Latest / Get Real with Jim Weiss / Founder Len Kozhukh on The Oral Microbiome and Writing a New Playbook for Longevity

Transcript

Founder Len Kozhukh on The Oral Microbiome and Writing a New Playbook for Longevity · Get Real with Jim Weiss

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Lend runs a company called NIL. It's a microbiome sequencing
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: company where you send your saliva in a little vial
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to Nil's lab and they send you back results of
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: your entire microbiome and your how your oral health connects
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to your digestive health. So a lot of it was
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: like very recombinant proteins, big science phrases. But I would
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: say that's the sort of to truncate what Len talked
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: about is we do not implement our understanding of our
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: microbiome to prevent the event. Well enough, Yet would.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: You say that, well, no, we don't do anything preventatively.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: They're very well, I mean I go in medicine, right,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: it's all been designed to treat, but it's changing. It's changing,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and the thing that's changed it, in my view, there
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: are two things that will have the impacts. The GLP
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: ones that you can get pretty much, Uh, you're wrong
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: for all intents and purposes. So that gets rid of
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: a risk factor that we've been wrestling with for a
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: million years, right, cancer and heart disease, risk factor of weight,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: that's one issue. And then the hormones. Right, you know,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: so the change in policy that will allow more use
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: of hormones as well, so that doesn't speak to the microbiome.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: But I think what's interesting about what these guys are doing,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: and they're bootstrapping it and it's early, and you know,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: it's kind of fun to come into these things early
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and see what happens. Because nobody thought in VISI line
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: would take off brace replace braces. And I can go
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: on and on about all the things that, yeah, which
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: it does. This is simple because you go into the
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: dentist office, that's where he is distributing. It makes sense
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: right and that you know, Dennis are a first line
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: sort of you know health, you know, arbiter by looking
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: in your mouth and saying, well, you know there's this
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: and there's that, and you need to go check this.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: And but what he was saying is that a lot
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: of oral health problems, you know, result out of the microbiome.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: So it makes sense the approach. I've heard of other
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: companies doing it, so it'll be interesting to see if
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: they can leap frog it. But the idea that you
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: can rinse out your mouth once with the stuff they
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: have and probably be pretty good from a microbiome perspective
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: is pretty wild. But I don't think they have a
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: lot of data. Yeah, and that's what he emphasized. We're
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: gathering the data. That's what a lot of this so
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: it's almost like they're doing a you know, real time
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: clinical trial. It's where it felt very hymns and hers
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: for the microbiome.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my takeaway as well. But it makes
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: sense like our mouth is the gateway to our body,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you know, what we are health of our mouth and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: we put in our body comes through here. So how
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: essential it would be that Neil.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Was fun on him, you know, really good to see you, Lenn,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Thanks for coming here. Len was my dad's name, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: yesterday was his hundredth birthday or would have been his
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: hundredth birthday. I wonder if anything we talk about today
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: would help me think about what where he ended up,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: you know. But uh, you know, a lot of what
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: we dedicate our time here on Get Real is how
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: do we prevent the event? How do we you know,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: live healthier longer, and are there things we can be
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: doing now, you know to know more So a lot
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: of the reasons we have you on today is really
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: because of the focus of what we do here. So
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I'm really excited to have you the founder of NIL. Okay,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: so you know we're going to get into the origin
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: story and all that, but I really why nil that's zero?
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Is there is there something to that we need to understand?
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think it as like the purpose of
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: nil is to have zero dental issues. That's largely the
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: direct origin. And then generally if you look at the
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: branding and the typography, kind of my previous work and
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: my work in biology is under this umbrella of accessibility.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: And the the font is Atkinson's hyper Legible, which is
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: a font developed by the Braille Institute to be hyper
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: legible and accessible.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: And so it is really say it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: And so the connection that I made when I had
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: the concept for nil was that the zero is the
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: only zero of any font that I found that had
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: it from the top left down with the slash the
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: top lest right. It's cool. And so that was kind
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: of like connecting those things around accessibility and the uniqueness
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: of the zero being zero issues.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: All right, now we know what zero is. I mean, look,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: I like zero problems and zero issues too. So usually
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: if you get ahead of something that can help you
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: do that. So I like to start with an origin story.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, what's your background. How the hell did you
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: get into this?
