Emerging Skin Microbiome Science, featuring Holobiont Medical Research Foundation Co-Founders Julia Durack and Larry Weiss

Episode Transcript
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Deanna (00:00):
Welcome to Cosmo Factory, a podcast by Cosmoprof
Worldwide Bologna, where weexplore the entire cosmetics,
personal care, and fragranceindustry supply chain. I'm your
host, Deanna Utrusky, and hereat Cosmo Factory, we look beyond
the trends to discover theideas, initiatives, and

(00:22):
innovations that are trulyadvancing beauty. Let's get
started. This episode is aboutemerging science. It's about
both the engrafted andenvironmental microbiome.
It's about skin health researchthat includes indigenous
communities. And it's aboutcontinual inquiry and the

(00:44):
movable boundaries of knowledge.Today on the Cosmo Factory
podcast, I'm speaking with LarryWeiss and Julia Durek, co
founders of HoloBio MedicalResearch Foundation. Larry,
Julia, welcome to Cosmo Factory.

Larry (01:00):
Thank you very much for inviting us. It's a pleasure to
be here.

Julia (01:03):
Yeah, thanks. Excited to be here and looking forward to
this conversation.

Deanna (01:08):
Likewise. No, thank you both. So in July, the two of
you, along with a larger team ofscientists, doctors and
researchers, published anarticle in the peer reviewed
scientific journal called NatureCommunications. This article
documents skin biome researchinvolving indigenous populations
living in the Amazon. And I'llquote from the article abstract

(01:30):
here to summarize the results.
You write, These findings revealthat diverse environmentally
enriched microbiota may conferskin benefits that are
overlooked in our current modelsof healthy skin. So this phrase
environmentally enrichedmicrobiota stands out to me.

(01:50):
Most of us live in what's calledthe built environment. Our lives
happen in buildings andvehicles, cities, towns, and any
contact that we have withnature, with trees, waterways,
dirt, our interactions withnature, they tend to be
occasional. We take a walk or goon a weekend trip or a holiday,
and it's often highly curated.

(02:11):
We interact with nature, butit's often a version of nature
that has been landscaped orcontrived, I might say. My first
question for you is whatmicrobes and what skin health
benefits are people getting whenthey live in an unadulterated
natural environment?

Larry (02:30):
Julia, would you like to take that?

Julia (02:32):
What we learned from studying pre industrialised skin
microbiome of the Yanomami isthat in fact our microbiomes are
constantly what should bereplenished by the environment.
And as you mentioned in ourmodern lifestyle, we spend about

(02:52):
90% of our times indoors. So infact, our microbiome is
replenished by indoor microbes,but it's not the case with
indigenous communities that livea traditional lifestyle. What
we've learned is that theseessentially microbial blanket
provided a shield from theenvironment from environmental

(03:18):
stresses like oxidative stressand provided constant metabolic
support that our modern skin andits microbiome is now lacking,
Our skin and the microbiome arevulnerable and highly stressed
out compared to these highlyenriched microbial communities

(03:43):
of the Yanomami.

Larry (03:44):
Let me add, one of the things that anthropologists have
been noticing for many years isthat within these communities
that still live a traditionalforaging lifestyle, they don't
have any of the skin problemsthat we do. So it was
specifically noted quite a whileago that the adolescents don't
have acne. Acne is essentiallyunknown. So acne, eczema,

(04:06):
rosacea, psoriasis, all theseinflammatory conditions were not
part of the native humancondition of foragers at all.
And the other thing that Juliejust mentioned is these
populations, the Yanomami have,I believe it's still the most
diverse microbiome that's everbeen recorded in a human
population.
Well, they live in one of themost diverse microbial

(04:31):
environments that's still lefton the planet. And as you
pointed out, we spend 90% of ourtime indoors.

Deanna (04:38):
Yeah.

Larry (04:38):
And so it's not very surprising, but the piece that
was lost. So the engrafted partof the microbiome that starts at
birth and that, you know, isfully populated sometime early
in childhood. And that, thatpiece has, it does a lot of
things, but has two very bigjobs. The first one is
colonization resistance.Basically just keep the

(05:00):
ecosystem so fully populated,with species that are so well
adapted, that an outsider haslittle chance of gaining a
foothold.
And the other piece is severalmembers of that ecosystem
communicate directly with ourimmune system, and they're able
to call out an immune responsein case there is a breach and
then recall it when the breachis cured. The piece that they

(05:23):
have, this healthy environmentalbiofilm sits on top of that. And
it's constantly replenished andharmonized with the environment
of true live. And we didn't justinterrogate it axonomically.
That is who is there.
What we did is we interrogatedit functionally and found there
was two big clusters. And Juliaalready mentioned the first one

