on

the genetics of drug response. This was recorded as part of our A6 and Z inaugural summit. It gives a

great deep dive by Stanford professor of bioengineering, genetics, and medicine, Russ Altman,

and his work, especially around building Farmer GKB.

Professor Altman gives a window into how data science and bioinformatics will change the future of drug discovery and drug response. In this case, it turns out that, you know, when we think

about inheritance, we might think about inheriting your grandmother's eyes or your grandfather's

ears. But it turns out there's a lot more to genetics than just that.

How you respond to drugs will be similar to your parents as well. Moreover, we can now see how building a large bank of human genetics variations will transform our understanding on

optimizing of drug discovery response, both for understanding side effects and toxicity, as well as

making better drugs and going after new indications. Professor Altman gives a really fantastic overview of the, as well as making better drugs than going after new indications.

Professor Altman gives a really fantastic overview of the space as well as a lot of his own

individual contributions. Thanks very much. And I would be Russ Altman from Stanford University.

So let me just tell you quickly that I get most of my funding from the National Institute of

Health. I also have collaborations with Pfizer and Genentech and Carius and Second Om. And I am a founder

of Personalist, which does immunoancology. So at Stanford, my laboratory focuses on informatics,

biomedical informatics and data science for understanding drug response and optimizing it. And so I think

the reason I'm talking to you today is maybe, maybe, some of the things

that we're doing is form the basis of the next generation of pharmaceutical discovery

...