NEB Podcast #81 -
Transcript
Interviewers: Lydia Morrison, Marketing Communications Manager & Podcast Host, New England Biolabs, Inc.
Interviewee: Carika Weldon, Ph.D., CEO and Founder, CariGenetics
Lydia Morrison:
Welcome to the Lessons from Lab & Life podcast brought to you by New England Biolabs. I'm your host, Lydia Morrison and I hope this episode brings you some new perspective. Today, I'm joined by Carika Weldon, founder and CEO of CariGenetics which focuses on bringing genetic research expertise and equipment to the Caribbean.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
So, hi, I am Dr. Carika Weldon, CEO and founder of CariGenetics based in Bermuda.
Lydia Morrison:
Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today, Carika, I'm really excited to talk to you. Could you tell our listeners about the mission of CariGenetics?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Sure. So, CariGenetics's mission is very simple, we want to make sure that the Caribbean is not left out of research. There's a lot of advancements in medical research where you have precision medicine which is your medication is tailored to what you need as well as how drugs are being designed today, it's using genetic information to tailor the medication to be more specific and we just want to make sure that, as these advances are happening, that the entire Caribbean region is not left behind. So, that is actually what the name stands for is Caribbean Genetics and it's just a shortened version of that. And we want to make sure that, not only are we involved in the research, but we're actually building local research capacity to do it as well.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, a really important mission because, as we all know, science and medicine are moving faster than ever today. I'm curious, what drove you to found the company?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
So, funny enough, what drove me to found the company is COVID. So, yeah, a bit of a story here. My whole career journey, I was in England doing my undergraduate then my PhD in biochem, after that, I went straight into a lectureship, I was teaching biomedical and medical science for about three years. And then I missed full-time research so I ended up at the University of Oxford in their genomic center Wellcome Trust Center of Genetics and I was very happy, I thought that was the pinnacle of my career to be honest. And then we all know what happened in April 2020, world completely changed and for me in a big way because I am the only Bermudian that, at that time, had a PhD in RNA science.
So, I get the call from the government of Bermuda saying, "Hey, would you be interested to come back home and to help us with our testing capacity?" And, of course, I love my country and I was like, "This is amazing that I have the skills to do PCR," and I returned back home. And it was during that time I was actually appointed as the science advisor to the premier of Bermuda for COVID, I was in charge of the entire testing strategy as well as being the one that had to create and train the government's first PCR lab, so quite a lot. And, in that time, I actually engaged with the other lead scientists across the region in the Caribbean and at that point when I realized Bermuda is not alone in our lack of research capacity and this is a regional thing that really needed to be fixed.
Just to give some context, when it came to sequencing the different strains of the virus which is very important for contact tracing because you need to know who gave who which version of the virus, we didn't have sequencing capacity in Bermuda and I knew that but we also really didn't have in the Caribbean. It just so happened that one researcher had a MinION that they had gotten approved early 2020 and they were the researcher doing all the sequencing. Can you imagine? For an entire region. And so, it really hit me that we really needed to build our own capacity because, in contrast, I was working at Oxford where we did sequencing from all over the world and, as soon as the pandemic was announced, everyone just shifted into COVID mode and it was such a huge striking contrast of having capacity, being able to switch it when needed versus not having it and not really having the answers.
So, that was really what drove me was my experience in COVID and then, on top of that, in 2021 when the vaccine came out, again, being the RNA scientist, had to be the face of the vaccine campaign in Bermuda and there was a real hesitation amongst our Black Bermudians who said, "Well, I don't know if I want to take this because it hasn't really been tested on people like me to make sure it's safe." Such a valid point and I had to be the bearer of the bad news that it wasn't just the COVID vaccine that fell into that category, actually, most medication that they're taking have not been tested on people like them and the sheer terror in their eyes that they just didn't know, they were shocked.
