Alessia: 00:06 We're using those 25,000 nutraceuticals as a discovery tool to identify compounds which may potentially treat cancer. Josh: 00:19 You're listening to the Why and How Podcast, produced by the Ontario Agricultural College and the University of Guelph, where we look to answer the big questions in agriculture, food, and the environment through casual conversation rooted in research. Jordan: 00:31 Hey Josh, how's it going? Thanks for coming on and help me out for this first episode that we're recording here. Josh: 00:50 It's my pleasure. If I have a good time, I'm hoping to come back. Jordan: 00:53 Good. I kind of need you. Josh: 00:55 Yeah, of course. So what are we talking about today? Who are we with? Jordan: 00:58 Alessia Roma, thank you for coming on Alessia. Alessia: 01:01 Hi Josh and Jordan, it's awesome to be here. Jordan: 01:03 Right on. We're super excited to have you on. So what are we going to be talking about today? Alessia: 01:07 So today I'm a PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. Paul Spagnolo in the Department of food science here at the University of Guelph. And today I'll be talking to you about some of the research that our lab does and in particular what I do. So our lab, we look at the potential of nutraceuticals further used to treat various conditions or diseases. And in particular, one of the diseases that I'm looking at is a blood cancer that is known as acute myeloid leukemia. Josh: 01:32 Okay, that's neat. Just to kind of specify what is a nutraceutical? Alessia: 01:36 So a nutraceutical is a bioactive or Fido chemical that is derived from food. So a bioactive is something that has some kind of health benefit, including the potential to prevent or treat a health condition or disease. Josh: 01:51 And you're looking specifically at acute myeloid leukemia? Alessia: 01:54 Yeah, so acute myeloid leukemia, I can go into a little bit. So if we look at normal blood development, or as we call it hematopoiesis, it occurs in the bone marrow where you get different types of blood cells forming. And these blood cells all originate from a hematopoietic stem cell. So if you imagine a tree for example, and the trunk of the tree is a hematopoietic stem cell, and that hematopoietic stem cell has the ability to differentiate or transform into a variety of different blood cells that all carry out a unique function. So if you think of the tree trunk, and you think of the first branch perhaps on the left of the tree, you get a type of progenitor cell. So another type of stem cell, it's a little bit more differentiated that's known as the myeloid progenitor cell or the myeloid blast. And on the other type of the cell, that is the lymphoid cells. So the lymphoid cells are cells that are involved in immune function. So they make your B cells and T cells. Josh: 02:48 B cells and T cells. What particular function would they have? Alessia: 02:51 So they are responsible for various immune responses. And then your myeloid cells, those are what many people are most familiar with. So those cells, they will differentiate into your red blood cells, your white blood cells, your platelets. But when someone has acute myeloid leukemia, what happens is those myeloid stem cells lose the ability to differentiate into these various populations with different functions. So what happens is you get an accumulation of these myeloid blasts that aren't able to carry out a particular function. And eventually this can accumulate so much that it will actually spill out into the blood, the peripheral blood, as well as the bone marrow of course. So what happens is you'll have reduced numbers of red blood cells, so patients will present with anemia and fatigue, you'll have lower neutropenias, which can affect your response to infections as well as reduced platelets, which of course we know are responsible for clotting when you have a cut or anything. So you'll also be more prone to bleeding. Josh: 03:48 Pretty complicated, but it's definitely, I can kind of get my head around it. That's really interesting. So basically, is AML one of the only types of cancer that can be treated using nutraceuticals or is this specifically what you're looking at? Alessia: 04:00 Oh, nutriceuticals have been used to treat a variety of cancers. Colon, breast, prostate, pretty much you name it. We particularly focus on AML, because it is a difficult disease to treat. So the current chemotherapy for AML, it's been virtually unchanged for the last 40 years. So that consists usually of a seven day treatment of a DNA targeting drug known as Cytarabine and then an anthrocycline. So the thing about this combination is that it is quite toxic to normal cells producing a lot of side effects. It works in patients that are a little bit younger and can tolerate these harsher drugs. But in the older patient population, which unfortunately the majority of those diagnosed with AML are actually over the age of 60, they're unable to tolerate these harsh side effects due to coexisting conditions. So oftentimes they can't actually even receive these therapies, and they just have to go into palliative care, which is quite sad. So because we saw that there was this window where we have a disease where there is a dire need for novel therapeutics, we decided to look at this cancer in particular. Josh: 05:05 So you said, because they can't take some of these harsher drugs. You said they have to delve right into a specific