Jasmina Aganovic transcript

Written by Christopher Kelly

March 9, 2017

[0:00:00]

Christopher:    Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined once again by Jasmina Aganovic. Hi, Jasmina.

Jasmina:    Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me on again.

Christopher:    Yeah. I'm absolutely delighted to have you back on again. Jasmina is a cosmetics and consumer goods entrepreneur who received her degree in chemical and biological engineering from MIT and she now works for a company Mother Dirt or is it AOBiome? I always forget the connection between the two names.

Jasmina:    Yeah. AOBiome is the name of the company and I run their consumer products division which is called Mother Dirt.

Christopher:    Okay. Tell me why it is you do what you do.

Jasmina:    Sure. A fully loaded question to start this up.

Christopher:    Yeah. I like loaded questions.

Jasmina:    Yeah. My background is in engineering so I really love learning and understanding how things come together. I love personal care and that was really the direction that I took my career in. And specifically what I really love doing is taking typically complicated stories and figuring out how we can translate those complicated technical stories into a more kind of experienced and emotional oriented experience, the branding process behind it, how do we take a highly technical concept and turn it into something that people connect with emotionally. I really enjoy doing that in my career and I've always gravitated towards roles that allow me to do just that.

Christopher:    Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I've really been enjoying your AO Mist product and I've been amazed. As you see, a lot of products come and go from my life. People send me free stuff and we've been involved with developing nutritional supplements ourselves and tons of stuff ends up in the supplement graveyard. But I still have two bottles of the AO Mist in my fridge that I use every day. I feel like it's a really great product. Maybe we should start by explaining to people what exactly is in that product and why it's so important.

Jasmina:    Absolutely. Of course, I'm really happy to hear that you're enjoying the product. It's great product to start off talking about because it is where everything began for us. I see no more appropriate beginning really to starting the conversation. So, the AO+ Mist contains ammonia oxidizing bacteria, hence, the AO in the name. And although it is kind of mouthful, these bacteria, the live microorganism that is in these bottles are from everything that we are learning and understanding seem to be a very important part of our skin's ecosystem.

    They are what we call the peacekeeper bacteria, which means that in a fairly small amount they can actually have a very broad and dynamic impact on the ecosystems that are around it. The other really interesting element of this bacteria, and the reason we are putting it in bottles that people can put it on their skin, is that we believe that this bacteria once existed on our skin and that over the last 50 to 100 years that it has been removed by two things.

    The first being our rapid change in modern hygiene. So the amount of products that we use today versus one generation ago has changed so dramatically. We've created several new classes of chemicals that are being used to formulate these products and chemistry has also become much more sophisticated and complex and it's involving new things that we have introduced into our daily routines from a very young age.

    And then the other thing that has impacted this bacteria being removed from modern human skin is lifestyle. If you think about 100 years ago or even 75 years ago, the amount of exposure that we had to the outdoors was significantly larger than it is today. Today, we spend so much more time outdoors and so much of our lifestyles are structured mostly around the indoors from working to learning to things along those lines.

    These bacteria come from nature. It's found in the soil and it's a very important part of the soil's ecosystem. And so if you think about how we once used to live walking barefoot and swimming in like some rivers and streams, we were effectively constantly inoculating ourselves with these bacteria. So, the mission behind our company and what we're doing is we're taking these bacteria, restoring it back to modern human skin and studying the effects of it.

    And so we are doing this in twofold. First, we have Mother Dirt, which we'll talk about shortly and kind of the mission behind it, and then the R and D and the chemical side of AOBiome which is doing more therapeutic research around the benefits of these bacteria.

Christopher:    Okay. We've heard the story before on the podcast. We talked a lot about the gut microbiome and, I think, everybody listening will understand the importance of certain bacteria in that environment including akkermansia and bifidobacteria and lactobacillus. We understand there may be certain microbes that are really important for keeping the peace in the same way as maybe the bumble bees are important for pollinating all plants. And when you take that microbe or that organism away then all hell breaks loose. But tell me about how you discovered that this particular microbe was so important?