And so, those two moments really solidified to me that, number one, we needed something regional that could help build capacity and, number two, we needed to make sure that we were no longer left out of the conversation or out of the data that is being used to design drugs.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah. What an interesting change in career pinnacles, very, very different than what you were doing in the UK, obviously, but really such a tremendously powerful application of your skills for the country of Bermuda and for your community there. I think it's one of those interesting silver linings that came out of COVID that makes us reassess our science and our standing and how we're dealing with viruses, viral spread, the monitoring of that and human health in general. So, it sounds like you were invited to come back and give an assessment of where the country stands and what an amazing opportunity for you and for your country to be able to really drive science forward there.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
It's definitely one of the better things that came out of it. I try to block out the whole time because it was very stressful but I was very determined that I didn't want this to be a one hit wonder type of situation where we actually did really well during the pandemic in Bermuda. We were top 10 of the world for COVID testing in terms of our rate of testing and I just thought we've done a great job, it makes no sense to just let it disappear. So, I'm really grateful to everyone, the team, our investors, our partners, the people of the region, of the Caribbean that have made this feasible that we can continue this work and build on what I realized during that time.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, really powerful changes that were spurred by COVID but it's so wonderful to hear that you're continuing on in them and helping strengthen the scientific community there. I know that you've been providing some wet lab training for high molecular weight blood extraction to hospitals in the region in order to enable more sequencing more regularly, is that something that you could tell our listeners more about?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Yes. This is what really gets me excited, actually, is the data is really cool but it's sharing the knowledge and the expertise and it's just really rewarding. So, one of the things that we're currently doing right now is a pan-cancer, sorry, a pan-Caribbean prostate cancer study, so we're doing a prostate cancer study in multiple islands across the region. Unfortunately, the Caribbean is the top region in the world dying from prostate cancer and so we're trying to understand what are the genetic basis of the risk and then we can try to look at other risk factors after that. And, as part of that, we have been working with different local partners in each island we launched the study and that is leading to, hey, well, can we also have capacity to do these clinical genetics tests.
And so, we were so thrilled, the team from Bermuda, we were able to go down actually exactly a month ago to St. Lucia to train the lab team there on how to do high molecular weight extractions and also how to do the library preps for nanopore sequencing and then to do the test. We started the week with just three of us from Bermuda knowing how to do it and we ended the week with eight of us in the Caribbean knowing how to do it. And so, we're now on this roadmap and we have a few other islands teed up that we can share the love, share the skills and, the more people in the region that can do this, the better for us all.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, it sounds like a really powerful sharing of information and skills. What information can you garner from the Oxford Nanopore technology sequencing workflow that you're training these individuals on?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
So, what we end up doing for our testing is we use Oxford Nanopore. The reason why is, not only do you get genetic information so you can, and I have to say this, a huge fan of what we call adaptive sampling, it's a very different way of doing targeted sequencing. For all of those who have done chemical pull downs and using probes and having to do all of that to pull out what you want to sequence and then doing the sequencing, this a new way of doing it. Instead of you doing all the heavy lifting to get the parts that you want, actually, let the machine do it. Beautiful, I absolutely love this. It means that we spend less time prepping the sample, we can go from sample to sequencing on the machine literally within hours rather than it taking days.
And so, we get the entire gene and what we tend to focus on right now is pan-cancer genes for our study as well as pharmacogenetics. We're seeing a lot of interesting, rare star alleles in some of these pharmacogenetics genes that we have in our population that are impacting the way that we actually can metabolize certain drugs. So, we're looking at those two things and the other thing I will add is, when you do any of the genetic testing with Oxford Nanopore sequencing, just with a click of a button, you can also get all of the epigenetic markers for the exact same regions that you're sequencing. So, it's super powerful.
