Ariel Feinerman

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Greetings and welcome to the United States Transhumanist Party Virtual
Enlightenment Salon. My name is Jannati stolier Off the second
and I am the Chairman of the US Transhumanist Party.
Here we hold conversations with some of the world's leading
thinkers in longevity, science, technology, philosophy, and politics. Like the

(00:21):
philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, we aim to connect
every field of human endeavor and arrive at new insights
to achieve longer lives, greater rationality, and the progress of
our civilization. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our
US Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon. We have a fascinating

(00:42):
conversation in store for you about the problems which face
regenerative medicines, such as the need to attract investment in
real life projects rather than exclusively AI or digital ones.
And this has been a problem that has been escalated
within the longevity or regenerative medicine community because of the

(01:05):
tremendous advances in artificial intelligence, which have led to a
lot of researchers shifting their focus essentially in using AI
to predict the outcomes of certain treatments or certain interactions
in the real world as well as, for example, screen

(01:29):
for drugs that are potential candidates for going through clinical
trials to treat a particular disease. And while these advances
are highly promising by themselves, they cannot give us the
entirety of what we need in order to achieve longevity

(01:49):
escape velocity in our lifetimes. So today our panel consists
of our director of Visual art our Tremon Garcia, our
member from Texas who heads the Texas Transhumanist Party, Alan Crowley,
and our legislative director Jason Geringer. So welcome to our
esteem panelists, and our special guest today is Ariol va Feinerman.

(02:16):
Ariol began his career as an entomologist in two thousand
and three, enrolling in the Kaliningrad State Technical University at
the Program for Aquatic bio Resources and Aquaculture. He was
engaged in the study of aquatic insects and he took
part in several expeditions to the rivers of the Kaliningrad

(02:36):
region and the North Caucuses. In two thousand and six,
he switched to learning programming. From twenty ten to twenty
fourteen he worked as a software engineer. He took part
in the development of games, computer graphics and sound processing.
In twenty fourteen, he enrolled in the physics department of
Saint Petersburg State University, and in twenty fifteen he completed

(03:00):
a practice in PCR real time PCR DNA gel electropesis
at the Faculty of Biology in the Laboratory of Plant
Genetic Engineering. In twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, he completed
a practice in genetic engineering at the Faculty of Biology
in the Laboratory of Physiological Genetics. He participated in the
screening of yeast genomes participated in the testing of metal

(03:24):
complexes for toxicity and biological activity using bacterial strains. In
twenty seventeen, he transferred to the Baltic Federal University and
continued his studies at the Program of Physics at the
Institute of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Information Technology. He
studied biological molecules using NMR spectroscopy. In twenty seventeen to

(03:48):
twenty eighteen, he worked as a consultant in a bioengineering company.
In twenty seventeen, he began work on education in the
field of rejuvenation biotechnology and regenerative Medicine. Twenty eighteen to
twenty twenty, he was the deputy chief editor of the
popular science resource Future Collector. In twenty nineteen, he received

(04:08):
a Bachelor of Science's degree in physics for the study
of pospholipids using low field NMR spectroscopy. In twenty twenty,
he founded the biotechnological company Intraclear Biologics OU in Tallinn,
Estonia and became its chief science officer. He is now
a guest author of the publication Longevity Technology. He has

(04:31):
been an allied member of the US Transhumanist Party since
two thousand and seventeen, so Ariel is well known to
those of us who read the US Transhumanist Party website
because we've published various interviews and articles by him. And
now Ariel, welcome and please tell us what you have

(04:52):
to say about the importance of real life projects in
regenerative medicine.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
All nice to medium.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
I want to add to my biography that i'm Since
twenty twenty five, I have been an advisory board member
of Live Board Foundation. So now I hope to help
more to regenerative medicine in the United States, and today
I want to discuss some problems of implementing their regenerative medicine.

(05:25):
There are technical problems which we usually focus on that,
but also there are policy making and financial problems, and
today I want to discuss precisely them. But before I
would like to remind our people who watch and listen
to us, what about regenerative medicine and say a brief

(05:50):
introduction to sense research. So, according to o Z estimates,
fifty to eighty million people died in the six years
of World War two. Agent kills at least one hundred
thousand people every day and at least forty million people
every year the population of modern Canada and only slightly

(06:14):
less than the entire Second World War two. And unlike
war they have no chance to defend themselves and they
do not die young and healthy with weapons in their hands.
Their last five two ten years of life are filled
with suffering and infirmity and pain, loss of dignity and

(06:35):
dependence of family and friends. This is why we must
make every effort to defeat agent as soon as possible
and put an end to human suffering and diseases. On
the other hand, I'm very glad that the fight against
aging has finally broken out of the world of science
fiction and enter it our lives. The inevitability of global

(06:58):
changes in health is becoming increasingly obvious, and twenty seventeen
year was a turning point in many ways. For the
first time, not only leading scientists, but also well known
politicians and economists spoke out about the fight against aging
and regenerative medicine. So far only in words and in

(07:20):
scientific publications, but this is already a lot. However, there
is still a huge gap between scientific publications and real life,
and it is great that more and more people are
not just talking about the fight against aging, but also
taking real steps in this direction. On the other hand,
the quality of these popular articles and steps is usually

(07:43):
very low, but when was it high, and is in
no way connected with regenerative medicine or rejuvenation. Many of
them do more harm than good because they marginalize they're
already not very good reputation of a very important and
necessary direction of research. In general, there is no enemy
more dangerous than a bad ali because no moredern medicine.

(08:06):
Not to mention all sorts of diets facting and diets
that imitate festing, dietary suppliments, antioxidants, geroprotectors, exercises and other
lifestyles are capable of rejuvenating the human body even for
a month. And here is why I want to say
that it doesn't mean that lifestyles do not important. They

(08:28):
are very important in the sense that bad lifestyle can
reduce your lifespan and health spun. But good lifestyle cannot
rejuvenate you. It cannot really prolonge your life beyond your
genetic capabilities. So we must have good lifestyle, but we

(08:48):
do not focus on it as an only way to
prolone our health and life. Most people certainly have no
idea what aging is, and so I, in a few words,
will try to explain it from the engineering point of view.
One of the most popular and unhelpful definitions of aging

(09:10):
is that the probability of an organism's death increases with time.
In other words, the older you are, chronologically, the more
likely you are to die. However, this has many flowers.
For example, a newborn baby is more likely to die
than a thirty years old guy, but it would be
a mistake to say that a newborn is older to

(09:33):
the point. Many turtles and fish's survival rates increase with time.
But this doesn't mean that they are getting younger. Finally,
like all other statistical definitions, it says nothing about a
particular person's chances of living alone and heal's life. A
good definition not only allows us to draw many important

(09:55):
and useful consequences from it, it also points us to
a solution to the problem. Below, we will consider agent
itself and approaches to its solution from an engineering perspective.
So agent can be defined as a process of accumulation
of molecular and cellular damages that are a consequence of
normal metabolism. It is very important to emphasize the word

(10:18):
normal here because once you take it into account, it
immediately becomes clear that it is impossible to slow down
the agent process, much less stop it. To do this,
you need to completely redesign the human metabolism, rewriting its genome.
It is important to know that the processes that cause
damage are also the processes that give us life. For example,

(10:42):
breathing Breathing generates a reactive oxygen species that kills us slowly,
but at the same time, breathing generates energy which we
need to life. But since we cannot influence the processes
of damage accumulation, themselves, at least at the current level
of science. What can we do without interfering with the

(11:04):
metabolic processes? We can supply remove the accumulated damage caused
by them from time to time, returning the body to
an earlier undamaged it and as a result, younger state.
And first approach that I talked about, trying to slow
down accumulation of damage by interfering with metabolism, is called

(11:25):
a gerontological approach, and unfortunately it is widely accepted in
academic community. The second approach, so called damage repaid approach
or engineering approach, or in other words, it can be
called a regenerative medicine, is in my view, the best
approach because it does not touch our metabolism, leaves it untouched,

(11:50):
but at the same time it clears out all damage
that causes agent pathologies. And at first glance, the idea
that traversing agent regivene is not just the easiest but
also the only possible way to combat it seems paradoxal.
But think about what is easier to build a machine
that never breaks down, or to repair it in time,

(12:13):
never to litter a room or to clear it in time.
This is how our world works. Eliminating structural differences junk
and damage is much easier than controlling the complex interviewing
of various processes that lead to their formation. More where,
we don't even need to know the structure of the

(12:35):
car and the purpose of the things in the room.
All they need is another working car and a clean room.
By comparing a broken car with a working car and
a dirty room with a clean room, we can find
out what parts it thinks we need, what needs to
be replaced, and what needs to be thrown away. Another

(12:56):
good news is that we don't have to fix all
the damage. For example, we don't need to punish every
scratch on the car and looks for every speck of
dust in the room. We just need to keep their
level below critical so that the car can drive normally
and the room is comfortable to live in. And the
second differences between genetological and engineering approach is that in

(13:21):
genetological approach, when we accumulate some level of damage, you
cannot lower it. You only can slow down to accumulation
of future damage, so people who already damage it and
old they cannot benefit from it. But in engineering approach,
because it is about reversing not slowing down aging. People

(13:46):
at any age can benefit from it because when we
remove damage, all our biochemical processes return to normal state.
We remove structural changes the damage, so structurally this regumination
person is almost identical to the really really young person. Okay,

(14:08):
this is the sense of the strategies for engineered negligible senescence,
or sense that doctor B. De Gray proposed in the
beginning of the century in twenty or seven years. I
hope everyone from you know about it, so I will
not talk about it too deeply, because today's conversation is
not about technical problems but mainly about formal and financial problems.

