Hello, everyone. This is your host, Susan Rosen. My guest today is Sunny Jane. I am going to ask Sunny to introduce himself and tell us a little bit more about himself. As you all know, I always prefer it that way because you don't want to be listening to me anymore than you have to. Okay, welcome, Sunny. Thank you, Susan. Thank you for having me. Hello to everyone. I'm very happy to be here today. My name is Jamie James, CEO and founder of flore.
Com and floreclinical. Com. We call ourselves Sun Genomics. These are our two arching brands, self-care and health-care side of gut health testing.
Myself, My background is in molecular medicine, so I was a microbiologist early on, once upon a time, streaking petri dishes and pulling out colonies of interest, and then moved into the side and started developing lab tests for groups like LabCore and Quest, mostly focused on leading-edge types of molecular diagnostic tests, especially when cancer and molecular oncology started to really have a need in biomarker testing.
Got to participate in some amazing assay development and launches of tests, including one at Illumina, where we launched the first clinical human genome sequencing test. I got to be the first clinical lab scientist to process a clinical-grade human genome inside of a CLEA CAP-certified lab. That was just dumb luck, really, being at the right place, right time. They had hired me and I was doing my job.
Really fortunate and now have leveraged a lot of what I've learned from microbiology and human genomics into this opportunity in gut health and applying those types of techniques to understand really what's going on in our guts and that second half of our bodies. Yeah, I think that's one area that so few people... I mean, it affects everybody, but so few people really understand what's going on down there and how they may be either making it better or worse. Yeah.
I mean, it's been eye-opening even to myself in 2016. I didn't even give it its fair appreciation to our human physiology. I was just coming into it thinking, Okay, yes, I know we have human cells, and we are humans, and we have human DNA, and this human DNA has a part in our blueprint and physiology. But then there's this microbial cell. Yeah, we have some microbes on us. Great. They're simbeons, I guess. They work with us. Well, as it turns out, that's not all entirely true.
There's trillions of human cells, and then there's an equal amount, trillions of microbial cells that live inside of our intestinal tract and are contributing up to 30% of the circulating metabolites in our blood system from that microbial self. This became a pillar for me to understand this is really important in human biology. We need to figure this part of our biology out, even though it's not actually our own biology. It's the biology of these microbes.
Yeah. I'm assuming that some of those get in just from what we're eating. Are we born with some of them as well, or how does that work? That is a fascinating area of research, which is the generational passage and inheritance pattern of microbes, because we understand that from Darwinian genetics, how human genes can be inherited, mother, father, and some inherited chromosomes and genes, and some representation of each.
We understand these true genetic inheritance patterns, but what we don't understand quite to that level of degree of certainty is the inheritance patterns of the microbes from mother and father. But we do know that there is an inheritance from mother and from father, or other people in the household as you're growing up or other environmental factors like the hospital system or like the home you're taken to when you're born, you're immediately exposed to microbes.
And microbes are starting to do their thing. They're in your air, they're going into your bodies, they're going into your intestinal tract. You're starting to eat things as you age and get into toddler, you're starting to eat microbes that are on food. That's starting to become a part of your body. We just have this evolving gut until we're settled in around our teens, where we start to have a more mature gut microbiome that sets the stage for a long part of our First. Okay.
The first thing that came in my mind is, how has all of the change or the popularity of organic foods impacting that Yeah, it's something that we're trying to understand more and more every day. I mean, organic today implies chemicals or nonchemical produce. Perhaps non-chemical produce may have less perturbation of the produce's microbiome. But if you didn't put those chemicals on, maybe you would be eating a bunch of nefarious bacteria as well. There's got to be that balance.
I think today, in thinking of organic, most of us generally are thinking of the toxicity that the chemicals may cause as we ingest the chemical itself. But we haven't really given it too much thought on the microbiome of the foods that we're eating and the soil that it is growing up in and what those microbes would do to the nutrient supply of the fruit or produce when you're using those types of pesticides and the impact of the soil.
