"I think that's what makes true mentors really exceptional. They're able to guide you to learn these different things, even if they know that what you're doing isn't going to work, but they know how to inspire you. They know how to help you build confidence and they know how to help you to think the right way. Ultimately, science is not about memorizing facts. We live in a society where we can look anything up online, but how do you use that information in a way that is productive, that builds something. Those are the critical thinking skills that everyone is talking about." - Dr. Angle
Massachusetts-based innovator Dr. Erika Ebbel Angle chats with KnowAtom CEO Francis Vigeant about her work with microbiomes, and the importance of female role models, mentors, and nurturing educators to inspire more women to pursue careers in STEM.
In their conversation, transcribed below, you'll learn about:
- What microbiomes are and what Ixcela does to help people rebalance their internal fitness
- How one sixth grade English teacher served as the catalyst for Erika's love of science
- Why cultivating a learning environment where mistakes can happen is vital
Francis Vigeant:
Hi, and thanks for joining us for this session on the path to innovation. My name is Francis Vigeant, I'm CEO here at KnowAtom. We're located just north of Boston in Salem, Massachusetts. We're interested in the path to innovation because we're not only equipping classrooms to teach science and engineering and engage students' higher order thinking through creative, evaluative, and analytical skills--those critical thinking skills that we're all focused on--but really, as teachers we hope as a result of classroom instruction we are preparing children to participate in innovation, whether that means they're scientists and engineers or salespeople and informed consumers.
As we talk today with Dr. Erika Ebbel Angle, we're going to be discovering her story about what led her to become not only a scientist and an engineer, but an entrepreneur pursuing STEM as a career.
To give you a little bit of background on Erika, she is CEO and co-founder of Ixcela. Erika Ebbel Angle received her PhD in biochemistry in 2012 from Boston University's School of Medicine. She holds a B.S. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2002 Erika founded Science From Scientists, an award-winning national nonprofit focused on improving science, technology, engineering, and math (which we often call STEM) attitudes and aptitudes for children ages 9-13.
She currently serves on the Massachusetts STEM Council Legislator Educational Work Group and the board of the elementary and secondary education STEM Advisory Council here in Massachusetts. She's also a member of the board of trustees and the executive committee at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts.
In 2014, the Boston Business Journal selected her as one of the 40 under 40 Business and Civic leaders who are making a major impact in their respective fields in the greater Boston area. Her accomplishments have also been recognized by the Boston Chamber of Commerce's Pinnacle Award for emerging executives in 2015. In 2013, the Boston Chamber of Commerce selected her as one of the 10 outstanding young leaders in Boston.
In 2007, she was identified as L'Oreal Paris's Woman of Worth for her work with Science from Scientists. She has been featured on Lifetime TV and NOVA Science Now on the Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers. Erika serves as commissioner for the Massachusetts commission on the status of Women. In 2004 she was Miss Massachusetts in the Miss America Scholarship Program.
Thank you very much for joining us, Erika. I appreciate the time and your willingness to share about your path to innovation with us.
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
Thank you, Francis, for having me.
Francis Vigeant:
Jumping in here, Erika, you're co-founder of the healthcare biotech company Ixcela, focused on this idea of internal fitness. Can you tell us a bit about what Ixcela does and what this idea of internal fitness is, why is it so important?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
I'll start by just describing internal fitness and then I'll tell a little bit more about what Ixcela's business model actually is. People are actually complex systems. We believe that optimal health is the result of having a healthy gut microbiome. This company is very much centered around the theme of gut microbiome health. I can describe what that means for people who aren't aware, but when you have the correct balance of biochemistry and microbes in your body, then you are, by definition, a term that we coined, “internally fit.”
