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Tom Stubbs, PhD has a background in cellular biochemistry, molecular biology, and epigenetics. With his extensive background, he created an epigenetics company called Chronomics in December 2017 to help people lead a quality lifestyle based on their results.

Transcript

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: Hi, guys, welcome to another episode of the Body Clock podcast. Today, I’m delighted to have Dr. Tom Stubbs on our podcast. Hi, Tom. How you doing?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Fancy. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: And I’m glad you could come on. So you’re based in Oxford right now. So I have been following you for about a year and I think you’re doing some very interesting and diverse stuff with genetics in the field of epigenetics, which I’m sure you’ll be explaining to our listeners in this podcast. But I just want to explain Dr. Stubbs’s background, which is quite proficient. So he’s been at the University of Oxford where he studied cellular biochemistry and molecular biology. He then went on to do a PH.D. at the University of Cambridge and is specializing in computational biology, machine learning, epigenetics, and in December 2017, he founded Chronomics, which is an epigenetics company.

So a very comprehensive background there and a lot of words, which I’m sure a lot of our listeners probably aren’t aware of. But I would describe it as working in the future of health. So, Tom, it would be very nice if you could kind of explain what you’re doing with Chronomics and how you got involved in the epigenetics feel and lifestyle, which will be helping kind of consumers and patients take more control of their health. So if you could do that for our listeners that would be great.

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Sure. Absolutely. Thank you. Save that introduction. So I guess as a bit of background, we’re all used to thinking about genetics as that information, that DNA that we get from our mother and our father, and that’s fixed from birth, so does not change. And it governs whether we’re going to have things like blue eyes or curly hair or be at risk for certain inherited diseases. We also know that there are people on the planet that share the exact same genetic material, so identical twins. But there are many instances where one twin gets sick, for instance, developing breast cancer when the genetically identical twin does not. Why is this? And the answer is epigenetics, which is the science of how our environment and our lifestyle affect how our DNA is controlled.

From birth, epigenetic signals influenced by factors such as smoking, sleep and stress are dictating the tracks that all life is heading down. Now, what’s exciting is that unlike this genetic information that’s fixed from birth, our epigenetic information is dynamic. This means that if we find out about factors affecting our health early enough, we can change tracks to live healthier for longer. So, as Sohaib kindly mentioned my background, I conducted PH.D. and postdoctoral research with some of the leaders in the field of epigenetics research, and I, including Professor Wolf Reik and Professor Shankar Balasubramanian. And I built epigenetic predictors of lifestyle factors on aging. During this time, I realized the potential for personalized epigenetic testing for proactive and preventive health management.

Currently, we cannot take action because we do not understand how our life choices are imprinting themselves on our DNA. So, this was already mentioned, my name is Dr. Tom Stubbs, and together with the founding team at Chronomics, we started a company to solve this problem- bringing together machine learning and epigenetic genetic testing to enable each of you. From a simple saliva test to understand how your environment and lifestyle are affecting both your DNA and also your health.

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: That’s really interesting how you’ve combined two aspects the other genetic companies aren’t doing. So I would like to ask you, a lot of people probably heard of 23andMe as being a major player in the genetics sphere. You know you hear a lot of people who are getting these tests done and then they say they’re not actionable or they don’t know what to do with the information. So by the sounds of things and kind of exploring your company, you’re doing things differently. So could you explain to the listeners how does Chronomics enable people to change their lifestyle according to the results they get?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Yeah, absolutely. So companies like 23andMe looking solely at your genetic information- so that information that’s fixed from birth. And as you mentioned, you can’t take action of that information and then see the impact of those actions on the genetic information because that genetic information isn’t changing. In contrast, the epigenetic insights that we provide people are dynamic and are actionable, so if you get your insights back from Chronomics and you make changes assisted by ourselves and our partners, you can then retest that epigenetic information to see: Has your health improved or not?

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: Ok, so you can get retests. And how long do you recommend retests? After what period of time?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: So our standard package involves retesting on a yearly basis with feedback throughout that year through health coaches and partners that help our users on the platform.

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: Ok, so you use coaching as well because at Owaves, we’re very keen on using coaching as the enabler for people to live healthier lives, and that’s what we want to be doing with student population. And I’m glad that you’re using kind of all these high-end technologies and applications of, you know, machine learning to find out all this information. But you’re using the human health coaches and professionals to kind of deliver that change for people to live a healthy life, which I think is quite unique. So someone that takes this- Is it a swab?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Yes, it’s a saliva test. It’s a spit test, not a swab. Very similar.

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: Yes. Saliva. So it’s similar to some of the other ones I’ve done. So a component of your saliva gets sent off. You get your results. So you’re looking particularly at how lifestyle factors affect people’s DNA. So epigenetics- for our listeners, so as our lifestyle changes or as we age, the environment can influence if certain genes are switched on and off. Could you explain a bit more about that?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Yeah, sure. So as you say, epigenetics you can think of as switching on and off genes. One simple way that I often used to try and explain it is- we are all used to thinking of DNA as the beautiful naked double-helix structure. But actually, the DNA in ourselves isn’t naked. It’s constantly wrapped up in clothes. Clothes that we as scientists call epigenetics. And as with changes in the environment and lifestyle that involves us changing our clothes, the same happens for the DNA and ourselves. And so what we see is that we provide information about different epigenetic indicators such as biological age or smoke exposure or metabolic state.

And with this information and an understanding of the aspects of your environment and lifestyle that you can improve, people are then able to make more informed health choices. To avoid ill health later on in life.

Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz: And have you found that people- once knowing their risk factors or what’s negatively impacting them, does that motivate people to change that behavior?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Yeah. So what we found is that, you know, we’re all used to getting relatively generic advice about lifestyle and well-being. And that is quite ineffectual because each of us is different. And each of us, because of our genetics, will respond differently to different things. And yet when you give people that personalized information about how those different things are impacting their health and you’re providing them with that information ahead of time when you’re still not suffering from diseases such as, heart disease or cancer, people are much more receptive to making change to ensure that they live healthier for longer.

It’s more of a predictive approach where people can perceive what path they might be going down on in developing disease. And so you’re looking at kind of upstream of how they may end up in the future. You talk about biological age as well. Tell me more about that. So is a younger biological age- obviously, that would be a lot better for someone. But do you see people who are, say, 30 but they have got biological age of 25? And ones that got an age of 35 or is it literally just your biological age can be more than what you are, but not less?

Dr. Tom Stubbs: Yeah. Great questions. So if we take biological age, the example of an indicator, what we see is that you know, we all have a chronological age that’s defined by time, but depending on things such as your environment and your lifestyle, people can have accelerated epigenetic agents or biological agents. So as you say, if you’re 30, you can look 35. And what we know is that this is asso