[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to a new episode of the few and far between podcast. I'm your host, Chris O'Brien. According to Rand research, an estimated 60% of us adults have at least one chronic disease, and the CDC notes that poor diet and lack of exercise are the main culprits. So how are the latest clinical innovators working to make society healthier? Today's guest has leveraged his background in science and athletics into probiotic solutions that create both high performance athletes and high performing people. Jonathan Schaiman is the co founder and CEO of Fitbiomics, a sports biotechnology company sequencing the microbiome of elite athletes to identify novel probiotic bacteria for applications in sports performance and everyday health. On todays episode, Jonathan and I talk about his journey from jazz tuba player at the famed school in New York to Big east basketball, to identifying the microbes of elite athletes in George Churchs lab at Harvard. Talk about a twisty career path. Well, also zoom in on having a science degree as a backup plan, the virtues of the FDAs grass generally recognized as safe approval process, and how women have become the ultimate biohackers. Having Jonathan on the show was a blast, and I hope you take away some good info from his behind the scenes stories. Okay, let's start the podcast.
Jonathan Schaiman, welcome to few and far between.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: So I've been really looking forward to this conversation. I get to talk to lots of smart, interesting people on this podcast. You are the first person whose product I have actually used. So I'm delighted to say that I'm a current experimenter with the product and I like it so far.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: That's amazing to hear. Yeah, I mean, it's part of our ethos we could get into, but this notion of accelerating biotech innovations to market so we could get more people to access them and benefit from them as soon as possible. So I'm glad to hear you're a user.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: All right, well, we're going to get into all of the detail around that, but let's talk a little bit about you first and how you got started here. You've described science as your backup plan to playing in the NBA. Tell us a little bit about how your plan b became a plan a. How did all that happen?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I have multiple plan b's in my life that's just maybe part of evolution. But, you know, actually I grew up, I was a tuba player at fame high school, performing arts, you know, sort of what?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Okay, I didn't get that from the background yeah.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I was in jazz ensembles, orchestras. After that, I went on to play basketball at St. John's University. Had a good run, won a big east championship, nit championship. I always say you make the NBA. So my backup was getting a PhD in biomedicine, and that's how I became a scientist. I was a bio major at St. John's and, you know, did some molecular biology research in a lab and decided to pursue that in terms of my graduate studies. So I guess you never know. But in a weird way, you know, as we get into Fitbiomics, you know, art and sports and technology, they all kind of merge together to create the company that we're building. So I guess everything happens for a reason.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: One of the themes we talk about a lot on this podcast is that the most interesting people you meet usually have slightly twisty life paths. You are the first tuba playing basketball, elite basketball player, stroke bioscientist that I've met. I don't know if you have a club, and there are several of you, but you're definitely my first of this sort.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: We're building it, and I think it's a perfect segue. It ties into, you know, after NYU and I got my PhD, I then went to George Church's lab at Harvard to do my postdoc. And I remember during my interview, he offered me an opportunity to join the lab, and I said to him, you know, George, my background is in the arts and athletics. Are you sure this is a good fit for me? He's like, john, that's what we want. We want people that think differently.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Right?
[00:03:58] Speaker B: So. And thus, athlete, microbiome technology, probiotics, and fit biomics was born. So there you have it.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: I love that. Will you talk a little bit about George and about the lab? We interviewed Dan Mandela on the podcast. We have a couple other upcoming George church alumni who will be joining us. What do you think? I would say the lab seems to throw off a disproportionate number of really interesting, swing for the fences company ideas. So what do you think it is about the lab or George or the ethos there? Tell us a little bit about that.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination of things and just the environment that George. And also, you know, I should say part of that is the Wyss Institute for biologically inspired Engineering. That's a special sort of institute associated with Harvard. You know, first and foremost, George thinks, like, decades into the future, right? And I think the more riskier and wild the projects are, probably the better. You know, I always like to joke, you know, coming from a lab with nonstandard amino acids to stabilize therapeutics like Dan, or sort of like organ replacements from pigs or de extincting woolly mammoths, somehow, you know, athlete derived microbiomes and probiotics is right up there in terms of wildness.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: But, you know, there's a bell curve in terms of how weird things are. We're probably in the middle. But, you know, George, I think, is really big on translation, and I think he is really into, you know, projects that could be translated into sort of these enterprises that have real world, you know, impact. And that's sort of the ethos of the vis.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: We don't want to build technology to stay in the lab. We want to build things that we could take out and really accelerate to help people, both from a humanitarian, planetary health perspective. So it's just, that's the environment it fosters thinking outside the box and entrepreneurship.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: That'S really, really fun. Is there a disproportionate emphasis there on bringing these technologies out into the world, or do you think that it's more of an encouraging of the out of the box stuff, but similar focus on company building or bringing products into the market?