I think that's where we're seeing a lot more science happen in agriculture, where they're starting to explore the microbiome population in the soil of the foods that we eventually eat and all the way to the supply chain. Yeah. Oh, no, absolutely. Yeah, because from my understanding, which is only part way down the... It's not deep, deep, deep. Part of with the organic, because it's organic meat, there's organic... It seems to be everything. I mean, it's Organic rugs and stuff.
But it would seem that at least as far as- That's a nice rug, Susan. If you've got an organic rug, that's a nice rug. Well, there's a lot of them that are made, actually, made with not Let's put it another way, not made with the... Now, I'm drawing a blank on the name. But of all of the stuff that they treat the rugs with. A lot of which- The formaldehyde release from the new rug and then the VOCs or the volatile organic compounds that may come. Yeah, exactly. It's permeated everything.
Everything that we do, that we eat. Unfortunately, we haven't done much about the atmosphere, but it can't have everything. It's a large challenge to take on in controlling all the microbial exposure that one's body is going to encounter in your lifetime.
But our perspective is the riskiest part of that is that this very delicate interface inside the intestinal tract where you just have a thin layer of endocromiphen or epithelial cells or endothelial cells that are lining the lumen of your intestinal tract. The only thing separating anything that you're ingesting or air that you're breathing in is that thin layer of cells and maybe some mucin, obiscus layer of protection.
If the mucin layer is compromised or if there's any compromised portion of your intestinal tract, now this environmental stimuli or this environmental microbe or stimulant could actually gain access into the insides of our body. We're defenseless. Our skin is a great barrier of defense. But if something's getting inside of our bodies, now we're going to be defenseless if that intestinal barrier is not kept intact.
That's our first level of defense so that we don't overwhelm ourselves with the air and testing everything around us that would be really insurmountable at some point to test everything. But you can test yourself and you can to stand the exposure to yourself. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, the whole thing is just very overhauling. Absolutely. I think it's just important for people to realize that there are certain things.
If you're going to get the inside of your house painted, you might want to look at the paint or talk to the painter. That thing. It's like, If you're not doing that, then don't worry about it. It's definitely a level of mindfulness approach to one's environment and exposure. If you ever feel like you did get exposed or maybe you went to a friend's house that they just got a new carpet or you hanging out. Or they wear the perfumes or cologons that you're worried about the female compounds.
We can see what impact this is having to the gut microbiome from at least a level of understanding dysbiosis and comparative commensal group of organisms, what we loosely call in quotes, a healthy comparison cohort, which we have about 122 defined healthy individuals where you can compare people and see where you're at.
If you feel like you have an exposure or something that is happening and it's disrupting part of your gut, which is a key part of your ecosystem balance, then we'll be able to pin that down and figure it out. Yeah. It's one of those things where you've got to have the base first before where you can start building on it. Yeah, definitely. For sure. Definitely getting a starting point of getting your baseline testing.
Also, we recommend that at Flora just because you never know when you'll be exposed to some of these factors. You could be traveling, you could be out of your home and comfortable environment. Many of us do travel during the summer months. If you travel internationally, the My friends, you're exposed to internationally may be different than the ones we're exposed to here in the United States. Just be mindful of that exposure and then doing some check-ins every once in a while. Yeah, absolutely.
Just be more cognizant of how you're feeling. A lot of people will say, Oh, jet lag, or whatever. It's like, Well, yeah, but not three weeks from after you got there. Yeah, there's something Something that you'd want to pick up sooner than three weeks. If something is persisting beyond a general 2-3 day period of discomfort, we always recommend getting checked out. Part of that process could be got focused.
Part of that process could be just figuring out anything you've changed in your environment or life or stuff you may have brought home or other things. I was just going to say, yes, exactly. That's one thing I think most people don't even think about. It is interesting. Tell me more about what you guys in particular are doing and who it is that you're interacting with. Sure. Flora is a precision… We're a precision nutrition company.