treatment. What was it that that you said? Sorry. Alessia: 05:11 Actually, that would be palliative care. Josh: 05:11 Palliative care? Alessia: 05:13 Palliative care is really just symptom management, pain management. So it's not actually treating the disease, but just kind of minimizing the pain and symptoms involved. Josh: 05:22 How common is AML, is it a relatively common form of cancer? Alessia: 05:27 It's not so much common as a cancer, but in terms of leukemias, it is the most common leukemia in adults. And like I said before, the majority of those diagnosed are in fact this older patient population. Josh: 05:42 So I'm curious, these nutraceuticals that you said that they are derived from food. So are nutraceuticals found in all types of food, or are there just certain types? Alessia: 05:49 So the thing about nutraceuticals is to our knowledge, there are about 25,000 different nutraceuticals that we know of. However, we know that there is an untapped potential there of many other different compounds that we haven't discovered. So they can be found in many of the foods that we eat every day. So there are different types that are often found in berries, citrus fruits, carrots are very famous for having high amount of carotinoid, as well as different soy, lentils, and also some plants that you might not be eating in your normal diet. Josh: 06:23 Nice. So you did say that you're in the Department of Food Science. And you're doing your PhD, correct? So how long have you been doing your PhD? Alessia: 06:30 I just realized recently that I just finished my fourth year of graduate school. I did start as a master's student, so I graduated my Undergrad in 2015 and then just started straight from there as a master's student at the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy actually. And then our entire lab, we had quite the appeal for Guelph, so we decided to pick up our pack our bags and move to Guelph, where I then transitioned to my PhD and I've been doing that about for about three years. Josh: 06:58 You said the OIC chose you? Alessia: 06:58 Yeah, it's really great to be on this campus. It's so beautiful. Everyday when I walk, I just see some kind of different bird, I saw groundhog and the other day and just being in a very collaborative environment has been great for us. Josh: 07:12 That's good. What kind of stage are you guys in in terms of your work right now? Alessia: 07:15 That's a great question. So right now I'm trying to kind of further, I'm looking at a specific nutraceutical and trying to kind of characterize how it is actually targeting the acute myeloid leukemia. So of course when we're trying to develop these potential novel therapeutics, we want to ensure that they are having some kind of selective targeting towards acute myeloid leukemia, and not the normal cells and normal blood cells. Alessia: 07:38 Because if they're targeting both, then we're going to produce a therapy that has a lot of side effects and won't be tolerated by the patients. So I have found that a certain compound is targeting the acute myeloid leukemia cells preferentially. So just trying to understand better the mechanism of action and how that's allowing for this differential effect. Josh: 07:58 And you said selective targeting. So how would a compound like the one you're working with, how would that compare to the action of see a chemotherapy or an alternative form of treating the disease? Alessia: 08:10 So many of the current chemotherapies are targeting cells that are proliferating or growing uncontrollably. So you have many cells in your body that are also growing uncontrollably, like the epithelial cells in your gut, which is why a lot of times when people are undergoing chemotherapy, they experience extreme nausea because not only is the chemotherapy targeting the cancer, but also those healthy cells. Alessia: 08:34 So another thing that's interesting about acute myeloid leukemia and leukemias in general is that, like I said, we have this myeloid stem cell that is not behaving properly. However, these stem cells, unlike the blast cells, they do not actually proliferate rapidly. So these current chemotherapies that are supposed to be targeting these uncontrollably proliferating cells actually don't target these leukemic stem cells. And as a result, patients will eventually experience relapse. So in our lab, we're trying to look at differences between normal cells and leukemia cells in terms of their metabolism. And it's been well characterized that acute myeloid leukemia cells have upregulation of various metabolic pathways like fatty acid oxidation, which is the breakdown of fats, as well as oxidative phosphorylation. So the compounds that we're looking at in our lab are targeting these pathways at various points. And we hope that by targeting these metabolic pathways that these cells will be more sensitive to these therapies, rather than the normal cells that don't rely so heavily on these pathways, and that we can obtain selective targeting in that way. Josh: 09:45 So it'll break it down. Sorry. When you say the metabolism of the cell, you mean its ability to kind of intake and break down these compounds that it's taking in, right? Alessia: 09:55 Not the metabolism of the compounds, but how it breaks down energy sources. So fats, sugars, amino acids, those pathways. And basically how it creates energy for the cell. Josh: 10:07 You said you were working with up to 25,000 different