Latest / Core Memory / She's Here To Make Dogs (And Then Humans) Live Longer - EP 40 Celine Halioua

Transcript

She's Here To Make Dogs (And Then Humans) Live Longer - EP 40 Celine Halioua · Core Memory

0:00
And then if you don't mind scooching that way down a little
0:04
bit,
0:07
and then you can see yourself.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: Make sure.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, my hair looks good.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay, the hair is optimal.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's going to think I can develop dog alone to have any drugs,
0:15
SPEAKER_01: but my hair looks like shit,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: actually.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, you can be comfy with the bike.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: They're pretty good.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Does that feel all right?
0:23
SPEAKER_01: That feels great.
0:24
I was doing an interview with a guy who's a rapper the other
0:27
day,
0:27
and he was like this.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Because I guess that's how you rap.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
0:31
the mic right there right up yeah yeah and i was like oh i
0:35
thought you were talking
0:35
about like a job interview for so i was like who are you what
0:39
position are you
0:39
hiring this guy for no it was some like social media rapper
0:44
dude um he like does
0:46
freestyles and one of our investors like brought him to an
0:49
investor like portco
0:51
off-site and had him like rap about our companies it was
0:54
actually the sickest thing
0:55
SPEAKER_01: ever so he did a freestyle rap about loyal
0:57
SPEAKER_00: And did he like, he did them on the fly?
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Totally on the fly.
1:00
Just like did a little interview and then asked me for like a
1:03
couple of like
1:04
SPEAKER_01: technical words from developing drugs.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, GMP and pathological aging.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: And he just like weaved it into a whole, whole narrative.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: So like that part of yours would be hard.
1:15
The other part was probably like a welcome change over like a
1:19
SAS software.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Dogs and humans should be a little more.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, he was a cat person, so it was a little extra tough for him.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:29
No,
1:29
but I mean,
1:29
at least you'd have something to hang on to as opposed to like.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: B2B SAS.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Or some AI.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: I guess AI is a new like insult now.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, some AI rapper.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: I saw you tweeting about some of that stuff.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Dude, shit's so stupid.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, AI is cool.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: But, like, there's more important things.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: There are.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're going to talk about them.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
1:54
SPEAKER_01: Fuck yeah.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: All right.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Celine Halliwa, thank you for coming to the studio.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Ashley Vance, thank you for having me.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: You have six names, right?
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do them all?
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Celine Leah, Gerda Juliet, Halliwa Hobbled.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and are there hyphens in there?
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Hyphens, I have three hyphens.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: And what is, your dad's German, your mom's from Ethiopia.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Morocco.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Morocco, okay.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: And then, I mean, where are the hyphens all, how do we figure this out?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: So the funny story is my parents did not intend to have me at all.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And I don't even know if they thought they could still have kids.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: My mom had me at like 43 or 44.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: And I was like the only kid and like on either side.
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And they were just like,
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oh my God,
2:54
like this is our like last chance to be immortalized.
2:58
And so everyone in the family wanted their name incorporated
3:02
into my name.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And so all the names are in my name.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Leah is my grandma.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: Celine is one of my grandmas.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Leah was, I think, another grandma.
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SPEAKER_01: Gerda is a grandma on my father's side.
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SPEAKER_01: Juliet's my mom's sister.
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SPEAKER_01: Holly was my mom's last name.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Hobbled's my dad's last name.
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SPEAKER_00: That feels like greedy.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: I guess it's nice.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, I'm from the generation of Scantrons.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: And so having to Scantron in my name.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean.
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SPEAKER_00: Horrifying.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't even fit.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't spell my name for a long time.
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SPEAKER_00: So you just get as far as you can go.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Like all my IDs have different versions and combinations,
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which gets you in trouble because you could always buy a ticket
3:46
on one form,
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SPEAKER_01: but then it's incorrect in the other form.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I could see that.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: You know?
3:50
SPEAKER_00: The problem.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: But hey, I think it's fun.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was actually always curious about that.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: So now I know.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: I know.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: I know.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: It's first gen problems, you know?
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: All right.
4:00
Well,
4:00
I'm going to tell the audience what you do,
4:02
and then we'll go explore.
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SPEAKER_00: That's good.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: I think I wrote the first story ever.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: You did.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: I was telling somebody that yesterday, actually.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: What year was that?
4:12
SPEAKER_01: 21?
4:12
SPEAKER_00: 21.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Something like that, I would assume.
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SPEAKER_00: That's got to be about right.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And so-
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SPEAKER_00: The premise back then was the same as the premise now.
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SPEAKER_00: You guys came out of stealth mode.
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SPEAKER_00: You were in the longevity arena, I guess you could say.
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SPEAKER_00: And you were coming up with therapeutics to help dogs live longer.
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SPEAKER_00: And this was part of a...
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A plan of yours to do dogs first and then hopefully do humans
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to kind of pave the
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SPEAKER_00: way for the FDA,
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SPEAKER_00: for people to start thinking about medications in the longevity field,
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SPEAKER_00: increasing lifespan as a thing.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
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You could treat as opposed to just like treating an illness and
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to like have people
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SPEAKER_00: wrap their heads around this.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: I remember when you – and before that,
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SPEAKER_00: you'd been an investor in this area,
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SPEAKER_00: one of the first and major investors alongside Laura Deming.
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SPEAKER_00: And I remember when you came up with this plan.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I –
5:13
I just knew,
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you know,
5:15
I knew that getting drugs approved is this long,
5:19
arduous process.
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SPEAKER_00: And so you wanted to do it for dogs.
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And so you were looking for compounds that could help increase
5:26
dogs' health and lifespan.
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SPEAKER_00: And then here we are.
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SPEAKER_00: So that was probably roughly four years ago.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:33
This is a big task ahead of you,
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but you guys have,
5:35
you guys have gotten quite far.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: We are closer, closer than not.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: It's our ball of fumble at this point,
5:42
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
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which is kind of crazy because there were so many existential
5:47
kill points between
5:49
SPEAKER_01: idea formation and today that
5:51
That I just can't believe we've gone through,
5:55
knock on wood,
5:56
gotten through all these.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's been really impressive.
5:58
So you're,
5:59
you're currently,
6:00
if I'm right,
6:01
you're pursuing three different compounds.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, publicly.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: We have more.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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SPEAKER_00: And then there's one that's like this lead candidate for older dogs.
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SPEAKER_00: And that just a couple months ago got this new FDA.
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SPEAKER_00: You're not like fully FDA,
6:20
SPEAKER_00: I could just order this,
6:21
but you got sort of the blessing that it seems to be working in
6:26
the studies.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Is that the right way to kind of phrase it?
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: the way to think about it is,
6:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:30
SPEAKER_01: you can't go to your vet and get prescribed this drug today.
6:33
But,
6:33
you know,
6:34
the hardest part about all parts of developing drugs are hard.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: But one of the hardest parts is,
6:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: meeting the FDA's bar for does this drug do what it says it does?
