Interview with John Snowball, Procter & Gamble

[0:03] Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another Oxford global interview today. I'm joined by John Snowball, a senior scientist at Procter and Gamble, whose work explores how our skin interacts with the environment through cutting edge spatial omics technologies. We'll be discussing how spatial transcriptomics is transforming skin research. So thank you, John for being with us today. First of all, and I guess to kick things off, could you begin by sharing a bit about your current role at P&G and the company's general position in the spatial transcriptomics field. Sure.

[0:38] So I am a scientist and bio repetition here at Procter and Gamble, where I primarily study, like you mentioned, the skin and hair follicle specifically, these are complex biological systems that interact with the environment, as well as some of png products, and also change across time, things like aging and UV exposure. And so these systems are very complex and they are very spatially patterned, and so one of the tools that we like to use to help explore these systems is both single cell transcriptomics and, more recently, spatial transcriptomics, due to their spatial complexity, something that offers insights and how these cells spatially interact with each other and communicate with each other allows us to really dig deep into these complex biological systems.

Along with that, it also allows us to communicate our findings in a digestible way to a more general audience. I like to always tell people that biology also, like many things in life, a picture is worth 1000 words, and some of these spatial platforms allow you to really get a grasp on how these cell types and complex systems are functioning.

[1:50] That's great. Thank you very much. And as someone with a lot of extensive experience in the spatial biology field, I guess you've seen firsthand the evolution of sequencing technologies and how, in your opinion, has the field changed over the years?

[2:09] Yeah, so this is one of those fields that is exponentially growing. When I first got into biology, we were doing, we were amazed to be able to do multi channel immunofluorescent stainings of a couple proteins. Now you can do whole panels with protein and NC, two based probes of five to 6000 genes, which is very spatial, high spatial resolution. You can also do now whole genomes with up to subcellular resolution. And there's advancing every day, so who knows what tomorrow bring, but the ability to really see very sub cellular gene expression and protein expression is a world that didn't exist even three or four years ago, and now is everyday routine for a lot of labs.

[2:55] Thank you very much, and you'll be presenting this year at Oxford global biomarkers and precision medicine events, specifically, your presentation is going to highlight the use of hair follicle niches as a model. And could you maybe explain to the audience why you chose this system and what makes it particularly valuable for spatial omics research?

[3:18] Yeah, it's a great question. So the hair follicle niche is very small and very complicated. So you have not only the various patterns within the skin and in the dermis, the hair follicle itself is very spatially resolved with very specific cell types that have their own function and their own purpose.

And how they interact with each other is known to be important, but not very well understood, and so conventional technologies like bulk sequencing and even single cell sequencing have struggled to really get to the spatial resolution and really understand these complex interactions. Along with that, there's not been a lot of work done in the human it's a lot of the literature is based on mouse and there's more and more data that the human hair follicle is very different than the mouse hair follicle in a lot of ways.

 So this, I think, offered us a very practical use case of a system that is spatially complex in a very small area, that not only would able us to test different platforms, but also gain insights in the complexity of this system.

[4:20] Thank you. And I believe you compared your model with six leading spatial transcriptomics platforms, and what were the main comparisons you drew between these?

[4:34] So with spatial just like I mentioned earlier, it is a ever growing complex field where there is new technologies coming out monthly, daily, almost. And so we wanted to do a quick landscaping of some of the leading technologies. So we looked at some spot based technologies and probe based technologies, laser capture based technologies. And what we found was each technology has its pros and cons. So. Some work better has been published in different tissues and for capturing different cell types, but there wasn't really a one size fits all, which is important to realize that this might be a field where you really have to tail your experiment to the very specific question or very specific system that you're working in.

[5:19] Thank you very much, and were there any specific results from this project that stood out to you?

[5:27] So one of the things I think, that jumped out to us right away is we knew that this the hair follicle, was a spatially complex system with a lot of different cell types and very specific niches, but we underestimated the complexity that there was within even the known spatial components of the hair follicle. And so a some of the well known or well annotated regions from the mouse aren't necessarily recapitulated in the human hair follicle, and there are new regions and new cell types of interests that are probably playing a big role in the biology of the hair follicle of humans, which is worth further examination.

