Hormone Tests and Uncovering the Power of Saliva: Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber, VitalizeDx

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 0:00

But I wanted, really, people to get a hold of their own health.

Alex X-Health.show: 0:20

We're in Lausanne, Switzerland at Biopôle, a life sciences campus hosting more than 120 companies and over 2500 people. I have been welcomed by Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber, a neuroscientists with 20 years of expertise in dementia, who happened to publish a paper about salivary diagnostics right when COVID-19 pandemic broke out. She's dived deeper into the potential of saliva and personalized health. She co-founded VitalizeDx to allow low cost self-diagnostics. I have taken the stress test, apparently the most popular so far, and quite honestly, was surprised with the results. You'll hear today about cortisol, progesterone, testosterone, early dementia detection, Swiss startup scene, and overall, the answers hidden in our saliva. What's there in saliva?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 1:25

Well, it's a wonderful biofluid. It's a complex biofluid, almost cell-free with a lot of material, biological material, being released, being bioactive as hormones. So they're unbound and this is why we can really detect them very well. And then there is tonnes of vesicles. And in those vesicles there's a lot of proteins and transcript and microRNA. And... So it's very rich biological fluid that I think has been under scored or under studied. When I started seven years ago to look at saliva as an early detection biofluid for Alzheimer... As we know, the disease progresses through a very, very long asymptomatic phase and if we could at least identify those individuals that are at risk, maybe we could adopt preventive approaches to then reverse the disease progression.

Alex X-Health.show: 2:28

Let's come back to that because that's amazing, you know. It's actually... when I took that test, because, guys, I took that test - we'll speak about that later, I think it was like the first time, maybe the second time in my life when I actually took a sample from saliva.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 2:51

Yeah, I mean, it has been really underestimated. And I think that has a lot to do with the ickiness because it has a lot of connection to... maybe intimacy and maybe, you know, it was just reduced to being a biofluid for fingerprinting for parenting, for validating parenting, and for, you know, criminal validation. But effectively, it's much more than that. And I think that the first to look into this, and to just see, really, the potential have been dentists. So there is actually quite a bit of work being done using saliva for oral care and really using it as a diagnostic biofluid. And now, of course, we are exploring all the richness of saliva, of the oral microbiome, for example. And, of course, the gingival microbiome is a little bit different from the oral microbiome, but still, we can draw parallels there. And we can definitely get an insight about oral care and oral health from the mouth. But besides that, what we want to say is that the saliva is produced by celebrity glands, by the parotid glands mostly, and this is under parasympathetic innervation. So my thought was, if we do have some deficiency early on, in those neural networks, then maybe we would catch them as a proxy in saliva.

Alex X-Health.show: 4:44

Why, then, you wanted to check that in saliva not in blood,

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 4:49

Because I wanted something to be sampled regularly. And I wanted to have it accessible at everyone's home.

Alex X-Health.show: 4:59

Painless...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 5:00

Painless, non invasive, you don't even have to go to the doctor. Doctors don't like that.[laughter] But I wanted really people to get a hold of their own health and do it in the most convenient way possible. And I think that we demonstrated this with the COVID, right, where we did really literally 200,000 tests for COVID for saliva. And, yeah, it was a lot of work. But...

Alex X-Health.show: 5:31

Tell me, tell me about it! Because being a neurological scientist, 20 years of research into Alzheimer's disease, how did you end up working on, you know, salivary COVID tests?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 5:44

Yeah. So, again, I was working on the salivary tests or developing fingerprints. And I did publish a paper, which I thought was was really relevant. And it was, it was relevant. But it was in January 2020, and the pandemic hit, so it really didn't have any coverage.

Alex X-Health.show: 6:05

What was it about?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 6:07

So we basically established that during the progression of the disease, you have the oral microbiome changes and changes in a very stereotypical manner. With the decrease from what we've could see of periodontal pathogens and an increase in opportunistic bacteria. As a result, we also were able to see that some cytokines were increased. And what we also observed is that with the advanced Alzheimer, actually, nothing was happening as it was a non reversible state. But we did observe this in those individuals that we call at risk and also MCI that there was a substantial change in the flora.