6:45
SPEAKER_01: And so we basically have met the efficacy bar for conditional approval,
6:49
which will allow us to bring it to market once we get safety
6:52
and manufacturing
6:53
SPEAKER_01: done,
6:53
SPEAKER_01: too.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: All right, what do we do at Core Memory?
6:55
SPEAKER_00: We cover innovative,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: fast-moving,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: forward-thinking companies,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: which is why Core Memory is sponsored by Brex,
7:04
because Brex is the intelligent finance platform for many of
7:09
these companies,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: 30,000 companies from startups to the world's largest corporations.
7:15
rely on brex's technology for their finances they've got smart
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corporate cards high
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yield business banking and expense automation tools that are
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fantastic i hate doing
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my expenses and brex's ai's and software run right through
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those expenses figure
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out where we're spending money and take care of so much stuff
7:36
for you so you don't
7:37
SPEAKER_00: have to waste your time on it yourself
7:40
Go to brex.com slash core memory to learn more and just,
7:44
you know,
7:45
get with the program.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Let's get going.
7:46
Let's get out of this archaic finance software and move toward
7:51
the future.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Core memory and Brex.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: And I was doing a bunch of reading before you came in,
7:56
SPEAKER_00: and I might be conflating things,
7:58
but was one of the goals with this particular therapy is one
8:04
year longer lifespan?
8:06
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the main...
8:07
SPEAKER_00: The main thing you guys are talking about.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Just one, at least one healthier year for the average senior dog.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Which would be pretty sick if we can deliver on that promise.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: And when you guys say senior dog, it just means an older dog.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:21
Like the on-label criteria will be 10 years and 14 pounds and
8:24
up for this drug.
8:25
And then we have a couple of other drugs that are for large dog
8:27
lifespan extension.
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SPEAKER_01: And those can be started sooner because big dogs age faster.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: So,
8:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:33
SPEAKER_01: a 10-year-old chihuahua is in,
8:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:36
SPEAKER_01: maybe a little bit over 60% of its life versus a 10-year-old Great Dane,
8:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:40
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't exist.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: They've often passed away before then.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And part of doing this was setting up a clinical trial for dogs.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: A goddamn trial.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: A goddamn trial.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: How many dogs do you have to put through a clinical trial,
8:56
SPEAKER_00: and how do you organize a clinical trial for dogs?
8:59
So we are currently running what we believe to be the largest
9:04
ever animal health
9:06
SPEAKER_01: clinical trial,
9:07
SPEAKER_01: point blank period,
9:08
SPEAKER_01: just extremely big.
9:10
But also the first ever clinical trial that's FDA enabling
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double-blinded,
9:15
SPEAKER_01: placebo-controlled,
9:16
SPEAKER_01: FDA concurred,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: blah,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: blah,
9:17
SPEAKER_01: blah.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: for a drug for lifespan and healthspan extension.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So it is a longevity pivotal trial.
9:25
And the point of this study is to hopefully definitively
9:29
quantify the lifespan and
9:31
SPEAKER_01: healthspan benefits of our drug over a placebo.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: And the problem with the testing and aging and longevity drug is
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, one problem is it just takes a long time.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure we'll talk more about this,
9:43
but this was one of the reasons we started in dogs was it takes
9:46
a long time in any
9:47
SPEAKER_01: species,
9:48
SPEAKER_01: but it takes way less of a time in dogs than it does in humans,
9:51
SPEAKER_01: right?
9:51
It's going to be four to five years we expect during the study
9:54
versus it would be
9:55
SPEAKER_01: decades to do it for you.
9:58
um but the other complexity is that aging is so multivariate
10:03
it's genetically
10:04
driven it's environmentally driven it's luck driven it's you
10:08
know feeding and
10:10
nutrition and exercise driven right and so we wanted to capture
10:14
that diversity of
10:16
SPEAKER_01: an aging trajectory right and to be able to show that for the average dog
10:21
regardless of what dog food you feed it or how often you go
10:24
running with your dog
10:25
SPEAKER_01: or
10:25
SPEAKER_01: blah,
10:25
SPEAKER_01: blah,
10:25
SPEAKER_01: blah,
10:26
that the average dog could expect a healthy lifespan extension
10:32
from this drug.
10:33
And basically the way you kind of drown out all that noise is
10:37
by recruiting a crap
10:38
SPEAKER_01: ton of dogs all over the U.S.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: across 70 clinical sites across the U.S.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: is a totally decentralized trial, which is also crazy.
10:47
to basically gather enough sample size so that you can see
10:52
signal through all of
10:54
that noise and you know we just fully actually overruled the
10:58
studies we initially
10:59
went out for a thousand dogs we had so much interest from the
11:01
public uh way more
11:03
interest than we could actually i'm sure take in um we've now
11:07
enrolled about 1300
11:08
SPEAKER_01: dogs in the study um and now we'll follow them for the next five years
11:13
SPEAKER_00: You guys, you had some, was it during the Oscars?
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: It was, right?
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Remind me.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing it and then now.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: It was, it was, I believe it was at Oscars.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: It was this director of beef, I think it's called.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: A TV show or a documentary.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Like the Golden Globes or something.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Um,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't watching it,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: but anyhow,
11:37
SPEAKER_01: when he,
11:38
SPEAKER_01: he got his award and during it,
11:41
SPEAKER_01: he was like,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: his last thing that he said is like,
11:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
11:43
SPEAKER_01: I do this for my family,
11:45
SPEAKER_01: named his family.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: And of course my dog's named his dog.
11:47
So like,
11:48
Hey FDA,
11:49
could you please like hurry up and get that,
11:50
uh,
11:51
dog longevity drug approved?
11:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: That was like the last thing he said and he walked off stage.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't even watching it.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: I was like at a coffee shop.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: I just got like my phone blew up.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing it.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh my God.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: I know.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: Dude, and we got a shout out on Joe Rogan yesterday, apparently.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Which isn't as cool as the Oscars or Golden Globes,
12:12
SPEAKER_01: but also like we get a lot of these little like mini shout outs.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: They're just really sweet.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: It was just Joe or somebody saying, there's this drug out there.
12:19
There's a theme here,
12:21
which is,
12:21
I also don't really listen to Joe Rogan's podcast.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Um,
12:25
SPEAKER_01: and so I didn't hear it firsthand,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: but what I was told was said was basically like,
12:30
they were just talking about how much they love their dogs and
12:32
how heartbreaking it
12:33
SPEAKER_01: is to lose their dog.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: But like,
12:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:35
there's this drug and there's this company developing these
12:37
drugs to extend dog
12:38
SPEAKER_01: lifespan and they're actually pretty close.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: So.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: It's only us.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Well,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: I only,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: I asked that because I didn't know,
12:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
12:46
were you already oversubscribed on the trial or did that sort
12:50
of media kick off
12:51
SPEAKER_00: this?
12:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
12:52
SPEAKER_01: every time we have a media anything,
12:55
SPEAKER_01: it's like,
12:56
SPEAKER_01: my inbox is like filled with dog owners asking to be in the study.
12:59
It's actually really heartbreaking because they're like,
13:01
this is my only shot.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Um...
13:04
SPEAKER_01: The biggest difficulty is like they have to live,
13:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:07
SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of eligibility criteria,
13:10
SPEAKER_01: right?
13:10
They have to live within a certain distance of a veterinary
13:12
site that's participating.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: We have a ton of sites, but does not cover all of the U.S., obviously.
13:17
They also have to know how old their dog is,
13:19
which is actually a huge challenge.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: And we have a lot of really creative solutions for that,
13:24
SPEAKER_01: like Facebook posts of like your puppy,
13:26
SPEAKER_01: when you brought home your puppy 10 years ago from the shelter.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like what do you mean?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: You have to prove it?
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Most people must have some vague idea of how...
13:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: So, like, I don't know how old Della is.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: I say she's 13, but when she's seeming kind of spry, I'll say she's 11.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: And when she's seeming old, I might say she's 14.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know how old she is, right?
13:43
SPEAKER_01: I adopted her from a shelter.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: Um...
13:47
SPEAKER_01: And so,
13:47
SPEAKER_01: but the problem is if you only accept it,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: like classically,
13:50
SPEAKER_01: if you want to verify a dog's age,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: you have a birth certificate.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: But if we did that,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: then we would only have purebred or like designer-bred dogs,
13:56
SPEAKER_01: which is a massive,
13:57
SPEAKER_01: like,
13:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:59
SPEAKER_01: confounding variable.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And so we wanted to have shelter dogs.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And so what we ended up doing was figuring out a way that, for example...
14:07
SPEAKER_01: We can actually take,
14:08
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:09
SPEAKER_01: if somebody has a photo posted on Facebook from,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:12
SPEAKER_01: whatever,
14:14
SPEAKER_01: 2014,
14:14
SPEAKER_01: being like,
14:15
SPEAKER_01: look at my cute little fluffy puppy.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: And it's plausible or,
14:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:20
SPEAKER_01: you can tell that the dog is,
14:21
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:21
SPEAKER_01: less than,
14:22
SPEAKER_01: like,
14:22
SPEAKER_01: a year of age or so.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Or even a vet visit or something.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: That actually will suffice for the study of age verification.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't be perfect.
14:30
We just have to,
14:31
you know,
14:31
you can't have a dog that we think is five actually 10 years of
14:34
age.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Right?
14:35
SPEAKER_01: It messes with the stats.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: No, that makes sense.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And then,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: okay,
14:38
so the dogs are in the study and then they take a pill and they
14:42
take the pill how
14:42
SPEAKER_00: often?
14:43
SPEAKER_01: Daily.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Daily.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And then they get monitored for how long?
14:47
SPEAKER_01: Rest of their lives.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: And so they're just,
14:49
these people are just checking in all the time and then you're
14:51
looking at metabolic
14:55
SPEAKER_00: indicators.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: No, not even that.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: We are literally just looking at lifespan,
15:00
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:01
SPEAKER_01: and quality of life,
15:02
SPEAKER_01: which is measured by the veterinarian and by the dog owner.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: Um,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: of course,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: we're also tracking adverse events,
15:07
SPEAKER_01: which in this case,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: an adverse event is like literally anything that happens to the dog.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Dog gets, you know, arthritis, dog has cataracts, right?
15:15
SPEAKER_01: Like,
15:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, in many cases, that's not likely to be related to the drug.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: But of course, you have to quantify that, characterize it.
15:21
The veterinarian has to do an investigation because you're
15:24
trying to understand how
15:25
SPEAKER_01: does this drug behave over time in dogs.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, we're also building a really big biobank.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And then you're just,
15:33
SPEAKER_00: so if you're looking for this extra year of life,
15:37
SPEAKER_00: then across this whole study,
15:39
you're looking at the breeds and what their usual lifespan is
15:42
and then just seeing,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: no,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: okay.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: No, it's literally just placebo versus treated.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, you see a differential in the lifespan between those two.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Like the mortality in those two groups over time.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And, and, um, okay.
16:00
And then going back to what you were talking about before,
16:03
like as to why you started with dogs.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I fast forwarded pretty quick just cause I knew the story, but.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Because you want to get your dog into study.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Is that why I'm here, Ashley?
16:13
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:15
just like why dogs are an interesting place to look because as
16:19
you pointed out,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: we've done these studies for decades where we have mice that get some,
16:24
SPEAKER_00: um,
16:25
concoction and they have these incredible results that they're
16:30
living twice as long
16:31
SPEAKER_00: as they used to.
16:31
And then every time we try to translate these to humans,
16:36
it never works out quite the same way.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And then nobody wants to
16:40
deal with the cost and time it would take to run a study on
16:44
humans because it's got
16:45
SPEAKER_00: to go for so long for you to be able to show some kind of results.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember when we first talked,
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
16:52
you hit on dogs because they had this lifespan that was in this
16:57
ballpark where we
16:58
SPEAKER_00: could actually...
16:59
approach this problem,
17:00
or at least that's how I remember our first chats.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: You have a good memory.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: No, that's basically it.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: So I was at,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: my quick background is I did an undergrad in neuroscience,
17:10
SPEAKER_01: started a PhD at Oxford in economics at preventative medicine,
17:13
SPEAKER_01: dropped out to go join Laura Deming at the Longevity Fund,
17:16
which was the first kind of really definitive fund investing in
17:19
therapies for
17:20
SPEAKER_01: longevity and lifespan extension.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Obviously humans was, you know, the implicit focus of that work.
17:28
And I just got really frustrated that companies that would
17:30
pitch us because,
17:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:31
SPEAKER_01: there was a lot of very cool companies,
17:33
SPEAKER_01: but they all had the same narrative of like,
17:34
SPEAKER_01: oh,
17:35
SPEAKER_01: we have this drug extends lifespan in mice.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we can't test it for aging because, of course, we can't.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: FDA won't let us.
17:42
So we're going to develop this aging drug for an acute,
17:45
usually age-related disease.
17:48
And but one day we'll like also somehow magically figure out if
17:51
it extends lifespan.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: And it just never made sense to me for a number of reasons.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Like it makes sense logistically, right?
17:57
SPEAKER_01: Like to run a human lifespan extension study.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to market and sell a drug for whatever is on the label,
18:03
SPEAKER_01: you have to run a study,
18:04
SPEAKER_01: many studies that show that the drug definitively does that.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: And that's like,
18:08
SPEAKER_01: you know,
18:09
SPEAKER_01: pretty hard for any disease,
18:11
SPEAKER_01: but it's really hard for lifespan,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: right?
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Because I give you a drug today and I'm like,
18:16
SPEAKER_01: okay,
18:17
SPEAKER_01: like let's see if this drug extends your lifespan.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I better be damn well sure it's not going to hurt you.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: The risk tolerance is basically zero because you're healthy.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Right.