[00:05:51] Speaker B: I think it's a combination of both, but I also think there's just they're ahead of the curve and the shift. And I think science and, like, academia versus industry and things of that nature, I do think, and getting into startups, I've been heavily influenced, better or worse, by the lean startup model and this notion of don't overengineer something, basically get something to market, learn from the market, iterate and optimize, and let the market tell you what's valuable. And I think the visa, in many ways, is that's how they're positioning sort of biotechnology.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: What are the needs in society? How can we address those? How can we learn from the market to now further optimize and de risk our assets? It's somewhat orthogonal to traditional academia, but I think others are going to start to play catch up.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: It makes a lot of sense. I think also you guys who have run in a lean manner, I guess there's two ways to look at this. It's been a tough funding environment for biotech for the last year, year and a half, two years maybe. So if you were raised a big round before that, in theory, you'd be in a better place than folks who've been running lean and raised less money. But in practice, I'm certainly seeing companies that have had to shed teams, shed assets and programs, things like that, because the next round, it becomes so expensive because of burn rate of the organization. So, you know, on balance, he's still happy with the kind of a lean model.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about sort of values. And there's this interesting discussion we have internally, the notion of valuation versus values. And, you know, I think, again, fit biomics is very, very different than traditional biotech. You know, we're not. Maybe it's a good time to introduce who we are and what we do.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: But let's do, let's do that. We jumped into you, but let's talk about fit biomics.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, so again, spinning out of George's lab, we kind of have a radical concept. You know, it's this notion of translating the biological data of the most fit people in the world into next gen health and longevity solutions for the broader population. Now, we're microbiome based, so we're looking at sort of microbes that are unique or enriched in these superformers that drive their optimal physiology and then turning those into probiotics, for lack of a better term. Now, a few things radical about that. One, we're not looking at disease, right? We're not looking at things that are broken. We're looking at things that work and super fit and really are selected for in the 0.01% of the human population. And, you know, we could get into this. We talk about the most fit people in the world as elite athletes, right, folks that have supreme endurance, strength, mental toughness, recovery. But from a physiological perspective, that's just energy metabolism, protein metabolism, neurology, immunology. And I just say the other, you know, radical concept is, and it leads into the lean startup approach, is, you know, we're not building drugs, we're not building therapeutics, we're not on this ten year, multi billion dollar development journey. We're finding a way to accelerate our innovations to market, not to treat disease, but to help prevent them. So there's a lot there, but to your point, that's our core value. We want to accelerate innovations to market. We want to help people stay healthy and have access to these new innovations. So for us, going down that path and maybe not raising boatloads of money, I still think we've created valuable assets that people are benefiting from today, including, hopefully you. That's part of the journey.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about the sort of foundational insight there. So when you first described the company and the products that you've produced so far, it sort of feels logical, but not, I guess, sort of. You okay? Well, yeah, it does make sense that there'd be something different about the physiology of elite athletes and, okay. The microbiome seems like a plausible place to look. How did you go from, like, this sort of makes sense to, like, how can we validate this? Or, hey, maybe we really have something here. What was that process like?
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it goes back into the original, you know, ethos of the church lab, if you will. I remember saying this to George, like, hey, what if we identified microbes and elite athletes and turned those into probiotics? He was like, I love it. Let's do it. You know?
[00:09:39] Speaker A: So it wasn't a tough conversation, you're saying.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean, so. I mean, they were doing things they were looking at, like, naked mole rats for, like, longevity applications. So I think looking at elite athletes was a little bit more plausible, actually. Right. So. But, yeah, you know, I think, for me, there's this one phrase, actually, I learned in high school. I think it's an architectural term, and maybe James Sullivan just this notion of form fits and how we design architecture for purpose. And to me, that really leaned into something that also made me want to become a scientist, just genotype to phenotype. And how, if we look at natural diversity, you see organisms and life forms that have a blueprint that encodes for their physical manifestation and form. And again, I was a former athlete, and the .001% of the population become NBA athletes. And I think there was this natural question, how are these people distinct biologically, that are enabling, essentially these superpowers? And how can we go about decoding that, translating that? And, you know, for me, microbiomes was the most logical sense, because trillions of microbes in our gut, they influence our immune system, neurological function, and also it's really translatable. At that time, we were learning about fecal transplants and how you could transplant these communities into another organism and elicit beneficial function. So a lot of that led to, all right, let's design a study. Let's collect some stool from athletes over time and see what we could discover. And that led to some interesting findings.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: Did you approach it, though, thinking, I just watched the last dance. I'm very late to the party on that. But. So that's the story of Michael Jordan. And it's clear that there are a bunch of things that go into making him arguably the greatest or one of the top two or three greatest basketball players of all time. Some of it is psychological in his mental game, some of it is genetics. And about his physical abilities, what led you to think that the microbiome for people like that would be different from the microbiome of most folks?