Alex X-Health.show: 6:57

That's amazing... That's amazing that you can actually track the progression in the saliva.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 7:04

Yeah, so that was was kind of our first paper, we're still working on this to do the validation and longitudinal cohort. And of course, using and doing sequencing it's fascinating, but it's also expensive. So I really was thinking about something that... combining the COVID, which was one shot, right, we had this multiplex kit and basically we developed this method that instead of doing extraction, we would go and do heat release, and in five minutes you were able to get, you know, the RNA released, and really massively accelerate the processes. So combining the targeted approach and this acceleration, I thought, well, let's go back and try to really look at the genetic content of saliva and do genetic fingerprint for the same patients. What's genetic fingerprint? So for us genetic fingerprint is to identify those transcripts that are relevant, and that basically correspond to biological function related to immunity, metabolism, cell renewal, that then as a complex, and in a multivariate way, would correspond to progression of the disease. We also saw that there are some genes, some proteins that do relate to to the brain. But when we did the study, and we were, you know, we looked at the proteome of saliva, and we also tried to say, is there any neural derived protein in saliva. Effectively, we could see that about 1/4 of the protein was shared but we don't know really whether those are really neural derived. So at this point, we're really fishing for clues. And for fingerprints, I think that the field has been very conservative, we always look at the same hallmarks. But what if we look at just fingerprints that are proxies, and maybe, you know, they're not amyloid, they're not tau? That's not neurofilament. But maybe it's something else, that still captures very well the progression of the disease. And what if we can do it in saliva? I mean, blood is clearly a great advancement. And I think that the whole the work of Zetterberg and colleagues is incredible and very clinically solid, and we will see these tests coming into into the clinics in a couple of years. And I don't want to take anything from that. But yeah, I think it's an alternative and probably closer to the patient.

Alex X-Health.show: 10:04

So you published the paper in January 2020. What happened?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 10:08

[laughter] And then , basically, the pandemic broke out. I contacted... People were

Alex X-Health.show: 10:14

In March. starting to talk about COVID and I contacted some journalists and Oh, wow, congratulations to that. I also found it like they said, You know, I mean, this is incredible, but right now, you know, it's secondary. So I said, okay, no issue. I mean, it's, you know... I did understand it, and we ourselves at the Swiss Integrative Centre for Human Health, we really endorsed the cause and we started developing salivary diagnostics for COVID. We worked with the University of Bern, the Red Cross and effectively, we were able to also publish a paper and demonstrated that salivary diagnostic of SARS-CoV-2 was as good as nasopharyngeal swabs. extremely interesting that you worked on olfactory, so smell diagnostics. Again before COVID to detect preclinical dementia. So this is actually something that we will have, we will add on to our portfolio of products. With a colleague in Geneva, we will add on a sensitivity olfactory test. It's a simple test, it's a smell identification test, it will allow you to really detect whether you had maybe either long COVID or you did have some neurological issue, or you just simply have flu. I think olfaction is a little bit like saliva, has been a lot underscored and the reason why it's because it's a sense which is not fundamental for survival. Just when you think about it, yes. But then when you lose it, I mean, it changes the perspective, right?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 12:18

Yeah, it does... I mean, you lose a lot of, you know, pleasure. And your appreciation of food and smell, and smell and things. But it's not as essential as vision, for example, or hearing. And so, I think that, of course, I do interact with Richard Doty, and Thomas Hummel, those are really, you know, the pioneers of olfaction. And they really digged to the very, very little bit and why this path was so important. And I mean, the reason why it's so important is because this is an organ with direct connection to the brain without a blood brain barrier. So it's literally a port of entry for species. Coming back to this, we are now building a consortium looking at the brain pathobiom. And really, we considered the olfactory positive ideas, one of the very, very important models for the development of the disease. And I think long COVID proved it. And it seems that those individuals have a strong risk for developing neurological deficits.

Alex X-Health.show: 13:55

How does COVID, you mentioned that, affects the brain? Because you also studied a bit long COVID.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 14:03

Yeah, so long COVID... and you see this with long viral, symptomatic. I mean, if you do have for example, shingles, shingles is as terrible as COVID. You do have very post-viral symptoms that do procure up to six months. It happens in elderly individuals but it can happen also in the young population. And so it's not very uncommon, just that COVID was so spread and maybe shingles is less of a, you know, the incidence of shingles is less, but many viruses that linger in in our organs, and our intracellular, can cause long-term inflammation. And I think that one of the big trigger all brain disease is neuro inflammation. Building on this, on the importance of affection for mental health, not now because now we really launched the product and we said, we bootstrap and we want to see what's the sentiment of the of our customers to salivary testing, but we definitely are interested in exploring the use of saliva test and olfactory test to profile mental health in a completely non-invasive way. And very, very cheap.

