Trends from the Trenches: Vizgen’s Terry Lo on Creating Maps of Biology’s Backroads

Host: Stan Gloss, BioIT World

Terry Lo has been in healthcare for almost 25 years, with business and commercial roles across pharma, diagnostics, and life sciences, but his most recent role—CEO at Vizgen—connects him with what he calls, “without a doubt the most exciting space I’ve been involved with.” In this episode, Lo speaks with BioTeam’s Stan Gloss about spatial biology, why it matters, and how he imagines the technology changing healthcare’s future.

Lo details how a science that explores the intersections between visual histology and molecular markers creates more complete images or maps of healthy and diseased tissues to better understand disease onset and progression. He explains, “The challenge has always been that these two have been very separate fields of science and technology. Now we have this ability to bring them together. And that’s really how you get spatial biology.” He also talks about Vizgen’s MERSCOPE platform powered by MERFISH (multiplexed error robust fluorescence in situ hybridization) technology, its origins at Harvard, and the company’s collaboration with the Allen Brain Institute to create detailed brain maps.