The gut microbiome is a very complex system. Basically, these are all the different bacteria, yeasts, things that live in your small intestine. Recent studies have shown that, if you have problems with your gut microbiome, you are susceptible to a variety of other potentially deleterious diseases down the road, whether they be in the neurodegenerative family, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, etc. Things like, for example, autoimmune conditions, things like leaky gut, even conditions that are as simple as acid reflux. The gut microbiome plays a very, very important role in overall health. Thus, when we coined this term "internal fitness", we thought it was apropos because, if you have poor gut microbiome health, then you're probably not particularly internally fit.
We designed a program where you take a pin prick blood sample. There's a kit that we send you. You poke your finger, take about 20 to 30 microliters of blood in a capillary and you put it on a little test kit. Then you send it in to us and then we send back a report looking at 12 different small molecules that both we and others have shown to be important to gut microbiome health. You get back your report and then we try to assist with creating a personalized program to help restore, should you have some sort of imbalance, to restore this gut microbiome health in a regimen of lifestyle changes, different supplement, et cetera. We try to assist once we know that there's a specific imbalance with whatever problem there might be.
My co-founder is actually a gentleman that I had done my PhD with; he's in his early 70s and has a pretty extensive track record in the area of metabo-wellness and small molecule research in this specific field. When we decided to found Ixcela, we said, "Hey, it would be great to create a product that could actually help people to find out if their gut microbiome is healthy and then make alterations as needed to improve their internal fitness."
Francis Vigeant:
When people have an issue with internal fitness, is that the result of lifestyle choices, is it genetics, or some combination of both?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
It's definitely a combination of both. To some extent, yes, in genetics there are some aspects of genetics that are unalterable, but there are also things that you can change that will alter specific elements of the genetics so that you're not necessarily absolutely certain to get a specific condition. Metabolomics is very much a snapshot of the current biochemical profile of your body, whereas genetics, when you think about it, genetics is further upstream.
Otherwise, some of the metabolites and metabolomics can actually affect the genetics for specific outcomes and diseases. One of the reasons why this is actionable is because metabolome shows the exact snapshot at that second of what is going on in your body and these things are changeable, fixable.
Francis Vigeant:
The term that you use, and I may mispronounce this, metabolomics, just for folks who may not be familiar with this term, are we just talking about molecular or metabolized or part of the digestive deconstruction of molecules, so for instance, food or waste products in the body. Is that correct?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
Metabomia is the study of metabolites. There are thousands of different metabolites. Anything that is basically digested and processed through the body. It can be amino acids, tyrosine, tryptophan, then you have other types of compounds, as well, that are in those- We are specifically interested in compounds that are in the tryptophan pathway. If you were so inclined, you could do a Google search and say, "Alright, what are some of the different metabolites as your body breaks down tryptophan? What happens to it?" There are a whole variety of different compounds, all of which are individual metabolites.
We're testing, at least for this test, only 12 metabolites, but, just for those who haven't heard of the term, your body has tens of thousands, probably more, different types of metabolites currently floating around in your various systems.
Francis Vigeant:
Interesting. Basically, how well your body is breaking those down or, perhaps, whether they are or are not breaking down certain materials is essentially a sign or perhaps a precursor to other conditions or perhaps create the conditions for something to become more imbalanced. Is it fair to think of a gut microbiome as almost an ecosystem of sorts?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
That's right. Some of the bugs that live- bugs, I call them bugs, but they're bacteria that live in the small intestine, actually will secrete or spit out some of these metabolites into the bloodstream. Some of the compounds that we're interested in are antioxidants, so they're known to be protective. For example, if you have in your youth or even recently taken a lot of antibiotics or eaten a lot of processed foods or- there are a whole variety of ways to insult your gut microbiome.
Stress is a huge factor. Then it's possible that you might have wiped out certain families of these bacteria that, in the case of some of them, they're secreting positive, good compounds into the bloodstream and, as a result, you are at a disadvantage because now your body is exposed. You no longer have those compounds present to help fight off or prevent these diseases from occurring or these disease processes from occurring. Part of it is to identify the specific weaknesses or challenges and then help to restore the balance that you might not have currently.