Alex X-Health.show: 15:41

How VitalizeDx was born?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 15:45

VitalizeDx was born from the ashes.[laughter] So we were a team at the Swiss Integrative Centre for Human Health, which is still there, but it was a research and development centre. And unfortunately, it lost the recognition from the federal authority to be eligible for funding. And clearly, if you don't have funding for research and you're public, private and non for profit institution, it's very difficult to leverage funding from investors. So basically, the Swiss Integrative Centre had to reduce to the minimum its workforce, especially the the research or the technicians. I'm still there, partially, very, very marginally. And we said to ourselves, it's so important, this is so important, we should not lose the knowledge, the competencies, and we should do something about this. And I, myself, I've been, you know... as a researcher, you're also a little bit of an entrepreneur, because you base all your research on on funding.

Alex X-Health.show: 17:02

And you also founded BrainFit4Life.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 17:05

And I did, I did found BrainFit4Life. So this was really an endeavour that I'm still very committed to and I am still pursuing. There's really a stigma in Switzerland about this population – patients cannot speak, so we were trying, as experts, to really bring about knowledge to to the public, to to make it, you know, clear that this is not, another part of being old but it's a disease.

Alex X-Health.show: 17:41

Dementia, you're saying, or Alzheimer's...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 17:43

Dementia... so the spectrum of dementia disorders. And I don't think in Switzerland there's a lot of sensibility to this, because those individuals who of course, you don't see them, they're a part of your family. And plus, they're mostly charging indirect costs. So the caregivers, the family, and so it does not represent really a public health priority. I think this is... I mean, this is a choice, I'm not discussing this. But I think based on the incredible research that it's still being done in Switzerland, it's a pity that there is no Consortium for dementia research that is really established, while in other countries, there has been a very strong effort to really cluster those centres. And so our, our scope was really to create a network and a critical mass to then go to the politicians and say, Look, we need more funding for this research, I mean, we are underfunded about 30 to 100 times as compared to cancer and yet the costs are so high, you just don't see them because they're indirect. So a patient costs still 80,000 per year and yet, you know, it's a nonworking individual. So, I think, by no means we got what we wanted, I had a much accelerated path I think in my head, it was clear to me. And then of course, COVID hit and everything kind of slowed down. I wanted really to go and present data and the data shows that if we don't do anything for this disease, it's going to be incredible financial burden. And so what's the best way to do it, to go about it, it's prevention. And if we can develop tests and approaches that are accessible to everyone... saliva based, as you said Exactly. ... then probably we can implement preventative approaches.

Alex X-Health.show: 20:01

So I'm hearing that you researched saliva to detect early symptoms of Alzheimer's...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 20:12

Biomarkers...

Alex X-Health.show: 20:13

Biomarkers...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 20:14

Exactly. Or early biosentinels of Alzheimer, yeah.

Alex X-Health.show: 20:19

And then the funding was stopped.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 20:22

And then the funding was stopped, because... I was part of this institute and then I said to myself, well, we cannot stop here. The research is ongoing. Now, still at the CHUV. So one of my students went to the CHUV and she's continuing on that and we have, we will have a contract, so Vitalize will have a service contract with the CHUV to pursue this research and to the more global extent, where we have built this brain pathobiom, which will, you know, I'm announcing here but it will, you know, will be a big thing with with really an international consortium, where Vitalize will be part of this really investigation of early biosignals, accessible and also actionable biosignals.

Alex X-Health.show: 21:16

And that's, that's the future.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 21:18

That's the future. That's... It's probably not so far from now. It's going to be July.

Alex X-Health.show: 21:26

No way.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 21:26

Yeah.

Alex X-Health.show: 21:27

Okay, you were fast. Okay. So tell me now... so, you found it VitalizeDx in...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 21:35

...on the 20th of February 2023. Together with Noura. So she's a colleague and she is a serial entrepreneur with her husband. And she just, you know, they really didn't see any way out except for building this...this company.

Alex X-Health.show: 21:57

But I actually heard you pitching earlier. So on Swiss Accelerator Showcase. It was in November.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 22:05

November, exactly. This is when we got the news that we would not get the funding for the other institute and we had to close down. So we really very rapidly said, okay, now it's time.