Our focus is on the 80 million Americans that are suffering from gut health issues every year. I mean, this is creating a precipitous increase in health care spending, especially in out-of-pocket health care spending for those that have chronic conditions that they're managing.
It could be things like IVS, IBD, the Crohn's Colitis, but it could even be gut access issues that are even more far-reaching than that as more and more science comes out on the importance of the gut brain access and our mental health and the influence that the gut has over release of serotonin and other neurotransmitters and how that may interplay to our overall wellness. We do this precision nutrition approach utilizing an at-home microbiome collection. Very simple.
It's a small 1 ml or a 2 ml tube, where you collect a pea-size stool sample and send it back to Flory Labor. Then we take it from there.
We process and extract all the DNA elements from the microbes from that sample, so not your human cells and not your human DNA, but the DNA of the microbes, and then begin to understand what functions do those microbes have that are living inside your intestinal tract and produce a report so that you can understand what the identification of those organisms are. I like to call it the biggest house party where you don't know who's on the guest list.
It would be really important to know who's on that guest list. Are they good actors? Are they bad actors? What's the balance of those? Then charting a path forward and doing that in a deliberate way. Today, most people, when they think of gut health, they might be thinking, I'll go to the probiotic aisle. I got to pick up my probiotic. Well, we agree probiotics can be helpful and beneficial for managing one's gut health. But the approach to the one-size-fits-all is where we differ.
Flore believes in the precision approach, where we know there's a lot of uniqueness in the gut microbiome. You and I, from a human DNA perspective, we are probably 99.9% similar. But from a microbiome perspective, we may only be 10% similar. It's that different from the microbiome.
This could explain a lot of the variation we see with these types of long-term chronic conditions, especially in IBS, where you see these subtypes A, C, and D. We definitely saw it true in our study we did in autism spectrum disorder, where there were different microbial populations dependent upon severity and symptoms. There are different beneficial effects of these different ingredients, the bacteria and the the phenols and the resistant starches that we provide back.
To make a long explanation short, we take the photo and the snapshot of the gut, and we can identify everything that looks like it's out of place and then produce a program to get you back to a better state of illness. Okay. What would people get then? What would you be giving them to help them? Is it a particular diet or is it something to take along with a diet, or how does that work?
We have an eHealth platform, so you can use a mobile device and you can register your kid and find out more information about where you are in the process. You also get the report digitally there where you can look through all your microbes and understand a little bit more information about them and what they mean to your own biology. Then we'll take it a step further.
Unlike groups that are doing just genetic testing where they just may give you a genetic report back and tell you, Oh, you have this SNIP or you have this variant. We really believe in closing that loop and not just providing information, which can be shelved and hidden in a hard drive We want to actually provide the solution, and then we'll actually custom-manufacture the ingredients that will modulate your microbiome to a better wellness state.
Oh, wow. Okay. What? Like saying, Oh, yes, start eating these foods and don't eat those foods? How does that work? Yeah. Everything is layered. The first thing that we like to do is get people on the precision probiotic, which is a probiotic and prebiotic mixed, and it's totally customized to you. We pick out of our repository of 115 ingredients.
We will select through our algorithms the 6-8 ingredients that would best fit what you're looking to achieve, what your health and diet survey indicates, and what your microbiome indicates. Then we'd compound that into a single capsule. It's a small 50 milligram capsule, one a day solution, so you don't have to take eight different supplements at once.
We're actually compounding that all together into a single capsule, avoiding that capsule fatigue so that it can be a behavior that's pretty easy to get into routine of. You take that one a day, and then we'll layer into that, once you're accustomed to that, the diet and the recommendations. We do offer recommendations broadly on a micro nutrient level today. Then there are tiers where we can also offer custom recipes, and we can also connect you through our direct consumer side.
We can connect you with clinicians on on our healthcare side, where you can have a deeper functional medicine call. There are all different ways that we can create engagement. Or you may be just coming straight to us from that functional medicine doctor, and we're supporting your functional medicine doctor in their program that they have laid out for you. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. I don't want to say publicizing, but getting the word out in online, or how is that working?