nutraceuticals, or you're looking at that wide, wide, large amount, right? So I'm just wondering what kind of method did you use? Because I'd imagine that it wasn't hand-picking through each individual 25,000. Is there a certain method that you use to end up coming to the one that you have now? Alessia: 10:24 So eventually, maybe throughout the years we can get to 25,000, but so far we have a created a library of around 300 nutraceuticals. So we tried to pick ones that have been understudied, or who are perhaps widely used kind of through folk medicine, but haven't undergone a rigorous scientific investigation. So what we do is we try to screen these nonbiasedly, so without knowing which compound is which. And we look at their ability to kill two different leukemia cell lines. So we use cell lines because they're quite easy to grow, and they're good preliminary models for a patient's leukemia. And then once we have a compound that we found is killing these cell lines, of course that doesn't mean that we're going to pursue it further until we look at other things. So some of the things that we might look at is whether or not it has been already investigated, and whether or not anyone has conducted some pharmacokinetic studies on it. So pharmacokinetics is the ability of your body to absorb and excrete a certain compound. Alessia: 11:29 So we want to ensure that the compound that we're studying has favorable pharmacokinetics. That is, that is absorbed readily and it is excreted at a rate that will allow for a therapeutic effect to occur. Another thing that we look at is of course, whether it also reduces the viability of those normal cells. So we are able to obtain normal cells and in a similar fashion screen these normal cells with these compounds. And what we're trying to look for is a compound that will kill the leukemic cells, but will have no effect on the normal cells. And then once we are able to see whether or not that is the case, then we will investigate the compound further to better understand this mechanism. Josh: 12:13 So I'm quite curious actually. So to be honest, when I think of food science, I think more of like product development, people working in labs working with the food. So this is definitely a whole nother realm of food science. Do you get that question a lot? Are People asking you why are you in food science or how is that related? Alessia: 12:30 That's a really great point. I do get that question a lot, and it's one that I'm quite fascinated about, but the way I see it is I see that consumers more and more seem to be more interested in getting more from their food than just sustenance and nutrition. So another thing that's very common right now is functional foods. So these are foods that are also able to exert some kind of health effect in a food matrix form while we're looking at a single compound from a food. So that's just two differences between a functional food and nutraceutical. But I just think that yeah, there is a growing trend towards looking at foods for other uses. Alessia: 13:07 Another thing is that many of the compounds that we are looking at are isolated from what would otherwise be food waste, such as the peel, or the roots of a certain fruit. So we're thinking that we're kind of looking at, in terms of sustainability, looking at something that would otherwise be food waste, and using it for something beneficial. Josh: 13:26 Very cool. So do you advocate for food science? Do you encourage potential students to to pursue food science, and kind of go a different route similar to what you've done? Alessia: 13:37 I always think that food science is a very dynamic department. So there's so many different things going on, and just from even being a teaching assistant, kind of sharing my research experience with my students and showing them that there is a different aspect of food science that you might not have thought of. I find many students are quite interested and I always invite them to come volunteer in the lab to see what it's like and get a taste of it. Josh: 13:59 Is that what you pictured for yourself when you were just doing your undergraduate, did you think you'd be at the University of Guelph, studying nutraceuticals, or was it kind of really out of left field for you? Alessia: 14:08 I expected to be studying nutraceuticals, but I didn't expect to end up in the food science department. I actually did my undergrad in biochemistry, and luckily in my Undergrad it was exposed to research in a similar field, and that's what kind of got me interested in it. And then that's what wasn't easy transition into my master's and then PhD. But being in a food science department, we've actually found a lot of opportunity for collaboration, even though we are a little bit different than what people typically think of as food science. Josh: 14:37 So I'm curious, collaboration, could you kind of give us a little more information on that? Do you mean within the department, you're working with other food scientists, or across the university? Alessia: 14:47 I would say both. So of course we collaborate with some people in the science complex, MCB, Department of Chemistry, but also within food science. Many researchers within the Department of Food Science are studying food matrices or food delivery systems, and you would be surprised to see how this can translate when you're trying to develop a delivery system for a nutraceutical or a therapeutic. So