[0:05:03]

Jasmina:    Yeah. There are a few different pieces of evidence that we look at. First, we look at, to get highly technical really quickly, we look at the nitrogen cycle. So, anywhere where there is ammonia being produced on the planet, and this is part of the nitrogen cycle, you will find this class of bacteria. No matter where, no matter how extreme the environment is, you will find these bacteria in the pot of soil, on the plants that sits on your desk, for example.

    But you will also find these bacteria beneath one of the deepest glaciers in Antarctica. And what those two environments have in common is they both have the nitrogen cycle taking place. So, nature exists and relies heavily on the nitrogen cycle. And one of the beginning parts of the nitrogen cycle is ammonia. And in order to complete the cycle you need this class of bacteria to help push it forward.

    The only case where you have the beginnings of a nitrogen cycle a.k.a. ammonia present but no completion of the completion of the nitrogen cycle is modern human skin. And what I mean by that is as we sweat we produce ammonia. And it is the only place on the planet that has been discovered so far where ammonia is present and there is no nitrogen cycle taking place. That piece of evidence and that extreme anomaly coupled with what we talked about earlier with the change in lifestyle and not spending as much time outdoors along with all of the personal care products and chemistry that we've introduced into our lives really just points to this element of this once was on us and we seem to have lost it.

Christopher:    And was the bacteria just discovered by accident? I'm just wondering how this went down that you -- It was always known in the literature or you just went looking for it or how was it discovered?

Jasmina:    The bacteria was actually very well known in the literature for its role in the nitrogen cycle and in the soil and different types of ecosystems taking place in nature. So, the bacteria itself was well understood. What was never discussed was its connection to human skin. Those, I think, were the kind of the critical pieces that we put together. And the story and kind of the light bulb moment for this really has to do with David Whitlock, who is our scientific founder.

    He started his work on this about 15 years ago. It might be even a little bit more than that at this point. But, unexpectedly, he was asked a seemingly random question. He was on a date with a woman who happened to be a horseback rider and she casually asked him the question of why her horses would roll on the dirt and, more specifically, they would roll in the dirt at a very specific time of year. They would roll on the dirt in March. And she wanted to know why that was.

    So, David found this to actually be a very interesting question because his initial response was that it had something to do with the insects but it turned out that the insects didn't come out until later in the summer. He realized, okay, this is an evolved behavior for horses and, more interestingly, this concept of rolling in the dirt is actually an evolved behavior for all mammals. If you think about it, elephants roll in the dirt. If you have a pet dog or cat, you've probably seen them roll in the dirt. You might even see them do it daily. Chickens, rhinos, I mean, every mammal has an ingrained habit of rolling in the dirt.

    And David's hypothesis was if they have evolved this behavior over thousands of years, there must be a reason why. It must be very important. And so he started looking for links between their skin and the soil. And this is ultimately the train of thought that that led him in this direction of realizing that this is the one bacteria that can survive off of human skin that we know of right now, that can survive off of human skin and that comes from the soil.

    And not only that but this idea of the nitrogen cycle taking place on the skin and how much it's deviated for modern human skin was a whole other kind of subset of thought. So, it was really David that led us down this path and ultimately led to the founding of the company.

Christopher:    And did he have to develop an assay to discover or test for the presence of the bacteria?

Jasmina:    Yeah. David, he got some dirt from like the greater Boston area. He created a -- David is also a chemical engineer from MIT, I should note, brilliant guy, and as he likes to point out, that he might be crazy but he's certainly not stupid. I always chuckle when I hear that. But what David did is he wanted to prove his hypothesis so he did a really interesting experiment with very little resources. And this is, of course, before the company was formed. It was really just David exploring this for himself.

    He took soil from the greater Boston area and he created a makeshift bioreactor at home and essentially tried to grow these bacteria by feeding it ammonia. So, he basically just fed this food source to the bacteria so that it could grow as much of it as possible. And then he started applying it to his skin to see what would happen and if he would notice any sort of differences. And that's essentially what was very compelling to him because he felt that he had noticed differences in his skin along with other things that were really interesting and important to him.