[00:11:33] Speaker B: It's a great question. And actually getting into this, there have been studies, and, you know, it's interesting to put things in perspective. You know, like, the human genome project is, like, maybe a little bit over 20 years old since it published the first human genome. You know, the human microbiome project is even younger than that, right?
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: That's like ten years old. But obviously, microbiology as a field before then. Listen, here are the facts, right? We're as much bacteria as we are human, right? We have trillions of microbes, predominantly in our gut. They basically process all the food we ingest, proteins, carbohydrates. Like, our body doesn't really do that. 70% of our immune system is primed by our gut microbiome. So think about that in terms of inflammation, recovery. It's a crazy number, right? I mean, there's other things that we're learning, and also there have been studies that have come out. If you look at human performance, human genetics actually has less impact than microbiomes.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:24] Speaker B: So there's a lot of studies coming out, and everything you could think of, even in terms of longevity, aging, disease, things like that, a lot of it is being tied into our gut. So it just seemed like a logical kind of conclusion to make. And then. And obviously, the proof is in the pudding. Following up with studies.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So, okay, so then will you walk us through that piece? What happens? You sort of say, hey, I think this is. I have a thesis here. Let's see if we can find differences in these elite athletes and, I guess commonalities as well. Is that what you're looking for?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and this is, you know how it started. We actually started with the Boston marathon in 2015, where one, you know, we want to look at the microbiomes between high performance athletes and sedentary controls.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: What are some of the things that are unique or enriched? But then the important thing is, you know, but traditionally, I think, microbiome research is done. Like in a snapshot. You collect one sample, and it's like, okay, what are we seeing? We actually designed the study longitudinally, where we collect microbiome samples on a daily basis over two weeks before and after the marathon. So we really looked at exercise almost as a stress inducer and how it led to microbial dynamics from a performance to recovery phase. And then basically, you collect all that metagenomic information and you're again looking for microbial candidates that are very unique or stand out. And, you know, that's what led to the discovery of viennella nature medicine publication and kind of here we are all these years later.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Fascinating. Okay, so you. Okay, I think we've got something here. We think we have something that might be interesting. How do you then think about productizing that? What was that process like? How did Nella come to exist?
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So actually going back to Michael Jordan, and I'd say I'm a LeBron guy, so that debate is still up for grabs.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Big LeBron fan not staking out territory there. I did say one of the top two or three.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I noticed that.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: And that's rare to hear someone say that. But, you know, one of the things that stood out to us right in the very beginning is that famous quote.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: Be like Mike.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: You know, you think about how many consumer products today are based upon sort of celebrity or influencer endorsements, right. You know, what they eat, what they drink, how they train, what they wear. But what does that really do from a health impact? So, you know, it kind of takes be like Mike to another level, if you will. But going back to what we discovered, you know, we did this marathon study. We then worked with ultra marathon runners that run 100 miles at a time. We worked with olympic caliber rowers. Boston, for whatever reason, is enriched at endurance athletes. So runners and rowers, by studying them, we found this microorganism called vianella. And the real light bulb moment was, you know, we looked up the microbe, and what it does, and its natural function is to eat lactic acid and convert that into short chain fatty acids. And that was like, whoa, this is kind of crazy because lactic acid builds up, you know, in the muscles and the blood. Its associated with fatigue. And now these elite endurance athletes have a micro that's eating lactic acid.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Eats their fatigue if you want.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: So, you know, we had this crazy hypothesis, but then we made the discovery of Viennel. I was like, wait a minute, this might not be so crazy. And then the natural thing was, okay, great, here's an interesting microbe. How do we now turn it into a probiotic that not just athletes could have, but everyone could benefit from? And by the way, not just for athletic performance, but just what about combating daily fatigue, chronic fatigue, anything you could think of to make people more active and healthy.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Fascinating. Okay, so that's target number one. Uh, over time, you've added additional things to the probiotic mixed. Is that right?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, fitbiomics, we never endeavor to be like a d two C supplement company, you know, truly. And again, this is coming out of, you know, George Church and all that. You know, we're building out essentially a biological database.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: Right?
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Again, you have millions of these microbes. You have terabytes of metagenomic information that can manifest itself into, you know, all these different unique organisms. So Vianella, we've developed for, you know, fatigue and endurance. We also developed another product called nella. Actually, there's a little bit of nuance here. You know, these are genetic, genetic variations of lactobacilli probiotic species. But again, things that are naturally occurring in these elite performers, and we found that they not only benefit digestion, but they're also improving quality of sleep.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Right?
