Origins, Breakthroughs, and The Future of Genomics with Dr. Jerry Lanchbury PhD

Kian Sadeghi (0:00)

Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of High Alchemy. Today, I have Dr. Jerry Lanchbury, the former chief scientist at Myriad Genetics, one of the largest clinical genetics company in the world, as well as the, I believe, first member of Nucleus' Scientific Advisor Board. We are so excited for this episode, and I cannot wait to talk about everything, politics, genetics, and of course, nucleus. Jerry, how are you?

Jerry Lanchbury (0:23)

I'm great, Kian, thanks.

Kian Sadeghi (0:24)

I think you flew out from London for this? Where were you not in London? Where were you?

Jerry Lanchbury (0:27)

I was in London the previous week, and then I was back in Utah, and I flew out from Utah.

Kian Sadeghi (0:31)

Okay, wow. So I hope it's going to be worth it.

Jerry Lanchbury (0:33)

It's definitely going to be worth it.

Kian Sadeghi (0:34)

I know we're going to give the fans what they want. I know it. I mean, you have such a unique kind of, I think, not only experience and technical knowledge, but also just such a profound, I think, ideology when it comes to genetics. And I think one thing that's always been very interesting about you being on the scientific advisory board is continuing just to push nucleus to new heights. I want to say, first and foremost, thank you for that.

Jerry Lanchbury (1:00)

Well, you're most welcome. I'd like to thank you for having me on the podcast. And it's a real honor because you've had some extraordinary guests, and it's an honor to be here in their place.

Kian Sadeghi (1:10)

Amazing, Jerry. My first kind of question for you, if you will, is sort of tell us a little bit about your childhood. Tell us about how you got into genetics. I think it's always good to ground these conversations and who are we talking to today?

Jerry Lanchbury (1:24)

Yeah, I'll give you a few vignettes because I could talk about this for ages. But I had a pretty unusual childhood as a consequence of my father being in the Royal Air Force in the UK. And he grew up on a really small island called Guernsey, which is and isn't part of Britain. It has a strange relationship. It was 12 miles by 6 miles. And at the age of 16, he really wanted to get out of there because options were limited and he didn't want to be a crab fisherman or a bus driver.

He joined the Air Force, eventually became an officer in the Air Force, sort of worked his way absolutely up from the bottom. And he was an electrical engineer. He was an extraordinary electrical engineer. And I sort of discovered in my mid-childhood that his job was essentially to work on the team to vaporize command and control centers in the Soviet Union. He was nuclear bomber crew on the Vulcans, which were the high-altitude reaction force that worked with the United States to ensure the security of Europe and the US. And so it was a strange life because we moved all around the world from place to place. He was around some of the time, but not all of the time.

Kian Sadeghi (2:37)

Could your dad just tell you what he did? Or was it confidential?

Jerry Lanchbury (2:40)

Well, you know, when you live on a bomber base at the end of the runway, and I knew he was on quick reaction alert, you know, some of the time, which is when they have to get the bombers into the air in a matter of minutes. You know where he is. You know, they're reaching in the mess and they're staying away from home. And then the alerts go and it's four o'clock in the morning. There's huge siren noise and the bombers start blasting off. So, you know, you know what their job is. It's perfectly obvious. And so I kind of lived that life until I was about 11 Went away to boarding school in Norfolk and had a very interesting sort of educational childhood.

I had some ropey periods, some rough periods. I kind of left school on the morning of my final exams. I was homeless for a while. What?

Kian Sadeghi (3:35)

Wait, really?

Jerry Lanchbury (3:36)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kian Sadeghi (3:37)

Okay.

Jerry Lanchbury (3:37)

I was homeless for a while, did all sorts of things.

Kian Sadeghi (3:42)

How did you end up in genetics?

Jerry Lanchbury (3:43)

Well, eventually, I went back just to take my final exams about a year later. I hadn't been to school, didn't know anything. You know, didn't do spectacularly well, and then scraped into a university, who I'm very grateful to for having me, and then really turned my life around, graduated top of two of the courses, 80 people, got the biology prize. During that education, I got exposed to human genetics.