[0:10:01]

    And that was when he started kind of putting his home brew if you will in bottles and started talking to people within the biotech community as well as others here in Boston to see if we could put some resources behind it to test the concepts and more of scientific setting, if you will.

Christopher:    Very cool. Well, let's talk about some of the benefits. So, the reason I keep using the product -- There's a few applications, actually. The first one was for my daughter. I'm just imagining her listening to this podcast in ten years time. She's going to wring my neck. We used it in place of maybe like in diaper creams. So, when she was in diapers or nappies as we call them in the UK, we would spray it on her skin and she's now long out of nappies and she never developed a nappy rash for her entire existence in nappies.

    I think it's quite incredible because, obviously, you can't be perfect about changing them, right? So, there's obviously a period where the kid's skin is like bathing in urea and whatever else is there. So, that was a really great application. And I've also found it's really great for bicycle helmets, right? So, most of the people listening to this podcast will be an athlete of some sort and many of those will be cyclists.

    I've tried a few different things. Your helmet gets kind of nasty pretty quickly and there doesn't seem to be much you can do about it. I've tried various different antimicrobial sprays, some of which are natural. They've got like essential oils or something like that. It sort of works for a bit but not really. And what I find is that I tend to get like acne around the areas where the helmet is making contact which is not very nice.

    The thing I figured out works quite well is not applying the AO Mist spray to the helmet but to apply it to my head. So, maybe I should stop talking here and maybe you can make a comment or explain what might be going on to resolve these problems that I found.

Jasmina:    Yeah. It's really interesting that you mention these things. We haven't done any clinical testing on those scenarios that you have raised, one of them seeming more breakout oriented and the other one seeming oriented towards diaper rash or as a treatment for diaper rash. And those are really interesting areas for us to explore from a research perspective. Right now, with Mother Dirt being a cosmetic product, we are not currently making those claims nor are we able to because as a scientifically grounded company, we want to follow the scientific process to be able to support the claims that we make. So, I just have to kind of put an asterisk there for those things that you have mentioned.

Christopher:    Yeah, of course.

Jasmina:    However, I do want to recognize the importance of what you have shared because this sort of exploratory sense of curiosity and wonder was really crucial and is still crucial today and, in fact, is part of our culture here at the company where we form this company, we just had a handful people, we want to validate David's hypothesis in a laboratory setting and we had ideas of what the bacteria back on the skin might do but we didn't know what direction to take our research in. We didn't have much money so we wanted to understand where we could best focus it.

    And when we originally launched the beta program for the Mist, I mean, we knew that the product was safe although ironically we could not say, "Use it for this. Use it for that." We really wanted people to explore with us very similar to the way that you did. And we wanted people to share their experience with us to better point the direction of the research that we should go in. And so the way that we've structured the company essentially is the consumer side of the business, definitely pre Mother Dirt and still with Mother Dirt, were constantly gathering anecdotal user feedback and now across many thousands of data points we are able to identify strong trends.

    And then we can take those trends, we can dig a little bit deeper into the data, we can structure smaller studies that are in a more clinically controlled environment. And then based on what we find through that, we can decide whether or not it's worth our pursuing of a clinical indication. And that's where the clinical and the therapeutic side of what AOBiome is doing. So, to date, we are in phase two trials on acne. It is the first ever live topical bacteria being looked at for the treatment of something like acne.

    We have not started exploring diaper rash although we have been asked that question several times but perhaps one day it will be a direction that we will be able to explore. So, I'm really happy to hear that you've been experimenting and information like that has really helped the R and D side of our company and our learning and the direction that we choose to take things in.

Christopher:    Yeah. And another two applications, and I think we talked about this last time, was as a replacement for antiperspirant deodorant and I'm still using it for that reason. And it's not totally bulletproof. So, I can't go out for a really heavy ride just wearing this stuff and expect to smell good in a restaurant after I finish the race, not that good. But certainly just for milling around the house, my wife is not complaining too much. I'm pretty sure it works well for that purpose.