Alex X-Health.show: 22:19

Okay, and then you already run Beta tests that I took.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 22:24

So no. We started running the betta tests in February, once we were incorporated. We were running some operations, you can run your operations before incorporating, but sales are not possible. So we started selling the day of incorporation.

Alex X-Health.show: 22:44

[MID-ROLL BREAK] This episode is brought to you by the XL show and me. So if you like this podcast be generous hit follow leave a review. That'll help me invite more such amazing guests for you. Thank you. [END MID-ROLL BREAK] I received an envelope with a test kit. And you guys listening you may want to check, you know, the kits available at vitalizedx.ch which is V I T A L I Z E D X dot C H. There are four tests now, right, available. Which are the tests?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 23:26

So we test a combo of hormones for strength, vitality or anti ageing, woman's health. And then we have the stress. Our best seller is the stress right now.

Alex X-Health.show: 23:43

Oh yeah, I chose that, too. Okay, so why the hormones come in pairs?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 23:53

The hormones come in pairs because you get a better insight of your biological markers. So for example, cortisol comes with DHA. Cortisol has a pattern which is circadian. So as soon as you get up, 30 minutes after it there is a peak and then progressively goes down. DHA should be up during the morning and during the day and then you should have like a down phase during night. So you have kind of a confirmation biomarker. We will extend also melatonin, which is the inverse trend as cortisol in another kit. So yeah, we'd like to have multifactorial readouts.

Alex X-Health.show: 24:47

So that's why I was instructed to take the test in the morning.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 24:51

Exactly.

Alex X-Health.show: 24:52

So this also, like, you need to basically plan the test if you are a menstruating woman. Because the instruction says that you have to take the sample in mid-luteal phase. And I mean, they are helpful to just tell you that it is a day 19th to 23rd of a 28-day cycle. So basically, you must plan the sample collection. And then you take the sample 30 minutes after you wake up but also 10 minutes before it, you are advised to rinse your mouth.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 25:32

Correct.

Alex X-Health.show: 25:33

Yeah, so I did all that. Then I took the collection, which is basically, you know, take your saliva into the tube. What was very helpful was the advice also in the

instruction: 25:47

imagine a lemon. It's like, guys, just imagine a lemon, what's happening in your mouth now?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 25:56

Yeah. You can imagine a lemon or if you're not having eaten anything you can imagine your breakfast. Works the same, yeah.

Alex X-Health.show: 26:07

Okay. And then I basically put everything into the stamped return envelope and sent it to you guys. What happened then?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 26:17

So then we basically collected several tests. Of course, for us at this particular time they come in waves. So we do battery of tests once per week. Currently, of course. Once we'll have 1000 tests per day, we will do it every day, it's clear. So we collected them, and then we did them Thursday and Friday you got your results.

Alex X-Health.show: 26:47

Exactly.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 26:47

Tomorrow, you're gonna get your programme, your customised solutions.

Alex X-Health.show: 26:53

Looking forward to it. But what surprised me... So I was actually expecting, I mean, I

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 26:57

Yeah, right. chose the stress kit for a reason, right? Because I felt

Alex X-Health.show: 27:02

So I was suspecting high cortisol levels, stressed. And especially at night, you know. I mean, I can handle during the day but at night, you know, I wake up. and actually, in the results that I received... So you receive two reports, a small, like a 3-page report and the longer 10-page report. And this said that I had a lower cortisol level. I mean, why is that?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 27:34

Because it's always about the Delta basically. So you cannot mount this cortisol response, this natural cortisol response. I have to disclose it, I have been closing one company or an opening Vitalize and at that particular time, I was also very much much repressed. So there's is this feedback loop where, you know, too much cortisol is not good for you so the levels keep on being very low. Yours where, I think, we're still within the normal range, but rather, you know, to the lower end. And this is really the Delta. And I think this phenomenon of Delta, which makes really the biological, you know, triggers those biological mechanisms is important, natural response to awakeness.

Alex X-Health.show: 28:28

So, the low is as bad as high or is it?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 28:34

So... so it depends. When you have an acute stress, you would have high cortisol. When you have a long term stressor, you would have this feedback negative loop, where you would repress the production of cortisol as a protection to the brain.

Alex X-Health.show: 28:53

How cortisol affects brain? High cortisol, low cortisol.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 28:58

So cortisol has a very important role in this fight or flight response. Right? So it's really has quite an ubiquitous function on all our organ bodies.

