This Nobel Prize Discovery Changes Everything - David Friedberg

Speaking of prospering, how far off are we from age reversal, do you think? >> That's one I'm most excited about. Um So, have you looked at Yamanaka factors? Have you Have you talked about this on your show before? >> Uh David Sinclair's been on, and I know that he's sort of tangentially associated with it, but assume no. Do the 30,000-ft view of the Yamanaka factors. >> So, every cell in our body has the same DNA, okay? Uh we know that, and the DNA is in every cell because of a process called mitosis. Every time we make a new cell from the time we're in the womb to today, we're making new cells, both uh our entire DNA gets copied over into every cell. But, what makes my eye look and act differently than my skin? If it's got the same DNA, how's it different? How's it different than my brain or my tongue or my feet? They're all They're all Those are different cells. There's different cells in different organs in the body. Those cells are different because the genes in the DNA are on or off. >> Mhm. >> So, there's a bunch of switches, and the switches are either on or off. And that creates cellular differentiation. It's It's what makes one cell different from another cell. The eye cell different from the heart cell, different from the skin cell or the lung cell. And the switches that are on or off are these little molecular switches. They're molecules that sit on top of the DNA, and they keep that gene from working. It blocks it off. And then the other gene is open, and when it's open, that means that your cell is making RNA copies of that gene and turning it into a protein. >> Zeros and ones. >> Zeros and ones, and each gene makes a unique protein. The proteins that then come out do a bunch of stuff. They're machines. They're molecular machines. And they're constantly doing all this stuff in your cell, and that's what makes every cell different is what genes are on and what genes are off. And the complexity of this is astounding. If you were to think about a cell being the size of Manhattan, so imagine a cell is a is a is a city the size of Manhattan with 500 story tall buildings. That's how big it would be. And every person is a protein. There's 10 billion people living in this 500 story tall building island of Manhattan going in between the buildings up and down all day long building stuff together never sleeping always working running into each other having coffee making stuff together breaking stuff together working 10 billion of us those are the proteins in the cell in one cell running around doing stuff for 80 years. That's one second in one cell. That's how complex this is. So the proteins that are on or off matter a lot and then they make stuff so that's why the eye cell does totally different stuff than the brain cell or the heart cell. As we get older this is the current science on this. It looks like what happens is we have DNA breaks. DNA gets damaged from radiation and sunlight and bad eating and alcohol and all the other As those DNA breaks happen your cell actually fixes the DNA. It's very good at fixing it. Goes in there's a bunch of proteins they're the worker proteins that are repaired proteins they go in and they fix the DNA. Every time the DNA gets fixed there's a chance that those ones and zeros those ons and offs get moved around a little bit. And as they get moved around over time they get moved to the wrong place. So what ends up happening over time is that the wrong genes get turned on and the right genes can get turned off in a cell. And then that cell stops working right. Stops the eye cell stops doing what it's supposed to be doing. The heart cell stops getting the right electrical cascade to flow through the other cells. All of the cells the the skin cell becomes a little wrinkled and eventually if enough of those cells have those epigenetic is what it's called epigenetic errors you start getting wrinkles your heart stops beating as well. You go blind all these sorts of things happen with aging. It looks like the root of all disease may be aging. And aging is a disease. So it is a disease rooted in the fact that the epigenetic factors these little molecules, move around in the wrong place. That's what we discovered is basically aging. In 2006, a guy named Shinya Yamanaka found that he could take four proteins and put them on a cell. They would go into the cell and they would move all of those epigenetic markers, those ones and zeros, to make that cell into a stem cell, which can then be turned into any other cell in the body. So, that was the magic thing he won the Nobel Prize for. In 2016, another scientist published a series of papers showing that instead of putting a lot of those four proteins on the cell, you could put a small amount. And if you put a small amount, instead of resetting all those molecular markers and making that cell back into a stem cell, what it actually does it just moves those markers back to where they're supposed to be to make it a young cell. And suddenly that retinal cell becomes like a young retinal cell. The skin cell becomes a young skin cell. The heart cell becomes a young heart cell. All of these cells get reset. And they did this in mice and they made the mice age to like 250 plus years old. They put it in monkeys, the wrinkles went away. And they've done it in um specifically applying it to retinal cells in the eye and reversed blindness. >> So, this is Sinclair's stuff, right? >> Sinclair has one of these companies that's in clinical trials now. And there's dozens of others. Altos Labs is like one of the most funded startups in history that no one talks about. Um they've raised, you know, close to probably 10 billion dollars at this point uh to pursue these technologies. But