    And the other one though I forgot to mention actually is, again very relevant for cyclists, is the prevention of saddle sores. I don't really want to go into too much detail. I'm sure the cyclists that are listening to this know what I'm talking about. But these things can be really vicious. It's almost like a boil and it will take you out of a bike race.

[0:15:00]

    If you're in a stage race and you develop a saddle sore on day two then you're done basically. It's that painful. So, definitely, that problem, I think, is solved by the product. But tell me about acne. What do you think might be going on there?

Jasmina:    Yeah. So, we'll talk a little bit about some of our ideas behind acne and we can also get into the body odor aspect as well. I think what we're introducing or what the microbiome as an entire field is introducing is a completely different pathway to look at things and to potentially solve problems. So, let's take acne for example.

    Many years ago, P. acnes or P. acne, however you want to pronounce it, was identified as the culprit in acne. And if you have this type of bacteria on your skin you are very likely to have acne. And then all the treatments for acne became very antibacterial in an effort to get rid of these bacteria. However, one of the learning that came several years ago but more on the recent side was this irony that most people have P. acne on their skin and yet not all of them actually have acne.

    

    In fact, some people with like beautiful pristine skin have P. acne on their skin. So, what gives? What is the difference between these two types of scenarios? And so a recent hypothesis that has emerged and is true in every other field of the microbiome, so the same sort of idea applies to the gut, and I'll give you a few examples of it as well, is that it is not the presence of a certain microbe but rather an imbalance that results in the issues that we see.

    So, the presence of one or two or, I don't know, a thousand P. acne on your skin does not mean you will get breakouts. However, if the rest of the microbial ecosystem that surrounds the P. acne is not able to keep it in check or keep things in balance or there's something that creates a dis-balance or an imbalance in that ecosystem then the opportunity for P. acne to actually cause issues is all of a sudden much greater. That is a big shift in how we think about things.

    So now the approach has become not one of eradicating or of antibacterial or antibiotic or whatever. They have become one of balance and restoring balance or restoring a healthy profile. So, the challenge that has emerged with that, and to give you really quickly an analogy to the gut, C. diff, a very serious infection that happens in the gut typically happens in the hospital after someone has been on a round of antiobiotics.

    Their gut microbiome is thrown out of balance and this leaves their gut microbiome much more susceptible to potentially pathogenic bacteria. And this is when people contract C. diff. Versus if someone were introduced to this type of bacteria outside of the hospital environment and had not been on multiple rounds of antibiotics, the likelihood of them actually contracting C. diff as an infection drops dramatically. So, we're starting to see elements of the same sort of behavior in very different ecosystems with very different types of microbes.

    So, what might be happening in the case of acne and what we are trying to understand is whether or not a restoration of AOBs, of the ammonia oxide in bacteria, result in a shift in the skin microbiome such that it becomes more balanced. And with that balance come kind of the visual benefits that we associate with acne in a different sort of treatment and approach to it. But as of right now, that is certainly a hypothesis. We understand the mechanism by which we believe that it works and this is why we are doing the clinical study to see whether or not that indeed is correct.

Christopher:    Tell me more about the mechanism. Everybody listening is super technical so you can just use as many technical words as you can. So, what, is the bacteria secreting some substance that's controlling the other microbes?

Jasmina:    Great question. So, I think both parts of the mechanism both with the bacteria is consuming and what it is producing are both really important in this scenario and in other scenarios that we look at. So, first, let's look at what the bacteria is consuming. We talk about ammonia at the beginning of the process. So, ammonia is a portion of our sweat. Ammonia typically has a high PH. We have seen that skin with high PH is typically associated with more problematic skin states.

    So, the fact that this bacteria, when it's on your skin, is consuming that ammonia which is driving up the PH of your skin, the fact that it's removing that ammonia means that it's having a normalizing effect on the PH of your skin. So, simply by having something on your skin that is helping keep the PH at a more balanced point or at a point that is better for the skin or has been shown to be more balanced for the skin is a benefit in and of itself. So, there's probably some degree of benefit that comes just from the removal of ammonia.