(05:47):
is oxidative stress. We live inan oxygen environment and we're
bathed in ultraviolet. Bacteriasolved this problem
2,700,000,000 years ago, andthey didn't solve it by the way,
by making the sense. Screen.
And the second big cluster ofgenes that we're missing are all
these secondary metabolicpathways that, you know, as
Julie mentioned, these providemetabolic support. And because

(06:08):
we don't have that layer andevery plant and every animal and
every surface in the environmentis a biofilm, but we don't have
it because of where we live. Andalso because many of our hygiene
practices, even if we did haveit, we would constantly do. In,
in missing that what's happeningis we're exposed to much more
oxidative stress. So we'reessentially oxidizing.

(06:30):
We're rusting. Some of us rustfaster than others, and we're
starving because we don't havethat metabolic support. That
reduces our resilience and inresponse to stress in the
absence of that resilience, wedon't bend, we break, and that
shows up as inflammation.

Deanna (06:45):
Very helpful. I'd like to talk about another phrase, in
the article quote that I read amoment ago. The phrase I'm
thinking of is current models ofhealthy skin. Does this imply
that our collective baselineunderstanding of healthy skin,
what we are trying to achieve ormaintain maybe with skincare, is
that baseline actually nothealthy? Should we be thinking

(07:08):
differently about what healthyskin is?

Julia (07:10):
What we think of healthy skin is, particularly in adults,
is skin that is in lowdiversity, highly dominated by
lipophilic cutibacterium speciesand that indicates you have
healthy skin. Anything elsemeans you've got dry skin for

(07:36):
example, if your diversity isslightly higher, we see
wrinkles, we see drier skin. Butwhat these studies are missing
and what we're missing in ourunderstanding of healthy skin
today is that diversity, is thatlack of environmental microbes

(08:00):
that we no longer have on ourskin.

Deanna (08:03):
Yeah. So just to make sure I understand correctly, the
common understanding that ourindustry has perhaps of healthy
skin is very much premised onwhat you described, Larry, the
engrafted microbiome, themicrobes that are somehow
programmed into our being. Theylive with us. They repopulate
almost no matter how much soapwe use or where we go in the
world. And what you'readvocating for now perhaps is a

(08:27):
new understanding of healthyskin that relies on microbes
that can only be borrowed fromthe natural environment.
Does that sound like I have itright?

Larry (08:37):
It's the root of it. Look, the first thing is, and to
use the line from PrincessBride, I don't think that word
means what you think that itdoes. So when you use the word
healthy, our common, you know,modern industrialized view of
healthy is not being sick, atleast that we're aware of. So
perhaps the right word for thatwould be non sick. Okay.

(08:58):
Healthy from an environment,from an evolutionary biology
standpoint, is the resilience inresponse to stress. They bend
and we break. And so, what we'velost is our resilience. And so
the way we're thinking aboutthis is when the ecosystem was
fully biologically intact, andthat is essentially harmonized

(09:21):
with the environment in which welived, and also represents very
similar to, look, our specieshave been around for, call it
half a million years, for, youknow, everything until like the
last twenty or so thousandyears, this was the state of the
human condition. And most ofthese diseases that we have
right now just didn't existanywhere.

(09:43):
So when you use the word what ishealthy skin, we can talk about
what is normal skin, that's astatistical abstraction. We can
talk about what skin looks likewhen it's non sick. Okay? And
that's that is actually moreappropriate to the way that we
think about it. But we have toacknowledge that a biologically
intact human skin and skinmicrobiome looked very

(10:06):
different, both taxonomicallyand functionally, from the way
we look today.
So what we've built is, this isa, it's just one evolutionary
reference point about what itlooked like when these diseases
were not commonly found or maybe found at all. And that gives

(10:26):
us a perspective that we canlook at what we look like today
and use that as an assessment.When we look at what everyone
within our community, within theindustrialized population looks
like, we don't have thatperspective. We can't really
see. You know, I think the wordshealthy and non sick often get

(10:46):
confused.

Deanna (10:48):
Thank you for that. So the next question I want to ask
is how now in the cosmetic andpersonal care industry, maybe
ingredient makers and productformulators in particular, how
can we make good use of thisunderstanding of skin health as
you've described?