[00:16:28] Speaker B: So think about this. Sleep is considered the number one performance enhancing drug we've decoded. Athletes would optimize sleep patterns, and we have identified microbes that can now benefit sleep in everyone. So now you have fatigue, you have sleep. But we're also building out programs for things such as strength, mood recovery. Basically anything from a biological aspect we think we could optimize with. Gut microbes derive from these super fit phenotypes.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Hi, this is Chris O'Brien, host of few and far between. We'll be right back with this episode in a moment. I personally want to thank you for listening to our podcast. Now in our fourth season, it continues to be an amazing opportunity to speak with some of the top thought leaders in the clinical trials industry. If you're enjoying this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps people discover the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe to few and far between so that you never miss an episode. One last request. Know someone with a great story. You'd like to hear me interview? Reach out to us at few and far
[email protected]. thank you. And now back to the podcast.
So what's the reaction when you. I feel like probiotics are still, can still feel to people like voodoo medicine, like something that all of this stuff can feel pretty far afield from, you know, something that their doctor is prescribing. So how do you overcome, overcome that question that people have or get people to sample it? Because I assume this is a try it and feel like you get a good experience out of it, and then people keep going. That's certainly, as I said, I'm at the two weeks in and enjoying my experience and feeling some benefit.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, one that's amazing to hear. But, you know, this is really the purpose of science and technology.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: It's to sort of disrupt antiquated industries that, you know, maybe aren't really providing benefit that they should be, you know, probiotics decades old. It's going to be $100 billion global market by the end of the decade.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: You know, thank you, Jamie Lee Curtis.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: You know, but I think you have this established consumer industry that's just continuing to grow.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: And 100 million Americans use a probiotic and traditionally just for digestive health. I think to your point, not a lot of people really know if they're working. Certainly there's been new innovation and we think what fit biomics is doing is just, again, it's applying biotechnology, but to more consumer health preventative medicine industries so we could evolve it and provide novel microbes with novel benefits that have clinical validation and benefits that consumers could feel. So I think it's a huge opportunity for us, but I think that's the case with anything. And for us, to your point, maybe traditional to biotech. I think a lot of biotech companies develop assets and then they're looking for a pharma partner that could either license or maybe acquire these assets. At Fitbiomics, we're developing these proprietary microbes, if you will. And now we're looking to partner with commercial entities that could help us, let's say create awareness and distribution. And that's in the fitness, but also in healthcare channels as well.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Do you anticipate if you sort of look forward and think about the future, do you imagine customized offerings that specifically are aimed at enhancing performance for elite athletes or would be elite athletes? Or do you see this more as kind of something that's more of a bringing the average up, if you will, for the normal average person?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's such a great question. And you know what I love about this? I'm getting goosebumps. It really ties back into our initial discussion on lean startup. What does the market want? What does the market need? Here's the reality of where we are at society. 60% of all us adults have at least one chronic disease. After all of our biotech manifestations, this is where we are actually, according to the CDC, the two leading drivers of that are poor diets and lack of exercise.
What we eat and our sedentary lifestyles are killing us way more effectively than anything we could think of.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: And I think for fit biomics, we don't endeavor to make elite athletes better. We endeavor basically to make society healthier. If you think about something like vinylla exercises medicine, getting people more active, you think about this whole, the emerging trend in fitness, biohacking and functional medicine, it's all the same thing. It's basically these demographics that are tired of being sick and sick care and drugs and pharma, and they're looking more for prevention and longevity and solutions that could help them stay healthy longer. And that's what Fitbiomica is gravitating towards. And how we're building these solutions is clinical.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: You talked about clinical validation a minute ago and do you see that as a distinguisher versus other people that play in this space? And we riff a little bit on that. That's of course the challenge with any emerging technology, biotechnology, is that there's a risk that you're going to have your share of snake oil salespeople.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: So that I think going back to your earlier question like what are the big challenges for fit biomics? I think yes, having clinical validation and having novel functions, functional applications is a huge differentiation point. Like for instance for V and l, the notion of fatigue as an epidemic, how it spreads from, you know, chronic fatigue, long Covid, perimenopause, right. Even think about the GLP one craze and how proper exercise accentuate weight loss.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: But to your point, you know, in the sort of the consumer realm, marketing dollars tends to win out, right?
