Biomarker Discovery – P. Shannon Pendergrast

P. Shannon Pendergrast, PhD, Chief Science Officer at Ymir Genomics (ymirgenomics.com), discusses his company's work in biomarker identification techniques.

Dr. Pendergrast holds a PhD from the Rutgers University Waksman Institute of Microbiology in Molecular Genetics. He completed his post-doctoral training at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Dr. Pendergrast has over 12 years of experience as a scientist, executive, and entrepreneur.

Ymir Genomics seeks to provide new and innovative tools to facilitate the discovery of biomarkers from biofluids, to assist in the ongoing fight against human diseases. Dr. Pendergrast discusses the primary objectives of Ymir Genomics. Dr. Pendergrast talks in detail about their accomplishments and discoveries, including their efficient, rapid method for isolating extracellular vesicles, extracellular RNA, and/or extracellular protein directly from urine samples. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-derived vesicles that can be released via different cell types, including hepatic stellate cells, hepatocytes, and immune cells in normal as well as pathological conditions.

The science researcher CSO discusses how they compare proteins using mass spectrometry, and how they look at the data. He talks in detail about their work studying liver-specific vesicles, exosomes, stability issues, and more. He discusses their processes in detail, discussing how they work with structures, proteins, RNA, etc.

Among the many important offerings Ymir delivers, they can also provide extracellular vesicle isolation protocol and bioinformatics protocol to discover biomarkers for prostate and bladder cancer. Dr. Pendergrast wraps up by discussing their current and future work.

In this podcast:

What can we learn from extracellular vesicles?

What can biomarkers tell us?

An overview of biomarker identification techniques