(14:33):
But I want to give you an example of the
third approach to treading agent, so called geriatric approach or
con Suttery approach. This approach is widely used in current
medicine and it is quite effective in the beginning of
the aging, but then becomes less and less effective. I
hope you now understand why modern medicine, not to mention

(14:56):
p SELD or reguminating technologies can do nothing about a
It does not eliminate its causes molecular and celulary damage.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
It is based on.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
A compensatory approach intervention in the malfunctioning metabolic processes and
compensation for its numerous symptoms, with an equally numerous number
of drugs. In its final form, it involves bringing the
biochemical and functional biomarkers of an old and sick organism
to those of a young and healthy one without changing

(15:27):
its structural features. But all these pathetic attempts to cope
with the learn learn hydra of a huge number of
interdependent processes a doom to failure in advance, and all
it can do is only slightly smooth out the symptoms
of aging, slightly slow down their progression, and ultimately only

(15:47):
prolong the patient's suffering. The compensatory approach for the purpose
of rejuvenation can be compared to regularly pouring gasoline into
a leaky gas tongue. It's an example of treating Packinston's
disease with levodopa, or even worse, turning on the afterburners
on a worn out engine, for example. It is like

(16:09):
gross gormone injections in middle age. Let's consider, for example,
such an agent pathology as arterial hypertension high blood pressure,
but know it's true cause the walls of arterias and
vessels are rigid because of glucosepane cross links and other
interporting cross links.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
In fact, there is another.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Cause classification of the vessel walls, but it is largely
a secondary damage that occurs because of a general increase
in the level of calcium ions in the blood as
a reaction to chronic inflammation, and its cause. The senescen
cells can be eliminated by synolytics. More where glucosopin cross
lynks themselves are a source of chronic inflammation. The only

(16:53):
reasonable method of treating hypertension seems to be dissolving glucoseypan
and returning the walls of art and vessels to their
originally youthful elasticity, but modern medicine does not yet have
such drugs. Modern medicine only alleviates or compensates its symptoms
by directly lowering blood pressure. It has dozens of different

(17:17):
methods and even more different drugs in its arsenal. Some
of them delight blood vessels, relaxing their smooth muscles. Others
reduce the hard rate. Others remove excess of water from
the soculatory system, reducing.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Its osmotic pressure. All of them have lots of.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Contraindications, incompatibilities with other drugs, and side effects. Well, what
did you expect interference in metabolism and a broken one
that does not work well, not to mention that they
do not eliminate the main cause. Yet, pharmaceutical companies with
quaxotic resonation continue to pour billions of dollars into developing

(17:58):
more and more drugs that don't Why they do this
is another question, one that dissolves a separate lecture and
the regenerative medicine of the future. Based on the elimination
of primary types of damage, everything will be different. Since
hypertation is caused by interprotein cross links, the only way

(18:18):
to treat it will be.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
To break them.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Of course, there will be still be different therapies, different
in quality, price, and effectiveness, but there are principles of
work dissolving breaking Glucoseyprian cross links, and the end results
normalization of blood pressure will be the same. As a bonus,
you will get smooth, elastic skin without wrinkles because interpret
in cross links I mind cause of skin wrinkles, and

(18:43):
since glycosypan accumulated slowly, such proceeds will be needed only
once every few years. Okay, this was a brief introduction
into regenerative medicine, and before I will proceed to the
next section, I ask you to ask questions if you
have them.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yes, thank you very much Ariel for the introductory part
of your presentation. I will just ask one question and
then I will invite the panel to ask additional questions. So,
do you think, based on the progress and regenerative medicine
that you have observed in the course of your career,

(19:23):
that we are on track to reach longevity escape velocity
within our lifetime? So Aubrey De Gray himself states there's
about a fifty percent probability in his view of longevity
escape velocity being attained twelve to fifteen years from now.
Do you agree with him or do you think he's
being overly optimistic given the current rate of progress.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
You know, I don't like to talk about time frames
because success in any area, and especially in scientific and engineering,
progress is not a function of time. It is a
function of our efforts. So it's completely dependent not on time,
but on our efforts. The more efforts we put on it,

(20:11):
they are better our chances. So I don't like to
talk about on frames because of that. Reason I think
that current efforts are not enough to be over optimistic.
But I can see some light, especially in the past
few years. So I only think I can say is

(20:33):
that within the next ten years there will be enormous
shifts in medicine. But whether they will lead to algevity,
s cape velocity or not, I cannot say. I am
not a god and I cannot see a future, but
I can put my efforts to bring these things to reality.

(20:55):
So I think the only thing I have to do
is not to predict the future or talk about time frames,
but constantly push our efforts to make it a reality.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yes, thank you for that answer, And I understand there
are a lot of uncertainties in terms of the time
frames in which these advances will arrive or are likely
to arrive, and some of these uncertainties also have to
do with non scientific factors like societal, economic, political factors.

(21:33):
And Alan observes in our private chat it's not the years,
it's the mileage in terms of the wear and tear
on the organism. And there is a certain extent to
which lifestyle can make a difference, but I would say
it is at most a difference of plus or minus
fifteen years in biological age, in the sense that already

(21:57):
by my age, I'm no seeing some differences among people,
and the differences may be a bit paradoxical. So, for instance,
I run quite a lot, but I don't run the
same amount as ultra running champions. I see some ultra
running champions who are my age, who have placed very

(22:21):
highly over one hundred mile races, who do climbing, who
do a lot of extreme sport activities. So they do
the running for a different reason than I do. I
do it for longevity and health. And I notice they
do look older than I do. They look more weathered.

(22:41):
They even have other features of biological aging which are
surprising because they're still physically fit. They're still very capable.
They could outrun me in long distances, and they could
do certain things that I couldn't. But they are biologically
older than I am, so they did something through excessive
way to their bodies. But the fact is, I don't

(23:05):
think there's a sixty year old who is biologically a
thirty year old. I don't think there's a forty five
year old who is biologically an eighteen year old. Notwithstanding
any of Brian Johnson's comments. I think if you look
at Brian Johnson, you could say, well, he looks very
good for his age, but somebody being asked to identify

(23:28):
his age would probably put him in his early forties,
whereas in reality he's forty seven. So there's only so
much that lifestyle can do. And I think it's important
to stress that point to anyone who thinks they're going
to live past the age of one hundred and thirty
based on healthy lifestyle alone, it's a good idea not

(23:51):
to die prematurely, but to extend maximum lifespan. We absolutely
need for juvenation. Now, Jason has a question for you.
Are keynotes that you went from studying insects to programming
to longevity science. Was that your plan all along or
did you just kind of make it up as you went.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yeah, with a brief start for physics along the way too.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
You know, initially, I can say that all my time
from my childhood, I worried about aging and death, so
I wanted to not age, to not die, and be
young and health forever. But when I began my scientific
career in the beginning of the century twenty years ago,
there is almost no research in biomedical engineering especially about

(24:39):
longevity or determination. Even such words though unusual at that time,
and I wanted to study insects. I wanted to study entomology,
but at the same time I wanted to live alone
and health's life. And then it's almost every step if
my life was accidental, but the same time, it was

(25:01):
influenced by preverse steps. So it was not random in
its sense, but it was influenced by both by my environment,
by my life, and by preverse steps in my life.
So I wanted to study insects when I was five
or seven years old, and at that age, I, of

(25:22):
course do not think about aging and death. At that age,
children usually don't understand their own mortality. While when I
grow up, it became clear that I will age and
die somewhere in the future, and especially it was clear
when I was thirteen years old, and it was a

(25:43):
big shock for me. And then I thought about whereas
possibilities to prolong my life. And when I was eighteen,
I wanted to study bioengineering or by physics something like that,
but there is no such programs in my hometown. And
then I decided to go to the field that I

(26:05):
already now, the entomology but it became quickly clear that
I lost interest not in entomology itself, but in the
university where I live. Also, not only there are no
programs for bungineering, but also there are no dedicated programs
for entomology. And I studied acuabiology and then after a