that has been a great opportunity for collaboration where these expertise is, which we wouldn't initially think would mix, but they produce some great results. Josh: 15:20 Very cool. Jordan: 15:21 I find it super exciting. This idea that it's awesome. One of the thing that I always kind of been curious about is that you're dealing with these really, really small compounds, or these really small molecules coming from these, well relatively big foods in comparison to what you're dealing with. Now I'm wondering how are these foods being broken down that you're getting these individual bioactive molecules? What's the process for that? Alessia: 15:43 So within the lab, we are either purchasing them from companies that have done the isolation or extraction. So we're looking at them single, so when we're adding them to ourselves or treating them in our certain models, they're already as a single compound. So depending on the structure and polarity of the compound, there's various extraction procedures that you can do, and then further downstream processes to isolate the single compound. And then we have various analytical techniques to detect that what you have isolated is in fact that compound. Josh: 16:14 is there some that are a lot harder to work with than others? Alessia: 16:17 Oh, that's for sure. That's for sure. But that's all part of the greatness of science, that every day is a new challenge. Josh: 16:24 What's been the greatest challenge that you've faced so far? Alessia: 16:27 Oh, that's a great question. There have been so many challenges. The thing is, every time you think that you just overcame a great challenge, another one is in front of you, but that's why I like doing research. It's kind of kind of nice to know that you're answering questions that you can't just Google. Jordan: 16:44 There's always more to learn, yeah. Alessia: 16:45 Yeah, one day you're going to be providing the answers that someone can Google. And I just feel like there's so much that you're learning, not only in your particular project, but personal development. I think people never realize how much personal development you undergo when you're doing a PhD and you're answering questions that no one had to answer and you're learning things and often teaching yourself, and that's been huge for me. Jordan: 17:07 Yeah, I couldn't imagine the amount of resilience it would take. I mean when you talk about some of these compounds that you're working with and some of the work that you're describing, it can't be easy, right? And it's amazing to think that you're able to do some work, and answering questions that no one has the answer to. You said it before, even Google doesn't have the answer for it. It's pretty amazing. Alessia: 17:28 Yeah, it's encouraging, especially when you have a lot of failure. That's just the nature of research. You have to get used to failure and kind of just pick yourself back up and keep going. I would say that in my compound in particular, we found, or actually there's two compounds that we studied in the lab where we found a certain pathway or enzyme that hadn't been conventionally thought to be a great target for acute myeloid leukemia. But through our research we found that it was something that was differentially expressed or upregulated in acute myeloid leukemia versus normal cells. So finding a novel target is something kind of interesting because when we were going with nutraceuticals, sometimes we'll find when we're investigating its mechanism of pathway, we find these unique things. So these unique enzymes or pathways that are upregulated. And then not only are you kind of proposing this potential novel therapeutic for acute myeloid leukemia, but a potential target. Alessia: 18:25 And then with potential targets, medicinal chemists or other labs can then interrogate that to find something that might be an even better therapeutic than the one we're studying in the lab. So I find that to be quite interesting. Josh: 18:36 Yeah. The importance of leaving no stone left unturned. Alessia: 18:40 Exactly. Josh: 18:41 Yeah, for sure. So if this is successful and you go forward, what would be the next step for you in your research? Alessia: 18:46 Everything that we're doing in my lab right now is mostly in vitro. And as we know, although in vitro studies are quite informative, they don't necessarily always translate to an animal or a patient model. So trying to see whether or not the results that we're seeing in vitro can be translated in these other models. Again, I mentioned earlier pharmacokinetics, so we want to ensure that our compounds can be properly delivered and absorbed in in a manner that will induce a therapeutic effect in the humans, and then eventually hopefully getting it to maybe a clinical trial. Josh: 19:22 Yeah, so it's kind of like the foot work right now that's leading up towards animal trials and then hopefully clinical trials basically. Alessia: 19:29 Exactly. Jordan: 19:30 You mentioned before that you really enjoy research. Do you envision yourself continuing doing research, continuing with academia after your PhD? Alessia: 19:37 That's a great question. I would love to, if I could. It is a little bit difficult, but I am kind of on the path right now to set myself up to hopefully eventually become my own private investigator. And not only do I like research, but I really do like mentoring students. I do get the opportunity to do that in my lab and I