    Then, what it produces in turn is nitrite and nitric oxide. So, nitrite is known in the medical literature as -- It's used as an anti infective. So, this is where we think as some of the modulating effect happened on some of the other microbes and to the rest of the ecosystem that is around it.

[0:20:00]

    The other thing that is produced is nitric oxide. So, nitric oxide is a gas and it's known for its anti inflammatory and vasodilation effect. So, lots of things here that don't even touch what we do on the consumer side of the business but it's really what the R and D aspect of the business is looking at and seeing how we can take what we know about that mechanism and apply it to different sort diseases, in the case of acne, that are rooted in inflammation, that are rooted in some sort of bacterial imbalance, whereby reintroducing something that is removing ammonia and producing these byproducts could deliver benefit.

Christopher:    Okay. I should probably make it really clear here, because I've definitely been confused in the past that you're talking about nitric oxide, not nitrous oxide which is laughing gas. That's what the dentist gives you. And it's actually quite toxic. It oxidizes cobalamin and effectively destroys it. So, it can muck up your methylation. So, I just wanted to make that clarifying point that we're talking about nitric oxide not nitrous oxide, the laughing gas that the dentist gives you.

Jasmina:    That's right. So, the nitric oxide, it's known as a vasodilator. It's one of the mechanisms that doctors try and access for things like blood pressure and the whole Viagra pathway is something that was tried to tap into by looking at the nitric oxide pathway. So, that's typically the arenas that you hear the words nitric oxide used the most. It's a little bit unorthodox that we're talking about it on the skin but that is the molecule that we're talking about.

Christopher:    Well, maybe this might be a good time to segue into talking about whether the nitric oxide could be used to lower blood pressure. So, tell me about that.

Jasmina:    Yes. So, this is another initiative on the clinical side of our business. I have to be very clear here that this is not the product that we are selling on the market right now through Mother Dirt. This is something different. It's still studying the same class of bacteria but it is a different formula. When we were running the acne study it was an early stage safety study. And as part of safety, one of the things that you are measuring on regular intervals of all of the patients is their vitals. So, blood pressure is an important part of this.

    And one of the interesting things that happened in this study even though it was a small study and it was simply formatted for safety is that we saw a reduction in blood pressure for these patients. And that was a really interesting aha moment. It's built into our patent so we weren't, knowing what we know about nitric oxide, it's not completely out of the blue but we were surprised that the signal was there despite the relatively short period of time that the safety study lasted and considering the surface area that people were applying the product. They were really only spraying it on their face.

    So, it was interesting for us to see that type of a response not really trying to perturb the system that much. So, we took that data to the FDA and essentially we submitted an IND and got the approval to start a phase two clinical trial in hypertension that is currently underway. This was a bit of a -- Two years ago, we didn't have this on our pathway here but it is very exciting and potentially radical to think about a product that you spray on your skin. The fact that we are studying a product that you spray on your skin to reduce blood pressure is a really interesting indication of the moment in time and, I think, the recognition that the human body is a lot more connected than we initially thought.

    Yeah, so as far as what the clinical team is doing, and I'm not involved with those efforts there at all, so this is in a different scope of what we're doing at the company, but it was a very exciting time of the team and it will be really interesting to see what the learning are from that study and what we can do with it. I mean, we have years to go before this potentially even becomes a reality and before it would be something that would be seen on the market but it is just a really interesting idea.

Christopher:    Hello, everyone, I wanted to interrupt this podcast to remind you that none of the statements made during this interview are FDA approved. So, the AO+ Mist spray is currently available but the clinical trials are still ongoing. I also wanted to remind you to head over to nourishbalancethrive.com/highlights where you can sign up for an email that will come from Tommy and me and we will send you once a week an interesting scientific paper that we've read with actionable advice, nonsense that we've read or heard this week and why it's nonsense, and something awesome that we've read or listened to this week and why it's awesome. So, head over to nourishbalancethrive.com/highlights. And back to the interview.

