Curation for Longevity 🧬🛍 1 - OneSkin, CPG but for preventative health, The cost of extending life.
Hello 👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a platform to try vetted and science-backed longevity brands.
In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big DTC (Direct To Consumer) category. 🚀
CPG but for preventative health 😃
What if CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) were not about consumption but being healthier? It looks like we might be heading that way as the pandemic changed our habits and priorities. The saying "health is wealth" ran more true than ever; the virus did not see race, class, or borders. Younger generations are being more proactive, and hopefully, this will lead to a culture of investing in prevention.
Better health, probably the most traditional category associated with wellness, extends beyond medicine and supplements to include consumer medical devices as well as personal-health trackers. Consumers are increasingly taking their health into their own hands: we are seeing a rise in targeted, data-driven care, apps to help consumers seamlessly book their medical appointments or obtain the prescriptions they need, and devices that help them monitor their own health and symptoms between doctor’s appointments. “Feeling good: The future of the $1.5 trillion wellness market”, McKinsey & Company.
Consumer health is already a category, consumer longevity should be one too.
Things to know 👀
Speaking about the benefits of prevention, context is everything, and we need to start looking at the cost of aging differently, not how much it costs to age with diseases, but the gains we make with longevity.
Last week a paper on The economic of value of targeting aging was released; the gain the economy would make with one year increase in life expectancy is a whopping 38 trillion per year.
Next week, to discuss this economic impact, the next revolution in lifespan extension, and the “Longevity Dividend”, I am hosting a call with S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. A scholar focused on public policy he is the author of Pursuit of Wealthspan, and Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
SAVE THE DATE and join the conversation 👉🏼 Wealthspan with S Jay Olshansky, July 20th at I pm ET on Clubhouse.
Cost of reactive 📉 vs. Preventative health 📈
I like to call sugar the longevity killer.
That indulgent ingredient that is pretty much on all processed food is one of the leading causes of various chronic diseases; obesity, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), as well as cognitive decline and even some cancers, and last but not least, diabetes - a metabolic disease that causes high blood sugar. Alas, the number one industry in the world is food, and at the rate investors are getting excited about the latest food and drink trend, we have still ways to go to eat less of it.
Let’s compare what monitoring your glucose intake, instead of getting sick because of it, looks like.
A Constant Glucose Monitor (CGM) for 3/4 months is an average of $1000 USD. During the time you are using the CGM you can learn about what foods spike your glucose levels, make diet changes, and continue to monitor or check back in a year. This device has been traditionally used for monitoring blood glucose by insulin-requiring people with diabetes, however, it is now being used as a personal health tracker.
Compare this cost, to the near $10K USD yearly cost of treating a patient with diabetes in the USA.
Obvious conclusion: Prevention costs less.
Longevity brand this week 🧬🛍 - ONESKIN
Tagline: Pioneering technologies aimed at extending human healthspan.
Why they are awesome 💫
OneSkin is a longevity Biotech company headed by 4 female PhDs with a range of specialties that include immunology, stem cell biology, bioinformatics, and biochemistry.
They have a Longevity Quiz I highly recommend taking to learn more about healthspan and longevity.
They are an IndiBio alumni -the world's leading biotechnology accelerator- and had Peter Diamandis, the entrepreneur, and XPRIZE founder co-host their online launch event. Let's just call these big endorsements for a longevity biotech company.
As they can also be categorized as a “beauty” company it opens a huge vertical and gives them an obvious advantage. People will believe in longevity when they see “rejuvenation” at a superficial level take place, and a great starting point for this are companies like OneSkin.
Having spent years in branding and consumer experiences; I must say that this was the first company that felt like what a longevity lifestyle brand can be.
The science 👩🏻🔬
The team built a human cell-based platform in order to close the gap between preclinical and clinical scenarios and to mimic skin aging as closely as possible, as well as develop their own skin-specific molecular clock.
Their proprietary peptide OS-01 targets the root cause of skin aging at the molecular level by preventing the accumulation of senescent cells.
Senescent cells production occurs throughout life and plays beneficial roles in a variety of physiological and pathological processes including embryogenesis, wound healing, host immunity, and tumor suppression. Meanwhile, the steady accumulation of senescent cells with age also has adverse consequences.
A major hallmark of aging is the accumulation of senescent cells, which have entered a state of irreversible cell cycle arrest after experiencing inherent or environmental stresses.
The OneSkin OS-01 topical is technically considered a senotherapeutic.
Senotherapy is an early-stage basic research field for the development of possible therapeutic agents and strategies to specifically target cellular senescence, an altered cell state associated with ageing and age-related diseases. The name derives from the intent of the proposed anti-aging drug to halt "senescence".
Published studies:
https://europepmc.org/article/med/32660606
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.30.362822v2
Communication 🤳🏻
They are talking about extending "Skinspan", “Skin health”, and “Skin Strength”, which are a great way of communicating the science + health + beauty combo. Did you know your skin is your largest organ? And after developing their first facial topical, this is only the start.
Their Instagram is a great mix of lifestyle, longevity, and scientific-educational data.
Their packaging took cues from DTC products but they communicated and emphasized the science straight away: “The first topical supplement designed to extend your skinspan at the molecular level.”
Personal Experience 👩🏻💻
I have been using OneSkin for a couple of months and I can see a difference in the size of my pores, which have always been on the large side, and the smoothness of my skin. But don't take it from me, I was predisposed to be a fan even before trying it. Products that are science-backed, and promote health as a lifestyle are everything I want to see. My friend Wendy Cooper purchased their product after she attended our “Let's Talk Longevity” call with the founders and she raved to me soon after. She is 66!
LEARN MORE oneskin.co
This month we have the honor of adding to MYKIGAI’s advisory board Dr. Ira Sobel, the founder of Fintech for Longevity and a respected voice in bridging the gap between our longer lives and the fintech we will need to fund them. We are thrilled to be working on some exciting projects with her. 💫
I am collaborating with two amazing people in the field of longevity, Nathan Cheng and Avi Roy hosting open forum conversations with the scientists, innovators, and investors in the field. You can find out more, hear, or read the transcripts on our past panels at Thefutureoflongevity.org ⏳
This week on the Longevity Education Hour call we discuss NAD+ and the role they play in our cellular health with Dr. Elena Seranova, who is a Ph.D. in Stem Cell Biology and Autophagy, and founder of NMNBio.
Come to learn and ask your questions THIS SATURDAY, JULY 17th at 11 am ET 👉🏼 Longevity Education Hour with Dr. Elena Seranova 🧬👋
#longevitylifestyle
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