Again, takes a few hours, we can go from a sample in the morning and it's on the machine by afternoon from the extraction and the library prep and we have an answer by the next day. We can do a whole test in 24 hours which was unthought of, that was unheard of in times past especially in the Caribbean where, by the time you even just ship the sample, it probably hasn't even left the regional hub within 24 hours, unfortunately. So, to be able to have an answer by then is just really transformational.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, super powerful in terms of the amount of information that it can provide about an individual and their genetics and epigenetic state, that sounds amazing. And also it sounds like you're really able to answer some of those underlying questions and concerns that the community had around the testing of drugs and drug treatments within that population in that community.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
100%. There's a lot of people that have seen high rates of certain cancers in their family, we're actually going to be starting to look also at cardiovascular disease, we have an upcoming study on chronic kidney disease and we don't yet know how much of it is genetic and how much of it is environmental, how much of it is lifestyle and so we're really giving some tangible answer to what does that look like. Because, once we know what the risk is, then we can actually be able to try to either intervene earlier to reduce that risk of getting the disease or get the right treatment for that person.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, such important work. I know that recently you also funded a travel award at the Bermuda Principles Foundation event providing funding for others to attend that event and be part of that learning process. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
So, yeah, we were really excited. We had a conference in Bermuda, the 30th anniversary of the Bermuda Principles which ... I wonder if the audience knows about the Bermuda Principles. Shall we dig into that?
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, yeah. If you could tell us a little bit more about the foundation itself, that would be really helpful.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Yes, okay. So, Bermuda Principles is dating all the way back to 1996, this was during the Human Genome Project where you had multiple labs all over the world that were sequencing humans for the first time. And, about five years into it, they were like, "Well, we have pieces of data at our labs but who owns it? Who owns the human genome?" And so, the Wellcome Trust in the UK actually funded a meeting where they brought together most of the heads of the labs and they decided they were going to do that in Bermuda. Why? Number one, because Bermuda is an overseas territory of the UK so they were still able to use that UK money and, number two, it was February and it was not going to be snowing or cold, definitely a better place to go than either the UK, Europe, or the US at that time of year.
So, they come to Bermuda and they have these meetings and they basically decided that no one would be able to patent the human genome but everyone would put it into the public domain for the use of genetic research so that humanity could benefit from the work that was done, such an awesome decision, has everlasting effects. And interestingly, as I learned at the meeting in February, it wasn't the norm when it came to science, in other fields, they were very much doing the opposite. And so, I actually found out about this myself being from Bermuda, I just thought this was absolutely amazing that, not only did they make that decision, but when they named the agreement, it's called the Bermuda Principles which bears our name, I was blown away. I then created the Bermuda Principles Foundation to continue on the legacy of the Bermuda Principles.
So, I established that in 2016 and initially did some science conferences back in 2017 to 2020 and some school tours that I would bring at the time and I was a lecturer to Bermuda. Been on pause a bit, obviously, because of the pandemic but decided, you know what, we have to celebrate the 30th anniversary. So, about 100 people from all over the world this February in 2026 came together, we went back to the same hotel in the same room on the same dates 30 years later and celebrated what had been done and also celebrated what has been accomplished since that time and where we are today and maybe how do we continue on with global collaborations in genomics. And, for us, it was important to make sure that we had young Caribbean scientists there because we need to make sure we had that representation on the global stage and so we were so proud to have the two winners to join us from the Caribbean.
Lydia Morrison:
That's so cool. I had no idea that the decision to make the first human genome public and to carry that foundation forward through future genome sequencing events, I had no idea that that happened in Bermuda and then that there was a group of individuals who laid down that law. That's such a wonderful piece of history, thank you so much for outlining that.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
You're very welcome. It's something I'm on a mission on. Unfortunately, Bermuda is known for its potential triangle which is non-existent. It's something that every Bermudian gets asked when you're away like, "The triangle?" and I'm like, "Yeah, but, no, there's not a real thing." So, I'm on a mission so that people know about Bermuda Principles instead.
Lydia Morrison:
I love that, I love that. I hope that we are able to replace the general knowledge of the Bermuda triangle with the Bermuda Principles, I think that would be amazing. And what a great way to remember and recognize that decision and the impact that it's had on science in the field of genetics and genomics.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
It was so heart-warming when I had the conference in February because I had this idea and I had a few people that also liked the idea and just to see everyone come together, we had you and Bernie who we awarded the Bermuda Principles Award to which is amazing for his work that he's contributed in bioinformatics and we had so many other really established and accomplished geneticists that also came to celebrate this moment. We also have to say we had some of the OGs, we had three people that were at the original conference in 1996 and to have them was just so heart-warming and I'm just honored that I was the person that could notice this and bring it into fruition.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah. It seems like you have a real knack for noticing gaps in knowledge or functionality or recognition and writing those so so cool to be talking to you about this today. I'm curious what you see as the challenges that you'll face in the coming years and how you see the impact of CariGenetics shaping the future of science and healthcare in the Caribbean and the surrounding islands.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
I think a big challenge that not just the region of the Caribbean but worldwide we're facing is the cost of doing sequencing is going down, astronomically actually. We've seen that, even since the Human Genome Project to where we are today, I think the Human Genome Project costs $5 billion to do. $5 billion in 13 years just to create the first genome, whereas, today we can do a human genome in a couple days and under $1,000. So, that progression has been super-fast and we're getting more decentralized sequencing so a lot more people are able to do their own sequencing.