would love to continue to do that in the future. Josh: 19:57 You said you love TAing and mentoring students. What's the most rewarding part about that for you? Alessia: 20:01 So seeing them come in on day one, and... a pipette is a tool that we use all the time in the lab, not knowing even how to hold the pipette to by a month later, they're doing experiments independently. It's just so great to see that. And being able to problem solve and rationalize through things. Josh: 20:17 I was one of those kids that didn't know how to use the pipette. Jordan: 20:20 I graduated a couple of years ago and I still don't know how to use a pipette. That's, probably why I switched programs. So I'm actually curious to what kinds of courses have you TAed? Alessia: 20:31 Okay. So I've TAed, functional foods and nutraceuticals of course. And then most recently I TAed sensory evaluation, which was kind of new to me, but I learned a lot through that. And then this year I TAed for an entire year, food product development. So it's kind of interesting because they are are very unique from my research, but you see that the things that you learn, like I said in your PhD, there's a lot of professional development that occurs, can always translate into any other course. Josh: 20:58 You said sensory development. I'm just curious, that sounds interesting. Alessia: 21:02 Sorry. Sensory evaluation. Josh: 21:03 Sensory evaluation. My bad. Sorry. Alessia: 21:05 That is the process by which we can conduct standardized tests that are statistically valid to evaluate different attributes of food. So if you think of just a taste testing panel, that would be a type of sensory evaluation. Jordan: 21:22 So did you do any research in your Undergrad? Was it kind of through that that you were like, I want to continue doing this stuff? Alessia: 21:27 Yeah, I was actually lucky enough to get an opportunity just after my first year of Undergrad. So I started pretty early on to volunteer in the lab during the summer, and then that one went well. So I was able to continue that for the rest of my undergrad and as a summer research assistant. So it was this field that was kind of similar to what I'm doing now. So that got me really interested in this field. And then of course, I think I just wanted to grow from that, which is why I decided to move to the Spagnolo lab, and eventually ended up here. So I got really lucky. I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity to get exposed to research throughout their Undergrad to definitely do so. Josh: 22:02 Amazing. So any other tips or tricks for current Undergrad students or high school students that would be interested in pursuing research and further education? Alessia: 22:11 Yes, I see a lot of people are scared or intimidated by research, which makes me sad, but I hear a lot of people say to me, "Oh, you're doing research, you must be so smart." And I think, yes, of course you need to be smart when you're doing your research. But there's a different type of intelligence that you're applying. So problem solving, like I said, you have to be okay with failure. You have to be a little bit tenacious. And I think that if you have those qualities then you're probably suited for research, and you should definitely give it a try. It's not necessarily whether or not your getting an A+ in all your courses. So don't be intimidated, and definitely give it a try. And if it's not for you, it's not for you, but you might find that it's actually something that you're really good at. Josh: 22:51 Was that a big learning experience, that idea of getting used to not necessarily always succeeding, or I guess you can view your failures as also opportunities to learn, because they'll teach you things that, you know, I'm just curious as to what that learning curve was like for you. Alessia: 23:06 Definitely, and I would say it's a continuous learning curve, because having that mindset that you just mentioned that every failure is learning experience takes some practice, and sometimes you have to remind yourself about that. There are definitely times when you're under pressure, and you might not always think that way, but I think getting frustrated is never a good thing. So just kind of take a step back and realize that there is something you can do to improve, and realizing that and just moving forward. Josh: 23:32 Yeah. Not to go back to this, just to backtrack a little bit, would nutraceuticals be a tool that kind of coincides with chemotherapeutics or would it be something that would stand solely and on its own, or would that just depend based upon what you're working with? Alessia: 23:45 That's a great question. That's something that we're currently investigating and another thing about nutraceuticals is that many cancer patients are actually using nutraceuticals that are available already in the grocery stores, in line with their chemotherapeutics, and they're not necessarily always tell them their oncologists about this, and the nutraceutical and cancer space is still something that really needs to be heavily investigated, because we don't actually know whether these nutraceuticals when combined with conventional chemotherapies are going to help or they can actually antagonize with the chemotherapy, so they wouldn't make the chemotherapy work as well. Josh: 24:21 Are there some kind of like quack products out there as well that people will kind of try to sell? Alessia: 24:26 