In a big-data age, drug development needs to be reinvented. The data revolution is already taking place in finance and commerce, in agriculture and transportation. There’s no reason for pharma to stay behind. “Tech on Drugs” is a podcast about the future of pharma. From novel targets to novel biomarkers. From disease models to population models. From clinical trials to synthetic trials.
It’s a show about the doctor in the clinic who needs to build on molecular features and about the bioinformatician in the lab who needs to build on clinical endpoints. In each episode, our host, Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, gets to do what he loves to do most. He gets to speak with some of the world’s top scientists and healthcare executives about the industry's digital transformation.
Tech On Drugs - Se3Ep3 - Shai on Nvidia AI Podcast
In this special episode, we are sharing a conversation from the NVIDIA AI Podcast, hosted by Noah Kravitz, featuring our host Shai Shen-Orr.
The discussion dives into CytoReason’s partnership with NVIDIA and how computational disease models turn massive biological data into actionable insights for faster, smarter drug development. Shai and Noah discuss:
Why biology is a deep data problem with too many features and too few samples
How agentic AI workflows help scientists keep up with exploding molecular and clinical data
Why CytoReason encourages teams to automate the routine to focus on what really matters
Why trust and interpretability are essential, with every prediction grounded in mechanism, not just statistics
And how computational disease models help pharma leaders decide what to develop, who to treat, and why
Enjoy this special Tech on Drugs crossover episode!
8 Aug 2025
Season 3 - Episode 2 - The Single Cell Revolution - Prof. Fabian Theis
What happens when two leading computational biologists swap code and models for a lively conversation?
Prof. Fabian Theis — Director of the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich, a pioneer in single-cell and AI-driven biomedical research, and a member of CytoReason’s Science Advisory Board — joins Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at CytoReason, to talk about:
The single-cell revolution and how it’s reshaping the industry
The promise (and the hype) of foundational models
Why tomorrow’s R&D lab might be a “virtual biotech” — or even a one-person operation
Tune in for a lively exchange full of insights and big ideas.
11 May 2025
TOD - 2025_04_17 - Nir Hacohen
We’re kicking off Season 3 of Tech on Drugs with Prof. Nir Hacohen — Director of the Center for Cancer Research at MGH, founding director of the Broad Institute’s Cell Circuits Program, and a distinguished member of CytoReason's Science Advisory Board.
Shai and Nir cover everything from the rise of antibodies and the promise (and pitfalls) of STING agonists, to the future of personalized cancer vaccines and a mysterious immune cell that appears only in patients with sepsis — a “cell that doesn’t exist” in healthy individuals.
This is a candid look at how deep biology, smart computation, and persistence can reshape how we treat cancer.
21 Nov 2024
Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep4 - Dr. Tom Bumol
Chief Scientist Shai Shen-Orr explores the future direction of drug development with Dr. Tom Bumol, highlighting successes, failures, and breakthroughs in precision medicine and AI-driven innovation.
14 Oct 2024
Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep3 - Dr. Yair Benita
This episode was recorded in the beautiful Island of Crete, at CytoReason's employee conference, the CytoSummit.
CytoReason's Co-founder Shai Shen-Orr hosts AION Labs CTO Yair Benita.
Yair is a computational biologist who spent more than 20 years studying biology through omics and clinical data in an effort to piece together mechanisms of human disease. He’s been leading computational teams in drug discovery at CytoReason, Compugen, and Merck.
In this candid conversation with Shai, Yair reflects on the highs and lows of his professional journey over the past two decades, as well as the broader industry landscape.
Key questions discussed include:
What major shift did Keytruda's development introduce to the industry?
How did pharma's 'Kodak moment’ come about?
What needs to happen in pharma R&D so data is no longer JUST supporting decisions, but actually driving them?
And plenty of other industry gems. Enjoy!
20 Jun 2024
Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep2 - Prof. Asya Rolls
While most neuroimmunologists try to understand how the immune system affects the brain, Prof. Asya Rolls has taken the road less traveled in her lab at the Technion. She and her team try to understand how the brain affects the immune system.
In this episode of Tech on Drugs, Asya and Shai talked about the power of placebo and how brain activity, particularly in the reward system, can influence the immune system.