18:27
I can't kill you to try to extend your lifespan on the backside
18:30
of your life.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: But also, like, let's just assume everything's super safe.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: It just takes such a long time.
18:39
to show the the remainder of the lifespan of a human being and
18:44
by the way there's
18:44
gonna be so much variance because of genetic risk because of
18:49
behavioral changes
18:50
because of environmental differences because of whatever where
18:54
you that study would
18:55
have to be insanely huge and just like i mean it's literally a
19:00
billion dollars yeah
19:01
SPEAKER_01: to run something like that and so
19:04
SPEAKER_01: I was like 24 or 25 or something.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: well,
19:07
that's crazy because I think somebody should develop and try to
19:10
get a drug approved
19:10
SPEAKER_01: for lifespan extension.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: But like, I don't know how to get a billion dollars.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of funny stories about like nearly going broke,
19:19
SPEAKER_01: like my first year in Silicon Valley.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:23
But then I realized that all these problems that were
19:25
inhibiting the ability to do
19:26
SPEAKER_01: it in humans didn't exist in dogs,
19:29
SPEAKER_01: right?
19:29
SPEAKER_01: You can see a dog's, you know, biological aging in about six months.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: You could see lifespan extension in four to five years,
19:37
SPEAKER_01: which is still a long time,
19:38
SPEAKER_01: but like much more reasonable in decades.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and by the way, people absolutely adore dogs.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: In some ways, they kind of adore dogs more than they are themselves.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And people want it.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: And so if you can extend a dog's lifespan, it's a really big market.
19:53
It's very,
19:54
like,
19:55
it's super difficult,
19:56
but it's,
19:57
like,
19:57
logistically feasible.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: And,
19:59
SPEAKER_01: oh,
19:59
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
20:00
we have this super unique relationship with dogs where we've
20:02
co-evolved with them.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: We share an environment with them.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: They get the same age-related diseases we do.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: They're exposed to the same food that we are.
20:09
And so if something extends a lifespan in a dog,
20:11
it's not one-to-one,
20:12
right?
20:13
SPEAKER_01: But it's certainly a much higher probability than doing it in a mouse.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: like you say,
20:17
where we've cured cancer in a mouse God knows how many times
20:20
and not translated
20:22
SPEAKER_01: that to humans,
20:24
SPEAKER_01: a dog's a much higher probability of success.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think nobody else had hit on this idea before?
20:31
SPEAKER_00: When you lay it out, it makes sense.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: When you told me the first time, I was like, this makes so much sense.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And there were like,
20:37
SPEAKER_00: there are these long running dog aging studies from universities,
20:41
SPEAKER_00: but nobody had really zeroed in the way you did.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: It's so funny.
20:45
I think I literally tweeted this yesterday that loyal is the
20:48
most consensus of the
20:49
SPEAKER_01: contrarian ideas.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's,
20:53
SPEAKER_01: so to be clear,
20:53
SPEAKER_01: I did not come up with this idea that the biology of dog aging is,
20:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: especially relevant to human aging and dog aging project.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: The University of Washington has been doing this.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: They're doing it with a drug called rapamycin.
21:05
There was the One Health program,
21:07
I believe the NIH,
21:08
looking at cancer in dogs.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: Dog cancer is extremely relevant to human cancer.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: But I think the pieces that we put together was the biology side,
21:19
SPEAKER_01: the longevity side,
21:21
SPEAKER_01: and the market and consumer side.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: And you kind of had to have all three for it to make sense.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: And then also bluntly, I think a lot of it's like timing and luck.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've raised like $150 million.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: We still don't have a drug on market.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's really hard to do something like this.
21:40
And so it just,
21:42
a lot of things had to come together for us,
21:45
for this idea to have a shot.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: But I agree.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: It's like the most obvious thing ever.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I didn't mean it sort of like, it's just...
21:53
SPEAKER_01: I think it's obvious.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: You did nail all the pieces.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you were running out of money?
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
22:02
This is just like in your personal life or as you were trying
22:04
to start the company?
22:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, no.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So I was at Oxford and I was like, I'm going to leave Oxford.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Which is crazy.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: It was really fun.
22:16
It was like probably the best two years of my life being there
22:18
in some ways.
22:19
But just so hierarchical,
22:21
so old school,
22:22
so linear in a way that's just extremely frustrating.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And so I cold emailed Laura Deming and I was like,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: hey,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: like,
22:29
SPEAKER_01: can I come do an internship for you?
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Like, I just want to like shout out you.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, yeah, sounds good.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, come and fly out.
22:36
I don't think she realized like how much not money I had
22:39
because I literally used
22:41
SPEAKER_01: like the last money in my bank account to buy my flight to Santa.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: And she like reimbursed me.
22:47
But like 30 days is actually a lot when you don't have like
22:51
that much money in your
22:52
SPEAKER_01: bank account.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: And then like the Ubers and the hotel and whatnot.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: So I had like, I must have gone down into the hundreds.
23:02
in my bank account and to take this risk yeah yeah um and
23:05
obviously paid off yeah
23:06
but uh thinking about it now gives me anxiety what do you like
23:10
when you for people
23:11
who don't know i mean laura deming um she she now is running
23:14
her own company um but
23:16
was kind of best known for a while as as maybe like the major
23:21
longevity investor i
23:22
think it's fair to say and she kind of had this crazy story as
23:26
like a child prodigy
23:28
SPEAKER_00: of sorts like
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Doing a similar thing, writing letters to professors and people in labs.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: That much younger Asian I did.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think she was like 14 or 15.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Literally, yeah.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: So what did you write in the, I mean, you made it sound so easy.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: What did you write in this email to get this job done?
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Well,
23:47
SPEAKER_01: so Laura,
23:48
I knew about her for a while and I really admired her because
23:51
the longevity field
23:52
SPEAKER_01: has been around for a long time.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: It's older than me and in some ways it's older than any of us, right?
23:57
SPEAKER_01: This idea of a,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: fountain of youth or whatever is one of the oldest pursuits of humanity.
24:04
But I really admired Laura because she brought to this field
24:06
that everyone
24:07
SPEAKER_01: objectively wanted scientific credibility.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: And she
24:11
professional credibility for a lack of better word like not
24:14
over promising under
24:15
delivering not just like going for the shock and awe factor but
24:18
instead really like
24:20
trying to bring this crazy air quote science to the mainstream
24:25
um and i really
24:26
admired that and so and she's also one of the few women in the
24:29
space um and so i
24:32
SPEAKER_01: reached out to her because i just wanted to learn from her um and i was
24:36
SPEAKER_01: And candidly, less intimidated in some ways.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: She's pretty intimidating.