    Yeah. I'm sort of thinking, wow, how the heck could this possibly work? The endothelial cells that line arteries produce nitric oxide and that sends a signal to the smooth muscles that surround that artery and make them relax. And that's just one of the ways in which nitric oxide can have an effect. And the half life of nitric oxide is quite short. So, I'm just wondering, do you understand the mechanism how the heck something applied topically could possibly have an effect on the smooth muscles that surround the endothelial?

[0:25:06]

Jasmina:    That's a great question and I will say that probably our chief medical officer is going to be much better suited to answering more of the specifics. I think a very basic understanding that I can apply is that although nitric oxide is a gas, which gives it that short half life, it does seem like, with the formulas that we are testing in this clinical study, that there is some absorption of the nitric oxide through the skin. We are doing more to understand that and to validate that but that is the direction of kind of understanding that we are heading in.

Christopher:    Yeah. I love it. I think it's the right way to go with this stuff. It's a top-down approach just to see if it works or not. So that's not an accidental discovery in a completely different clinical trial and then let's worry about the mechanisms later on once you understand that they're actually relevant, right? You might spend a lot of time looking at the mechanism and later on you discover who cares because it's not useful anyway? I think the top-down approach is the right way to go about it.

Jasmina:    Yeah. It's been a really interesting journey for us and, I think, what's most important to us is that we kind of stay true to the scientific and, of course, the regulatory process, which is why for your listeners I'm trying to be very deliberate and distinct about the very serious distinction that we have between what happens on the clinical and the R and D side and what happens on the Mother Dirt side. But it's really important to us that we never speak ahead of the science, that we're very transparent in what we're learning and what we know and what we don't know and what questions we're looking to answer. But it's been quite a ride.

Christopher:    Why would you choose to go down that route? It's quite curious to me. So, absolutely I'm strongly in favor of the idea of you doing clinical studies and then publishing your data to show that the claims that you're making are substantiated. But why go down the FDA route in the first place since it's so expensive and it takes so much time?

Jasmina:    We have a really long time horizon when we look at the mission of this company. We fundamentally believe that this will be a major shift in public health and it will be a different way of viewing how we approach disease whether that's with what we do with the ammonia oxidizing bacteria or whether it's someone else in the industry that kind of comes up afterward if we inspire them or we kind of pave the way or whatever you want to call it.

    Even if we are not successful we would like to believe that we have started enough of a process and interest and intrigue in kind of approaching disease in this sort of fashion. And to be really specific with you on a few scenarios, when you look at the current state of drugs for acne and the number of people that struggle with acne, the best way for you to have deep and long term impact and success on people's lives is to get the academic and medical community on board. That leads to long lasting change in medical practice and viewpoints.

    And the fact that we can look at something like Accutane and look at the side effects that are associated with it and then you can look at ammonia oxidizing bacteria and the safety profile of this is so incredibly mild that we'd been accelerated through safety for the topical applications by the FDA. Our safety profile is an incredible dream when you compare it to other drugs that are currently on the market for the case of acne.

    Then look at the case of hypertension. With 75 million people are pre-hypertensive but doctors do not put them on drugs because of the types of side effects. So, doctors try and help their patients modulate their own behavior by eating healthier and getting more exercise but there's this other subset of 75 million other people who are actually hypertensive and do need to be on these drugs and the side effects are not great.

    And so when I talk about time horizon we do want to create long lasting change in the mindset of how we approach disease and having a consumer product we view as a tool to have a conversation around clean and our relationship with bacteria but to treat disease is a very different sort of approach and it's really important to us that we follow the scientific process because we do want to create that long lasting change within the medical community and we want to be very respectful of it so that, hopefully, something that leads to long lasting impact that will impact many people's lives in the end.

Christopher:    The safety record for probiotics also is almost suspiciously good, right? It's almost no adverse events at all. It almost makes you wonder whether the intervention is doing anything at all. Have you had any adverse reactions to people using this spray?

Jasmina:    We log anything that could be categorized as a negative response to our product. Like in any study, we will have someone on placebo basically glorified saltwater and they will have an adverse response to the saltwater. So the way that we look at our adverse responses, and I'll talk about it in the context of the clinical studies, is about how different it is from people that are on placebo. Because that's really all that matters. Whether or not you have two adverse responses is not as important as how many people had an adverse response that weren't taking it.