(26:29):
few years, I leave university and I became a self
educated programmer, and I worked about ten years as a
programmer in industry, and then I decided to return to science.
Within that ten years there was a big changes in
perception of longevity and regumination, and I could see that

(26:53):
there are chances to make a change in the world.
And I thought to choose a field of science educational
program strictly speaking, which will give me the more possibilities.
And I chose physics because it's the most fundamental science
that give you opportunity to work in almost every field,

(27:17):
from pure mathematics to bioengineering, chemistry, biology, or medicine. I
hope you know that the majority of Nobel Price lowres
in medicine and physiology were physicists or chemists by their education,
and molecular biology is at most discipline that is a

(27:40):
science that will be built by physicists mainly, So I
chose physics as a fundament of my education, and I
never regret about my decision. So then I got a
physics degree and then started to study biomedical engineering. And

(28:02):
now I keep my interest in physics, and at the
same time, I continue my self education in biomedical engineering
and preparing to getting a PhD. And I hope to
move to the United States soon to continue to get
PhD in either.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Physics for example, biophysics.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
It will be a continuation of my university walk about
structural biology, or in medical or biomedical engineering for example,
genetic or cell engineering. I'm interested in both these fields
and they are quickly interchanged, and they have many similarities.
So I think that degree in either of them will

(28:48):
be very valuable.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
For my work.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yes, thank you very much for that answer regarding your
academic path, And certainly I can see the relationships among
those disciplines. And I will also say people who delve
into multiple disciplines have a higher likelihood of making contributions

(29:12):
in a variety of fields because they could see insights
that those who are just narrowly specialized in one field cannot.
And this is actually one of our purposes for our
Virtual Enlightenment salons to bring in people with these interdisciplinary
insights and see if we can break new ground in

(29:34):
terms of understanding certain phenomena. We're figuring out solutions to
certain phenomena.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
And I want to say that my experience in software
engineering in programming has a huge impact on my views
in biomedical engineering. And I think that biomedical engineering should
be as advanced as other types of engineering, like programming
engineering or our space engineering, and even more, I family

(30:03):
believe that medicine is itself is a type of engineering
because it can be thought of as human repair engineering
in fact, so for now, uncertainly, medicine is still is
more art than an engineering and I want medicine to
be a more engineering discipline, so I hope it will

(30:24):
become a truly human repair engineering with all engineering ground.
It's very useful in medicine when you treat human body
as a very complex self repairing machine.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yes, indeed. And I will also note that Aubrey de
Gray got his start in his career path as a programmer,
and I think that was crucial to get him to
recognize the merits of the engineering approach toward combating aging,
because he saw that people who are just pure biology,

(31:00):
they were more focused on just understanding aging and the
processes of aging, and not so much in intervening them
or fixing them. So he brought a much needed fresh
and different perspective from an engineering background and approach. So
thank you for that discussion. Please proceed with the next

(31:21):
part of your presentation.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Okay, now we will talk about problems with governmental funding
of regenerative medicine.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
If you take a close look.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
At national Institutes of Health or National Institutes of Aging
funded work, well, you will find hundreds of publications about obacity, lifestyle,
air pollution and their impact on longevity. Don't you know
that obacity, smoking, and much drinking of alcohol is bad
for you? How can this information might help us create

(31:53):
a new cure against cancer or a earth crossis? Do
we really need another one work on it? Also, you
can find many publications about calorie restriction and various genetic
manipulations on worms and other model organisms that mimic it.
Calorial restriction is everywhere. While we know for twenty years

(32:14):
that calorie restriction doesn't work for humans and high primates.
For example, in twenty fifteen, five hundred million dollars was
given to projects like a large randomized trial of vitamin
d omega three fifty assets and cognitive decline. It's not
a joke, it's a real research walk. You can find
more on the side of National Institutes of Health. All

(32:37):
that is useless because you cannot use it to produce
working rejuvenation therapists. Only small part of this work is
useful in the sense of defeating agent. Do you know
what is the most interesting? It's all your taxes, all
your money. Now you know that. And for example, the
budget of National Institutes of Health is constantly growing, and

(33:00):
in twenty twenty five it is almost five billions of dollars,
and unfortunately the grand system of National Institutes of Health
do not check for what this money is spent on.
For example, my former scientific advisor several years worked in
National Institutes of Health and they said to me that

(33:22):
they found that when you enter this system you can
get money for nearly everything.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
People really got money for.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Studying butterflies in Amazon rainforests, for example, and only they
have to do is to ride somewhere in the end
of this article that this work may help create medical
treatment somewhere in the future, and this is enough for
national Institutes of health.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
So it is quite difficult.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
To get grant from national institutes of health. But when
you inside this system, when you already entering this system,
you can spends governmental money for nearly everything. And I
think it's very bad because National Institutes of Health is
a health organization, it's a medical organization, and I family

(34:12):
believe that they have to spend their money only on
those research that directly related to human health, to the medicine,
to the creating of new therapies, new tests. There are
only two kinds, two sorts of medical good things that
can be funded by government. Thrust is medical tests to

(34:35):
test human organism whether it have a disease or not.
And second that therapy to treat or prevent a disease
in the case if that human organism has that disease
or can have that disease. And current situation I think
is not normal when governmental money then every year five

(34:55):
billions of money spend for something that we even do
not know for where I want to ask where is
the results? Fifty billion of doors is a very big
money and I want to.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Ask where are results?

Speaker 3 (35:09):
And at the same time, really important research projects like
work on glucosepunk breaker therapy, which will end many agent
pathologies like arterial stiffness, chronic inflammation, hypt engine strokes, and
will save many leaves.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
For example, it was to can piggle up at.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yale University is permanently underfunded and would be closed in
twenty seventeen without financial support from Since Research Foundation and
German entrepreneur Michael Grave. Likely they finally found an investors
and now they sown out a company called Arrivel Pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately,

(35:47):
there are still in a stealth state, and I many
times have tried to reach our own Cravens. They're so
much here rejected an interview unfortunately because they they are
not treadive for disclosure their information about this therapy. But
he permitted that they will make a statement soon, so

(36:09):
we wait for them. And finally, the cost of implementing
the vocan rejuvenation treatment, for example in old mice, the
implementing all the SENSE program in old mice, so called
robust mice rejuvenation, would by current estimates, be only one
to two percent of the Apollo program, and the same
amount of money about half a million of dollars was

(36:33):
already spent on cirtuins which have obviously produced nothing. If
you remember, there was such a company Certwix, and such
genes called cirtuins that allegedly could prolong human health and life.
And this research was led by David Sinclair, a famous
researcher from Harvard Medical School, and he spent hundreds of

(36:56):
thousands of dollars on this research. But finally it was
bought by one of big pharma companies and closed because
in fact, there are no real results from it though
all this money, and that was known initially because the
mechanism of action of their alleged therapy was not a

(37:17):
damage repair approach, so it was initially known that it
will not work. But nevertheless they spent a big amount
of money for that and got nothing from it. So
this is an example of what I called genk research.
One of the reasons this takes place, I think, is
because people from academia are mostly not by medical engineers

(37:42):
but gerontologies. Genontology is a basic science which studies aging,
while biomedical engineering and regenerative medicine engineering disciplines which do
not study aging but try to influence aging try to
fix broken human organism. This is a much difference between

(38:03):
basic research and engineering research, and I think that unfortunately,
still in academy and in governmental agencies in the United States,
the most of the positions are taken by classic academic researchers,
classic gerontologists who are not interesting in results, who are
interesting in publicly, in academic careers, in publications, in Hirsh index,

(38:29):
in rise grants, in their perception by other members of
academic community, but they are clearly not interesting in curing people.
They are not interesting in caring of patients, and I
think that we need a change of course. Academia must
have basic researchers. I do not want to say that

(38:51):
basic research is bad. No, basic research is very good,
because it's a fundament to all other research and engineering.
But these people people have not to work in governmental
agencies who spend money on things that must have direct
results related to human health. Only those people who work

(39:13):
on real generative medicine, on biomedical engineering may make decisions
and rule and governmental agencies, because their goal is not
to get knowledge, but to use knowledge to help people.
And so we need to have less gerontologists who merely
study agent and more biomedical engineers who repair damage In

(39:36):
other words, we should switch our focus from aging research
to regomination engineering or generative medicine. It's almost the same terms.
Even their generative medicine is slightly more general term because
generative medicine works not only in the case of aging
but also in the case of traumas of young people.