Because there's so many different ways to get information out, right?
Yeah. Well, I mean, there is a lot of noise in the probiotic market, in the supplement market, and cutting through it is a challenge, but that's what we set out to do, is to have a science-backed approach and really talk about the reason why we're including this specific probiotic ingredient, because it has this clinical study that supports its endpoint result with the exact symptom that you said that you're looking to achieve. We do that through this educational content creation.
Then we also engage with media. We've been on a Netflix episode called Hack Your Health. Those that are interested in Netflix, binge watching. I encourage you to add Hack Your Health to your playlist and give it a go because it's a really fun way to learn about gut health. Our scientific advisor, Jack Gilbert, was featured within it and really breaks it down in a simple way of why we should be more focused on gut health. Yeah, interesting.
Okay. Are you Have you all finding or have you found that most people don't understand the role that your gut actually plays in your health? Early on, that was definitely true. We started in 2016, more than eight years ago. Part of our job was to be educators at that time and unearth some of this scientific literature, bring it into relatable conversations, create blogs, create videos, create content on the internet that is truthful but also readable.
And understandable. That can be a tough balance. Yes, that can be a tough balance. Now, I think things are starting to hit a tipping point. We do see major outlets, eatingwell, and Wall Street Journal, and Fortune magazine and Times. They all have written about the gut health evolution and how it's changing the way we look at food, our environment, our soil, and our bodies. I think there is going to be a second wave of that gut health education and commercialization.
We've seen this for first wave, and you see these more personalized consumer products being made and marketed on the shelves, whether it be your favorite department store or grocery store We're now seeing this second wave, which is this science-backed understanding and clinical-studied understanding of these ingredients. Looking at ingredients within a population, what is that shifting in your microbiome? Is that shift genuinely good for you? Is that what you want?
One example could be a big population, especially as we age, we see that enterobacteria begin to increase in concentration. Which are? Enterobacteria are like Shigella, Salmonella, E. Coli. These types of foodborne organisms. For some reason, as we age into every decade of 50, 60, 70, 80, we see an increasing concentration of the enterobacteria.
But if you were to keep that down, and especially in studies that have looked at centenarians and people that are living into the blue zone in the hundreds, is that the enterobacteria were actually quite low in that population. I think what we're going to begin to see are foods and ingredients that can help us drive down the concentration of enterobacteria because we don't want those to be elevated later in life. Okay.
Then when would you be suggesting that people start utilizing, using, eating, whatever? All of those things? Is there born or what? Well, sooner the better. Yeah, When they come out. Yeah, the healthy habits. My hat's off to every parent that instills the healthy habits early. It's a hard and long-fought battle. I have a toddler and eight-year-old at home, so I know the battle quite well. But instilling those habits early can create a very easy decision making process later in life.
Even as you pointed out, Susan, and trying to think about allergies and asthmas and things like that later in life, how do we curb that? Well, one of the ways that science is directing us from the microbiome is that if we can manage our microbiomes earlier in life, then we may reduce the risk for asthmas and allergies later in life.
Perhaps there's some association of these microbes that we're inheriting either from the parental line or in our environment that are associated with these continual asthmas and allergies. But there are known microbes that can help us break down carbohydrates better, break down foods better, break down these different compounds better. So The sooner we start to educate ourselves on this, the faster we're going to start to get to feel in healthier.
Unfortunately, if we wait for all the industries to catch up with all the science- Good luck, right? Yeah. First, you have to prove that they've got a huge market, otherwise, they're not going to be interested. Well, I think the world's population is a big market, and if we can keep them healthy. I agree. No, in fact, that brings up, I was thinking as you were talking about all this, how much of this is very US and/or Western-focused.
In other words, if you're talking about maybe the UK might have a little bit more... If you get into, I don't know, Romania or something, it might not be It's quite the same. Yeah, it's an interesting question because I'm not sure one person or myself could answer that with ultimate clarity. But I could say that when we started to reach out to source ingredients. The place that we found the highest density of available ingredients was in Europe and Scandinavia. Which makes sense, actually.
