{"podcast":{"title":"Owl Posting","slug":"owl-posting-6974455","podcast_index_feed_id":6974455,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2520497/s/139003.rss","website_url":"https://www.owlposting.com/s/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/2520497/s/139003/5c1267a7053a23eae4b2e6f61eab88e7.jpg","author":"Abhishaike Mahajan","episode_count":11,"summary":"Some audio-based content over biology-ML. Some of these are conversions of existing posts that lend itself well to audio.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-06T10:19:44.481952+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/owl-posting-6974455"},"episode":{"title":"How do you make a 250x better vaccine at 1/10 the cost? Develop it in India. (Soham Sankaran, Ep #2)","slug":"how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine-at-1-10-the-cost-develop-it-in-india-soham-sankaran-ep-2","published_at":"2025-02-03T22:56:25+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/owl-posting-6974455/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine-at-1-10-the-cost-develop-it-in-india-soham-sankaran-ep-2","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/owl-posting-6974455","url":"https://www.owlposting.com/p/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/155943924/6da744b7dbdf2be79c740088b802667c.mp3","summary":"This is an interview with Soham Sankaran , the founder and CEO of PopVax , an mRNA vaccine development startup. Curiously, PopVax is based in India, specifically Hyderabad. This should be a surprise to most people in the field: we never really hear of interesting biotech research being done in a place that isn’t [US, Europe, East Asia]. Yet, PopVax has been astonishingly successful, having a (in mouse) influenza vaccine that is 250x better than its competitors, multiple large research collaborations , and their first upcoming US based phase 1 clinical trial being fully sponsored and conducted by the NIH . It’s an extremely interesting success story from what feels like a very clear underdog. In this 2-hour podcast, we discuss everything from why so little biotech research gets done in India, a breakdown on what you care about in vaccine design (immunogens), how PopVax uses machine learning for precise immunogen design, how raising money for a vaccinology startup is going, and a lot more. Timestamps and transcripts are below. Just as in my last episode, I’ve included a ‘jargon explanation’ as a quick primer for some of the subjects discussed in the episode. Some final bits: the studio rental costs were kindly covered by Dylan Reid ! Huge shout-out to him for making this episode possible. Also shout-out to Samarth Jajoo, Reha Mathur, and David Yang for some very helpful discussion about the Indian biotech scene. And, if you think PopVax is interesting, here is their Substack which has some articles on their results, their job section (they are actively hiring), and can be reached at contact@popvax.com. Timestamps 01:31 Introduction 02:38 Why is there such little biotech research in India? 17:43 Advantages of building a company in India 31:30 Policy prescriptions for Indi…","meta_description":"This is an interview with Soham Sankaran , the founder and CEO of PopVax , an mRNA vaccine development startup. Curiously, PopVax is based in India, speci…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":8107,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/owl-posting-6974455/episodes/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine-at-1-10-the-cost-develop-it-in-india-soham-sankaran-ep-2/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/owl-posting-6974455/how-do-you-make-a-250x-better-vaccine-at-1-10-the-cost-develop-it-in-india-soham-sankaran-ep-2.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}