Francis Vigeant:
That sounds really interesting. I know I recently did a blood test myself for Ixcela, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results and learning more about my internal fitness. I wonder, as you look back, today you have a PhD in biochemistry. You have multiple patents and trademarks and everything that's coming together in this particular venture and I'm sure others.
What, when you think back, given that most of the people listening to this discussion are K-12 educators, whether they are teachers or principals or so on, what people or experiences nudged your curiosity from those early days towards some sort of STEM career that has resulted in all of these really interesting technologies?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
It all started in the 6th grade. Interestingly enough, it was my 6th grade English teacher who got me interested. At the time, there was a class trip to Washington, DC, and my parents had said to me, "You have a choice. We can either send you to Washington with your class or we can go to Cancun during spring break. We can't afford to send you to both, but you can pick." Obviously, I'm an 11 year old kid, right, I picked Cancun. For those of us who didn't go to Washington, DC, we weren't allowed to stay home and play hooky. We had to go to school. The teacher who stayed back with us was, in fact, my 6th grade English teacher. She had us reading books like Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain and doing very simple science experiments. I loved it. I loved the books, I loved the experiments.
Then April came and family, we went to Cancun and we visited a crocodile farm. Crocodiles, when they're mortally wounded, will actually flip over onto their backs and slip into a coma and commit suicide. If you ever find yourself wrestling a crocodile, just flip it over on its back long enough and it will die. When I got back from that trip, they said, "Guess what? Science fair project time." Of course, all of the kids were saying, "What am I going to do for my science fair project?" I think with all of the reading of all of these different books and this experience at the crocodile farm I said, "Gee, I'd really like to do a science fair project where I look to see if cells commit suicide if they're infected by viruses." Don't ask me how that happened. That was just my hypothesis.
I told my teacher, "This is going to be my project." She looked at me and said, "Okay. You're probably not going to be able to do that here, but we encourage you to go and find someone to help you do it," so I made a variety of different phone calls. I pulled out- at the time, it was the Yellow Pages, right? I pulled out the yellow pages and I was looking to see what local area labs were close to where we lived. I made dozens of phone calls. Most of the people I called, of course, when you say you're an 11 year old who's looking for a mentor to do a science fair project, most of the companies were very concerned. In fact, they wanted to talk to my parents because they thought I was crazy and said, "Look, you should probably be keeping track of what your daughter is doing in the basement without you knowing about it."
I struck out until there was one gentleman who worked at a local public health lab who said, "Look, come on in and talk to me about it." I walked in and he said, "What do you know about virology?" "Nothing." "What do you know about cell biology?" "Nothing." He gave me this stack of textbooks, like Molecular Biology of the Gene. He said, "You can read all of this and I'm here every day after 4:30. I will work with you. I will help you," but he just let it be on me. Suffice to say, make a long story short, I designed a little experiment with him to test whether viruses caused cell death. The results were inconclusive because it was a very basic experiment, but it was my first time working in the lab and I loved it.
The following year, I ended up coming back to that lab and starting a project which, then, I worked on through high school. That was six years of working in that lab and it was just so incredibly important [contribution made by] Michael, the gentleman at the public health lab, and the English teacher.
Francis Vigeant:
That's interesting. At least for myself, I know that I found when I think about critical thinking and I think about the critical thinking skills: creative ,evaluative, and analytical skills that are required to be a scientist or an engineer, I often associate those, even in my experience, with my English teachers in middle school and in high school. In talking with other innovators, I know Lewis Athanas, who invented audio glass and a number of other audio products, shared his leading to audio engineering was through his English teacher, as well. I wonder, jumping around here a little bit, what does it really mean to be a good scientist or engineer? Is there some connection to the arts a little bit?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
It's a great question. I think one of the reasons why Michael was such a great teacher was that, even though he knew things weren't going to work out, he never told me. He never squashed any of the creative ideas that I had. He never poo-pooed it or said, "I already know that's not going to work," or "That's a bad idea," or whatever. He let me figure it out by myself and encouraged it. "You want to go try it? Try it. Why do you think that's the case?" He made me describe why I wanted to set up experiments a certain way. He made me really think it through.