So, we've gotten to a point where sequencing is no longer or, not no longer, in some areas it is but it's becoming less of a bottleneck, what really is becoming a bigger issue and a bigger bottleneck is making sense of it. So, you can have all the data that you like but, if you don't know what it means, then it's still not impactful. And one of the things that really is something that I see as a challenge is a lot of our annotation, be it ClinVar for example, that is a really great resource, it was shared, actually, at the meeting we had in February that over 90% of the data is from the US. That doesn't, obviously, represent the global frequency rates or the global genetics and so we're not actually getting the right data to say, well, okay, this variant is pathogenic or not which is what you need in terms of actually making sense of the genetics and how is it going to impact someone's health.
So, I think that conversion of, yes, we have data but what does it mean is really becoming more of a challenge as well as the associated data that you need to actually find these new associations which is your medical record data. A lot of the big, big, big projects and you have, what, UK Biobank and Our Future Health and All of Us and these really big national projects that have happened but they've happened in places where there's digitized records, that is not a reality in majority of the world. So, if we ever want precision health to be for everyone, we at the same time need to make sure that we're also digitizing the medical records. And why is that? We need the funding to do the work.
And, yes, you have some countries that will allocate it from their government's budget but I already knew that was not going to be the first option for the Caribbean, it just isn't a reality. We just learned about what PCR was during COVID so we're a little bit behind so we have to be a bit creative in other ways to get this funded and so we are working at CariGenetics more with industry. But, again, for it to make sense for them, they would like to do R&D and you need medical records. And even if we're getting it funded by your government, if you don't actually take the results and integrate it into their record, is it actually benefiting them? You can get a pharmacogenetics result, for example, that tells you where medication is safe for you but, if your doctor doesn't know that, then they're still giving you the wrong medication, has that actually been helpful for your health?
So, it's all of these downstream integration applications that I think is really going to become the challenge when it comes to doing any type of genomic work around healthcare is we need to make sure it actually is helping. Where we were 30 years ago, we were just trying to create the reference genome, just generate data, we're past that point now, the data needs to be helpful.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah. And I was just going to say, as you were talking about how best to interpret this data and put it into use, I immediately started thinking of AI but you raise a super valid point which is, if these medical records aren't digitized, they don't exist in a way that an AI or an LMM to be able to read to help with those predictions of impact and to help see those patterns then we're at a gap in the knowledge.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Exactly. And so, you have this double-edged sword, I would say, is you have the technology and the generation of data that is speeding forward in terms of how fast it can go and how many people can get access to it but then is it actually going to have an impact if we can't actually use it. And so, then you start to widen the gap even further between those that have and have not and so I think that's really the biggest challenge that we're going to be facing in the next 10 years. Unless there's a really clear concerted effort to make sure that digitization of medical records and electronic health records are a priority, we're going to just see this gap get wider and wider.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned working with partners in industry to try to bring about some of these changes and I would be remiss to say that we are so happy ... I would be remiss if I didn't say that we are so happy to be working closely with CariGenetics as you are the distributor of NEB products in the Caribbean region. Could you tell our listeners a little bit more about the area that you serve and what your relationship with working with NEB has been like?