(39:57):
So I prefer to more generally term of generative medicine.
Since aging is an engineering problem, then from the generatology
and sports of view, it looks like not my job.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
To reverse it. So this is why I ask to.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Invite more real generative medicine researchers and biomedical engineers to
work on it, and likely there is some good change
in past few years. The one of the few good
things that the past White House administration leaves to us
is Advanced Research Project Agency for Health or URPA H.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
It was established in twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
First as a six and five billion dollars agency and
is meant to be the biomedical equivalent of the Defense
Advanced Research Project Agency DARPA loans for developing GPS and
the Internet. As at DARPA, a small group of program
managers will have considerable freedom to choose many of our

(40:56):
per h's efforts and specific awardies. Unlike National Institutes of Health,
it didn't initially ask for long applications full of supporting data,
just three pages outlining a vision or major goals and
how to achieve it. There's a big difference because our
per H is work not in academic like National Institutes

(41:18):
of Health, but in industrial way. It works as an
industrial company by medical company, and it's very good because
it allows it to achieve great results in very short terms.
In contrast to darker research which is meant to help
the military, our per H projects I am to improve
the health of all Americans. And even more, unlike national

(41:41):
Institutes of Health, when all applicants must have academic positions
in the United States, the applicants to our per H
they need not to have academic positions, and even foreign
citizens can apply for contracts in our PERH. So this
is a very very good idea. And if our p
H successfully follows its namesake history, the backbone of the

(42:05):
agency will be its programs, so called programs led by
a so called program manager who conserves an idea then
assembles an outside team of scientists to carry it out
with funding that might be one hundred millions of dollars
or even more, and team selected by our pH, funded
with contracts rather than grants, will work closely with the

(42:28):
agency and could have awards bullet if they don't meet milestones.
It's a different way of thinking and it's not for everyone.
They estimate only ten to twenty percent of academic researchers
will find it appealing. And I think that this party
that our PIH uses is very good for any types

(42:49):
of engineering, and especially for regenerative medicine, because it's not
like in national Institutes of Health when you are getting
to this flow of almost free money and you work
for many years without any results. In our PAH, you
must write a report every six months and if you

(43:11):
do not meet your promises, you will pulled out of
the program. And I think it's very good because it
will keep away all these academic researchers who just want
to make their academic careers and not create real results.
And unfortunately a new administration fared out renee Vaction, director

(43:33):
of our pH, who built this agency.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
In fact, this is normal because.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Every new administration usually changes directors of governmental agencies.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
But the issue is.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
That rene Vaction was the best person through this agency,
and they still do not find a new director of
the agency. So if someone from the officials listen to us,
I asked them either to return renee vaction to her
position or to find someone as genuine as sure because

(44:03):
it slowed down their work of this amazing agency. And
I would like to say that this our agency is
a really amazing, wonderful endeavor which can be compared to
a poll up project for its importance for the United
States economy and science and healthcare. Okay, so if you

(44:25):
have questions about this section, I will be glad to
answer them.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yes, thank you very much, Ariel for this part of
your presentation and discussing some of the poor incentive structures
that have historically characterized funding of medical research. Particularly you
mentioned the NIH grant project. And it's interesting because various

(44:52):
scientists have complained to me and to others that the
NIH is notoriously un willing to fund projects that may
be extremely effective in the long term for reversing biological aging,
but they are uncertain in terms of their outcomes. So

(45:16):
there could be a long research timeframe and then at
the end of that timeframe, from one's initial vantage point,
it's not really clear whether or not that research will succeed.
And the NIH, from my understanding, grants about twenty percent

(45:36):
of the applications that it receives, so about eighty percent
of the scientists who apply for grants do not receive
the money. But it's interesting that sometimes the criticism that
I hear is that the NIH is very conservative. They
only want something that will bring near term results, and

(45:58):
those could be incremental rest But they could say, especially
to politicians or to taxpayer advocates, oh, we've been spending
taxpayer's money wisely. See here's those published paper that arrives
at certain conclusions. But you also said the NIH sometimes
funds speculative research, like potentially research on butterflies, where the

(46:24):
grand application says, well, someday this could be translated into medicines.
And on the one hand, an argument could be made, oh,
there are plants and animals, especially in remote parts of
the world, that could have properties that could be beneficial
for human health, and it would be good to study
them and understand those properties and their potential applications. But

(46:46):
at the same time, I would also agree that that
is not the most direct path, and that is not
the path that is most likely to succeed to getting
us to longevity escape velocity in our lifetimes. So why
do you think the NIH is more likely to fund
the butterfly research which is very uncertain as to the

(47:10):
medicinal applications, as compared to say, sense type damage repair research,
which also has a long time frame and some uncertainty,
but could provide some significant benefits if it succeeds. What
do you think is happening there in terms of the
thinking in the agency.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
I think that there is some history reasons because an
H is an old organization with their own rules and traditions,
and I think it's sometimes more valuable to make something
new from scratch than trying to change something long existed,

(47:53):
and our PIH is a good example of that.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
I think that just because an.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
H is unlike it's it's more academic than goal directed
industrial type institution, and it has a long application process
and very bureaucratic process, very formal process.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
It has a long term traditions.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
And has people who work in an age for many years,
and they are from the when damage repair approach was
not grounded, was not even consider it, And this is
just the and I think this is a reason so
there are age principles that some of them are formal,

(48:37):
some of them are informal, but they are slightly outdated.
And I think when you know, one of the physicists
said that new ideas gained popularity not when people understand them,
but when the people who defended old ideas are die
from aging. So I think that an age will change

(48:58):
when a new generation of researchers who from the beginning
study regenerative medicine and bio medical engineering will take positions
in it. But we cannot wait for that, and I
don't want that any of them die, So it's not
very altruistic to wait when the old generation of researchers

(49:20):
will die. So I think that we will make changes
just today, and that is the reason why our pH
was created. It's not a concurrent to ANIH because their
very approach is completely different, as I explained, So I
even do not consider ANIH for my applications, both for

(49:40):
formal and formal reasons. But my projects and projects of
my coeleagues completely fit in our pH gender. So I
think that it's very very good endeavor and I think
that it have at least such money as an age.
I think if our pH has fifty billions per year.
Many projects will be already have done. You said a

(50:03):
valid point that many research involved in regenerative medicine have
some ansertaincies and long term But for now, of course,
I can say we do not all about aging, and
we for many years will not know all about aging.
But I can say that we know enough about aging

(50:23):
to treat it and to at least begin to create
therapies that will reverse it. And the idea of longevity
is capulocity, as you know, is not to create a
one hundred percent effective therapy from the beginning, but to
create a therapy that will somehow help people. And this
will buy some years, and these years will allow us

(50:48):
to create more effective therapy that will buy even more years.
And this, step by step, we will reach the state
when we completely defeat agent. So we already know enough
to do many things, and I will in the next
section give you a few examples of the companies and

(51:08):
their technologies that already can cure incurable diseases, but they
cannot get money for that. So I think that our
page have to be a first priority agency for the
White House administration. I hear everyone that about artificial intelligence
and the Trump and ellwn Mask and other people in

(51:30):
the United States who make politics. They constantly talking about
artificial intelligence and their importance and that we need to
invest in it. But unfortunately, no one of such high
level persons talk in the same way about regenerative medicine
and health care. I cannot see such talks, and I

(51:52):
think we have to talk about it. We have to
write open letters to White House Administration. So what is
the makers, to snators from American Congress, to any influential
people you know, so that this problem will be constantly
pushing to this So this problem will be constantly on

(52:15):
our screens and newspapers. And I think this is very important.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yes, thank you for that answer. And now Alan, I
know you have several questions, so please go ahead.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Now, thank you, Eron.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
I do have several questions, and I appreciate what you're saying.
I want to kind of give you my background from
the military, because the military gets tons of funding and
I think this idea that sort of scared me when
you said it that you know, folks at the NIH
there just wanting to mark their careers in time and

(52:50):
not actually delivering results. And oddly enough, a lot of
the people in the military are just the opposite, which
is not what you want in science.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
Or the military, right, you don't want to know.

Speaker 5 (53:01):
And it's like, yeah, you learned how to make a war,
but our real job is just to punch our time,
do our career and make the peace happen.