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess the towards the beginning. I'm an
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: immigrants that I grew up in Palo Alto, and so
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I started programming when I was fourteen.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Wait, you're an immigrant from Paulo Alta. Now that doesn't
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: sound you know, maybe because you're a marine right now
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and that's obviously far away. But tell me where where'd
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: you grow up?
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm agree with My family from Russia when
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: I was five, grew up primarily in Pau Alto. My
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: dad is the Ukrainian, my mom's Russian. I was born
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: outside of Saint Petersburg, and so growing up in Po
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Alto during the early two thousands, dot com boom, you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: that directed me towards programming and computer science, and so
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: I started programming when I was fourteen. That led to
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: joining a molecular biology lab at Stanford focusing on computational
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: modeling of protein and so developing biosensors, and so that
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: kind of gave me a foundation in transitioning the computational
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: modeling work into genetic engineering, a wet lab work expression
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: of protein characterization, kind of funneling all the data back
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: into your fundamental models. And obviously all of this is
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: pre alpha fold. This is almost twenty years ago. And
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: so from there went to Berkeley, dropped out built software
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: companies for over a decade, and then wanted to kind
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: of circle back and integrate my skill set, which developed
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: into software, hardware and biology. And so I started building.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: What was the old software? What were you building before?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Does it inform any of what you're doing now?
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Obviously, so it's a lot of consumer software, a
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: little bit of B to B. So from that I
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: kind of understood productization and having the tangible feedback loop
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: and connection to your end customer and just generally kind
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: of along with the rest of the software industry, kind
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: of focusing in on user experience and kind of productization
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: that makes products accessible.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Right, So what did you was it, you know, a
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: gambling site or what what did you do?
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Was it no?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: One site? I mean I always want to know, you.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Know, one was an ad network, One was an e
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: commerce company, so mobile shopping, So across the board, like
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: lots of projects, lots of various angles on consumer behavior,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: and I think that really instilled the product perspective in me,
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: which I try to bring into biological products, and so
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: I guess to kind of.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: We need it in biology and healthcare. I mean, that's
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons I asked you about the other thing,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: because I think a lot of our thematics here are
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: about how new technology AI being the you know buzzword,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: but you know, machine learning and quantum and all of that,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: will you know, get us the faster cures and treatments
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: and preventions and all that kind of stuff. So that's
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: why I asked it. You know, do you are you
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: one of those guys that thinks tech will fix healthcare?
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: No, I think we are incorrectly putting technology on the
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: pedestal when it's one one piece of the puzzle and
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: it needs to be applied correctly and then brought to market.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: And ultimately you're building, in this capitalistic system a company
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: to make the production and distribution of a product sustainable
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: over a long periods of time. And so that gets
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: beyond you know, a single person's output a single technology.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: If you look at any of the large technology companies
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: that have survived the i've over many decades, and so
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: that is never a single tool of a single technology
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: a single person.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Now that really makes sense to me, and it's sort
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: of where I think about it. You know, I don't
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: think any there's no one, you know, silver bullet technology,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: there's no I think it's the combination of ingenuity and tech.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: So Andrew Hessel, our friend, our mister biology friend, came
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: in and talked to us, and he introduced us. How
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: do you know him? Did he help you with us
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: or did you guys work together on at all?
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: He's been a huge supporter. I think he calls himself
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: a super fan. So Andrew, Yeah, that's why you're here, right.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Andrew and I have been. I have known each other
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: for a number of years. We were introduced through mutual friends.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: I think we're both kind of on the mad scientist
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: end of.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you seem like I'm sorry, That's why I kind
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: of like you. You know, I can tell that you know,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: I'm a mad scientist too in my way. But okay,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: that's how you guys met, and he's helping you out.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I think we both share this kind of
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: passion for biology and bring it to market, both to
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: be more accessible and just to start shipping away at
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: all the opportunities and possibilities that we can make people's
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: lives better.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So let's back up a little because you explained what
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: nil meant, right, you know, and you mentioned dental So
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: let's ground everybody and what the company's focused on. It's
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: oral health, right right? Why does oral health? Matt, I'm
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: like kind of wondering, you know, oral health, like what
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, my friend actually just went through a bad
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: week of you know, infections and root canal and it's
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: nightmare and you know, like anything, it can take you down.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: And they always say, you know, sort of a lot
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: of clues to your health are housed in the mouth,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and dentists often find you know, cancer earlier or maybe
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: even later. You know, you hear those stories. Why oral health?