I think the easiest way to make someone feel like they're not good enough or not smart enough is to say, "We know that's not going to work," but you're 11, you're 12, you're young, you're a kid. You don't know that it's going to work or not, so you want to be encouraged and then you learn, "Oh, okay. That didn't work. Here's what I would do to change that experiment."
I think these are the skills that define what it means to be a scientist. When you say "research", there's a reason why it's "research", R-E-search because you have to do it more than once. It doesn't work out the first time. Maybe it will. Maybe you're super lucky and it does, but rarely, right. You learn the skills of perseverance. You don't take it personally if it doesn't work out. It's a learning experience. You adapt. You improve the design. You improve the experiment. You fix things as you go. You learn very early on that there is no stupid questions. You want to be curious. You want to be able to ask people things and learn and experiment and try things.
I think that's what makes true mentors really exceptional. They're able to guide you to learn these different things, even if they know that what you're doing isn't going to work, but they know how to inspire you. They know how to help you build confidence and they know how to help you to think the right way. Ultimately, science is not about memorizing facts. We live in a society where we can look anything up online, but how do you use that information in a way that is productive, that builds something. Those are the critical thinking skills that everyone is talking about.
Francis Vigeant:
It seems like the, new Next Gewneration Science Standards, are a shift from a traditional model of instruction, and perhaps even the reason for teaching science, to something that's "next generation". The way we look at that difference here at KnowAtom is to say that a traditional model of defining or even teaching science was this idea that there are facts that you need to know and those facts get somehow projected at children and children need to absorb those and be able to project them back. That's where that fill in the blank model of assessment and whatever we want to call it, definition of proficiency, originates.
Under these Next Generation Science Standards, or at least the way the National Research Council has talked a lot about what the Next Generation Science Standards should represent with science and engineering practices, is the idea that the content is not sufficient. I think how they define science is along the lines of what you're describing, it's about the ability to develop and use content, to actually go beyond that to think about it. I guess it sounds like what you're describing is that, as educators, it's not just the facts that we need to focus on, but really how we question and challenge students to think in the classroom and to create, evaluate, and analyze scientifically.
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
Absolutely. I think that there is just the challenge for most educators today is just that there's not enough time. There's not always a lot of time, especially for STEM, with all of the emphasis on other subject areas. It's just, educators are up against a lot of hardship, so it's difficult to, in addition to teaching the content, because you still do have to teach something content wise, to then also have the time to even go beyond and to do these additional pieces that you're talking about, Francis. Part of what I think the purpose of the Next Generation Science Standards [is to] integrate all of this together. Again, whether or not that ends up being feasible with the time, resources, et cetera, that folks have, that remains to be seen, but I absolutely agree with you.
Francis Vigeant:
Building on that, I guess I see the switch or the purpose of science in the classroom changing. I guess I see it as changing from learning about what scientists and engineers have done to learning to be a scientist or engineer. I'm not sure, we'll see how that fleshes out. I guess one of the questions I really want to ask is that, as a scientist and entrepreneur and as an engineer, really, how do you define innovation? It seems like, if we're going to teach children to be scientists and engineers, it has something to do with innovation. What is innovation to you?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
First of all, let me just say my trajectory, I never really thought about becoming an entrepreneur and innovator. Part of that is because this is not taught. Even in college, at MIT, the reason why I went and started Science From Scientists is because I saw others starting businesses and I think I was very fortunate that I had these real life role models doing it, but it's just not something that one considers, simply because it's not like you take a class on entrepreneurship. I think it's happening more now than it used to, but it's definitely still- You go and you give talks at the college level. Now I've given talks at MIT and even at BU Med. It's just not something that folks consider as a viable career opportunity. It's not as well known as- I think it would be nice for it to be more well-known, but it's not.