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: So I think for us having technology, having IP, having the unique story that lends credibility to find the commercial partners that have established consumer ecosystems.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: So for us it's not a game of customer acquisition, it's about selling directly into these ecosystems through fitness and healthcare, you know, vertical partners. And by the way, in some cases what's really exciting is now this could be more into different product formats, food and beverage, global brands, we could use the IP as more of an intel inside approach and now power other brands and sort of orthogonal regions. So there's a lot we could do with the clinical validation and technology that gives us an advantage.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really. In fact it sounds to me like you have, you're spoiled for choice on some level, right? Lot of options. And we always say, I think that for CEO's the toughest challenge sometimes is knowing what not to do. Because if you're lucky you've got a lot of potential. So if we think of if we were analogizing you to a big company, are you more Nike than Pfizer? Is there another analogy you would choose. Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: You know, and again, if we're going to dream big, this is, you know, the big vision for Fitbiomics, right? This notion of a biological data company, right, from these super rare phenotypes. And if you just think about data and how that manifests itself and even think about what are the two biggest trends in society today? One is like AI, right? And then the other one is like these GLP ones, right? So think about having this biological data, right, learning new insights into the secrets of health and human performance, and then translating that into all these different microbes and assets that could go into consumer, that could go into food, that could go into pharma. And, you know, again, this might be pie in the sky, but if you think about, like, a Nvidia, right, or a company like that, they've basically created all this software originally for game, right? They'll say that for sure, for gaming, right? But they've created these microchips that now have become essential for anything AI related.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: And it's this huge empowering the AI revolution. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: So I like to think of Fitbiomics as, like, this biological data company that's created these assets that we spoke about, functional medicine, fitness, and biohacking. Now, these assets could plug into this entire wellness economy. And I do think assets like Vianella are as powerful as things like GLP one's, right, with different functions, different mechanisms. But it's a consumer mind state, right, that we can now address and sort of help people looking for these novel solutions.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: That's fascinating. What's the IP, and what's the IP protection strategy for you and for the company? You're identifying naturally occurring organisms. How do you protect that and productize that?
[00:24:15] Speaker B: You know, again, in that regard, I think we're very similar to a pharma company, right? They're developing small molecules, antibodies, microbes. Sometimes they're engineering them, and they're sort of protecting the uniqueness of those assets, as well as the health claims and functional applications. It's similar to Fitbiomics. We have IP protection both for methods as well as compositions. And here's the thing, you know, you identify these microbes, you clinically validate them for, like, reducing fatigue or inflammation, also translating them from something naturally occurring in the gut to something that's now industrially fermented, right. You sort of modified the original state and now could sort of create ip around that, as well as other sort of forms with other microbes. So it's very similar to traditional biotech. We're now just again, applying it to the consumer health. But that's also think about this. You know, lactobacillus makes up, I don't know, 70% of the probiotic market. You know, imagine having IP over the entire lactobacillus genera genus. That's effectively what we have for vianella. So that's kind of how powerful it is.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Got it. Got it. That makes a ton of sense. So let's blue sky for a minute. We did a little bit of that. But if you sort of play forward five years, let's say, and if things, if things go very well, what is the company doing? What does it look like? How is it different from today? I'm asking you to suspend all of the caveats that we all have about all the stuff that can go wrong and does go wrong on a daily basis. Just, just kind of what if, what if things go great? What does it look like?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'll also just preempt that by saying I think things have probably gone better than we could have even imagined to this point right here.
[00:25:47] Speaker C: Here.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: I mean, again, think about what we spoke about, George Church's lab, crazy idea, collecting stool from athletes. And here we are. We have these assets that improve sleep. You know, 100 million Americans have insomnia and then we have an asset that alleviates fatigue.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: And think about chronic fatigue and stuff. So I think we validate this hypothesis. Hypothesis. Where were going to, you said pie in the sky? Five years from now, we want Nella and Vianella to be fully integrated into this entire preventative medicine, wellness economy. So these things should be as prevalent as everyday common probiotics, but also, id say as prevalent and maybe even more sustainable than things like GLP ones.
[00:26:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Unfortunately, 70% of Americans overweight and want to be healthy. Something like Vinella and Nella.
[00:26:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Can help people on their health and longevity journey. And then to your point, an expanded platform, terabytes of biological data that manifest into thousands of microbes. We're building programs for mood, strength, recovery.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: So think about now having all this IP that now we're sort of plugging into various functional applications. I think that's where we're going and I think we're going to get there.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: That's really, really, really cool. Are collaborations or partnerships going to be a big part of how you tell this story? I'm not talking so much about, I mean, like you mentioned that there's an intel inside version of the model where you might be providing ip that adds a benefit to some existing food or beverage or things like that. But I'm thinking more about getting the word out however you think about partnership, actually.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: So, yeah, at our basic, most simplest form, fit bombs creates proprietary health solutions that we then work with commercial partners to integrate into the wellness economy. In some cases, that's finished products like Nella and V and L. In some cases that's just the material and IP, but it's all really predicated on b two b, two b to circumflex. See partnerships, right. And so it becomes very synergistic, to your point. There's a lot of partnerships we have in the pipeline with, let's say, AI, fitness companies, wellness clinics. I mean, that's a huge emerging trend in society now, right, to even just like gyms and fitness centers. And then, you know, we also have, we're looking into functional medicine applications, healthcare practitioners, right. Sort of that sort of channel as well. And then from a clinical perspective, we're building out partnerships, let's say, within food tech and how, let's say our assets could go into, to various functional food formats.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah, why not?