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the mouth obviously is the entry points of
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: the body. So that's just the physicality of it. I
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: think as you have progression of oral disease, which I
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: think half the world population currently has, you then allow
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: the microbes or the pathogens present to then access the
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: rest of your body. And now we're kind of pulling
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: on these systemic health threads where we have links to
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: oral pathogens across all kinds of diseases, from rheumatory arthritis
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: to cancers. As you mentioned, to neurodegenitive disease to our
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: material plaque in the heart.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, what can your mouth tell you about your health? What?
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: What is it? What? What are some of the big Yes.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: So we're definitely in the early phase of accumulating data,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: but there's definitely correlations with larger systemic issues. But those
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: correlations are much tighter. If you have if you already
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: have dys biosis, are pretty pretty bad oral health. If you,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: for instance, have paradon titus, right, you have lesions in
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: your mouth that gives access to these oral pathogens to
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: your bloodstream. And that's kind of what we're what we're
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: seeing as the mechanism by which they spread and kind
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: of lead to these systemic issues.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, can it can what's in your mouth
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: kill you? I mean, do you think it's that life
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: and death?
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: I think that these things things take time and it's
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: not going to be you know, you have an infection,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: it's going to kill you immediately. For the most part,
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: it's more of like what we're seeing is that the
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: neurodegenitive diseases take decades to really unfold, and they're probably
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: the mechanism of action is neuroinflammation from infection by microbes
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: and viruses, and so you know, it's more of like,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: we can improve people's lives significantly and reduce the healthcare
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: burden on the entire system if we catch these things early.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: And so what I would like to see in oral
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: health is to switch from that reactive of where your
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: friend had issues or pain and then you go see
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: a dentist, and then you have all this all this
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: expensive work done to a more preventive approach to where
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: you know, we can sequence saliva samples, give you a
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: snapshot of what's going on in your mouth, catch the
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: pathogens fairly early before you have dyspiosis in full on
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: set periodontitis or anything else, and kind of build up
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: a longituninal data set for you as an individual, and
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: then kind of aggregate that into population level data where
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: we have these kind of loose associations between pathogenic behavior,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: opportunistic pathogens, and kind of on set of these systemic diseases,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: and we can fully track over the you know, hopefully
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: lifespan of individuals and then the population at large to assess.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Risk, right, because that's like, right, we haven't proven none
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: of that, yep, or did we Is there science behind
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: this that tells us what's in your mouth? And if
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: you know what's in your mouth, you can possibly, like
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I say, prevent the event or prepare for it, or
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: give you knowledge. Because I was wondering why, if this
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: is the thing, why isn't everybody doing it?
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think fundamentally so different layers.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Like why don't you get this whenever you go to
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: the dentist.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: So I think fundamentally microbiology is absence from dentistry, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: dentists aren't really taught microbiology at large, So there's a
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: disconnect between root causes, you know, the microbiome, and what
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: is what is current or legacy dentistry practices of just
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: like operating based on macro visuals and just like inspecting
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: the mouth visually right instead of using these more mode
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: which I've done.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: It goes in and look right.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: But now we have modern tools like sequencing take us
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: to live a sample and analyze it to understand the
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: exact pathogens or a commensal bacteria that are present. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: so you know, it's kind of like this scenario of
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: where you're looking for your lost keys under the lamppost.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: It's using the tools that you already have and know
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: as opposed to bring in more modern technologies to kind
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: of expand the possibilities. And so dentists also are operating businesses.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: They are more in the day to day.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Whether it was just a Wall Street Journal article about that,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: but it just happened like yesterday before you showed up. Yeah,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: so it does seem like you're on the right track.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Does this help, you know, make Dennis more of the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: front line of healthcare?