24:41
But I was less intimidated by her because it was like,
24:43
oh,
24:43
she kind of looks like me.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:45
And she also didn't come from,
24:47
you know,
24:48
generations of Silicon Valley elite or whatever.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Like she figured it out on her own, too, albeit much earlier than me.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it was just a shot in the dark and it really worked out.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And so you just, you just made your case really clearly in this email.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I made it really badly.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, what she told me later is like my interview was not very good.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but somehow she still let me come.
25:12
I think cause I was really passionate and it was clear that I
25:14
was super passionate.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Apparently,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: I didn't remember this,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: but in my first job interview ever,
25:21
the person hiring me said that I asked at the end if there was
25:28
going to be a drug
25:29
SPEAKER_00: test.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: And then when she retired,
25:33
SPEAKER_00: she wrote this note and she said she had like all these tips,
25:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: things that she had learned through her career.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was something like,
25:42
SPEAKER_00: if your job candidate seems like,
25:46
SPEAKER_00: like asks if there's a drug test,
25:48
SPEAKER_00: but seems promising enough,
25:50
SPEAKER_00: like take a risk on that person.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Would you have failed a drug test?
25:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was college.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:59
i i like i i don't actually remember doing that i was kind of
26:02
shocked when she put
26:03
that in because i was like man would i really have done that
26:06
but dude i did so much
26:08
stupid shit it's like amazing they think things that you think
26:10
of as like totally
26:11
SPEAKER_01: normal like social whatever it's just like
26:14
non-obvious if you haven't actually been in the world i mean at
26:17
that point that
26:18
one's pretty bad but you know i was like it's kind of shocking
26:21
because i i it's
26:23
like hard for me to even put myself in the headspace where i
26:25
would say something
26:26
like that that's the job interview but i guess i was just very
26:29
um i'm usually quite
26:31
open and honest so there you go there you go um there's there's
26:35
so many different
26:36
SPEAKER_00: things i want to ask you the
26:40
SPEAKER_00: I just want to cover a little bit just around the therapies,
26:43
SPEAKER_00: and then I have a bunch of bigger picture questions for you.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
26:48
SPEAKER_00: so if everything goes well and stays on this timeline,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: it's kind of like 2026 when this first therapy might be available.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And so that will be a pill that the dogs will take.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And then the next one, I think, is an injection pill.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: No, it's another daily pill.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: It's another pill.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: Or big dog short lifespan.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: Which is what you're thinking about in terms of the injectable.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's in a clinical trial already?
27:12
SPEAKER_01: We have done a lot of clinical work with it,
27:14
SPEAKER_01: but we haven't started the big lifespan extension study yet.
27:17
And then I remember this when I was first doing my story,
27:19
and I think it still holds true.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: You guys do not say what the underlying compound is.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: Not yet.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: So this has always been sort of secret.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: I remember when we were talking before,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: there's things like you mentioned,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: rapamycin,
27:34
SPEAKER_00: metformin.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people on that.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: So there have been these compounds that we have seen for decades that...
27:41
potentially could increase lifespan and have done so in mice
27:46
and different things.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And so I think when we talked before,
27:51
it was safe to say it's like roughly in that ballpark of things
27:55
that have been
27:57
SPEAKER_00: tried.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
27:58
I will say explicitly it's not rapamycin or metformin or
28:01
anything like directly
28:02
SPEAKER_01: adjacent to it.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: But yes, it is this idea of...
28:07
SPEAKER_01: You know,
28:07
I think we have a very different approach to longevity in some
28:09
of the companies in
28:10
SPEAKER_01: the space in that we're not trying to reinvent the wheel,
28:12
SPEAKER_01: at least not yet.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to clinically develop and bring to market very extremely
28:18
SPEAKER_01: well-validated aging biology and build a really good drug product around
28:24
SPEAKER_01: well-validated longevity biology.
28:26
I don't think that's going to maximize efficacy or get us to
28:29
immortality or anything like that.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: Not that's what we're trying to do.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: But it maximizes the probability of success.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: And really my thesis going in is that we can do no harm,
28:39
SPEAKER_01: no safety risk,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: and we have to have a hopeful benefit of lifespan extension.
28:43
And we need to maximize the probability of success of seeing
28:46
that benefit.
28:47
So that means like really dying on one hill,
28:50
which for us that one hill was –
28:52
a label claim for a lifespan extension itself and of obviously
28:56
meeting the efficacy
28:57
SPEAKER_01: bar for that label claim.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: And then everything else is like boring as hell.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And so, so it's roughly like some off-label use of a compound.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:07
Like think like it's,
29:08
again,
29:08
it's not repomycin or macformin,
29:10
but think similar to that.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, like metabolic fitness improvement.
29:15
It's like a core driver of pathological aging and basically
29:19
every species.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: So then my one big question, I mean, this is amazing.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: It makes all the sense of the world to me.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: People love their dogs.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: They're going to flock to this.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Great business.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Great science.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: This all makes sense.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: If you did want to push this to humans at some point,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
29:35
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
29:36
SPEAKER_00: this is the one thing I always wondered is if you don't have some...
29:39
protection around this compound when you make that first switch
29:43
to humans it's like
29:43
what does that business look like and then if you weren't doing
29:46
that but you wanted
29:48
to develop your own compound like doesn't the the second stage
29:52
of this business
29:53
SPEAKER_00: isn't it quite different from this stage
29:55
SPEAKER_01: It is.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: It is.
29:57
So there's I'd say there's three unlocks that dog longevity
30:02
allows for human longevity.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: And one of them is just compound like direct compound data.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: But I would actually say that's a third in terms of importance.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: The first two is one is just the biological data.
30:18
So the actual quantitative understanding of the causative
30:21
drivers of healthy versus
30:23
SPEAKER_01: unhealthy aging.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: We have so much correlation data in humans,
30:27
SPEAKER_01: just like ungodly amounts of correlation data in humans.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of causative data in mice and worms.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a lot of causative data in the middle.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: And so by running these giant FDA enabling clinical trials,
30:41
SPEAKER_01: we can't touch any of that,
30:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:43
SPEAKER_01: biobank today.
30:44
But once the study is done,
30:45
we'll be able to actually hopefully tease through it.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Like if you want our AI story, like that's our AI story.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: That's going to be a stupid amount of data,
30:54
SPEAKER_01: like 70 plus million data points on the clinical and the biological side.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: From these dogs biomarkers.
31:03
Blood,
31:03
saliva,
31:04
everything like that,
31:05
clinical assessments,
31:06
diagnoses,
31:07
all of that pictures.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: And so that's one.
31:11
And I think that's going to be absolutely crucial to understand
31:15
what are obviously
31:16
SPEAKER_01: validating of existing targets or devalidating of existing targets,
31:21
SPEAKER_01: but also identification of new targets.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: But actually,
31:25
even more important than that potentially is actually just
31:26
going to be the revenue
31:27
SPEAKER_01: and the team,
31:28
SPEAKER_01: right?