Alex X-Health.show: 29:10

So when it fires at night, I'm waking up. That's, yeah, flight response.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 29:17

And this is of course related and it's a reflection, and it goes with this anxiety, and can also be influenced by depression. But of course stress is a daily, you know, a daily reality for a lot of people. Working people, not working people as well. So, one of the... what is very, very important stresses and depression, and really mental disorders, need to be taken care of because prolonged cortisol or prolonged impairment in the HPA axis can cause neurodegeneration. There are neurons and CA3 of the hippocampus - so this is the region which is responsible for making memory - are particularly sensitive to CRH - the corticotropin-releasing hormone. And so it was shown that, for example, monkeys that were exposed to prolonged stress, they would have part of their CA3 degenerated.

Alex X-Health.show: 30:36

You also check cortisol level in your strength test coupled with testosterone. Why, why is that?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 30:44

Cortisol can also influence the metabolism and, basically, poor performance. And of course, testosterone is also a proxy for muscular strength. So we did do... I would say that it's better to check it in the morning. But the best for all those tests would be to do it multiple times per day. And so there, of course, you know, that doing exercise would lower your cortisol level or rebalance your cortisol levels. So doing cortisol and testosterone would give you kind of a readout of your fitness performance.

Alex X-Health.show: 31:30

Let's see what's in my report. So I received the short and long report. And in the long one, we have the morning cortisol level and DHEA level. So the morning cortisol level is 3.29, DHEA level is 252.59. We spoke a bit about what it means. So that's the...

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 31:59

So this is the first, you know, analysis that we provide in the graphic and tell you a little bit where you lie on a Gaussian curve. Just for you to really know where you, you know, where you are. And then we have... we intersect the hormones values with some global health parameters that we've provided through the questionnaire.

Alex X-Health.show: 32:28

Yeah, because before I actually took the sample, I replied to some questions you had on your website.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 32:36

Yeah. So frthrough the collection form that we have... Tt's very helpful for us. First of all, you have to give us your tube number because everything is coded, and we really don't know about the... report is also coded. So privacy is for us also a very important aspect. And basically, for this form we have an equation that intersects the value of the hormones with the Global Health Parameters, and we're talking about sleep, mood sport. And we do have also, nutrition. We also have your BMI. And I think it's, it's about it, it's a really short questionnaire. We, you know, we didn't want to go at length, because we know people get, you know, after the 3-second span they get annoyed. So we tried really to have 12 questions, which were very, very targeted. It is possible that in the future the questionnaire will also integrate some digital parameters. But we were developing that.

Alex X-Health.show: 33:56

So on the second page, we've got this graph and the intersection of the two that you just mentioned. And what's there later on.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 34:08

So basically, we make an assessment, about your parameters of health and we put it in on a percentage scale. And you can see that for example for you in a very agnostic way, sleep and sleep pattern is not as good and as somehow correlates to the low end level of cortisol.

Alex X-Health.show: 34:33

Right so I scored 29% in the sleep behaviour. What is it 100?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 34:40

Yeah, 100 is really sleeping regularly. When you say for example, I sleep very long and I sleep very well. You have, you know, you have not only the length, but the quality of sleep. You, for example, you said I have an average sleep but my quality is very bad. So basically we intersect this and we have a matrix that says okay, but you know, despite the fact that you sleep enough hours, but the quality of sleep is not good. So it comes out that despite, you know, the timeframe, you still have a low score.

Alex X-Health.show: 35:21

Right. And then I actually ranked above average in both mood and sport.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 35:27

Yes.

Alex X-Health.show: 35:28

And yeah, I got nutrition 100%, yay!

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 35:33

Yes. So you seem to be doing great from this side.

Alex X-Health.show: 35:38

What's aggregate stress and burnout health score?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 35:42

Yeah, so this is basically what we call a global health score, contextualised to the stress and burnout. And it's basically the output of this small equation that we have put together for this particular test.

Alex X-Health.show: 35:59

So I scored 62%. Yes. Which is... where do I place myself?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 36:05

I think, because of the cortisol and because of the sleep patterns – certainly, you could improve your your sleep routine.