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: I would hope so, honestly, again, because the mouth is
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: kind of the street point and because of the early
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: warning system. So I think if we can start generating
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: that data and showing it to you know, everyone and
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: getting everyone comfortable with that data and understanding it, that
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: becomes a stepping stone to then a hopefully better health
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: practice is better maintenance. You know, I hear constantly from
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: dentists of like, it's so hard to get patients to
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: even switch to an electric toothbrush, you know. The behavioral changes.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: And again, if we kind of rewind to productization and
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: user experience and kind of making things accessible, the behavioral
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: changes are kind of like the the ultimate barrier to
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: better healthcare better maintenance.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Do we find this online or do Dennis give it
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: to you?
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can find this on our website. We
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: can ship it in no envelow that's was formulated to
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: be able to.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: So how the hell would you find it? You're out looking.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, people don't even look for you know, what's
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: my mouth telling me exactly?
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: So a lot of this is on us to educate
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: the wider audience doing this podcast with you, Jim, and
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I think part of it is also the partnerships that
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: we're building with dental practices and kind of seeking out
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: dentist dental industry professionals that have identified the microbiome as
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: being impactful, interesting, and kind of starting to pull on
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: those threads of like how do they bring it into
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: their practice. What we're seeing actually is, you know, while
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: the dentists are mainly like bogged down and operating a business,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: the dental hygienus and the supports staff are actually the
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: ones that are really focused on better clinical care, better
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: patient care, better experiences, and they're the ones they're really
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: hungry to learn more about the microbiomes, the impacts and
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: what they can do.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: How easy is this to do? Are we gonna try it?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: On me. Yeah, how do I do it?
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: It's a mouth rint, so just like anything, Oh.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: God, I'm gonna need somewhere to spit. Oh no, So
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: wait is it You've got to mix it in water? Right? Okay,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: well we don't. I don't. I think I have a
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: little here, but that that's not probably gonna work, but
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: we'll have to. You know, one of my ideas was
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go do this and film it and
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: then we're going to use it later when we published,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: because I definitely want to try it. I want to
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: see what's going on in my mouth. I'm sure, Well
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Do I really want to know? I
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: think we do want to know, right.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: So I think that's kind of the next set of
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: things to tackle, which is why I'm here from dentist
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: and consumers, is like, Okay, we've seen quince my saliva sample,
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: and we have this data, right, what do we do now? Right?
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: And so ultimately we're in this kind of early phase
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: where the we have one probiotic against you know, one
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: set of pathogens, but otherwise there's twenty plus pathogens that
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: are commonly scene in the ural microbiome, and we really
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: don't have solutions against them. So it's just behavioral practice
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: and being on top of your daily maintenance and going
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: to see your dentists and doing the six month checkup.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: And so I think that's kind of the ultimate opportunity
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: for NIL and our long term vision of developing a
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: suite of products that could target every single pathogen that
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: we could see, and so we would have a suite
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: of solutions to offer the patient based on the sequencing data.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: So there are others doing it because I did this
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: in my doctor's office where they swabbed me and then
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: they told me all like the bad things that I
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: don't actually think it's back yet. You say it takes
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: a long time right to the analysis. Well, I think
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: so I don't even know that mine's back. I did
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: it at you know, I have a preventive health doctor
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: longevity doctor in the city and they did do this,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: so I got to find out from them what it
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: told me. But I don't I don't I feel like,
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: you know, there's often when we do these sorts of tests,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: everybody jumps on it and says, why do we need
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: to do these you know, why do we need to
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: know about something we can't do anything about?
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I fully hear that, and the you know that
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: is again based on the feedback. I think my response
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: is to then go out and develop a suite of
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: solutions to uh.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: So what are those? Like would you develop up drugs
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: based on the information that you get or like what
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen?
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: So the way I'm envisioning this would be biological cosmetics,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: so not therapeutics, just topically applied recommon in protein. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: so we can formulate that as like think of a
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: whitening strip or something similar, dissolvable gum or a mouth
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: rints freeze, dried mouth wrints that you can hydrate, you know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: use and then not really think about. So again, oh
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: so this cleans out your mouth totally, this test set right,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: this thing, yes, this solider collection kit right, and that's
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: the probiotic.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, and this okay, I see, so you know the microbiome. Well,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: don't we take a bunch of probiotics all the time,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't everybody get? Isn't that enough?