31:30
Like to have a team that is wholly focused and thinks every day
31:33
about translational
31:34
longevity biology and has the money to pursue that and doesn't
31:38
have to go and tell
31:39
some story to an investor of how they're going to get into a
31:41
phase one and then
31:43
SPEAKER_01: Pfizer is going to buy their drug at phase two.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: But instead, it's just like, yeah, we have a billion dollars.
31:48
And we're going to use that billion dollars to try to develop a
31:52
longevity drug.
31:53
And that's going to be the decision of me and the team and the
31:57
directors of the company.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: But we won't be beholden to the desires of big pharma,
32:06
SPEAKER_01: which,
32:06
SPEAKER_01: to be clear,
32:07
I think aging is going to be extremely sexy and of extreme
32:10
interest to big pharma.
32:12
But I think somebody has to get there first and show,
32:15
have the GLP-1 moment.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:17
You know,
32:17
show that this is the next big category,
32:19
and then they're all going to jump in.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:22
And we're going to have the opportunity to do that because
32:24
we'll have the desire
32:25
SPEAKER_01: and the capital to do so.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: That's super interesting because I think if people are not in this field,
32:31
maybe they don't know how much most startups come out and their
32:34
whole goal is to
32:36
SPEAKER_00: find one molecule that the big pharma people will acquire.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And so you raise enough money to develop that molecule,
32:44
SPEAKER_00: get through a clinical trial far enough that you're showing that.
32:47
results but it's it is this sad sort of process you're not
32:49
really building a
32:50
company that's meant to be like the next genentech you know
32:53
you're just kind of
32:54
like you're making some product for a bigger pharma company and
32:58
just just kind of
32:59
being more focused and saving them the time and effort on that
33:02
so in in this if you
33:04
have this blockbuster dog therapies then that gives you this
33:09
freedom to make these
33:10
SPEAKER_00: choices as you exactly moving forward exactly okay that is exactly that's
33:14
SPEAKER_00: interesting
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
33:15
SPEAKER_01: if you think about it from a human biotech side,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: the human biotech drugs,
33:20
SPEAKER_01: they just fail at such a high rate.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: It's 90% plus all-in failure rate of initiated drugs to approval.
33:27
Each stage will have somewhere between a 30% to 50% or more
33:31
percent probability of failure.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: If you're a fiduciary,
33:35
are you going to roll the dice on another trial or are you
33:38
going to take that half
33:39
SPEAKER_01: a billion to a billion dollar offer in front of you?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: You're probably going to take the offer in front of you.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, like it makes sense why this happens.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's just not terribly romantic.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: I know.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: You know,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: in some ways,
33:52
SPEAKER_01: bio is like one of the most,
33:54
like trad bio is one of the most transactional fields because
33:58
everyone's so jaded
33:59
SPEAKER_01: because things fail at such a high rate.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: since day one,
34:03
the Core Memory podcast has been supported by the fine people
34:06
at E1 Ventures.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: They are a young and ambitious VC firm in Silicon Valley,
34:12
SPEAKER_00: investing in young and ambitious companies and people.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much to E1 Ventures for all your support.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
34:19
SPEAKER_00: you mentioned,
34:19
I saw you doing an interview and you hit a couple things that I
34:23
wanted to talk
34:23
SPEAKER_00: about.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: this GLP One moment,
34:25
SPEAKER_00: in this other interview,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: you said if the big pharma companies did get into longevity and aging,
34:32
SPEAKER_00: you said if they had an aging division,
34:34
SPEAKER_00: that would be the sickest thing ever.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And I was curious how you...
34:43
The GLP-1 revolution or whatever sort of happened after you and
34:49
I talked for the first time.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: And when you and I talked for the first time,
34:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
34:53
there really was beyond people experimenting with like
34:57
metformin and rapamycin.
34:59
I mean,
34:59
you know,
34:59
and that was kind of like a Silicon Valley sort of health nut
35:03
kind of thing.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Definitely not super mainstream.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, there was nothing...
35:09
Nothing like GLP-1,
35:10
which you can argue is a longevity drug of sorts,
35:17
right?
35:17
SPEAKER_01: At least for overweight people.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Potentially for more than that.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Because it's treating these major causes of illness.
35:23
And so,
35:25
yeah,
35:25
it was so,
35:26
you know,
35:27
and so clearly the pharma companies have all seen this.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: It's been this massive blockbuster.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: And so when you said...
35:34
SPEAKER_00: If they had an aging division, it'd be the sickest thing ever.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: I was just kind of like surprised.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Does that,
35:38
that means that big pharma has not like turned more in this
35:42
direction the last few
35:43
SPEAKER_00: years?
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And if so, why not?
35:45
Because it just seems like the GLP one stuff would have got
35:48
them maybe so excited
35:50
SPEAKER_00: and thinking,
35:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: in this,
35:53
SPEAKER_00: that way.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's the beginnings of it, right?
35:56
Because what are the drugs that are most financially successful
36:00
in humans,
36:01
right?
36:02
It's statins,
36:03
which are a daily pill,
36:05
a reduced risk of certain forms of cardiovascular disease.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: I made literally a trillion dollars, the drug class did.
36:10
And then there's GLP-1s,
36:13
which are on track by some estimates to beat statins.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: In terms of their revenue,
36:19
SPEAKER_01: of course,
36:19
SPEAKER_01: it's targeting,
36:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:20
SPEAKER_01: multitude things,
36:21
SPEAKER_01: but obesity being kind of like the really big thing.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And it seems to have a bunch of downstream consequences,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: which actually,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
36:27
SPEAKER_01: makes total sense that if you improve metabolic fitness of an individual,
36:31
that it not only benefits their weight and their direct
36:34
metabolic disease,
36:35
but also tons of other downstream things because metabolic
36:39
fitness is systemic and
36:40
SPEAKER_01: it impacts every organ system.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: And plays a role in the health of every organ system.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: So it's really cool to see that,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:46
SPEAKER_01: foundational aging biology and aging thesis making it to the masses.
36:50
It actually makes my job of,
36:52
you know,
36:52
educating much,
36:54
much easier because now people get it.
36:58
And I know that there's rumors that,
37:00
like,
37:01
some groups are working on it.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Some have,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: like,
37:03
SPEAKER_01: kind of,
37:03
SPEAKER_01: like,
37:03
SPEAKER_01: kind of stated they're working on it or had,
37:05
SPEAKER_01: like,
37:05
SPEAKER_01: in theory aging groups.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: Although, how much of aging are they actually doing?
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, TBD.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: But realistically, it's just, like, it's very mimetic.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: In different ways, right?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: Like the minute that first drug came on market and became a total,
37:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:23
SPEAKER_01: craziness,
37:24
SPEAKER_01: now like every biotech company has an obesity story.
37:27
It's like,
37:27
it's like,
37:28
it's so similar to how AI works in the Valley,
37:30
right?
37:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a wave and then there's like the drivers of it.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: And then there's like all the straggler ons.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: And,
37:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:38
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people become very wealthy and very successful by that strategy,
37:42
SPEAKER_01: by all means.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of people don't.