Larry (11:02):
Well, to start doing actual real world validation of
things. In other words, we do alot of marketing science. We're
not doing an adequate amount ofactual what is happening out
there in the communities withthese things. How is it working?
How is it delivering on apromise?
That is the first piece. Thesecond piece, and I think that

(11:23):
this is also really important,is acknowledge that our
knowledge is finite and ourignorance is infinite. And the
biggest myth of the microbiomeis that we know anything about
it yet. It's still very early.And look, science is a
disciplined practice of wonder.
It's driven by creativity andour desire to make things

(11:46):
better, but it needs to betempered by a deep sense of
humility that acknowledges thatthere's a great deal that's own.
Look, we only decided that wehad a microbiome twenty years
ago, and now we're behaving likewe know everything about it. And
so this is for us as scientists,this is an incredibly exciting
time. It's stepping on a newplanet that we've never seen

(12:09):
before, and the complexity isamazing, but we need to
acknowledge that. And that theway that we approach skincare
today, is very much atraditional approach where we
fix broken things.
You come in, you have got thisthing that is broken, We have
poked around inside themechanism of a disease or a
problem that we do not reallyunderstand, and found a way to

(12:31):
introduce a novel, maybepatentable foreign substance to
ameliorate the symptoms of thisdisease we do not understand.
But along the way, often breakmore stuff. Those are the
adverse side effects fromthings. What I'm suggesting is a
very different approach wherecan we restore what was lost?
And if we do that, do we regainthe resilience so that these

(12:53):
failure modes, these adverseevents, these diseases don't
occur at all.
And I would advocate foreveryone who is concerned about
these things to recognize thatwe're moving from a very linear
approach to a systems biologyapproach, and it's going to be
complicated.

Deanna (13:11):
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you for that. I
noticed with my questions today,I seem to be very focused on
quoted material, but I do wannashare another quote that I think
many people would hope is a sortof guideline for our modern
moment. And and this quote is,when you know better, you do
better, which is something MayaAngelou said. With this idea in

(13:34):
mind, I want to ask you aboutenvironmental sustainability as
well as about medical ethics andracial justice.
I want to ask you, is yourresearch disrupting and
exploiting healthy ecosystems,ecosystems, that of the Amazon
or that of the Yanomami people?

Larry (13:53):
That's a really important question. And so the answer to
it is anytime you measuresomething, you do change it. And
we've been very cognizant ofthis and the, our collaboration
and that's what it is with thispopulation is very, the first

(14:14):
time it's been done this waybecause our unique relationship
with it, but they arecollaborators. So this is not,
you know, we are going there andsort of mining them for things
for us. This is how do we crafta mutually beneficial
relationship.
Now, what I will tell you isthat it is not simple. And these

(14:36):
populations are criticallyendangered because of all sorts
of things, climate change,political stuff. Is very
complicated, but it's veryimportant to us, not just as a
company, but us as anindustrialized population that
they survive. So everything wasdone with that in mind.

(14:58):
Sustainability is reallycomplicated because there are no
perfect answers.
But what we have tried to do,this falls very much, you know,
I have to give kudos to DavidGoode and the Yanomami
Foundation, because withoutthem, this would absolutely not
have been possible. We, peoplelike us, do not go into those

(15:19):
communities.

Julia (15:21):
Only way this study was possible was because of our
collaboration with the YanomamiFoundation. They are the
custodians of preserving andrespecting kind of traditional
lifestyle. David himself is partYanomami, and he's the only one

(15:45):
that kind of interacts with theYanomami communities from this
study's perspective. Now, theYanomami Foundation are very
focused on respectingtraditional life lifestyle and
preserving the lifestyle. So,you know, and we're just

(16:08):
grateful for the opportunity tokind of study the community and
have our hands on the samples.
It was really an amazingopportunity because we learned a
lot.

Deanna (16:24):
Can I just ask as a follow-up, do you have any sense
of sort of the recognition orunderstanding that the people
involved in this study have ofour skin concerns or industrial
interests? Or like, do they havea picture of, you know, the the

(16:45):
industrialized world?

Larry (16:47):
I hope not. In many ways, the best thing that we could do
for these populations would beto leave them alone. Because,
you know, anytime we interactwith them. But, you know, this
is his family, and thecollaboration here was, look,
they are critically endangeredin this world, and they, it is
in all of our best intereststhat they survive. There's maybe

(17:08):
30,000 of these humans leftalive.
One of the things we didn't talkabout is, despite the fact that
they don't have any inflammatorydisease, several of their
inflammatory biomarkers areelevated. We would, based on
that, call them inflamed, butthey're not inflamed. And what
this is telling us, we don'tactually know what a healthy
human looks like because none ofus ever met one. So it's

(17:31):
critically important that theysurvive undisturbed. And so, you
know, everything is done with,you know, I'm gonna date myself,
used to watch Star Trek, butsomething along the lines of
this prime directive, which istry not to interfere.
Because look, when these humansare gone, they will leave no

(17:53):
record. So if we need tounderstand what's happened to
our health and we need a fullperspective on these, there is a
clock ticking on it. And soeverything that we have done is
how do we do best? And by theway, we welcome the inquiry
around it. And if someone hasideas about how to do it better
or how to do what we did inanother population, those

(18:15):
conversations absolutely shouldhappen and we encourage that.
David is preparing a manuscripton the ethical collaboration
with indigenous populations forpublications right now. It's
very important to us, to all ofus.