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: No? So a lot of the microbiome sciences around gut
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: health and metabolic and all the probiotics are mostly supplemental
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: and targeting your microbiome in the gut, so ours is
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: one of the only ones that has a long term
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: kind of ability to stick around in your mouth, and
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: so this is a one time use. That's partly why
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: the price point is so much higher as.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Opposed to h what do you charge for it?
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: So it's one hundred and seventy nine dollars.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Okay to clean your mouth out for the rest of
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: your life and you won't get any of the disease,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: no claims. Okay, all right, that's fair. Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So so so.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: How are we going to now? I mean, maybe you
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: do it on faith. One hundred and seventy nine dollars.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: There's no need for faith, right Like partly partly we
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: have sequencing results, so we're accumulating data so before and
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: after snapshots of what that microbiome profile looks like. We also,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: we don't offer this publicly, but we have PCR capability
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: where we've run hundreds of samples to verify that our
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: probiotic does have a longer effect and so we can
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: specifically identify it in your microbiome and then you know,
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: months after use, we can see whether your saliva sample
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: still has traces of it.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Right, is this catching fire or is there challenges to
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: bringing it to the market. What are some of those?
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's always challenges, right and especially like I mentioned,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: behavior is the largest one. So price point is you
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: know again kind of like a major one. Behavior is another.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Exposure and kind of distribution is another. We're kind of
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: limited in claims and so we're cosmetic, we're topically applied.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: We we are partnering with dentists to bring it to
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: market as a means by which to kind of orient
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: the entire profession around first of all, that we exist,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: that this is possible, and then kind of have the
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: backing of the dental industry to then bring it to
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: the consumer. Some consumers you know, hear about us or
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: like you know, I interact with quite a few.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Well when they inquire what what do they want to do?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: What is the thing they're looking for?
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: I think it's a lot of consumers that have a
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: history of oral health issues, and so they just like
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: any other bodily health issues, right like when you're in
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: pain or you've had issues over and over, you kind
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: of will go to extreme ends to kind kind of
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: alleviates sure that discomfort or pain or that chronic issue.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: And so I think again, half the world population has
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: oral disease.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: So like my friend that had this issue, she should
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: take this. So again, there are no I know that
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: you're not guiding it, but I'm just saying that, you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: she might expect to gain at least some insights, right.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: Right, so we should definitely sequence her which understand what's
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: going on there. I would caution the probiotic U says,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: with everything after surgery or when you have active lesions
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: in your mouth.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Is this like twenty three in me for your mouth? Like?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: What is this?
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I would hope we're a little more modern and comprehensive
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: rather than twenty three and me twenty three and me
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: was I believe six hundred thousand snip markers across your
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: genome of three billion base pairs. So we take a metagenomics.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so what is that? A metagenomic snapshot?
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: So basically, we take your saliva, we extract the DNA,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: and we try to pull out and not sequence the
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: human mammalian you know yourselves. We try to focus on
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: taking out the bacterial DNA, bacterial, viral, fungal and then
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: sequence that remaining DNA and then statistically analyze it to
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: compare with known databases to then kind of approximate these
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: are the bacterial strains that we can find that correlate
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: to that DNA signature.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I guess we would do one before then
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: we would do the rents and then we look again.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: And then honestly, this should be a standard dent practice.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Where is that every six months, like when you get
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: your teeth, so it's part of your teeth cleaning.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: I guess like my vision is essentially you walk into
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: your dental office and at the front desk counter you
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: can just pick up a saliva collection kit, droule into it,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: hand it off and not think about it, continue with
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: your visit and the rest of your day and week
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: and whatever. And then once we have the results ready,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: h share it with your dentists obviously, and then you'll
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: just get an email that your results are ready. And
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: these are the kind of findings, So the are what
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: makes our reporting and analysis different from a handful of
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: other companies that do similar work. Is the top line
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: is we've tried to essentially encapsulate into a single number
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: on a spectrum between health and dys biosis, and it's
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: just biosis, So an unhealthy mouth.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, wow, it has a name.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, more slightly more technically.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you swear too much like I used
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: to have that problem. But and my mom used to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: wash my mouth out with soapd So it reminds me
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: of that a little bit. But it's more pleasant. Does
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: it taste good?