[0:30:06]

    Because the human body is complicated and some people will apply coconut oil to their skin and they will have an adverse response to coconut oil. So, really understanding what the proper delta is from placebo is how we compare it. And in all cases, whenever we've done these studies, there is no difference between placebo and the product that we are testing as it relates to safety and potential negative responses and adverse responses.

Christopher:    Okay. And then do you ever see a time when the ammonia oxidizing bacteria, and I see it referred to in your clinical studies as B244, and do you think that will ever be a drug that doctors will prescribe?

Jasmina:    That's the goal. That is what we are doing and what the clinical team, to be specific, is working on doing. So, B244 is the clinical designation for what is officially filed with the FDA and anyone can go to clinicaltrials.gov to see the work that we're doing for the clinical trials that are currently underway. But if we are successful, that is certainly the goal for it.

    Thinking about your comments on cycling, and so we have had a lot of athletes use our product and perhaps not surprisingly, I think, that it also fits in with the mindset and the mentality. We got a really funny email one day that was pretty exciting to the team. It seems like Roman Bardet, you must be familiar with him, I think.

Christopher:    Yeah. I know that name.

Jasmina:    Yeah. He uses our product. I think his coach or someone that does some element of his training was really interested in our product and what it does and had him using it while he was doing the Tour de France. So, it was really interesting. We just got an email one day basically saying like, "Do you guys know that the person that--" I think he came in second or first in the Tour de France? He did really well. But I was just thinking of that. I wanted to remember his name and it took me until now to remember his name but it seemed like he's a fan of the product. I don't know much more about what particular use he has, whether it's something associated with the helmet or the saddle sores that you had mentioned but it would certainly be interesting to find out.

Christopher:    Yeah. So, there's this new revolution of thinking about microbes, rather than it being the war on microbes it's now like, well, how can we just give them a bit of nudge and shift them in our direction? Yeah, maybe he has gone down that route of trying antimicrobial stuff for those types of problems, saddle sores and whatnot, and realize that's not the way. But I'm also wondering about oxygen deliverability. So, if you're vasodilating and lowering blood pressure, is it possible you could be increasing oxygen deliverability?

Jasmina:    Yeah. Who knows? Definitely not with the cosmetic product or at least every way that we look at it, definitely not -- I think, everything that we are looking at on the clinical side and on the R and D side is at a significantly different formulation. So, it wouldn't be correct for comparison. But who knows? I mean, certainly if that was the direction that the R and D team wanted to maybe go in, that would be very interesting to consider because one must wonder, right?

Christopher:    Right. I just worried that so many potential applications that I'm going to be dead and buried by the time you go through the FDA approval process for all of them.

Jasmina:    We're very lucky we're not going after them consecutively. We're actually going after them in parallel. So, we currently have multiple underway and we'll have several more that we'll be filing shortly. So, I don't think that it's going to be -- I don't think it will be that long. If we are successful, I think, over the next two years that will be kind of the critical time for readouts and some of our successes and then another couple of years after that for the phase three to be done, and then maybe two years after that. So, it is not sure. We're talking about six to ten years. But definitely not dead and buried, particularly if you are taking care of yourself and you're healthy, which I think you are.

Christopher:    I like that word. I like that. Tell me about the personal care products. Is there a way for people to know whether the personal care products, the soap, for example, is compatible with the ammonia oxidizing bacteria?

Jasmina:    Great question. From the research that we have done, there are two major things that impact the biome or making things not biome friendly as we define it. Preservatives in your products. Preservatives are meant to be inherently antibacterial. And then the other one is harsh surfactants, so something like an SOS or SDS. Those tend to be pretty rough on the skin and the skin's ecosystem. And so what we try and do and we're still gaining a better understanding of it, is screening different classes of ingredients.