Alex X-Health.show: 36:16

Right? And then on the next pages there are some suggestions how to improve these.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 36:24

Yeah, so there are neuro lifestyle suggestions but we also try to connect those lifestyle suggestion to the level of the hormones we are testing. So it's kind of reverse engineering, right? We started from, you know, giving you the levels of the hormones and then we get the description of your Global Health Parameters. And here we are kind of telling you, you know, why probably you have this, this this deficiency, or this reduction in sleep behaviour. And the hormones could be causative, for example, but it could be that you're, you know, working at night, and that you have digital devices all around you. So that then cause your hormone level, your cortisol levels, your stress hormones are are whacked off.

Alex X-Health.show: 37:19

Right, and then you suggest behavioural changes, but also you have some supplements that you provide. What's there?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 37:31

So we did devise some nutraceutical solutions. Because once we were serving our products and we went to some clinics, and they say, Oh, this is so interesting but what about the solutions? And I said, Okay, solutions, let's think about the solutions. And so we talk to a partner, and we physically device with this partner in Geneva, some nutraceutical solution which would which would fit the category. And those currently are, you know, we say to our customers, those are customised solutions, probably on the dosage, for example. But in the future, we will probably have some more, you know, personalization on the nutraceuticals. On top of this, the solution won't be only the nutraceutical but it will be really this health path. So with the professional around you and the community of users for motivational purposes. And I think at the end, you get just the a little bit of the literature, right, about the hormones.

Alex X-Health.show: 38:40

I also appreciate that there are references in the report that you can actually go and read a bit more about.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 38:49

Yeah, so this was was done by Hanh, she's still part of the team but she has another commitment in the meantime. And we are effectively four and she, basically, started writing the report. And now with a little bit of artificial intelligence, we augment our team to nine. With the four of us and five artificial intelligence brains.

Alex X-Health.show: 39:20

Who's on the team now?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 39:22

So we're still four of us. So there is me, there is Noura, she's my co-founder. There is Carlos and there is Hanh. And so... every one of us is very different, has their different paths. And this is really the richness of our team. So none of us can do the same thing. We're really completely complimentary and synchronous. And we learn from each other. So of course, I'm like, the spokesperson, the person that has the greatest seniority, let's put it this way. And so, of course, I do represent Vitalize in industrial setting, but also in academic settings. However, for example, Hanh has a very good understanding of biology. And she's a Scientific Director. And she also composed the first version of the report and that now a little bit augmented. And so we have, we have her to give us sometimes directions and to investigate some formulas. On the other hand, there is Noura. She's a lab technician, clinical lab technician. So she knows very well the quality assurance of a lab and the methodologies. And she does the test. And on top of this, she's amazing in graphics. So all our visuals are done by Noura. And I don't think that there is a lot of people around that can do this as well as her. And Carlos, he's really taking care of the financials. He's also an entrepreneur, so they both, Noura and Carlos have previous experience in raising companies. And he's very good at selling. So everyone is different. I think this is really the power.

Alex X-Health.show: 41:29

Would you like to say a bit more about other tests? Like, why actually have you chosen the ones?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 41:36

So um, we chose this in collaboration with Tecan that is providing the kits and I think we released the news last week, where we said, we are working actively with them. It's really a very, very pleasant collaboration, like, partnership. So we did develop it with with them and so they have a lot of experience in salivary biomarkers. And so we basically discussed and they said, Well, you know, if you want to, for example, look at vitality, while DHA certainly is one hormone to look at, and then you can look at progesterone for females and testosterone for males which change according to age. And then, of course, the women's health is really related more to the cycles, and it's estradiol, and progesterone.

Alex X-Health.show: 42:33

So you're interested in Alzheimer's – why these kits?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 42:38

So we start from the wellness, first of all, with the concept that being able to really track your health should be given to everyone. And everyone should be able to learn and monitor closely and really embrace their wellness their global health.

Alex X-Health.show: 43:03

Which is not happening really in public health, is it?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 43:07

It's I think happening to a certain extent with the digital health because it's so accessible. But of course, in digital health as an aspect, we are more looking at liquid biomarkers. So I think that the combination of liquid biomarkers with digital biomarkers will be probably be the future of self monitoring.

Alex X-Health.show: 43:34

You started with wellness. What are the plans?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 43:38

So we started with wellness, a little bit in a strategic and maybe opportunistic way. But of course, it's a soft matter for us. And our plan, which is really mid-term but not too far from now is to open a business unit, which is going to be the VitalizeDx Health Science unit where we will continue to work on the celebrity diagnostic for Alzheimer. We have a project for salivary diagnostic for periodontitis and salivary diagnostics for diabetes.