Yeah, there's already some learnings and appreciation for organic farming, natural farming, and doing things that are generally gut health friendly. Whether or not they were doing that intentionally for gut health, I don't know, or if it was just part of their culture.
We're learning actually quite a bit about here in the Western United States and and generally in North America, the importance of management of one's diet and reduction of ultra-processed foods and selection of a healthy portion of fibrous vegetables. It seems obvious, but we have to relearn it, I think, a little bit and maybe challenge the food pyramid a bit. It makes perfect sense.
It makes perfect sense because we have to I think one of the things that we have to do that I think most people don't understand is that you've got to change your taste buds. There's so many people that from the age of six months or something were given sugar and sugar and other things of sugar. It might have been fruit, but it's still sugar. Sugar-coated sugar. They actually sell that at the fairs. They take fruity sugary fruits, and then they dip them in more sugar. I know. Exactly.
And it's one of those things where not only you have to break it, you got to get the information to them first so they even think about it. I don't Europe never, I don't think, got to that point. They've always seemed to have better food. I don't know what the right word is, but for what they eat and where they get it from. I think we've awoken to that now. You do see that influence, especially when we go to natural product expos.
We're seeing all sorts of innovative companies thinking about different ingredients that are better for you options, reducing the sugar content, but how do you still make it flavorful that you can enjoy it? There's this new evolution of snack foods that still may be processed, but at least they'll have healthy alternative ingredients within them.
At least if we make choices to have some of those sugar-covered sugar ingredients, we know it's just for fun or for culture or for enjoyment or memory of when we were a child or whatever it may be, and not something that we would consume on a regular basis. Yeah. No, exactly. I think it's still an uphill battle at this point. I think there are areas that are more open to it. California, probably. Well, not all of California, but certain areas in California, probably.
This is where We think it's not only maybe a problem that we created. This could be something that is scientifically driven. That data now is starting to come out, which is that our cravings, including for our cravings for sugar, could be generated because of the bacteria that are in our intestinal tract.
If we can manage the in our intestinal tract in a proper way by either supplying it the right fibers and fructoeligosaccharides and other prebiotic components and resistant starches and polyphenols, If we're feeding it the right ingredients, then the metabolites or the triggers into our endocrine system or hormonal system or downstream cascade, it may be mitigated. Or or reduce so that it's not triggering these food cravings.
But when you start to eat sugar, and maybe, Susan, you've experienced this, is when you cut sugar and you're on this diet of vegetables and your lean meats and your proteins and stuff, you start to think like, Man, why did I ever have desserts? I don't need desserts ever again. But then you go to an event and you have a dessert and you're like, Man, this cookie is good. I can have one more. Yeah, right.
This is this positive feedback loop that these cravings can create that get us in this snowball effect. If we can break it and restructure our microbiota as well, we can have that change biologically that may help us make the better decision. Yeah. No, absolutely. It's interesting, too, because there's fruit is in there, which is natural and full of sugar, most of them. Yeah. But hopefully the fruit is laced with fiber, I'd like to say. Oh, no, absolutely. Like an apple.
Like apples and bananas and all of those. Most of them do. But it is interesting because for some reason it gets people's sugar motivation started. It's like, Oh, yeah, I need more sugar. There are still really nice fruits that you can eat, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries. They're very sweet.
Yeah, and they still have sweetness to them and cherries, but they also have this second component of the plavenoids or the egalatans or the polyphenols or the things that are going to actually be prebiotics for those strict anaerobic bacteria that are commensal bacteria, which are positive or beneficial bacteria, that are going to in turn release positive metabolites for you. If we selected those types of fruits that come with these other value-added benefits, then I think there is
a place for healthy fruit. We see it in our studies. One of the biggest differentiators between the microbiome of high diversity microbiome and, again, I use healthy in quotes, healthy cohort population studies is the presence of fruit and fish, oftentimes in the diet. Both of those have been implicated in the healthier diets, the Mediterranean diet, of course, is always mentioned. I think there is a place for fruit from the microbiome perspective.