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing I'd say is just looking at new applications for our current assets. We're building studies for things like women's health, menopause. We're building studies for, let's say, glucose regulation, you know, and how that could be relevant for pre diabetic, you know, population. So a lot of it's commercial and clinical partnerships to currently build out the assets.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What's the craziest idea or the craziest application that you guys have played around with? You just listed a whole bunch that are, they all sound really interesting and quite practical, but I imagine you guys have some blue sky stuff.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you know, I just, I think it's something interesting here. And I want to go into like women's health for a second. And we had a conversation yesterday about biohacking, and we're talking about how women are like the ultimate biohackers. Because if you think about traditional bioscience, clinical studies, consumer development, they've been completely ignored.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: And yet make up half of the global population. So to me, like pie in the sky, blue skyd. What's crazy? It's like, how about we're just providing health solutions for half the population? How about that?
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Doesn't sound that crazy.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: But according to history, it is crazy, right? And you know, so this notion, and I've seen this even myself with my girlfriend, we're talking about this like, you know, men, we're so passive in our health. It's like, okay, we'll wake up. But women, they have like, you know, I see this, my girlfriend, all these various products for longevity, anti aging, beauty. And now as I'm getting older, I'm like, my girlfriend's like, john, just take these. Take two of these.
Yeah, exactly. So I think even this notion of something like perimenopause or menopause, something that all women go through.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Right?
[00:29:42] Speaker B: And women are actually disproportionately affected by fatigue compared to men. So think about something like Vianella and how it could be applied to women in helping them going through this event and alleviating chronic fatigue and giving them more energy and maybe even replacing hormone replacement therapy and stuff like that, right? So again, it's radical, but not so radical, but kind. Kind of like decoding next gen probiotics from elite athletes, right? It's.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: It's like crazier. This is crazy, but it's actually, I think, practical. So, yeah, I mean, if you want to get crazy, you know, to your point, maybe designer probiotics from elite athletes.
[00:30:17] Speaker C: Right?
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Maybe like a. A Michael Jordan or like a LeBron James probiotic or something like that, right.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Either aimed at a specific person's microbiome or based on an elite athlete microbiome, I suppose. Right?
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So, yeah, there's a lot of really cool. And we could get George Church in and talk about all the crazy things, but it's just to your point, I think the possibilities are somewhat endless, and that's part of the challenge, staying focused as an entrepreneur to really build out the current assets.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Right. I apologize. I'm pushing you away from what you should be doing. Sounds like you've got plenty in the near term that needs a lot of time and attention. Talk a little bit about regulators and the FDA and how you think about that whole regime.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting choice of words. But, you know, I think I. I think. Listen, traditionally, biotech pharma, you're treating a disease ind. Route FDA approval, right? Yes. What fit bomb's doing? We're not creating drugs.
[00:31:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: We're not treating disease. We're creating preventative medicine, consumer health products, you know. So for us, it's not Ind, it's grass. We get sort of grass approval, generally regarded as safe to bring these assets to market. They don't require FDA approval. However, we've already engaged the FDA and are seeking sort of FDA grass approval, as well as another, you know, sort of check in the regulatory process. You know, the one thing I could say, though, is that does not mean there isn't a rigorous process in de risking and validating and ensuring supply chain safety and qualities like it's around a, you know, 24 plus month process to go through that. Grass approval, industrial fermentation, quality control, chemical purity, biological purities, allergen purities.
[00:31:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Anything you could think of. And then obviously doing the clinical studies to validate some of the claims you're looking to make. So while it's a different path, it doesn't mean it's any less risky. Rigorous. That's how we think about accelerating innovations to market.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really, that feels like a great combination. Right. I think we all would worry about stuff that's just getting tossed into the market that's not, that's either not clinically validated. God knows there's way too much of that, or where there's, there aren't enough controls on around production or hasn't been enough work done around safety to ensure that we're not putting patients at risk or people at risk. So that all makes sense. But this is a path to kind of two years from concept to the delivered product. Is that about right, or.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Every microorganism is different.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: And I think one of the big bottlenecks in microbiome startups, not to mention just food tech startups, is just industrialization and fermentation, going from a lab scale discovery and batch fermentation to something that you now have hundreds to thousands of kilograms.
[00:32:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: At food grade material. And of course, with microbial products, making sure you have commercially viable cfus. Right. And potency, as well as stability long term, you know, certain components of that process are 24 months.
[00:33:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: And putting together a safety dossier. But, you know, doing sort of supply chain de risking fermentation, stability that could take longer. And by the way, that's the other amazing thing about Fitbiomics. We've de risked that entire process.