Speaker 6 (53:10):
Right.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
So it's really kind of interesting to see that difference
and the difference in funding. Now it's just shoveled on
top of the military without any checking and yet basic research,
which you know, and I guess nobody wants to go
up in front of Congress and say, well, we've found
ten thousand ways that a light bulb doesn't work, you know,

(53:31):
like that's we are really onto it, you know, they
want to be. It's just the basic research, right, we
need all of that basic research to find out these
materials don't work. These materials don't work, these two they combine,
we can make that work anyway. That's just not a
popular call to say we've been researching this for years
and we still haven't found anything. Right, It's counterintuitive, but

(53:55):
that's where the real breakthroughs come in. And yeah, I
think that one place where the army or the military
has been really good is in this thing creation of
what's called a tiger Tiger team, which I think is
actually from Deming, the guy that Demming's fourteen points about industry,
but the military picked that up. They have Tiger teams

(54:15):
to this day. But the idea is to bring in
several experts personalist, a logistician, an operator, an intelligence expert,
you know, all these people come together to really build
a team about how to do something. And I see
a lot more kind of stove piping in science, because
you know, specialization. You know, if you're really specialized, all

(54:37):
of a sudden you're an expert in something nobody else knows,
simply because you've become a little bit smarter. You've spent
your time looking at widgets, you know. But as for
the applications of widgets and being able to have a broad,
expansive understanding of all the different ways wigets can be,
that's all another field that almost comes into philosophy or
psychology or those practical applications. So all of that to say,

(55:00):
how do we get the bio engineers and the gerontologist
and really end the money all in the same room
at the same time. And I read and prepped for this.
I read your article on longevity technology about the company Intraclear,
and it sounds like Interclear got what a lot of

(55:21):
companies get. They got a very supportive angel investor to
come in and help. And yet it's those supportive angel
investors that want the quick turnaround and not kind of
the slow money that really government can provide to say, hey,
take your time, get this right. This is going to
ben a fit everybody wants it's released to the general public.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
So what are your other than what you've already told us?

Speaker 5 (55:47):
Please give us the How do we get the money
and the people in the in the in the room together?

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Okay, thank you for a question you ask, how can
we build teams that will involve researchers of different origin
and investors so that these teams.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Will have money and all they need to do what
we need.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
Yes, well, yeah, I mean adversity and experience and specialties.
I don't know that they're each going to break a
pocket full of money, but somebody needs to to get
the research done. And is that a government? Is that
a coalition of governments? Is that a coalition of universities.
I'm not sure it's the right place for private equity
because it's a long term unless you're going to crank

(56:31):
out a new drug or something. Just pharmological team can
do that. But we're talking about longevity, which you know,
continued research on the blue zone has showed that not
every technique there works, but many of them do. I
mean a lot of that is lifestyle. If you live
a lifestyle that's easy on your body, and you take
care of yourself and don't get damaged and repair damage

(56:54):
you get. I mean, those things are essential to longevity.
But there's no profit in me telling anybody that, right,
So there's no reason to say, well, I'm want to invest,
you know, invest in your company.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
So people learned to eat to write foods, you know,
which I mean, just that's.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
Not a there's not a no ROI on that, like
immediately for a company to give a company motivation to invest,
I mean, how do we draw that money and the
multidiscipilary teams together.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Okay, you know when you and your colleagues say that
it's very unclear which research will give us a working
therapy and which will working therapy, it's right, but not
under one hundred percent. Why because in fact, I was
trained as a physicist and work it as a software engineer.

(57:40):
So in these fields we usually before any experiment of
writing the code, we used to make theoretical calculations, whether
it was math or just it was some theorizing. But
we before making something by our hands, we must to
be shot that it will work at least theoretically, at

(58:03):
least from the theoretical point of view. And this training
is very helpful. This helps me a lot in biomedical
engineering and regenerative medicine because unfortunately, when I talk to
my colleagues from classic medicine or classic biology, unfortunately they
do not use theorizing or thought experiments or calculations before

(58:27):
making something by hands, and unfinitely many of them work
in the way as let's change this gene and look
what will happen. For example, let's try it, or let's
try that. I think that real engineer shouldn't work in
that way. I'm sure the real engineer should make any
experimentation or proposals only based on their good theory. British

(58:52):
physicist and philosopher David Deutsch says that the most valuable
thing in the world is a good explanation. So when
you can explain why.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Your therapy will work.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
This is very valuable, and this is a proof, even
though theoretical, but nevertheless the proof that it at least
can work. It of course doesn't mean that it will work,
but at least it can work, and it means that
I can see that many, many, many companies and governmental

(59:26):
programs work on the ideas that will not work even theoretically.
So it shocks me. It is a big surprise for
me because I used to work in completely another way
and I think that even though human health is much
less predictable than more simple physical systems or computer soft
draw but we can in some situations make good predictions

(59:50):
and we should do them. And what I can say,
I have a very very simple and clear recip to
say what will work and which we will not work.
For example, if therapy or technology is based on a
damage repair approach, so if it reverses some type of damage,
it at least may work, and we should put some

(01:00:14):
effort to test it. But if it doesn't clear any
type of damage and merely interfer with metabolism to influence
some metabolic pathways, we should not even write because it's
completely useless, not at all in the sense that for example,
there is some exception.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
Look at chronic inflammation. The mind.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Cause of chronic inflammation is a senescent cells that produce
various types of inflammatory molecules that influence other cells, and
these cells become This is a secondary sinescence, so called
replicative senescence. And in such a way information spreads across
the human organism, and so only truly walking way to

(01:01:01):
get rid of information is synolytics therapy, so the therapy
that kills ses and cells, but in some cases.

Speaker 5 (01:01:10):
That spoils the bunch. Got to get rid of that
one apple before its effects. Can I mean literally in
a case of apple that exoodes gas it causes other
apples to run.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Yes, yes, yes, but for now. Most anti inflammatory drugs
work in another way. They block the receptors of this
inflammatory moleculous so they interferre and inflammatory pathway somewhere near
its end, not the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
And the consequence is that inflammatory.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Moleculus is spread across organism and do harm, but not
such a big harm as if we do not block
these inflammatory receptors. And the problem is that when we
stop to take these anti inflammatory drugs, for example aspirin
or something another informatory quickly return, so they suppress not

(01:02:01):
the inflammatory process but the reaction by theselfs an tissue
to that inflammatory moleculus. So we need to indefinitely constantly
take these anti inflammatory drugs. And the more importantly, not
all inflammation is bad. For example, when we have some
sort of trauma, infection informatory may be good to suppress

(01:02:23):
the cause of this disease. But antiinflammatory drugs do not
distinguish between good inflammation and bad inflammation. So in general case,
anti inflammatory drugs do not really help people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
They only slightly decrease the harm doing by chronic inflammation.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
But they may be good for example, in the case
of acute inflammation, for example, if so called cetochinous storm.
You know that condition when for example, people cut some
infection and it causes a huge ghurst of inflammatory moleculous
and people can die of this acute inflammation. And in

(01:03:02):
this case, of course, just blocking and inflammatory receptors is
a very good idea because organism will conquer the infection
and inflammation will drop to its normal level. But in
the case on agent information so called inflammation or chronic
inflammation by outer immune diseases, for example, these blockers of

(01:03:24):
inflamatory receptors do not work in that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Way that we want to.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
So this is an example that sometimes interfering with biochemical
pathways is good, but it's not a solution. It's just
a stub for acute cases, for emergency cases. But in
combating with aging, we have to use only those solutions
that really affect the cause, that eliminate the cause, so

(01:03:52):
the damage repair approach, and when we know the mechanism
of therapy, we can certainly say how it walks by
demonship pair approach or by interfering with metabolism. And I
think that in the case of long term results, in
the case of really defeating agent, we should put most

(01:04:13):
of our efforts into demonshyp pay approad therapiest. So in fact,
when we're working on the therapy, we cannot guarantee that
it will work, but by knowing its mechanisms, we at
least know the chances that it will work as expected.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Yes, thank you Ario for that answer, And I do
have a bit of a follow up to Alan's questions.
So getting some gerontologists and more engineering focused scientists and
investors in the same room has actually been tried several
times before, most notably by Calico, which was established by

(01:04:53):
the founders of Google, as well as now Alto Slabs,
which is funded in part by Jeff Bezos, but also
Uri Milner and Alto Slabs focuses more on cellular reprogramming. Calico,
it seems, focuses more on fundamental aging science. But in

(01:05:16):
neither of those cases, even though they spent a lot
of money hired some of the most recognized and according
to some most accomplished scientists in the field, we don't
yet see a lot of outputs from either of those
companies in terms of therapies or even translational research or

(01:05:38):
even intermediate results that they've published that could show how
aging might be reversed in the future. And there have
been some previous situations like this as well. For instance,
Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, had donated in the
past about two hundred million dollars. He said it was
to anti aging research, but he stopped doing that even

(01:06:01):
sometime during the early last decade the twenty tens. Then
there was Peter Teel who donated a few million dollars
to the Sense Research Foundation during its early days and
helped it to get launched but he doesn't donate that
much to aging research anymore. And then there's Brian Johnson,

(01:06:22):
who is I would say, very notorious these days for
not actually donating to anti aging research, even though he
has the don't die motto. He says AI will solve
everything soon, and he has had some negative experiences when
he was previously investing in certain projects that didn't work out.

