TechBio Talks Episode 2: Broad Institute’s Anne Carpenter with Host Chris Gibson

In the second episode of TechBio Talks, host Chris Gibson talks to Anne Carpenter, Institute Scientist and Imaging Platform Senior Director at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a pioneer in image-based profiling, who played a key role in Recursion’s origin story.  

Anne talks about her early discovery that phenomics-based profiling could be as powerful as mRNA profiling; how she decides what data to make by determining the problems she can solve well; how these tools can be deployed to produce safer chemicals; the critical role of open science in advancing new technologies; and why the race to the virtual cell “is more like a mosh pit.” 

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00: Welcome to TechBio Talks

02:33: The dinner conversation that helped lay the foundation for Recursion

03:06: Discovering that cell morphology could be as powerful as mRNA profiling

05:32: Behind the open-source tool, CellProfiler

06:21: The importance of relevant biology

07:21: In drug discovery, framing the problem is the real bottleneck

08:55: Which types of data are most important for drug discovery

10:52: Why we need open data

12:30: What it’s like to see others utilize and advance her technology

14:02: How the virtual cell race is “more like a mosh pit”

15:27: Evolving the definition of the virtual cell 

17:38: From systemization to major industry shift

18:51: Anne’s “big bold bet”

20:48: The proposed cost to test existing medicines against rare diseases

22:29: Parting thoughts: “If you are interested in data sciences and you're tired of mRNA profiles – check out image-based data”