Right. Which, unfortunately, many people because of these quack products like you mentioned, sometimes nutraceuticals get a bad rap because of that. So the thing that we're trying to do in our lab is rigorously and systematically provide validation and better define these nutraceuticals in a way that anyone would do with any other kind of compound or non-nutraceutical. Josh: 24:49 By the sounds of it. It can be an excellent tool to help treat lots of really horrible diseases. Alessia: 24:55 Exactly. So we're using those 25,000 nutraceuticals as a discovery tool. Josh: 25:00 Yeah. Well when we talk about chemotherapy as well, we know it as an extremely painful process, and I'm sure we've, we all have someone in our lives that has undergone the treatment and been through it. And I'm just curious, if you were to take just the nutraceutical, would there be these elements that are often associated with chemotherapy? Alessia: 25:18 So that would definitely depend on every compound or nutraceutical that we're looking at. There could be side effects. Of course our goal is to create something that would minimize these side effects. But again that's something that we wouldn't be able to really see until we translated to human models. Jordan: 25:36 So I'm curious just kind of what is a day to day like for you? Because it seems like you're definitely doing a lot of lab work. If you're not TAing or helping with students, what does a typical day look like for you? Alessia: 25:48 So I'm an early bird, so I usually like to start quite early in the morning. So usually I'll start with my morning with kind of planning my day and understanding what kind of experiments I'm doing every day. And we'd like to keep very detailed notes in the lab. So kind of making sure that my lab book is sorted out for the day. So that makes it easier for me to kind of navigate throughout the day. And then I am doing a lot of cell culture work in the lab. So we're working in bio-safety cabinets, as well as just on lab benches. I do do some animal work. So sometimes that will involve me kind of escaping the lab a bit and going to work with some animals. And then when in-between experiments you're kind of always trying to look and keep updated with the latest research and kind of trying to plan future experiments and where your project can go next. Josh: 26:35 Is there anything exciting coming out of your lab specifically? Maybe not your work, but just something that you get to hear about or see? Alessia: 26:42 Yeah, you might have heard this, it's kind of been in the media already. So one of the compounds that some of my lab mates are currently working on is a compound that's derived from the avocado that's known as Avoca and B. So the avocados are kind of a hot topic right now in food. So to find a compound that is isolated from the avocado itself is pretty interesting for us. We didn't intentionally look to find a compound in the avocado, but through our unbiased screening we found this compound and then we saw that it was from the avocados. So we are currently looking in our lab to see how this compound might be used to treat not only acute myeloid leukemia, but we see that sometimes pathways that are upregulated within these diseases might be involved in other diseases. So we're also looking at how this compound might be used to treat or prevent metabolic syndrome. So diabetes or obesity. Josh: 27:40 I'm sure your team gets a lot of jokes about avocados or guacamole, paying extra for guac. Alessia: 27:45 We do. Sometimes people refer to us as the avocado lab, which is pretty funny because it's just a small part of our research. But because it's such a hot topic right now, some people kind of thought that we just decided to go with the wave, but it happened that way. Josh: 28:00 Pure luck. So we're kind of getting short on time here, so we'll ask if you have any shout-outs or anything exciting up and coming in your life that you want to share with our audience here. Alessia: 28:12 Yeah, so I'm currently in the last year of, or hopefully the last year of my PhD. So just trying to wrap things up and hopefully defend maybe this time next year. So I'm hoping that my research will be published soon. So that's something that everyone can check out. You can follow me on Twitter, roma_aless. I always tweet out my publications and as well as anything else that's going on in the lab. And of course for a shout-out, I always want to shout-out my lab mates who make the work fun every day. Not only when were doing research, but we're also cracking jokes and talking about Game of Thrones every once in a while. Josh: 28:47 Don't spoil it. I'm only on season two. Alessia: 28:50 And then of course my supervisor Paul Spagnolo, who's always very supportive. Josh: 28:55 That's great. Jordan: 28:56 Josh, is there anyone you want to make a shout-out to? This is our first episode, how do you feel? Josh: 29:00 I feel great, and I'd like to say hi to my mom and all my friends in eastern Ontario, as well as my housemates and the OAC 2021 Broncos. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Until next time. Josh: 29:11 The Why and How podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph. It is produced by Stephanie Craig and Jordan Terpstra. Recording and editing done by Jakub Hyzyk and Kyle Ritchie. The host is me, Josh Moran. Funding for this episode was provided by the W.S. Young Memorial Communications Grant through the OAC Alumni Foundation.