basically what this means is we are now discovering not just the four proteins, but a whole bunch of other little molecules that we can put into a cocktail either we're going to drink it, take it as a shot, uh uh or take it as a pill, it will get into our cells and it will reset the epigenetic of that cell to make it young again. They're starting with targeting diseases, like a particular like like blindness or glaucoma in the eye or, you know, rheumatoid arthritis or some other heart issue, and they're applying these factors to the cells in that tissue only. >> Locally. >> Locally. But over time what will end up happening is this becomes a systemic treatment. And they're already doing it in animal models. And then you can either do it continuously, or what I think will end up happening is we'll probably have a system whereby these factors will be continued When I say the word factor, I mean protein. These proteins can be continuously made and released inside our body as they're needed. >> Mhm. >> So, we maintain our youth. And we will live, theoretically, for as long as we want. That's where this is headed. And the technology shows now that we can do this in animals. We can re- re-dose them, re-dose them, and keep them young. >> done systemically yet? Cuz it's You mentioned it was >> is the mouse the mouse model where they made these mice the equivalent of like having someone live like 200-plus years old. You know, and this is like so early. They haven't even optimized the molecule. They haven't optimized how you deliver the molecule. They haven't optimized the dosing. They haven't optimized the method of the do- Like there's all these techniques that are going to be developed on top of this. For every 1 year we can extend average human lifespan, we're adding tens of trillions of dollars to GDP, right? So, this is also another big economic driver. But it's not just how long people live, it's how healthy they are, and how energetic they are, and how happy they can be, and they can now go out and not feel all the pain and have the disease. You know, theoretically, this can lead to a reversal in rates of cancer proliferation, a reversal in diabetes, a reversal in many of these other diseases that are fundamentally rooted in this kind of failure of your epigenome, the the markers that are turn your genes on and off. So, this is a technology category that I am like I think it's one of these other things that you can kind of think about the compounding effect. Free energy, right? Like AI, automation, um uh and, you know, infinite labor uh for people to do all the things they want to do, and potentially living forever. I mean, you start to think about how these all kind of compound. That's why I'm excited about the future. Like these very quickly become these sort of compounding effects that drive us into a happier tomorrow. And then again, it becomes a question of abundance. How do you want to spend your time? You know, again, 100 years ago, I don't think people would have had the job option of being a yoga instructor or being a podcaster or being a wedding photographer, you know, go down the list. Like there's so many things that people have found joy in doing with their time and they can be productive doing it. I think more of that starts to happen tomorrow. And it's less of the like you got to go work the corporate shitty job on a trading floor in a corporate office at a cubicle or, you know, in a factory or all the things that maybe we will look back one day and say, "Hey, that was kind of limiting human potential." Like maybe humans could do a lot more and maybe they should. And these shifts to more abundance give us that opportunity to do that. >> How far do you think we're off from getting to the stage where we can do age reversal? One decade, five decades? >> Way less than that. Way less than that. We are in clinical trials now on several of these cocktails. And if there's always a a risk in going from animals to humans, but we've done it with human cells in um uh in vitro and in a Petri dish and we see the effects that we are expecting to see. So, we have a lot of reasons to believe that you know, over the next 10 to 20 years um more of this starts to proliferate. >> You've heard Peter Diamandis's idea of longevity escape velocity, right? That you need to stick about every year that you live means that you're going to live a little bit longer. But that when you cross a particular threshold, you just need to stick about until this happens essentially or whatever the equivalent is, whatever the technology is >> Yeah. >> that allows you to extend lifespan indefinitely. >> it's fair. >> You just hold on. Hold on. It's it's probably the best long-termist view for looking after your health. >> Yeah. >> That now is not the time to it. >> Right, totally. >> Because in the past, there wasn't really any reason to think about. Yeah, you're going to live 80 years >> Yeah, and that's >> 70 years or 60 years, but you you know, you're playing around with fives and tens. >> Yeah. >> Whereas if the difference is between 80 and 100 or 80 and 120, >> Yeah, you're like, "Hey, keep it together." And by the way, a lot of like the number one thing you can do to fix your epigenome, which you can do without taking these drugs, is exercise. >> Fasting. >> Ex- Well, fasting helps. >> Yeah. >> Uh fasting does have an effect, but exercise like exercise releases molecules that in many cells in your body will go in and start to address the epigenome and make you more youthful. And then there's other things that you can start to take. Some of this peptide stuff that people are crazy about has shown that it has an effect. Um some of the I I don't want to be prescriptive on these things. 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