They discussed the immense potential of harnessing brain-immune pathways for new treatment approaches. For example, research that shows that stimulating certain brain areas can boost immune responses and even reduce tumor sizes.
But it's not so simple; as Asya put it, this is "complexity on steroids." To better understand the brain-immune connection and develop more holistic treatments, future research will require advanced computational models for different diseases and tissues, as well continuous data integration.
21 Mar 2024
Tech On Drugs - Se2Ep1 - Prof. Eran Segal
This one was fun.
In the latest episode of Tech on Drugs, Shai met with Prof. Eran Segal from the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Eran heads a multidisciplinary team of computational biologists and experimental scientists working in the area of Computational and Systems biology. His lab at Weizmann aims to develop personalized nutrition and personalized medicine using machine learning, computational biology, probabilistic modeling, and analysis of heterogeneous high-throughput genomic and clinical data.
Among other things, Eran and Shai talked about precision nutrition and preventative medicine, and the importance of large-scale, longitudinal health data for advancing personalized medicine and improving drug development efficacy.
28 Sept 2023
Tech On Drugs - Episode 5 - Prof. Ido Amit
Our guest this time was Prof. Ido Amit, whose lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science pioneered single cell transcriptomic analysis and its application to the immune system.
Amit’s research focuses on some of the most important questions in immunology – specifically those relevant to novel targets for immunotherapy in autoimmune diseases, neurodegeneration, and cancer.
A fascinating discussion between two leading scientists about the potential of single cell RNA analysis to revolutionize target discovery and drug development.
28 Apr 2023
Tech On Drugs - Episode 4 - Dr. Emanuele de Rinaldis, Sanofi
What will the future of precision medicine look like 5-10 years down the line? And how will AI accelerate this future?
I asked Dr. Emanuele de Rinaldis to answer this and many other questions.
Emanuele is VP, Global Head of Precision Medicine & Computational Biology at Sanofi R&D.
He believes that AI will help us define new taxonomies of diseases. We will identify different types of Asthma, different types of Fibrosis.
And AI will help us create a new textbook – not one driven by just clinical observations, but a textbook driven by genetics and gene expression, together with real world evidence.
This will take drug development and precision medicine to a level we have never seen before.
16 Mar 2023
Tech On Drugs - Episode 3 - Prof. Yanay Ofran
Our guest this time is serial biotech entrepreneur Yanay Ofran. Yanay is a renowned computational biophysicist and the CEO and Co-founder of Biolojic Design. More importantly, Yanay, together with his stellar team, developed the first AI-designed antibody. He shared with Shai his (strong) opinions about:
The barriers to precision medicine (and how to overcome them).
The potential of AI-designed antibodies (and how, just a few weeks ago, a cancer patient in North Carolina became the first American to receive treatment with such an antibody).
The reasons why even in this golden digital era drug development is still insanely expensive (and how - to use a battle metaphor - we've mastered the intelligence phase, we have great ammunition, but we need to seriously up the ante in execution!).
Enjoy!
13 Feb 2023
Tech on Drugs - Episode 2 - Prof Yehuda Chowers
The doctor in the clinic must build on molecular features and the bioinformatician in the lab must build on data from the clinic. Prof. Yehuda Chowers, a leading gastroenterologist, has been harping on this point for years. It's a two-way street that will benefit both drug makers and drug consumers. In this episode of TOD, Chowers talks to host Shai Shen-Orr about immunogenicity, clinical trials, and population models.
16 Jan 2023
Tech on Drugs - Episode 1 - Ran Balicer
Our first episode features world renowned epidemiologist, Prof. Ran Balicer (https://il.linkedin.com/in/ranbalicer), Chief Innovation Officer at Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest healthcare organization. We talked about the mining of real-world data and how it guides healthcare policy. The impact on Covid is pretty mind-boggling!
12 Jan 2023
Introducing - Tech on Drugs
This is a podcast about the future of pharma. From novel targets to novel biomarkers. From disease models to population models. From clinical trials to synthetic trials. In each episode, our host Prof. Shai Shen-Orr (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-shen-orr-364107/) talks to world-leading scientists and healthcare executives about the future of pharma.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 31 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
50
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
Contact Tech on Drugs with Shai Shen-Orr
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Tech on Drugs with Shai Shen-Orr?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
