Episode 037 - Momo Vuyisich - the secret world of the gut microbiome

The following is a conversation with Dr. Momo Vuyisich, co-founder and chief scientific officer at Viome. Viome is a life sciences company that analyses the activities in your oral microbiome, gut microbiome, and blood using RNA, essentially measuring gene expression.

This gives the company the ability to be able to assess what the microbiome in these various areas of the body is doing and gives insights into potentially how that links to diseases, which gives you personalised recommendations for how to improve your microbiomes through your environment. So basically your diet.

Their vision is that in the future, through the analysis of all of this data, they're able to make predictive bets on who is at higher risk of developing particular diseases and issues due to the composition and function of the microbiome.

Momo is an amazing communicator. You'll learn about. the microbiome and its importance in gut health. You'll hear about his own story in terms of how he managed to cure chronic disease through his own diet. You'll hear about his vision for Viome, how the pharma industry works in his opinion, and how things are going to improve over the coming decades.

Fascinating discussion, I enjoyed it. I wanted to thank Momo for coming on as such a busy person. Now, with the introduction done, I wanted to say thank you to all of our listeners for supporting the podcast. Some of you are listening to every single episode and sending feedback about the episode, what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you learned.

We've been going now for a year and a half. And we're loving every single moment and the feedback from listeners makes it all worthwhile. So if you're enjoying it and you haven't yet liked and subscribed, please hover your finger over that button and give us a five-star review.

00:00:00 Intro

00:05:27 Momo’s vision

00:08:08 Is science improving human health?

00:15:58 Applying science to big health problems

00:18:11 Human genome

00:27:46 Vaccines with probiotics?

00:36:27 Is the microbiome undervalued?

00:45:59 Next gen RNA sequencing

00:52:37 Building Viome

00:58:34 Preventing all disease through diet

01:00:41 Sialic acids

01:11:16 Food industry

01:14:24 Importance of sleep