(01:06:43):
At least that is my impression. But what do you
think explains the fact that there have been these kinds
of attempts, including by people with big money, and yet
they haven't resulted in the damage repair approaches being emphasized,
and they haven't resulted in the publication of a lot

(01:07:04):
of promising intermediate results.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Even yes, I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
Can comment it in a few words. The case with
Calico is explaining that they failed just because they hire
a basic researchers to directors positions, and in fact all
their research was directed by basic researchers, and doctor b
Degray said it's about it almost ten years ago, so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
It's no surprise. It's no surprise.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Much more surprisingly to me that almost every case when
some wealthy people try to fund some anti agent research,
in almost every case they spend their money not on
the damage repay approach, but on the classic gerontological approach.
And it's quite surprised to me, but it may be

(01:07:55):
because how people who do not know anything about the
generative medicine and will decide to whom he will give
his money. How I think they all behave in the
same way. They look at the social media or newspapers
and they see some names of well known gerontologists and

(01:08:15):
they ask them and they suggest them to whom to
give their money. And this is a vicious circle. Why
it all fails in the end, and I think that
this is because people fall in the big misconception that
gerontology is something about fighting against agent. No, gerontology is

(01:08:37):
about studying agent, while regenerative medicine is about curing agent
or any other type of damage or bad condition to
human organism. And I never heard about that project is
called medical engineering project or generative medicine project. All of
them are called something like anti agent project or agent project.

(01:09:02):
And I think it's the reason why all this happened.
And I already said about that we can switch focus
from gerontology to regenerative medicine and state that it is
an engineering. And one of the problems is that anti
agent and anti aging research is seen by many biomedical

(01:09:23):
engineers as quite marginalized field, and many biomedical engineers whom
I know personally do not want to associate themselves with
this field, with anti agent, this longevity, with all these
words and groups of people they work on real generative
medicine that will really reverse agent, but they never said

(01:09:48):
about their work as anti aging medicine or something like that.
They call like work precisely biomedical engineering or generative medicine.
And this is I think the reason why these things happen.
The people who really work on anti aging treatments do
not call these anti agent treatments and do not be

(01:10:09):
associated with that field, mainly for historical reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Probably yes, And I've had conversations with doctor Bill Andrews
about this. He pointed out that in the anti aging field,
the so called snake oil salesman came first and the
reputable scientists came later. But there has been a kind
of reputational stain on the anti aging field because initially,

(01:10:37):
say in the early nineteen hundreds, it was associated with
a lot of quacks and charlatans who would sell substances
of dubious validity marketed as anti aging substances, and sometimes
they would have damaging components like cocaine for instance, or
various poisonous substances, and unfortunately that tainted persons still lingers

(01:11:01):
in certain corners of the scientific community. Now, Alan does
have a follow up question in terms of wealthy individuals
who used to fund anti aging research to a significant extent,
whether or not it was funded optimally, and he wonders
did they stop funding that research altogether or did they

(01:11:24):
stop funding it publicly? He also wonders, maybe the wealthy
have their own teams working on this just for them.
And on the one hand, we know that Brian Johnson
has a medical team of his own, but that medical
team is very openly discussed and primarily they are there

(01:11:46):
to set up various diagnostic procedures, measure biomarkers, monitor for
unforeseen consequences, intervene if there's a need to do that.
So Brian Johnson and has a very clear personal health
optimization goal and this medical team is doing that for him.

(01:12:07):
What do you think about others who have previously taken
an interest in funding anti aging research. Do you think
they have their own medical teams, and do you think
those teams are also focused on damage repair to some extent?
So Larry Ellison, interestingly enough, was recently given praise for
his appearance, and even Brian Johnson praised him. Larry Ellison

(01:12:31):
is eighty years old, and if you look at pictures
of him, he looks like he's sixty five. So if
there's this plus or minus fifteen year difference between chronological
agent biological age, Larry Ellison may have maximized the let's say,
slowing down of biological aging that could be achieved using

(01:12:52):
today's technologies. But do you think this is more widespread
than commonly known or are they just using techniques that
everybody knows about and they just have more money to
devote to that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
In fact, many ways to create regenerative therapies to reverse
agent are known. They are published in scientific publications, and
to replicate them or to create them using these publications,
I think any good bio engineering lab can do this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
So I will not be surprised.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
If there are some offshore clinics or boratories that privately
afford such therapies to wealthy individuals, because, as I said above,
we already know enough about agent to fight against it.
And the only reason why we cannot see this in
usual clinics is lack of funding in medical regulation. Some

(01:13:46):
of the already said and some I will said in
the last next section. So I do not know such cases,
but I'm sure that this is completely possible with current
state of by medical engineering medicine to do many of
these therapiest and offer them privately.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Yes, thank you for that answer, and I think right
now it would be a good idea to proceed to
the next part of your presentation, so please go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
Okay, Next is problems with private investing. Previous was governmental
funding and now problems with private investing. And I think
that the private sector should play a lead role in
funding regumination therapiest. But unfortunately, what we can see, in
my opinion, it's very terrible that many so called digital

(01:14:38):
health companies reserve twenty to fifty hundred millions of dollars,
while VET bioengineering companies, which work on true regenerative therapies
that can cure incurable pathologies, cannot get five miserable five
to fifteen millions of dollars to finish their work. I
can name two companies which have wonderful, wonderful technologies. First

(01:15:03):
is olsen Biotechnologists is an American company laid by Gary Hudson.
You know them, I hope and I talked to them
a few months ago and he said that they struggled
to find a needed amount of money to finish the
gene therapy against senescen cells and against cancer. But likely

(01:15:24):
their pathna company Phusogenics, which created a fantastic delivery system
so called proteolypied vehicle, which is a microliposomus microscopic spheres
of double layer liipids which entrusted by so called phusogenic proteins.
These proteins were gathered from viruses which used them to

(01:15:47):
get into the cells through the celling brain. And the
way they use these microlipasomis with these phusogenic proteins on
their sofas. These microlipasomas are quickly use with celling brain
and deliver their moleculous inside them into the cell. And
these moleculous are usually NA or DNA for gene therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
And this unique.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Technology that much supero than traditional virus systems for delivering
gene therapy and the company Fusogenics got twenty millions of dollars,
but unfortunately not from a United States investment company, but
from a Canadian investment company. So it's quite ridiculous that

(01:16:33):
one of the most innovative American companies cannot find money
in its own country and get invested by Canadian investors.
I think it's a shame for American investors and venture
companies that they do not invest their own companies that
have technology much supero.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Than anyone have in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:16:57):
But unfortunately there is in Byteicnology company itself is still
in need of money. They still cannot find an investment
for their fantastic gene therapy that can make a revolution
in treatment of chronic inflammation and cancer. They publish interviews
about their technology in longevity technology, and I took interview

(01:17:20):
with Gary Hudson some years ago and they can be
found on my blog and medium.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
So this is one example.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
And second example is Covalent Bus Sciences company which I'm
helping now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
I'm trying to help them now.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
Already they are closing because of lack of money, and
they try to get money for seven years and unsuccessfully,
and they have as a fantastic therapy as oisin's therapy
against inflammation and cancer against innocent cells and cancer cells.
Covalent bu sciences technology is catalytic antibody technology. Of course,

(01:17:59):
know how conventional antibodies. They are widely used in medicine
today and they work in such a way. These antibodies
stick to antigens, unwanted cells or moleculars. For example, it
may be broken proteins or infectious agents like viruses or bacteria,
and they mark these unwanted agents for immune system and immune.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Cells macro facts.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
They are guided by these antibodies that sticks to the
foreign agents or unwanted or dangerous agents. They engulf these
moleculous or organisms and kill them or break them. For example,
in such a way works antibodies against alghemer disease, against
other types of amyloids or tau proteins. They stick to

(01:18:49):
these moleculars and then immune cells destroy this moleculus. But
there is a big side effect of such a way.
The side effect is acute inflammation because they activate immuni system.
It leads to acute inflammation and may lead to citachino
storm and a quick death.

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Of a patient.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
Even if they do not lead to acute inflammation it anyway,
and constant activation of immune system leads to chronic inflammation
which mainly breaks all good effects of these consequences. The
side effects this chronic inflammation shadows the good effects of

(01:19:30):
this therapy. So yes, this therapy clear for example Brian
from better ameloid, but at the same time they influence
a chronic inflammation in the bran and this chronic inflammation
do the same harm that better ameloid did previously. So
this is the reason why patients almost do not benefit

(01:19:51):
from these types of treatments. But Colin Biosciences invented a
completely new type of antipo this so called catalytic antibodies.
They work in completely another way. They do not recruit
immune system to destroy these unwanted moleculus or bacterias. They
behave like enzymes themselves. They stick to unwanted moleculars and

(01:20:15):
break them without a recruiting immune system, so there is
no chronic inflammation and because of these enzymes themselves, each
these catalytic antibody can destroy about one thousand unwanted moleculars
in a soccle before it will be destroyed itself, so
it's a fantastic therapy that will change the game in

(01:20:38):
treating out immune and neurodegenerative conditions. And they need about
five to fifteen millions of dollars to finish their work,
and they cannot get them for whole seven years. I
now try to help them, and I'm looking for investors
in Israel and Canadian now and I will try to

(01:20:58):
communicate with our Perhaden because these people are really tired
of this uncertainty and they decided to close their company
because they cannot believe they can get money for their work.
These people walk in the lab or in Texas University
in Houston, and medical center in Texas University in Houston

(01:21:20):
is the biggest medical center, the biggest university is medical
center in the whole world. And I really cannot understand
why no government, no private investors want to invest a
real bioengineering and regenerative medicine companies.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
And I can see a big big shift in.