37:45
You know,
37:45
similar to how there was the waves of crypto and whatever
37:49
before it.
37:51
And so I really think that somebody is going to have to have
37:54
the balls to be first
37:56
SPEAKER_01: and show that this is a drug class that.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: A,
38:00
SPEAKER_01: can get through the FDA,
38:01
which it just doesn't fit into how people think about what a
38:04
drug can or can't be
38:06
SPEAKER_01: today.
38:06
And one of the cool things is the canine FDA or the veterinary
38:09
FDA is regulated by
38:10
SPEAKER_01: the same federal statutes as a human FDA.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: So in theory, our precedent should hold.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we'll find out, right?
38:17
We haven't gone to human FDA yet,
38:19
but at least at that highest regulatory bar,
38:23
it should.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think
38:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's going to seem real until it's real.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm going to try to ask this in a semi-eloquent way.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot going on in my head, so I'll try to frame it right.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, when I... Okay, if I'm talking...
38:41
SPEAKER_00: To my friends and people I know in longevity world out here in Boston,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: UK,
38:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to people about transcription factors,
38:52
SPEAKER_00: compounds like metformin,
38:54
SPEAKER_00: rapamycin,
38:55
SPEAKER_00: kind of what you guys are doing,
38:56
testing these molecules that we've known can do interesting
39:01
things for a while.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: on the further out there end,
39:06
SPEAKER_00: but the thing that reasonably smart people are buying into,
39:09
SPEAKER_00: it's like whole organ replacement,
39:11
SPEAKER_00: you know?
39:12
SPEAKER_00: And,
39:12
SPEAKER_00: and,
39:12
SPEAKER_00: and,
39:13
and so these are like the three giant buckets that I run into
39:17
the latter two,
39:18
SPEAKER_00: the transcription factors,
39:19
SPEAKER_00: the whole organ replacement,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: which for people who aren't into this stuff is like this idea of your,
39:25
SPEAKER_00: your,
39:26
SPEAKER_00: maybe growing organs and swapping out your unhealthy ones.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: It's like changing a tire on a car.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: On a car, right.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: You don't try to like regenerate the rubber.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: You change the tire.
39:35
And so when I'm in those two buckets,
39:39
outside of like more traditional drugs,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: It's all startups.
39:43
And there is big money in the sense that like someone like Jeff
39:47
Bezos or Yuri
39:48
Milner or Sam Altman is giving hundreds of millions of dollars
39:52
to one of these
39:52
SPEAKER_00: startups.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: But it's not,
39:54
I don't think I've ever run across like a pharma company
39:57
talking about stuff like
39:58
SPEAKER_00: this.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: So when you're saying maybe there's rumors that they're doing stuff,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: like what direction do you even think they would be going in?
40:06
SPEAKER_00: They're just going to look for some GLP-1 like compound.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: I,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: so,
40:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: I,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: I think the,
40:15
the whole organ replacement will like definitely not be a
40:18
pharma thing for a long
40:19
SPEAKER_00: time.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, that one is interesting.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: Livers by Merck.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And can I get like the Merck logo on my liver?
40:28
SPEAKER_01: That'd be pretty sick, honestly.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: Um,
40:32
Although then it'd be bad if your liver ended up on the black
40:34
market or something.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: It'd be like, oh, there's that Merck liver.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: I think it's going to be the,
40:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm obviously biased,
40:41
but I think the big pharma are going to get into more the
40:45
vision of what I and
40:47
SPEAKER_01: others have,
40:47
which is a cheap daily pill that reduces risk broadly of
40:52
age-related diseases.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: OK, so they'd be hunting for a interesting molecule.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
40:57
SPEAKER_01: because one heuristic,
40:59
SPEAKER_01: which is not always true,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: but just the heuristic is that,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:03
with the more complexity of a product comes increased safety
41:08
risk or at least
41:08
SPEAKER_01: safety unknowns,
41:10
SPEAKER_01: even if it's not necessarily risk.
41:11
And again,
41:12
this is like,
41:12
you know,
41:12
drastically simplifying something down.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: But,
41:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: I think for something new,
41:18
like this idea of a drug to be given to a healthy person to
41:22
delay their future risk
41:23
SPEAKER_01: and severity of aging,
41:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:25
SPEAKER_01: it's kind of like a vaccine in many ways.
41:28
And that like the safety tolerance or the tolerance for adverse
41:31
events or the risk
41:32
SPEAKER_01: of adverse events is going to be almost zero.
41:35
And so you're really going to want to pick things that are well
41:37
characterized,
41:38
SPEAKER_01: that are well understood.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: And then once there's that foundation,
41:41
SPEAKER_01: then you can go higher and higher and higher and be like,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: okay,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: well,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: this is a trade-off for efficacy.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: And yeah,
41:45
SPEAKER_01: there might be some like long-term safety risk,
41:47
SPEAKER_01: but you're really reducing the risk of or eliminating the risk of
41:50
SPEAKER_01: neurodegeneration,
41:51
SPEAKER_01: right?
41:52
And maybe you only give that to patients that have like certain
41:54
genetic backgrounds
41:55
SPEAKER_01: that increase their risk of eating Alzheimer's or Parkinson's,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: right?
41:57
Like there's lots of different pathways this could go,
42:00
but really what will be a
42:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:02
a foundational massive blockbuster drug is going to be a statin
42:07
for reducing risk
42:08
SPEAKER_01: of multiple HLA diseases instead of just cholesterol-associated certain
42:13
SPEAKER_01: cardiovascular diseases.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: And since we—because I haven't had a chance to ask you this question,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: even though I've run into you since I did that original story,
42:22
SPEAKER_00: but given these changes,
42:23
SPEAKER_00: like—
42:24
I was not reporting on transcription factors and partial cell
42:28
reprogramming back
42:29
SPEAKER_00: when we first...
42:31
SPEAKER_00: Whole organ replacement was...
42:34
SPEAKER_00: a little more sci-fi and far off than it seemed.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
42:38
SPEAKER_00: it's still far off,
42:38
but there are people I know who are actually trying to do some
42:41
of these things.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything out of all the non loyal,
42:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:46
SPEAKER_00: approaches,
42:47
SPEAKER_00: some of this more sci-fi futures since you used to be,
42:52
SPEAKER_00: or,
42:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
42:52
SPEAKER_00: have invested in all these areas.
42:54
Is there anything that is particularly intriguing to you that
42:58
people are trying near the fringe?
43:00
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of really cool things going on.
43:03
I think it just depends on what are the variables that you're
43:09
optimizing for.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: So I started with gene therapy for Loyal.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: Actually, Loyal's first program was a gene therapy program.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: We immediately killed that.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: I think gene therapy is super sick and really interesting.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: Gordian, for example, is working on multimodal gene therapies.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: They're hitting multiple genes at the same time,
43:23
SPEAKER_01: which makes total sense because genetic diseases are...
