🧬🛍 21 - Cellular Reprogramming (Rejuvenation) Race, Let’s Talk Longevity Podcast, Cortisol Protocol

Hello👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a discovery and recommendation platform for longevity.

In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big consumer health & lifestyle category. 🚀

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I have officially arrived at the point where I dream of longevity.

On day five of my COVID convalescence, I had a feverish dream about cellular reprogramming. It was one of those in-and-out semi-conscious, repetitive dreams. Basically, an anxiety-fueled longevity dream.

I woke up in the morning wondering why I had it. It made me think of my two recent posts on longevity about rapamycin and cryonics. The dream, I realized, was about the one thing everyone in longevity is most excited about: 3 billion-dollars-enthusiastic, that is. This was the initial capital received by the most well-funded biotech startup in the space: Altos Labs. Go to their website to see what an all-star cast of scientists looks like, including Nobel Prize winners. This is the equivalent of bringing together Ocean’s Eleven.

In my last posts, I made a case for something that could be relatively “immediate” and something that feels like science fiction for most. But the one area of scientific breakthroughs that could bring on the era of rejuvenation and not be so far off is indeed “cellular reprogramming”.

Remember that headline I wrote about that made front page news? About skin rejuvenation? This breakthrough falls under this category, and incidentally this was done in the lab of Dr. Reik, who is now at the aforementioned Altos Labs.

This won’t be a long post as the best analysis on the subject with an incredible amount of research was done by one of the partners of On Deck Longevity Biotech, Ada Nguyen. 

A map of reprogramming companies’ progress and approach.

Nguyen, A. Partial reprogramming deep dive: the good, bad, and partially unresolved. March 2022. https://www.adanguyenx.com/blog/partial-reprogramming.

All this to make the declaration that we are in the cellular reprogramming rejuvenation race. Trust me when I say this is one race, you want to go fast!

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Let’s Talk Longevity - Podcast 🎧

A new podcast challenging the current narratives in longevity.

I have been working on this in my “free” time.

Last year, in the thick of the pandemic, I had a weekly show on Clubhouse, with my co-host Junaid Mian, interviewing the founders and researchers making longevity happen. The focus of the show then was to expose people to the potential of this type of research and innovation.

When you are an advocate it is also important to challenge your own biases.

What if instead of just trying to preach to the converted, we address the typical pushback normal everyday people have against longevity? This is what this podcast will be about.

Our first guest speakers to discuss if we are close to Longevity Escape Velocity are Dr. Charles Brenner & Dr. Aubrey de Grey. Look out for the release of the first episode and other special announcements.

Charles Brenner, PhD @CharlesMBrenner

Aubrey and I agreed to a debate hosted by @LauraMinquini in which he will attempt to defend the proposition that we are approaching longevity escape velocity. I'm pleased that he will put his ideas to the test. The debate will be later this week and will be podcasted

Alexey @Alexey_CA

@aubreydegrey @KiraStormy Perfect! Let’s pass the @CharlesMBrenner test. David Sinclair has been quite unsuccessful recently

🔗 https://www.letstalklongevity.com