Speaker 3 (01:21:38):
Funding from real lab work companies, wet lub companies too,
so called digital health companies. But it is important to
know that human health is biological, not digital, and mobile
up cannot cure people and reverse their agent.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Only true that therapy can.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
Even their Computer modeling is widely used in biomedical engineering,
for example, to model some drug to target interaction, to
predict their behavior, to construct and design new moleculars small
moleculars and biological moleculars like proteins, for example, but it's
completely nather type of research. The computer modeling in bimedical

(01:22:19):
engineering is a completely valid type of research that is
helpful in designing new therapies, but just creating rice so
called artificial intelligence systems that allegedly can main databases of
small moleculars and predict their usability of label use, I

(01:22:40):
think is a complete waste of money because we cannot
get any new information from this.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
We just spend.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
Electricity, computer resources, and investors' money for nothing. In fact,
and such things harm our economy and healthcare and how
many more people must die to The investors' attitude is
towards true regenerative medicine, and I think there are two
reasons why investors are in favor of so called digital

(01:23:09):
health companies as opposed to that bio engineering companies.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
One of the reasons is just.

Speaker 3 (01:23:15):
A lack of knowledge and a misconception because investors is
just people and many of them do not have enough
knowledge in bodics, biology, bio engineering, medicine. They think that
and artificial intelligence and so called digital.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Health is very popular now.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
Everyone talk about them, and they think that it's school
things because people talk about them and they want to
invest in cool things, and they invest in them just.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
Because of lack of knowledge.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
The other reason is much more dangerous because these people,
these investors who invest in these kind of companies initially
do not want to get useful results. All I want
is to invest in a company some money, then make
a bubble from that company, so their price would be
much bigger than their investments. And they'll then sell that

(01:24:12):
company to another investor, a secondary investor, and this secondary
investor will do the same. They will put some money
in this company and make even bigger bubble from that company,
and finally sell to the third investor, who usually will
be some big pharma company that can pay billions of

(01:24:33):
dollars for that company, and many big pharma companies by company,
not to make some result from it, but just in case,
just to get rid of a concurrence. So only result
from this chain of bubbles is spend of money. And
finally big pharmer will pay for that without getting anything useful.

(01:24:55):
And I think at least my duty is to inform
public or people about these two reasons and to fight
them by first giving people through information about which approaches
work and which approaches do not work, and secondly say
about such bad schemes when people make a bubble from

(01:25:18):
companies just to sell it for high price. And on
the one.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Side of the spectra is such.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
And amazing companies like oison By Technologies and Compalant Bar Sciences.
The other side of the spectra, for example, I will
not name these companies to not make them free advertisements,
but you all know them and this company get really
big money, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
For example, one of.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
These companies got twenty million dollars from Jim Mellon without
any supporting date and for whattch and the seal of
this company pretend to be a researcher, but.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
In fact his Facebook is full.

Speaker 3 (01:26:02):
Of photographs from conferences, airports, gyms and beautiful girls. And
at the same time he has more publications than many
real researchers. Mike Coligues who invented these amazing catalytic County
boardies from covalent both sciences, for example, and he's only
forty five years old, and it's a shame from.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
My point of view.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
Okay, before I will continue the last section about medical regulation,
I ask you for questions.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
All right, thank you, Ariel, and I will note that
you are to be applauded for your efforts to save
covalent biosciences and this seems to be a larger tendency
within the field of longevity. That funding has greatly diminished
over the past several years, especially around twenty twenty two

(01:26:55):
to today, compared to the preceding five years or so,
the funding has really dried up, and so a lot
of companies or charities that focus on we lab research
are experiencing difficulties attracting either investors or donors, and this
does need to change, and we in the Transhumanist Party

(01:27:18):
would urge for more funding for such research from any sources.
And if you are a private individual with the means
to support such organizations, please do so. I'll also ask
art Ramon if he has any questions before we move them.

Speaker 6 (01:27:33):
Just a few observations.

Speaker 7 (01:27:35):
Since I've sort of been involved with transhumanism, I used
to see a lot of articles on super soldiers.

Speaker 6 (01:27:41):
I'm not saying these articles.

Speaker 7 (01:27:42):
Anymore any taug of super soldiers. And one of the
reasons I thought they were sort of onetain. I'd say
I was a person involved in Darba H. You know,
I would want super human super soldiers to send them
out into deep space, and you know deep space it
could take forever, so you want someone with you know,

(01:28:03):
a long lifespan. But I think somewhere along the line
they decided that maybe it's better to just go digital.
You have artificial intelligence and the robotic platforms, and not
worry about having a long aged human outdoing deep exploration
because you know, mental health issues family that could be

(01:28:24):
more problematic.

Speaker 6 (01:28:25):
And maybe it has decided to.

Speaker 7 (01:28:27):
Cut out the super sodial program of longevity.

Speaker 6 (01:28:32):
That's my thinking from just what and then you have
to do.

Speaker 7 (01:28:36):
A use of AI in using AI to help you
find you know, a solution to the longevity. So maybe
they just decided to put all thebody into the digital.

Speaker 6 (01:28:47):
Part and not the biological. Just just my observation over
the years.

Speaker 3 (01:28:52):
Okay, what is the question, No questions, It was just
about question if you want to respond to any if
you know anything that, feel.

Speaker 6 (01:29:01):
Free to respond.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
Yes, there is some people who talk about so called
mind applauding, but I quite skeptical about it, because any
digital copy of the human mind will be just a copy,
so it will not help the biological original in any way.
So I prefer another way to switch from the biological

(01:29:24):
human nature to something on another fundament. In fact, it
is possible and there is no contradiction in that. The
approach to do that was suggested by Polish science fiction
writer stanislavlem as loan As in fifties or sixties years
of the twenties century. And the approach is that we

(01:29:47):
do not make a digital copy by the human mind
by some sort of recording their electricical activity. But we
since human brain consists of individual cells, we just replace
cell by cell by artificial cells nature biological cells by
artificial cells, and during this course, which will take some

(01:30:09):
long time, the brain finally will consist only of artificial cells.
In such a way, we will really switch human brain
from biological nature to some artificial nature without interrupting the
human identity. Because human identity is a continuous process. It's

(01:30:29):
not a state, it's a process. It's a continuous process,
and to preserve human identity we must not intrope this process.
So in such a way we can replace human brain
by artificial brain, just by replacing cell by cell during
some long time. And similar approaches are tied to so

(01:30:50):
called nanomachinists approaches or nanomedicine, where small tiny micro nanomachinists
the size of a virus or bacteria are in world,
and they program it to regenerate human organism and putting
into our bloodstream, they can multiply and finally replace all
human cells by artificial constructions, and so this human will

(01:31:15):
not be of biological nature anymore, but some kind of
sort of artificial nature. But of course all these proposals
currently are highly speculative and there are some technical problems
in implementing them, even though they are completely valid from
a theoretical point of view. Unfortunately, we still do not

(01:31:36):
have such a technology to implement it for now, and
as a physicist see some very big problems in implementing
nan machinists. For example, as you know, all our big
machinists communicate using electromagnetic waves. But the issue is that
all nanomachinists are smaller than the length of the electromagnetic wave,

(01:31:58):
even very small wave, so to communicate they use some
sort of very short wave for example X rays, That
of course impossible inside the human organism, so we have
to invade another way of communication between the net of nanomachinists.
So there is a big problem I'm thinking about, and
I want to consult with other physicists about what they

(01:32:21):
think about solving it. So this is why I think
we must put all our efforts for now for a
VET bioengineering approach. And of course a problem with long
term space flights can be solved by either creating nearly
infinitely long humans by implementing a DiamondSure pay approach, together

(01:32:42):
with for example, using some sort of suspended animation, which
also I know there was a program in NASA to
study possible suspended animation implementing suspended animation for humans, and
there were some progress, but I cannot see any use
recent news about it, so I don't know whether this

(01:33:03):
program is still exists or work or was closed. But
of course this is a very important, very important and
valid area of research. Spend it animation of humans. It
can be used not only in long term spaceflight, but
to saving lives of those individuals who cannot be cured
just now and can be put in a low temperature

(01:33:25):
state to preserve body to be revived and cured somewhere
in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
Yes, thank you very much for that answer. And now
please proceed with the concluding portion of your presentation.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
Okay, this is not in fact a conclusion. I hope
a conclusion will be given by you. I will finish
my conversation with a fifth part of it, and it
is about problems with medical regulation, and I think that
it is another problem, very big problem. One of the
main problems I think is excessive medical regulation, which causes

(01:34:03):
lack of translational research, especially in Europe, UK and the US.
The irony is that these countries make almost all biomedical
research on our planet, and some guys calculated that bringing
new therapy to the US market now costs about two
and five billion dollars and fifteen years on average. Even

(01:34:26):
there on average cannot tell us the whole picture, and
some new therapists like immune therapists for cancer, for example,
or gene therapists for life threatening conditions, were approved in
merely five years. These numbers are scary. One issue is
that these rules for clinical trials were written and had
some sense for the pharmaceuticals therapists based on small mediculas

(01:34:50):
whose behavior and whose side effects are really hard to predict.
Unlike them, biological therapiests or so called biologics be designed
to be metabolically inert because they just eliminate the key damage.
They do not need to interfer with metabolism, so it
is much easier for them than usual to avoid side

(01:35:12):
effects and interactions.