Alex X-Health.show: 44:18

How do you want it to happen?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 44:21

So besides the operational milestones of course we need some juice and we're looking for financing. We're doing this through competitions. I'm very, very proud to say that we passed round 2 of the MassChallenge US... Congratulations.... and we are participating in two other Swiss competitions. We're currently evaluated based on our IP and a future IP at about 10 million. So we're looking into giving 15% of our equity. So, you do the math, it's about 1.5 million. This would allow us to really advance the digital health app, do the research and development for also the 16 genetic fingerprint, and also pursue the research and development for the Health Science section. We think we can get there. But of course, all of this takes time. And also in the perspective of opening a subsidiary in the US, by the fall, I think we will have access to venture capital, that are interested in consumer healthcare.

Alex X-Health.show: 45:39

So you're really going global.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 45:41

We are going global, yes. We are very different, I think, from the typical startup, Swiss startup. We adopted another type of approach. We were very concerned about whether there was acceptance of the product. People, you know, got tested a lot during COVID. Of course, they prefer salivary test versus the nasopharyngeal swabs. But is there a fatigue about testing? Is there, you know, an interest at all after this pandemic?

Alex X-Health.show: 46:18

So that was your worry.Because I was like, what would you worry about? But this, yeah, the fatigue of COVID

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 46:24

Yeah. I think that fatigue was like tests. our worry and I said, you know, this is a wellness product, would people at all be interested in this, right? So we wanted to really test the sentiment of the public. And for us the priority was to go to the market.

Alex X-Health.show: 46:46

And you offer the test now in Switzerland only or?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 46:49

No, so we ship Europe-wide. We're getting a lot of coverage from European countries, neighbouring European countries. The website is in four languages. So it's accessible. But we are getting a lot of interest from the US, from Brazil – from South America. From Spain, although our website is not in Spanish but as you know, Google can translate this automatically. So we probably should not have gone to the length of translating it to for languages. But because we are a Swiss company, we wanted really to, you know, to represent Switzerland, and its richness and languages. So because the testing is the first step but there is really the whole journey, right? And it is a little bit depicted in the video where you repeat it and you see your progression.

Alex X-Health.show: 47:46

So how do you see, like, ideal customer?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 47:51

The ideal customer or the ideal... person who is cognizant of their health, and has access to this relatively cheap test, because while the Beta test was particularly, you know, down-priced, but for us, it's very important to keep those prices accessible to everyone. And it's not a given, it's not a given. Because now the majority of tests are really for a segment that is high, you know, it's high up. And it's a decision but we would like to see those tests everywhere. We would like to democratise the ability of people to bio-monitor themselves. And so what we are doing is that we're developing an app right now where you will be able to get really the trajectory of your sample, and then get results, get recommendation, get your supplements, get access to professionals in the area, so with geolocalization. But also connect to a community of users, like, in a little bit like a Duolingo fashion. So for us it's important to provide a journey to the customers and to convince the customer that this journey is worth pursuing.

Alex X-Health.show: 49:23

You recommend to take the tests every three months?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 49:26

Correct. So we suggest to take the tests every few months. I think that this is not, you know, it's not written in stone. And as I was saying before, we have requests also to do testing throughout the day, for example, for cortisole. So I think it will develop in the future some other products more, you know, custom-made for people that would like to really go deeper inside. And I mean, we are not, we're not we're not providing a medical device. This is not a medical product. But, you know, it's the first step towards maybe then detecting some deficiency. And then you can go to your doctor and say, Look, I detected my cortisol, there's something wrong, I, you know, I need to adopt some strategies to get better.

Alex X-Health.show: 50:18

So this wellness part, the first part of VitalizeDx, it's a starting point, for a whole journey for

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 50:28

It's a starting point, absolutely. It's you. the starting point, I think the wellness for us it's personalised, very close to everyone, very close to, not to a specific market segment but really close to everyone who's cognizant of their health. I think that the problem also, but especially in the US, there is a big disparity among you know, that high-income and low-income. And I think this is also due to really the accessibility of medical care. If we can... we if we could really allow people to do testing or to access digital, for example, digital testing, in, you know, in a more convenient and also affordable way, probably some of the diseases could be prevented.

