# Can We Make a Drug for One Person?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530/can-we-make-a-drug-for-one-person
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530/can-we-make-a-drug-for-one-person.md
Podcast: [Galaxy Balance](https://stenobird.com/podcast/galaxy-balance-7619530)
Published: 2026-08-24T20:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/ccc319887a8217a541d9be5a5d30dafeb774cbe759d2e0a34e11f482fd0daa98/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiI4MTE1NWFhYi00ZGFlLTQ5MDktODhkNS0yODdhYmJkNTNmNzEiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiJjMGE0YjQ3Yi1iMmM5LTRjNjgtODhiNS0xYmFhM2EzNTJjODMiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OTBiYjRiMzM2NjY3MWFlZGQwZTZhMTEiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNmE4YzI5NTFmMjY5Y2ZkMTVmNTYwY2Y1L2Nvcnktc21pdGhzLXN0dWRpby1sTktuWC1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTgtMjRfXzEzLTIxLTUyLm1wMyJ9.mp3
Audio file: https://api.riverside.com/hosting-analytics/media/ccc319887a8217a541d9be5a5d30dafeb774cbe759d2e0a34e11f482fd0daa98/eyJlcGlzb2RlSWQiOiI4MTE1NWFhYi00ZGFlLTQ5MDktODhkNS0yODdhYmJkNTNmNzEiLCJwb2RjYXN0SWQiOiJjMGE0YjQ3Yi1iMmM5LTRjNjgtODhiNS0xYmFhM2EzNTJjODMiLCJhY2NvdW50SWQiOiI2OTBiYjRiMzM2NjY3MWFlZGQwZTZhMTEiLCJwYXRoIjoibWVkaWEvY2xpcHMvNmE4YzI5NTFmMjY5Y2ZkMTVmNTYwY2Y1L2Nvcnktc21pdGhzLXN0dWRpby1sTktuWC1jb21wb3Nlci0yMDI2LTgtMjRfXzEzLTIxLTUyLm1wMyJ9.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/galaxy-balance-7619530/episodes/can-we-make-a-drug-for-one-person
Duration seconds: 3820

## Resource

What if we could design a medicine for a single person? Casey McPherson was a musician and songwriter when his daughter Rose was diagnosed with an ultra-rare neurogenetic disease. There was no approved treatment and no clear path forward. Rather than accepting that answer, Casey began learning genetics, building a network of scientists, and ultimately creating the infrastructure needed to develop a treatment for his daughter. Today, Casey is the CEO and co-founder of Alpha Rose Therapeutics, where his team is working to make individualized genetic medicine scalable. Their approach combines antisense oligonucleotides, patient-derived stem cells, AI-guided therapeutic design, automation, and a new economic model for diseases that traditional drug development often leaves behind. We discuss how Alpha Rose reduced a therapeutic amenability analysis that once took months to just minutes using AI, why Casey believes drug development should eventually be approved as a repeatable process rather than one drug at a time, and how point-of-care synthesis could allow personalized genetic medicines to be produced rapidly for individual patients. We also explore autonomous laboratories, AI scientists, patient-derived iPSCs and brain organoids, the economics of rare disease, genetic enhancement, and a future of medicine that looks increasingly like the sick bay of Star Trek: understand the unique biology of the patient, design the intervention, synthesize it, and treat them. Casey's story raises a much bigger question. Are rare diseases really rare, or are they the first glimpse of a future where every disease becomes individualized? 00:00 - Casey McPherson’s path from musician to biotech founder 01:38 - Childhood curiosity: music, programming, electronics, and biology 04:16 - Rose’s…

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## Transcript

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