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Sure, yeah. I'm so thrilled that we were able to get this to come together as well. So, for us, we at CariGenetics use NEB quite a lot. So, we are doing our extractions all with the Monarch High Molecular Weigh Kit as well as all of our nanopore sequencing requires your companion kit. And so, we have, in our journey and in our quest to understand all of the other players in the region, have come across other researchers who also use NEB who are also doing nanopore sequencing or are using it for other reasons and we realized that there was a bit of a gap and so we're just super happy to have pulled this together. What we really are here to do is try to make the process streamline, a lot simpler, provide that support because one of the things ...
For example, we had a client that came through NEB, they had just bought a P2I to do coral reef sequencing which is pretty awesome in the Turks and Caicos and they also needed support on nanopore and had all these questions that they didn't know who to ask and we were like, "We're here, that's what we do every day." So, it's really nice, again, to be able to build that capacity and show that we may be small but we are mighty in the Caribbean and we can do really top class research as well. So, yeah, for NEB, our partnership, anyone who may be listening that is from the Caribbean, we are here to help, you can reach out to our team. What we like to do is get on a bit of a discovery call, discuss all your needs, try to figure out if there's other ways that we can help as well and help to make sure that you can get all of the reagents and items you need to do your amazing research.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah. And it sounds like CariGenetics has become such a valuable resource for the Caribbean region. For others seeking knowledge, for those setting up new labs, I think it's really wonderful that you're there as a resource with your expertise, with your hands-on training availability and I can only assume that your team is also available for individuals to reach out to you by phone or email for help, for guidance as well as for access to products.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
100%. We really like to help as best we can. Again, even if they have questions about other aspects of the research, we're happy to help. What I tend to find in the Caribbean that is just a general headache for most of us is around shipping. There are some logistics that are very different on an island especially in the Atlantic or in the middle of the Caribbean Sea that are a little bit different to consider, it takes a little bit longer to get shipments, you have customs to deal with and it's nice to be able to try to help people to get past those hurdles. So, yeah, anything at all, obviously, we'd love to help make sure they have the right products, that we can streamline whatever process they are doing. I have to say we have also experienced ...
Funny enough, we were about to embark on our national tree project in Bermuda, so our cedar tree and it coincide ... We were about to order all the reagents. It was a lot of harsh chemicals that we don't normally use in the lab being plants as it were. And around that time is when our NEB rep came to train us as distributors, we were newly appointed and just in a conversation I told him what we were doing, he was like, "Oh, we have a kit for that." I was like, "Do you?" and he was like, "Yeah," and he pointed it out and, honestly, best decision we've ever made. It's so fast, it is no harsh chemicals, works like a dream and we've been able to do our reference genome of our national tree, we've done a population study then we've done close to 30 trees, and we're now starting to use it for other projects.
So, we've done or about to do our other tree, a local tree in Bermuda, roses. We even literally last week just helped a big, big global project that's doing eDNA, again, using that NEB kit that we had in the lab. So, you just never know until you have that conversation that there may actually be an easier way, so much easier to import, no flammable stickers and all these kind of things that have to be considered when you're shipping to a small island. So, yeah, we're here to help talk it through, we can help you with even research design if that's needed and help you to make the best of your idea and make it a reality.
Lydia Morrison:
Carika, thank you so much for being here to join me today and to share the story and the mission of CariGenetics as well as the history of Bermuda, really, in the greater genetics and genomics field as well as sharing a little bit about your experience working and coordinating with the New England Biolabs as a distributor. We really appreciate your time and all the stories and resources you've shared with us today.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Thank you so much. We really appreciate all that you have at NEB and we're looking forward to even bigger and better partnerships in the future.
Lydia Morrison:
Yes, we are as well. We'll be happy to continue covering those with you and there'll be lots of links in the transcript of this podcast for our listeners to find more information about CariGenetics as well as the other things that we've discussed here today so we invite everyone to check that out.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Awesome.
Lydia Morrison:
Yeah. Thanks one more time for being here with us, we really appreciate it.
Dr. Carika Weldon:
Thank you so much for having me.
Lydia Morrison:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Lessons From Lab & Life podcast. We invite you to check out the episode's transcript on neb.com for helpful links from today's discussion and we hope you'll be with us next episode when I'm joined by two NEB scientists who will walk us through their tips to optimize your next RNA isolation.