[6:08] Thank you. And I also know that you're going to be a panelist at the event on addressing the future needs of spatial multi omics. So how do you see spatial biology influencing consumer health research, specifically over the next five years?

[6:30] So whenever a new technology comes out, one of the first places it starts to be begin to be leveraged is in consumer health spatial transcriptomics and all these spatial techniques allow us to get a better understanding of very complex biological systems, and that can be used right away to help better understand diseases, as well as potentially even personalized medicine, where you get a more in depth view of how someone's particular disease or condition is compared to others, this will allow for a better, streamlined, personalized medicine, but also allow for better communication of results to individuals. I do think one of the big powers of spatial transcriptomics and spatial biology in general is it's very digestible to the individuals that aren't very well versed in general, high tech technologies in the biological spaces. So being able to show a consumer or a patient, this is an image of your disease, this is where the cells that are causing the problem exist, it helps streamline communication with those individuals.

[7:38] Thank you, and I'm guessing that collaboration is a big part of your company's ethos. So could you tell us a little bit more about P &G's partnership with Imperial College London?

[7:52] Yes, so we did a landscaping experiment joint venture with Imperial College of London, specifically Claire higgins's lab, who's an expert in hair biology. One of the things that's very important with spatial omics in general, is the logistics of being able to get the tissue process it correctly, and actually get the in most cases, a slide that contains the areas of interest that you want to study.

Imperial College has expertise in that, going back for years and years, and we've worked with them in a variety of projects to help better understand hair biology. And so they were a de facto go to group that could help us with this, along with the expertise in hair biology, space Imperial itself has a cutting edge spatial core, which contains over six we just tested six of the leading spatial platforms, and so this allowed us to have a one size fits all, where we could actually generate the samples, but then also perform the spatial analysis and get data on the various platforms. So it was, it was a no brainer to go with Imperial.

[9:00] Very nice. Thank you. And I guess, quite a big question now, maybe quite broad, but what are the key steps that are needed, would you say, to turn complex spatial transcriptomics data into actionable insights that can kind of guide product development, or, you know, improve patient outcomes.

[9:23] Yeah, so this is a question that's near and dear to my heart, because it not only applies to spatial transcriptomics, it applies to single cell biology. It also implies, in some ways, to more conventional like bulk RNA sequencing, to really leverage data that this type of data, which generates so much data, so many different things you can look at. You need someone that has an expertise in the space that you're actually working in.

So in our case, we needed expertise in hair biology. If you're working on heart you need someone that knows about the heart or the lung or the brain, not only a to be able to. Isolate the tissue and get access to the right regions, but also to ask the right questions about the data.

So when you generate spatial transcriptomics, or any of these high level omics data sets, there are so many things you can look at. So being able to understand the system and understand what are the key questions to go after really helps facilitate the leveraging of this data. Secondly, we're just in the infancy of generating pipelines and algorithms that can really leverage spatial data sets.

 A lot of the traditional data sets for like single cell are being used for spatial, but they weren't made for spatial and so moving forward, there's going to be a need to really have spatially centric analysis pipelines and techniques that really leverage some of the new nuances of spatial biology.

[10:54] That's great. Thank you. And final question from me is, what do you hope the attendees at the biomarkers and precision medicine Congress take away from your session.

[11:07] So what are the biggest advantages of a conference like this? Is the mix of people that will be there with different disciplines and different backgrounds, and to my earlier point where being an expert in your field or your biological system. One thing that allows the transfer of techniques and knowledge is getting around people where you're not an expert. And so being able to learn from people that are doing other techniques and are leveraging other systems that can then be applied to your specific biological questions, I think, is very powerful.

 And so getting all those people in one place to be able to share ideas and to learn from is one of the key advantages of a conference like this. And then also, with this newer technology being on the forefront, you'll be exposed, and I'm hoping to be exposed to new platforms that I wasn't aware of, as well as new techniques to leverage those platforms. And so I'm very excited.

[12:06] That's great to hear, and we very much look forward to welcoming you at the event. I think that's everything from me, John. So thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today on the evolution of spatial and like I said, we look forward to seeing you very soon at the event. Thank you very much.

[12:25] Likewise. Thank you. Bye.