Listen: CRISPR for the heart, biotech’s recovery, & what it means to be a ‘hot girl’

Can CRISPR edit out a heart attack? What happens on #GutTok? And is health care recession-proof?

We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. Sek Kathiresan, cardiologist and CEO of Verve Therapeutics, joins us to explain the company’s work on preventing heart disease with genome editing. Then, STAT’s Isabella Cueto joins us to discuss “Hot girls have IBS,” an internet in-joke that evolved into a movement for people with chronic illness. We also break down the latest news in the life sciences, including a long-awaited victory for Novavax and ostensible good news for biotech.

For more on what we cover, here’s the latest on Verve; here’s the story on “hot girls have IBS”; here’s the news on Novavax; here’s where you can find episodes of Color Code; here’s where you can subscribe to the First Opinion Podcast; and here’s our complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Be sure to sign up on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you have any feedback for us — topics to cover, guests to invite, vocal tics to cease — you can email [email protected].