[00:33:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: You brought up something that's very interesting.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: And I think this is also a radical idea that Fitbionics is pushing forward this notion of, like, pharma. And like, you know, I actually just heard Mark Cuban say this in, like, a masterclass. He's like, the number one mistake that entrepreneurs make is that you think you have to raise tons and tons of money to build successful business. It's like, that's not true.
[00:33:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: You know, you think about the pharma model, hundreds of millions of dollars, right, to build these drugs. Think about what Fitbiomics has done, right, in a fraction of time with orders of magnitude less capital, but we still de risked the entire supply chain, and we've built these microbes that have potency, clinical validation, and now we're bringing them to market.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: Right?
[00:33:51] Speaker B: So it's just a very orthogonal translational medicine model, but I think one that is extremely effective.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: It's a great point. It's a perfect segue to the next. The last thing that I want to talk about, which is lessons for entrepreneurs, especially scientists, who are thinking about moving in an entrepreneurial direction. So maybe I'll start with the frame that you just put around fitbiomics, which is, I think, absolutely legitimate, much lower cost path to market, much less risk for investors, et cetera. Did you know that was where you were going, or did you sort of, did that just kind of happen? How much of this was, you called your shot and how much of it was, you sort of found it as you went along the journey, if you know what I mean.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: It's a little bit of both, right? I mean, you know, obviously, again, we're talking about ten years ago or more, that conversation with George about athlete microbiomes. So clearly we had a thought we could translate that metagenomic data into these real world probiotic assets, right? But I think at the end of the day, we're building the future of health in real time.
[00:34:45] Speaker C: Right?
[00:34:45] Speaker B: And so that's one thing I would say, you know, at entrepreneurs, there's a few things. One, I think it's very important, extremely important to build the right team, right? And I think early on, and it's a journey. It's an adventure. There's so many ups and downs, and I think having really smart people that complement your skillset that are going to be with you on that journey, right? So for me, my background is technology and bioscience. Now, having like, a partner that's more in commercialization and business development, right. And market research and insights, wildly critical. You know, the other thing, too, as we alluded to, I think it's always important. And maybe scientists don't do this like we build technologies, but I think creating MVP's minimum viable products, right, showing commercial plausibility, but then thinking about those opportunities, what's your tam, but then what? What are you going to focus on? And I think part of that is weaves into telling your story and how you're building something that's disruptive. So those are some of the things, right? What is the holistic vision? But then how can you create a very legitimate and profitable business out of it.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: And again, this goes back to valuation versus values.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Is it better to say, like, yeah, we're going to create some drug and there's a less than 10% success rate, but we could raise a lot of money on it, or say, you know what, we want to build these assets we could bring to market and really create sort of, let's say, a revenue generating company. But really, at the end of the day, we're going to help a lot of people faster.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: So I want to just decode a couple of things that you just said. You mentioned Tams, that's total addressable markets. I think what you're saying there is make sure you've got a meaningful target in mind, that, as a friend of mine likes to say, the juice is worth the squeeze. And then you said, develop a minimally viable product, which is the lowest cost way to test that market. Is that what you're saying there?
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I want to say something that's pretty interesting. I really think we could learn a lot from, like this GLP one craze. I know I keep bringing it up, but think about something interesting there. You know, you basically had these assets that were developed as drugs, right? And for diabetes, and now all of a sudden they've become sort of like these consumer biohacking modalities that people are willing to spend thousands of dollars on.
[00:36:50] Speaker C: Right?
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Yes. And it's only because that's what the market wants. Right. 70% of the population. But then also think about this in terms of lean startup model. And now how everyone's saying, oh, not just diabetes and weight, think about cardiovascular health, think about neurological health, think about how it's reducing mortality with COVID Anyways, they're now using consumer insights to build out new indications for these assets. So, I mean, the first and foremost thing is like safety.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: You again, regulatory processes, let's prove that.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: It'S a safe drug.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Exactly. But once you do that, now you're kind of learning how this could be applied and repurposed for different indications.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Do you think that's going to have an impact on. Yeah, on sort of startup founders and early stage companies, how they think about going after drug development. One of the things we see is that sometimes companies really struggle after they even get approval for a drug, persuading the market that they've got something meaningful.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Exactly right. So again, you go down this huge path, low success rate, high capital intensive, and then what do you do with it?
[00:37:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: And sometimes it works out. We spoke about Nvidia building stuff for like the AI boom. And now, again, these companies having GOP one s during like, this obesity epidemic.
[00:38:02] Speaker C: Right? Yeah.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Again, I think the quicker we could develop assets, tangible assets that are clinically validated that we could get to market it, the better.