With regards to innovation, it's a difficult question. It's doing something unique, doing something new, and doing something cutting edge, but it can be defined very much by the individual. There's so many options. If you have a STEM degree, you can choose to start a business that is in STEM. In my case, I was in bio sciences, so it was biotech, but you can also start businesses in bioinformatics and in topics that bridge the gap between different fields. That's something that's happening more and more.
Before, if you had a degree in biology, there were jobs. Now you almost have to branch out and have additional skill sets or you have bioinformatics or biostatistics. I think you have to push the envelope a little bit and spread your wings and be a little more cross disciplinary comfortable, if that makes any sense.
I do think that, to me, innovation is defined by something new, something exciting, something useful, but it can be socially useful. I think that starting a nonprofit to help people is innovative. Starting a biotech to help people is innovative. It's a tough question. I think it's a broad answer. I think it depends that which is right for you as that innovator. As long as you're passionate about it and you feel that there's a place for it and it's useful, then you've checked the boxes.
Francis Vigeant:
Would it be fair, do you think, to define innovation as extending something, basically from what's known to what's unknown, in a sense?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
Of course. Innovation suggests "new". It can be an extension as long as it's something that's novel.
Francis Vigeant:
When you think about something like Ixcela, this biotech that you've started, is there a connection there in terms of the innovation? Did you see a space where you said, "Here's something on the left and here's something on the right, but there's nothing in between but that Ixcela can fill this gap with testing for internal fitness and trying to resolve it"?
Dr. Ebbel Angle:
Absolutely. There are a couple of different levels for Ixcela. The gut microbiome space has become, though it's still quite new, it's become something that you see more and more businesses being set up in the microbiome space. We're also interested in preventive medicine.
Part of the concept behind Ixcela is, if you can, earlier on in people's lives, correct the thing that could potentially down the road lead to worse things, then you've done a service by helping them to live and lead healthier lives. The gut microbiome is the specific, I don't want to say organ, but the specific practical location where we're doing this. The concept is how do we identify the problems before they become a real big problem. That is what I think makes Ixcela, from the 20,000 foot level, unique. Let's fix the problem before it happens.
Then, in doing so, you think about how much money you spend on healthcare and treating folks with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and all these debilitating diseases. Thus, if you can prevent these things from happening, you can really impact change because you're lowering the cost of healthcare, you're improving the healthcare system, you're empowering people to go and make more informed decisions about their own healthcare with their own physicians. You're giving them information that they can then use to live better lives.
That would be, I think, in Ixcela's case, that's one of the unique aspects. Then, of course, when you start looking at the technology and the way that we analyze the samples and the specific compounds, there is uniqueness there, as well. Why are these the compounds? How do we collect the samples? How do we process them? There's innovation there, as well.
If I had to tell you why Ixcela is unique, one, it is a personalized way of telling folks, "Hey, look, something in the body may not be where you want it to be. Let's try to fix it. Here's how." It's all actionable, which I think is very, very important. "Let's try to keep you healthy enough so that you're minimizing your chances of having bad things go wrong down the road."
Then, in general, as this company is dealing primarily in the supplements space, our goal is to- We're not diagnosing diseases. We're not treating diseases. I'm going to be very clear about that. That is not the goal. We can tell you about the health of the gut microbiome, but this is not a diagnostic, per se, company or a drug company, a therapeutic company.
We're trying to also help inform people about the specific types of supplements that they need. You go to Whole Foods and you decide, "Maybe I need to take Vitamin B6 and maybe I need to take Vitamin D" and you take it blindly. My theory on this is you want to treat every supplement as if it's a drug. If you can inform people about whether they need specific types of intervention, then you're preventing them from taking supplements that they might not actually