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):
With other therapists.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
For example, gene therapy does not inhibit your liver enzymes
or overlord your kidneys. Like many small molecular treatments, there
consist of the same moleculars irona, proteins, lipids, like human
organisms does when they have done their job, they are
just quickly degraded by cells or machinery. So all biologics

(01:35:37):
consist of the same building blocks of the same moleculars
that all other moleculars in human organisms, so there is
no difference between them and when they done their job.
The cell machinery like ironazes, sell enzymes, like ironazes, proteases
s lipazes. They break all these components of the gene, cell,

(01:35:59):
or immune or enzyme therapy to their primary molecules and
they are used again in the human organism.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
So this new common.

Speaker 3 (01:36:07):
Medicine uses completely different repair basets rather than compensatery approach
and needs completely different clinical trials protocols and the whole
new health paradigm the health party which is not disease
oriented or symptoms oriented like current medical paradigm, but damage
oriented paradigm. And I think these have to be implemented

(01:36:31):
in the FDA documents and current policy making in medical area.
Another much more important issue is that no one wants
to take responsibility for patients health and life. Regular lettors
prefer patients to die from their pathology rather than from
the therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
This is because in.

Speaker 3 (01:36:52):
Our system, in our current system, if patient who will
die anyway from his or her condition from pathology, this
is considered to be normal and no one can be
accused of crime because they cannot save a life of
a patient if this patient die of an incurable condition. However,

(01:37:12):
if patient dies from the new experimental therapy, all people
from the regulation and clinical chine can be charged and
can be accused of crime. So for them it is
much safer to do nothing than do anything. They cannot
be charged when millions of people die because they don't
approve new experimental therapy, so they are not interested in

(01:37:35):
bringing new therapies to the clinic. This is much scarier,
and the most important is that it is not because
of these people are bad and they hate other people
and do want to cure them. But this is just
a feature of the system, just because they do not
want to risk their own lives and their careers.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
So it must to be changed. I believe just imaging.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):
Millions of people die from conditions we can already cure,
and the a few countries which has enough resources to
work on them, make such therapies illegal in failing attempt
to save the status score, while clinical trials bottleneck is
so narrow that many therapists will not see their patients
for many more years. Meanwhile, many Asian countries show green

(01:38:24):
light for new experimental therapies, for example the Fast Track
Approval system in Japan, which was introduced back in twenty
fourteen years.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
The system I aimed.

Speaker 3 (01:38:34):
To increase access to regenerative medicines by introducing laws that
allow for emergent treatments to be used so long that
they have been proven safe that the only hints of
their effectiveness.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
It means in.

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
The United States terms, that therapy can be used in
clinic just after safety trials.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
Just after safety.

Speaker 3 (01:38:58):
Trials face it can be used in clinics, and the
other results that need to give this therapy raial medical
status will gather it during the course of its pine
in clinics, so people have a chance to be cured
by this new therapy if it really works.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
And this system is aimed to.

Speaker 3 (01:39:19):
Increase access to the generative medicines Pentodius laws and that
allows for emergent treatments to be used so long as
they have been proven safe with only hints of their effectiveness.
The idea is that as patients reserve these safe treatments,
more conclusive date on their efficacy can be gathered thereafter.
This negates the need for large scale clinical trials that

(01:39:40):
take place over several years and cost.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
Hundreds of millions.

Speaker 3 (01:39:44):
As a counter example, in the USA, because of insane regulation,
it is almost impossible to release emergent therapy to the
market and the cost of the process, including clinical trials
is at least two and five billion dollars. The spit
of the big number of inventions by American scientists and
engineers the first place in the world by invention American researchers.

(01:40:07):
Only a few of these therapists have entered human clinical trials,
and only a few of them have reached the market. Finally,
and many such therapies are already in development of clinical trials,
and others will arrive in the coming years. And this
new emerging medicine uses completely different as I said above,
repair basic rather than compensatory approach and needs different clinical

(01:40:29):
trials protocols. And the whole new health parody and traditional
period has already begun and we should use it wisely
to save more human leaves. But on the other hand,
prohibitions force people to be inventive, and biohickers arouse in
the USA and not other countries. After all, the first
bio hickers were the USA resoldiers. So to unswer the

(01:40:51):
original problem, I think there are three key points in
the fight for better medicine. First, development of regenerative therapy
and treatments, whose mechanism is the elimination of molecular and
silver damage that causes generatic diseases and agent pathologies. Second
is reduction of regulation of emergent therapiest in regenerative medicine.

(01:41:14):
The lovering of regulation is very important if you want
to make the progress the medical progress more quickly. And third,
last but not least, an education in regenerative medicine so
that people, including physicians and policymakers know about emerging therapies
and can help in their implementation and entering the clinics

(01:41:36):
at least by fulfilling these key points.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):
And for that, I want to.

Speaker 3 (01:41:40):
Establish a completely free and online by medical engineering and
regenerative medicine conference via some platform like Google, Meet or
Zoom to bring attention to all these problems and invite
more people from all over the world to solve these problems.
And I ask everyone who can help in debt to

(01:42:02):
help us to make this conference, because almost all conferences
are offline and paid, and so not everyone have money
and ability to travel to another part of the world
and spend a few thousand dollars to participate in conferences,
and many researchers have no time no money for that

(01:42:24):
and their work are not known for many investors unfortunately,
so it must be fixed. And finally, I want to
say that if any of American policymakers, government officials, or
private investors now listen to us.

Speaker 2 (01:42:41):
I would be glad to help all you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
As a consultant to make America more healthy and better.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
Thank you, yes, thank you very much, Ariel for that
very thorough presentation where you covered the various facets of
the problem we're seeing in terms of regenerative medicine and
the field of longevity more broadly not making as much

(01:43:09):
progress as we would like. And you covered both the
scientific aspects of this, the lack of investment in or
appreciation of the damage repair approach, as well as the
political aspects with grant giving agencies like the National Institutes

(01:43:33):
of Health as well as the excessive regulation of new
medical procedures, devices, drugs, therapies that stand in the way.
And then, of course there's the broader problem of public
opinion and how to get the broader society to support

(01:43:55):
these endeavors. Because I think politicians respond to public pressure,
and if there comes about a large public constituency that
will demand advancements in longevity science and in effective rejuvenation
treatments using the damage repair approach, then the politicians will

(01:44:17):
seek to allocate funding to make that happen. And moreover,
there will be larger numbers of private investors who will
also be convinced by the broader messaging to the public
and will contribute their funds. But I agree that this
is a difficult period for the longevity field because it

(01:44:38):
does seem like many of the best and most promising companies,
as well as nonprofit organizations. A good example is LEVF,
the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, which Aubrey De Gray now runs,
need a lot more funding than they are getting. So
Aubrey de Gray has stated that to conclude the second

(01:45:00):
Robust Mouse or juvenation study and collect all the data
that would be helpful on the combinations of interventions that
would be tested in that study, which is even going
to be more ambitious than the recently concluded first Robust
Mouse rejuvenation study, he is going to need on the
order of six million dollars. Now, in terms of how

(01:45:21):
much scientific funding gets allocated in total, six million dollars
is not a lot of money, and if enough people
of means were persuaded to understand and agree with the
validity of his approach and the promising nature of his approach,
that money would be forthcoming. But we have a task
ahead of us, and this is a task of the

(01:45:41):
broader community of transhumanists of longevity advocates. This is why
the US Transhumanist Party exists. This is why we hold
these virtual Enlightenment salons to bring light to these kinds
of issues, these kinds of obstacles, and deliberate about how
they may overcome. So Ariol, thank you very much for

(01:46:02):
joining us today. Unfortunately our time has come to an end,
but this is certainly a discussion that needs to continue
within our broader community so that we may all live
long and prosper

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
Thank you, good luck,

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