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Yes? So again we've formulated it to uh be a
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: kind of subtle, subtle mixture of sugar which is for
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: hydrating the bacteria and salts.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Wait, sugar in your mouth? That doesn't add up?
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: So the sugar is for the bacteria, right, but it doesn't.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: It's not so much sugar like it hurts your teeth.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: And then it has a slight peppermints flavor. Yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: That sounds relatively pleasant and easy to do. So why
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: isn't everyone doing it? Dentists out there? Like? Who else
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: do you need to get on board here? Sides dentis
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: and people with you know, painful mouths. Yeah.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: So again, we're bringing it to market at this one
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: hundred and seventy nine dollars price point, which is not
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: accessible to many people. So we're working again to build
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: the company and the vehicle by which to distribute this.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: So we plan to scale up production, scale up distribution,
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: lower the costs.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: You're funding it yourself.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so far fully bootstrapped.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, well I did that with my company. It's always
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: good to do that as long as you can. Yeah,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I do want to ask this question I always end
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: with before we go to our hot takes. What's something
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: you're trying to get real about this year?
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: I think I think in my in my day to
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: day life, is how difficult it is to bring products
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: to market and to change in the entire industry that has,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: you know, decades of legacy practices, and I think being
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: in a kind of in this gap of we have
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: an inkling of you know, how to change things and
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: what a solution or SEV solutions would look like. But
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: bridging that gap not only engineering solutions, but also productizing
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: and then building a company around it is a lot
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: of effort to say.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I've done it, so I get it, I got
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: your you know, I've helped companies do it. There's been
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: plenty that have done it, so you can do it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: It's just this is vast right, you know, this is
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: oral health, and we have a consumer product we all
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: kind of know, and you know you're you're getting people
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: to understand the concepts of biology, and you know, basically
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: natural ways to you know, make our microbiome healthier by
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: making a healthier mouth. So, but we can't make those claims.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: I know that, So I'll be careful about that. Let's
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: do some hot takes to wrap it up. I say, topic,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: you give a brief answer off the top of your head.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Probiotics Can they work if they are one size fits all?
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, I think Again, humans have eaten fermented foods for millennia.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I think there's generally good science around it. We're just
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: lacking kind of population level data and so we're constantly
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: accumulating and trying to get there.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: And that's why this will help, right exactly. Yeah, so
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: that's a reason for everyone to do it. Debunk one
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: myth about the microbiome.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: A myth about the microbiome, I think, I don't. I
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: don't even know myths, you know, I'm so rooted in
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: the science.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: And then give me, give me. You know what we
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: all should take away about the microbiome from this conversation.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: I think it's tightly integrated with overall health. I think
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: it plays a much larger role than we've let on
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: it kind of again that finding your keys under lampposts
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: versus like where you actually lost them. And I think
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: paying attention to the microbiome is making progress towards shifting
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: healthcare to more preventive measures as opposed to very reactive
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: when you already have significant issues.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Awesome, toothpaste, floss or diet? What matters most?
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Toothpaste I think first and foremost, floss seconds in terms
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: of just not letting things wrought in your mouth, and
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: then diets. You know, that's body composition and kind of
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: more of your gut microbiome rather than your oral microbiome. Awesome.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Thanks for putting your money where your mouth is.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, happy to do it.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's what I'm here to help with, right. I
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: think it's incredible what you're doing. I can't wait to
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: try it myself. Fantasty Thanks story. Yeah, yeah, well I
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: hear you, man. You know, look at this is our
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: goal here, you know, keep people out of the healthcare system,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: keep them out of an emergence situation. No one wants
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: to go to emergency rooms and all that stuff. So
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the healthier we start at our mouth, the better.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: So all right, thanks for being here, Lenn, Thank you
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: keep up the good work. Hey everyone, thanks for watching.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate that you take the time to listen
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: to this and tune in, so please subscribe, follow We've
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: got a lot of amazing guess you're gonna learn a
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: lot and you're gonna feel a lot better because you
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: did it.