Alex X-Health.show: 51:30

We are speaking now at Biopôle in Lausanne, I heard you pitching at Swiss Accelerators' Showcase. How has Swiss accelerators' scene be of help to you?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 51:47

Yeah, so it created visibility for us. Now, of course, we do have a lot of more visibility through our website. But yes, at the time, it was really helpful. It was... We just started and I think that the concept was out there we wanted and what we would like to do, we would really like to be visible very, very quickly worldwide. And we have discussion to go to the US quite rapidly.

Alex X-Health.show: 52:21

It doesn't surprise me because some startups I already spoke with, they actually prefer to launch in the US. What are the reasons for you?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 52:34

Well, it's of course, the scale of the market. But there's also just this really embracing health and the fact that here, a lot of the services are paid by the insurance. And in the US I think a lot is really endorsed by the patient. And so they're much more curious about solutions that could be more affordable, from which would they could get more insight on...

Alex X-Health.show: 53:05

Probably also more preventive solutions, right?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 53:09

Most likely, yes, preventive solutions. I think there is a general good understanding about prevention in Europe. But I don't think there is a good understanding and that there is actually a little bit of fear about monitoring health or fear not to understand fully. I think that the reports that we provide are quite thorough for this reason. Because I mean, there is nothing hidden, everything should be explained. And really, it's also an effort to disseminate knowledge for us.

Alex X-Health.show: 53:43

What's in the immediate future for VitalizeDx?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 53:48

So the next step is really releasing the web app. The web app will come out end a spring. And we are inviting everyone who has taken the test also to join the Beta testing of the web app. And of course, this is also a developing story because we will take feedback from the users and try really to adapt it to, you know, to be user friendly, and to really cover all the aspects of the global health that are of interest to the client. And of course, it will take much longer to then do the collection of the geo-localised professionals and not so long to connect the user of Vitalize. We will really want to create a community of VitalizeDx users.

Alex X-Health.show: 54:41

Thinking globally, what would you call a success for VitalizeDx?

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 54:49

For us success is really to be able to get people to understand that salivary diagnostic, and I'm talking about professionals, so academics also doctors, that salivary diagnostic is effectively a very promising avenue. And we need more studies really to validate that it's a good proxy for reading out global health and chronic conditions. So for us, it's really an effort not only to achieve market presence but especially with the Health Science section that we will open soon, really to mark the beginning of an era which is very different from before where, for example, for Alzheimer patients, the detection of the biomarker of the biofluid with biomarkers was happening after the onset of the symptoms. And this was, literally, too late, was when all the processes were already irreversible.

Alex X-Health.show: 55:54

I think we just made a circle here, going back to the Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why you wanted to test saliva in the first place.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 56:07

Definitely. And I think, you know, and dementia, I mean, it's, of course, my cause. I've been studying this for the past 23 years. Terrible disease, a population of patients that is really unable to speak out, a lot of family members that are affected. It's a major problem. We know we will live very long, this is clear.

Alex X-Health.show: 56:36

Longer and longer.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 56:37

Right, longer and longer. And so if we don't do anything truly to prevent this, this is going to be a major socio-economic problem. So we really need to detect those subjects that are at risk, and also do stratification. And we need really accessible methods to do so.

Alex X-Health.show: 56:57

Good luck on the path then. And thank you very much for the very interesting conversation.

Dr. Lavinia Alberi Auber: 57:03

Yes, thank you, it was a pleasure, Aleksandra, yeah, thank you.

Alex X-Health.show: 57:07

And you guys listening, if you want to follow VitalizeDx, please head to vitalizedx.ch. Again, V I T A L I Z E D X dot C H.[POST-ROLL] I'm totally impressed by the audacity of researchers turned startup founders, doctors turned entrepreneurs, ordinary parents turned healthcare innovators. People battling the battles that no one fought before. For the eXtra health of the future. So if you see a startup posting on LinkedIn, show them some love, hit Like, comment, That's fabulous! If you have a couple drops more of that altruism, follow the X-Health.show, leave a review here. I'll be able to bring more of these visionaries to you. So a big Thank you. You're awesome. See you next week.

SPEAKER: 58:03

The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. If you have any medical questions, please consult your healthcare practitioner. The opinions on the show are Alex's or her guests. The podcast does not make any responsibility or warranties about guests' statements or credibility. While the podcast makes every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, please let us know if you have any comments, suggestions or corrections.