It's just being conscientious of the sugar content. Yeah. How much? Well, it's like everything, right? You don't want to have half your diet be one food, even if it's a healthy one. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, I think we've beaten that one to the end of- If your doctor hasn't told you already, it all comes to diet. That's true. Oh, no, it's very true. The only thing that we're changing here is why are we eating these diets? It's not just for your human cells.
It's not to feed your human self. The reason we need to change these diets is that there's this 30 trillion microbial cell population that is driving your biology. If you don't change what you feed it, it's going to turn angry on you. It's going to release apparent or negative metabolites, and you don't want that. If you feed it the right things, then it's going to give you that benefit. Out of curiosity, is there also some relationship between what part of your body it goes good or bad?
In other words, it's your brain or your heart or... I don't know. That's the first two that came to mind from eating particular foods too much or not enough. Yeah. Well, This is the part of precision that we're exploring is because there are... Our test will analyze 25,000 unique species of the gut microbiome. An individual may have up to 500 to a thousand unique species within them.
Every one of those organisms has its unique genome and the capacity to release these unique proteins or metabolites into your body, which may then send a signaling pathway into our human selves. How do we manage this big data challenge with all these potential pathways, with all the combinations of food that we could possibly be eating? What we try to do is make that easy and simple.
We've got a database that understands what is driving the changes in these microbial populations, and if that's a good microbe or a negatively impacting microbe, what type of molecules, fibers, foods are going to shift those microbes and then guide the recommendations based off of that information. That's how we view all the diversity of food and what you can do a gut microbiome. Yeah. Okay. Just curious. Okay. Well, are you looking for people to contact you or their doctor?
Or how does one get to utilize some of the information that you have? Well, we encourage everyone to have those conversations with their doctors, especially about gut health and ask your doctor, What are you doing about my gut health and my caretaking? So you've, Yes, you've drawn my blood, you've looked at my cholesterol, you've looked at my A1c. What are you doing related to my gut health?
If there are 30 trillion cells in our body contributing to our wellness, what are we doing about our gut health? And that should definitely be a conversation with your medical team. But you can also go to flore. Com. It's pretty easy. You can sign up there for adults or kids programs where we first gut test, and then we do the combination of ingredients and ship that over to you on a monthly basis. Then you can also go to floreclinical. Com.
If you want to introduce your doctor, you can click a link there and introduce your doctor to Flora Clinical. Or if you're a doctor or a practitioner already seeing patients and you want to introduce gut health solutions into your practice, we help you do that in an easy way to avoid having to figure out what probiotics to give your patients, or it's a question that always comes up, or what testing solutions to use. We use a metagenomic high-resolution processing test.
Of course, that's my background in lab-developed tests and assay development. We did it with the highest quality medical grade equipment that we could. We think this is going to be the next molecular diagnostic test to come to market and make the microbiome standard of care for everybody. If you're born and you're an infant, you should have a microbiome test done. If you're a developing toddler, you should have a microbiome test done with your checkup.
It's your annual physical, should be a microbiome test included in there. You can do that through introducing your practitioner, or if you're a practitioner yourself, you can sign up today. Yeah. Okay. I'll put some of this information in the show notes, but why don't you spell out Flore for people? Yeah, Flore is just- Trying the wrong thing. Yeah, sure. It's flore, flore. Com. And Flore Clinical is Flore, F-L-O-R-E-C-L-I-N-I-C-A-L. Clinical. Okay.
So no hyphen or anything in between. No hyphen. Okay. We'll do. I will put all that in the show notes for people if they start looking. Usually, they don't, but I put it in there anyway. Well, appreciate it, Susan. So thank you very much for coming on. I do appreciate the information. Nice to know that people like you are doing more than what we see, usually, or hear about. And so I will also say that neither of us are doctors, and this is not to be seen as medical advice.
And with that, I will be seeing everybody next week.