    So, screening a bunch of different surfactants and screening a bunch of different emulsifiers and putting together our palette of biome friendly ingredients that we can then put together into a formula that we can recommend. It's taking longer than we would have expected to kind of screen through things but it is a complicated problem that we are trying to solve and, I think, the motivation behind Mother Dirt has been focused around changing people's perception of what they put on their skin for this microbial ecosystem and this is why the brand has been kind of using that as a vehicle predominantly. It's having that conversation and forcing people to kind of think in that direction of, hey, is this biome friendly? Is this affecting my microbiome in a way that I don't want?

[0:35:03]

Christopher:    Yeah. I've certainly been using a lot less personal care products. In fact, we hardly have anything in our house in that regard. But we do use castile soap and maybe neem soap sometimes. I don't really use that when I'm particularly dirty or if I've been riding somewhere where there's poison oak which is pretty nasty and is easy to contaminate other things with it once you're covered in it. I don't suppose if you know -- There are lots of people listening to this will also be using the soap. I don't suppose you know whether those are compatible or not?

Jasmina:    We probably don't. Until we test the product we don't but if I were to give them one piece of -- There are two pieces of advice here. One is really reevaluate how much you actually need something. I think people are most surprised by the fact that they don't need to lather up head to toe to feel truly clean or they don't need some products as much as they thought they did. So, you can kind of be judicious with where and how you use them.

    And then, secondly, and I promise this is not just a product plug, I mean, just restoring good bacteria to your skin or helping keep that ecosystem balanced, even if in extreme cases nuke it every single day, just putting like peacekeepers back is the best thing you can do for yourself. Very extreme cases, nurses. So, nurses in the environment that they work in, they have to wash their hands so many times. They use very harsh soaps. They're also using hand sanitizers. So, they have no option. This is part of medical protocol. And for good reason, because of what happens in hospitals. They absolutely should, and we're not advocating for any of this to change.

    But we do have nurses that come home and before they go to bed they spray the mist on their hands and they just find that the quality of skin on their hands is so much better and feels much more resilient because of kind of that restorative process that's taking place overnight with the bacteria on the skin. So, even if you don't want to cut back on your products or like the products that you're using but you want to incorporate something that is more biome friendly or you are kind of thinking in this direction, it is really easy just to take the mist and apply it as the very last step in your routine or once a day right before you to bed.

Christopher:    Yeah. We've certainly been recommending it as experiment for people in that situation. We've worked with nurses and other medical practitioners that have been using the hand sanitizer, like you say. The skin gets so dry and cracked that you actually start to get to see fungal and other infections in the cracks on the hands and it sounds awful. But anecdotally, we've heard of people showing some improvement when they use the spray. So, that's quite exciting.

Jasmina:    That's great.

Christopher:    Cool. What did I miss? Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?

Jasmina:    No. I think we covered a ton of really interesting topics. I mean, I think, in the best possible way I would like to say that there's so much that we don't know and yet that is precisely what makes this so exciting. I think the fact that people are interested is probably another really important aspect of it. The fact that people are kind of interested in the direction that this field is going in which makes it even more exciting. But, yeah, I think we covered a bunch of really great things.

Christopher:    Cool. Well, if people would like to try out any of these products, I have negotiated a discount code. I don't know all of the details yet. I think it's going to be 25%. But if you come to the show notes for this episode, so if you're listening in Overcast, say, you'll see that there's a details button and there's some notes including everything that we mentioned during this episode and a timeline that you can look at.

    I'll put the details of the discount code in there. And then maybe I'll set up a redirect on the website as well. So, if you come to nourishbalancethrive.com/dirt, that will redirect you to the show notes for this episode and you'll be able to find the discount code there. Well, Jasmina, this has been phenomenal. Tell us about where people can find you online.

Jasmina:    Sure. So, if you're interested in the consumer side and the cosmetic side of what we're doing, that is motherdirt.com. I also welcome you to follow us on any of our social media channels too. And if you're interested in learning more about the clinical side and the R and D and what we're doing there separately, you can go to aobiome.com.

Christopher:    Excellent. I will, of course, link to those things in the show notes also. Jasmina, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you.

Jasmina:    Thank you so much, Chris. Always great chatting with you.

[0:39:00]    End of Audio

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