How AI is Unlocking the Human Microbiome w/ Dr. Jenny Yang, Co-Founder & CEO, Outpost Bio

We share 99.9% of our DNA with every other human. But the trillions of microbes living in our gut tell a much more personal story. In fact, no two microbiomes are alike, and those differences shape how we respond to food, drugs, and disease. Today's guest wants to turn that hidden biology into personalized medicine built around the patient, not the population. Welcome back to Humanify Health Tech, where we explore how AI is rewriting the rules of healthcare and putting people back at the center of where they belong. I'm Brian Chee, Senior Director of Content and Communications at NetHealth, or your host for short. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Jenny Yang, co-founder and CEO of Outpost Bio, a company combining lab-grown human microbiomes with AI to make medicine as unique as the people it's meant to treat. Before she took on the microbiome, Jenny was using AI to hunt for cancer drugs. She earned her doctorate at Oxford as a Muray Curie Fellow, one of Europe's most competitive research fellowships, and built her career at the rare intersection of real bench science and machine learning before co-founding Outpost Bio in 2025. She's that rare expert who's equally at home growing microbes and as she is building AI models. And today, she's here to help us make sense of both. Good luck with that, Jenny. But thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me.

Awesome. Okay, so first question I want to jump into is, it's going to be a little basic, right? But I think it's good to sort of set there, begin the conversation there. We're about to spend this entire conversation on the microbiome. So before we do that, let's just say that most people have never had to think about it as a health factor at all. So first question, what is a microbiome? And in your own estimate, how much of a person's health actually traces back to their microbiome versus their genetics?

That's a great question. So I guess first with the definition of a microbiome, it really is the community of, like you mentioned, trillions of microorganisms that inhabit a specific environment. And I guess to contextualize this conversation, we can focus on the gut. So this would include all the bacteria, viruses or fungi that live in your gut, but there are other microbiomes. So there's a microbiome on your skin, in your mouth, et cetera. But it really is that community of organisms that inhabit a certain environment. And I would say a lot of people actually have thought about the microbiome, but it might've been phrased differently. You probably hear the term gut health a lot, and that's probably much more tractable, but I'm sure a lot of people think about the foods they eat and how that affects their health. And that is directly related to the microbiome.

Awesome. So one of the things I noticed in doing some research for this podcast, I noticed that you have a lot of passion about this topic, a lot of enthusiasm for your mission at Outpost. And one of the things that stood out to me was your work with Professor Stephen Jones at the Genome Sciences Center. That seemed to be a key point in the journey that you're on with Outpost. What was it about that experience that led you to where you are today?