Julia (18:29):
Well, and will add here that the Yanomami community that
we are working with through theYanomami Foundation are
interested in kind ofunderstanding what we uncover.
What does it mean? So there isan educational component to this
where we try to kind of put itin simple terms and kind of

(18:57):
explain what we're learning andwhat it means. So it's an
ongoing kind of back and forth.We're learning a lot from them,
but we would like to give backand kind of grow that
understanding.

Deanna (19:13):
Well, while we're thinking about learning, I want
to jump back to the world we allwork in, the three of us, I
should say, and certainly ourlisteners. We do have a lot more
to learn about skin microbiomescience, a lot more research to
do. I'm wondering what the nexthypotheses worth exploring are.

(19:34):
Maybe this is what's your teamup to or would you make some
suggestions for other researchteams out there? What should we
be studying?
What are our next questions totry to answer or learn more
about?

Julia (19:47):
Well, I'm just going to say, I think what I'd love to
see is just more diversity inthe people that we study
ethically and ethnicity and alsoobviously lifestyles. But just

(20:09):
because that's the only way wewill learn more about the micro,
what encompasses a microbiome,skin microbiome.

Larry (20:22):
Yeah, and this is going be dependent on a couple of
things. One is our methods arebetter than they've ever been,
but worse than they'll ever be.We need, you know, there's
still, look, we're now at thestage where we can, we have a
good chance of gettingreproducible data, but whether
it is actually bias free oraccurate, it is not. So we have

(20:44):
got some precision, but we dohave accuracy. In fact, we are
precisely inaccurate these days.
So our methods need to improve,number one. Number two, our
commitment to the integrity, theclinical integrity, in other
words, to really understand ifthese things are going to work,

(21:05):
we need to study largerpopulations. We need to go past
marketing science and go intothe real world evidence. Don't
if I sent it to you, there was aRock Health article that came
out about two weeks ago.Basically, look, as you know,
women make 80% of the buyingdecisions and they consider

(21:25):
themselves to be the chiefmedical officers in their
families.
And they just want to make gooddecisions. And they believe less
than 5% of the health relatedinformation that they get
online. So we need to do better.We all deserve better with that.
And the way we will do that, theway we will rebuild that
credibility is again by a realcommitment to not quick easy

(21:51):
answers that you can use to justto sell the product, but a
recognized commitment that this,the science of the microbiome is
complicated, it's going to taketime, but it holds the promise
that we can, if we can restorethe resilience instead of
treating all these problems,we'll just have less of them,
which is pretty much whateverybody wants.

(22:12):
But it's going to take some timeto get there.

Deanna (22:14):
Excellent. Just quickly for our listeners that I do want
to mention a few past CosmoFactory episodes on microbiome
topics in particular that thatyou might want to listen back
to. This year at Cosmo ProfessorWorldwide Bologna, I sat down
with Ida Makala of UTAScientific. That episode is
number 55. In episode 27, you'llfind my interview about phage

(22:37):
technology for skincare withMilan Bunata of Fagopharma.
And even farther back in theCosmo Factory archive, you'll
find my conversation with MarieDrago, founder of Galenae
Microbiome Skincare, a brandthat is owned by Sashedo. That's
episode number seven. And now,Larry and Julia, you've added
quite a lot of good informationto this very exciting topic. I

(22:59):
thank you for sharing yourresearch with us today and for
being guests on the CosmoFactory podcast.

Larry (23:04):
Thank you so much for inviting us.

Julia (23:06):
Thank you.

Deanna (23:08):
Thank you so much for listening. If you find the Cosmo
Factory podcast useful, pleasetake a moment to leave us a five
star review and share yourthoughts so even more cosmetic
industry professionals candiscover the Cosmo Factory. I'm
Deanna Utrusky. Please join meagain next Tuesday for a new

(23:29):
episode of the Cosmo Factorypodcast.

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Emerging Skin Microbiome Science, featuring Holobiont Medical Research Foundation Co-Founders Julia Durack and Larry Weiss

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