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: I mean, that's. Again, that might be the most radical thing Fitbiomics is doing.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, forget athlete microbiomes, forget, you know, this and that. It's like we've cracked a code and turned a ten year multibillion dollar process into something we could accelerate much, much quicker, and by the way, to address.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: At a fraction of the cost.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but also, this is the other thing. Candidly, the challenge fitbioms has faced, again, goes back to values versus valuation, because that's orthogonal to traditional pharma economic economics. Right. There's maybe something perceived as less valuable for that.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Versus. No, this is a new framework for translational medicine. That's the real value. And that in of itself is iterative and could be expanded upon with new innovations, new data and things of that nature.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: That's fascinating. Okay, so if you were not working in the microbiome, are there other examples of things you think people ought to be spending time on and investigating that could be clinically validated but don't go through full FDA approval or not actually development of a medicine? Or do you think it's mostly in the microbiome space? I mean, I understand this is your passion.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: Well, I lean towards microbiomes because it's something that we could modulate, we could extract right from the early days of fecal transplants. You also think about probiotics being a hundred billion dollar global industry. There's so much in place for consumers already adopting this and. Yeah, but you know, what are the other things that could really, I mean, obviously there's gene therapy, there's stem cell therapy, gene editing and engineering. Again, I don't know if any of those are more consumer focusing and stuff like that. But, you know, I think one of the big challenges in society today is just honestly, knowledge and accessibility. So beyond just like bioengineering, like, how can we make access to knowledge and healthcare and interventions more accessible to people, right? I mean, to me, that's the biggest challenge, right? Knowledge. And then you have social media compounding that and what's real, where do people go? So I think finding ways, it's like almost veracity, right? You know, how can we validate certain information and then distribute it to people so they could learn about how to optimize their health long term. I think that's an interesting sort of challenge that maybe isn't microbial related, but is just holistically very important for society.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely hear that. I want to come back to the entrepreneurial lessons. We talked about picking complimentary team members, the importance of having the right team out of the gate. That makes a lot of sense. We talked about target, you know, picking a tam that makes sense, that makes sense. And trying to test it as quickly as possible. Any other insights that you want to leave us with that are takeaways? Either the good kind, I did this right, or the like, I wish I'd known this or thought of this earlier. Both are irrelevant.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think you don't need a lot of money to start a company and you don't. Although, listen, let's be real, having capital resources is very important. And there's this interesting dynamic. Again, back to value versus valuations. Sometimes you could accelerate too fast.
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: And, you know, if you bring a product to market and stuff like that, you might be judge differently than if you just were in ideation phase. And there's this weird thing where if you have an idea in IP, you might be able to raise a lot of money because you can't quantify what this will result in once you start having a commercial asset. And now unit economics, revenue and stuff like that, now it's like, oh, well, how much revenue you're generating? This and that. Guys, we just created miracles of science. Wait, we have assets that are comparable to pharma, right? Like, no, now is the time we're going to build the commercial scalability and partnerships and we need resources. So, you know, sometimes slowing down a little bit.
[00:41:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: And the other thing I'd say is just telling the right story, knowing your audience. And I love this, you know, lean startup that's influenced me. Steve Martin, you know, the actor comedian, he has this book born standing up, and there's this phrase, I just, I love it. It's so simple, mind blowing. And he said, you know, I would do the same routine, and one night I would do a routine in one part of town and be crickets. No one would get it right. But guess what? I'd go to a different part of town the same night, do the exact same routine and kill them. And he was like, it's basically the audience in knowing your audience and finding the right audience for your routine. I love that, you know, and like, that's what it is. You have to tell the right story and connect with the right audience.
[00:42:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: And I think you alluded to, even with pharma, at the end of the day, you create these assets, but you still have to market it right and find the right users. So in many ways, a lot of it is storytelling and finding the right audience and, you know, obviously building assets and clinically validate health solutions that have broad impact. That goes without saying. I guess the last thing and you could see for me is if you're going to go down this journey, you have to be passionate about it.
[00:42:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: It's just, it's ups and downs. Like, you have to believe in what you're doing, and that will, I think, get you through regardless of what's going on.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: Well, I think, look, your background is showing here. You know, the grit that you just talked about at the end, that's the, I'm going to tie that to your career in basketball, the Steve Martin thing. I think that brings us right back to fame and the tuba stuff from the very beginning.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: That's it.
What's the big fit? Biomics. We're bridging the gap between pop culture and cutting edge biotechnology to create things that are both transformative but also tangible for society.
That's the easy way.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: I can't think of a better way. And Jonathan, Jonathan Schaiman, CEO of Fitbiotics, thanks so much for coming on for you and far between.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the latest episode of few and far between. Our podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts and other major streaming services. Please take a moment and leave us a user review and rating today. It really helps people discover the podcast and we read all the comments. Those comments help us to make few and far between better and better. Also, be sure to subscribe to few and far between so that you don't miss a single episode. Got an idea for a future episode? Email us at few and I far
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