Hard Drugs
Saloni Dattani & Jacob Trefethen
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Inventing the second malaria vaccine with Katharine Collins
Malaria is caused not by a virus or bacterium, but by a complex, shape-shifting parasite that has evolved alongside us for millennia. This has made vaccine development a brutal challenge.In this…
Should everyone be taking statins?
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but it’s also one of medicine’s biggest success stories. Since the 1950s, the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease has fallen dramatically,…
The first cancer vaccine
Hepatitis B is a tiny virus that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths from liver disease and cancer each year. The vaccine against it became the first of many milestones: it was the first viral…
The history of vaccines
Before vaccines became routine, they were risky experiments. In this episode, Jacob and Saloni travel back to the world of smallpox, cowpox, and cow-based “vaccine farms” to see how scientists…
Will AI solve medicine?
Artificial intelligence is transforming how we discover and develop new medicines. But how far can it really take us? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni trace the path of drug development from…
The art of protein design with AI
What if you could design a protein never seen in nature? In this episode, Jacob and Saloni explore how researchers are using new tools like RFDiffusion, AlphaFold, and ProteinMPNN to ‘hallucinate’…
Hacking proteins with AI
Nature didn’t evolve all the proteins we need, but maybe artificial intelligence can help. Jacob and Saloni explore how tools like AlphaFold and ProteinMPNN are helping researchers re-engineer…
100 years of insulin in 15 minutes
A hundred years ago, insulin was scraped from pig pancreases. Today, it’s made by bacteria in giant tanks. In the second part of a mini series on proteins, drug development and AI, Saloni tells the…
Proteins: Weird blobs that do important things
This episode kicks off a mini-series on proteins, drug development and AI. Saloni and Jacob explore the world of proteins, including how proteins fold into complex shapes, why that complexity matters…
Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDS
Lenacapavir is a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and it could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide. Saloni and Jacob talk about the development…
Coming soon: Hard Drugs
Hard Drugs is a new podcast about medical innovation: how to speed it up, how to scale it up, and how to make sure lifesaving tools reach the people who need them the most.Presented and written by…
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Hard Drugs has published 11 episodes since June 2025, covering topics in Health & Fitness, Medicine.
Hard Drugs is currently highly active with new episodes every 2 months. Average episode length is 2h 13m.
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