43:27
SPEAKER_01: you know, or sorry, age-related diseases are extremely complex.
43:31
Upregulating or downregulating one thing is not going to be as
43:34
efficacious for a
43:34
SPEAKER_01: complex disease as it is for a very simple genetic disease.
43:39
SPEAKER_01: But there's also, like,
43:40
COGS risk and safety risk and,
43:42
you know,
43:43
there's not a mass market gene therapy.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: So there's all those other things.
43:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
43:47
So there's reasons I wouldn't do it and there's reasons we're
43:49
not doing it at Loyal.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: But that's also like,
43:52
SPEAKER_01: again,
43:52
SPEAKER_01: we're optimizing for probability of success,
43:55
SPEAKER_01: regulatory pathway and likelihood of safety.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're not optimizing for maximal risk.
44:01
efficacy or maximal reversal or whatever but i think that world
44:04
is cool um i don't
44:07
know like the depths of the science but a lot of the organ
44:10
replacement stuff is
44:11
interesting just because you're invariably going to have a
44:14
shelf life on an organ
44:17
at a certain point or just like have a disease that might
44:20
require a replacement and
44:22
of course the whole you know transplant system is very
44:25
difficult and you lose a lot
44:27
SPEAKER_01: of people on it
44:30
So that's obviously like massively,
44:31
you know,
44:32
valuable from a humanity perspective.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of like,
44:35
SPEAKER_01: again,
44:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an expert in this space,
44:36
but it like plausibly makes like that actually feels more
44:39
tractable to me.
44:41
versus some of the other things when i talk to people in that
44:43
camp i mean i guess
44:44
they've bought in to the idea but but you know they they often
44:49
will argue to me
44:50
that everything else is kind of pointless because you're never
44:53
going to find all
44:54
the root causes behind these things there's too many things to
44:57
have to manipulate i
44:59
wouldn't go that far because you have a whole whole portions of
45:01
your body that
45:02
SPEAKER_01: you're never like your vasculature is extremely relevant to aging
45:07
You're not going to be able to replace the entire vascular
45:09
system,
45:10
right?
45:10
But there are a lot of diseases or like things that can go
45:14
wrong in certain organs
45:16
SPEAKER_01: that can become rate limiting to your lifespan.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: And so it's always going to be a combinatorial, right?
45:23
SPEAKER_01: You want to broadly slow the rate of aging of the organism as a whole,
45:27
but also like maybe they have some genetic predisposition to
45:32
liver cirrhosis or
45:33
SPEAKER_01: whatever,
45:33
SPEAKER_01: right?
45:34
SPEAKER_01: right,
45:34
then it doesn't matter how much of an aging drug they take or
45:36
how efficacious of an
45:37
SPEAKER_01: aging drug because the liver cirrhosis is still going to get them first.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do in that case?
45:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe a replacement.
45:43
And then that person can benefit from the lifespan extension
45:46
that they otherwise
45:47
SPEAKER_01: would not have had.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm really interested in cognitive decline.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: Personally,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: as a,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: as a huge rate limiter in health span and lifespan,
45:56
SPEAKER_01: not to mention quality of life driver in the later years.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: I think people would take that one, even if your body's a little gimpy.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: You know?
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: You can get pretty far.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: You can get pretty far if your brain functions.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: And right now it really feels like a lack of a draw.
46:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: Of who does or doesn't have cognitive function into aging.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:15
Although there's obviously like correlation or reason to
46:18
believe that it is associated with
46:20
SPEAKER_01: you know, various longevity markers too.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's also something that's never going to be replaceable.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: Or I don't know,
46:29
SPEAKER_01: depending on Neuralink does,
46:30
SPEAKER_01: but you know,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: much rather prevent decline versus,
46:35
SPEAKER_01: uh,
46:35
SPEAKER_01: banking on,
46:36
SPEAKER_01: uh,
46:38
SPEAKER_01: uploading of the complexity of your brain and not just,
46:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:42
SPEAKER_01: then you have to ship a thesis or whatever issue.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: In the span that you've been doing this,
46:51
SPEAKER_00: we've gone through different political administrations,
46:56
SPEAKER_00: if you didn't know.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: Nah, never heard of it.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Like when you first started,
47:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
47:02
SPEAKER_00: one thing we talked about,
47:03
SPEAKER_00: which we mentioned a bit,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: is just that the FDA...
47:07
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really built to consider aging an illness.
47:13
And this is a problem because you sort of have to have a
47:17
medicine that's designed
47:18
SPEAKER_00: to treat an illness in order for the FDA to get into it.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't see aging as like a illness,
47:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:25
SPEAKER_00: it just falls into this weird regulatory abyss.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:31
SPEAKER_00: have things changed?
47:34
All of this technology seems so much more mainstream in some
47:39
ways than it used to be.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, is the government more open to these things?
47:47
SPEAKER_00: And I have no idea if this is administration dependent or not.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: It's not really administration dependent.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of these regs that, um,
47:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
47:56
impede or don't impede a drug being approved for lifespan
48:00
extension are actually
48:00
SPEAKER_01: federal regs,
48:02
SPEAKER_01: which are,
48:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:05
SPEAKER_01: not policy specific.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: It's more the, like, funding regulations of the actual agency itself.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: That said, you know, the aging field always has this as a battle cry.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, the FDA doesn't agree that aging is a disease.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: We just were like...
48:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, like, who gives a shit?
48:23
Like,
48:23
we don't need to die on that hill to have a drug approved for
48:26
healthy lifespan extension.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: And we figure out a way to,
48:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:31
develop an efficacy package and a label claim language
48:34
provisionally that,
48:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:38
SPEAKER_01: achieves what we wanted to achieve without,
48:41
SPEAKER_01: you know...
48:44
SPEAKER_01: wading into a war that we didn't need to have.
48:48
And so I think there's a lot of dogmatism in the field in terms
48:52
of these things
48:53
SPEAKER_01: that,
48:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
48:54
SPEAKER_01: kind of bluntly,
48:55
SPEAKER_01: I've always felt like there are a little bit of excuses
48:58
SPEAKER_01: of, you know, oh, like, we would have this if it wasn't for the FDA.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: It's like, figure out a way to do it.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: You know,
49:05
SPEAKER_01: like,
49:05
SPEAKER_01: it's not,
49:06
SPEAKER_01: like,
49:06
SPEAKER_01: completely physically impossible,
49:08
SPEAKER_01: clearly,
49:09
SPEAKER_01: because we figured it out.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you're playing genius if it works, because...
49:14
Not only did you tackle that problem,
49:16
but it's like if people see their dogs being healthier.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: Happier, running around.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: It's the social pressure.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: Why can't I have that?
49:27
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: It's the societal pressure, right?
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Of the normalization of this idea.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Why can I get a longevity drug for my dog and not my grandma?
49:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is such a better way to,
49:38
SPEAKER_01: quote unquote,
49:39
SPEAKER_01: fight this battle than just like screaming and crying about the agency.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: And I've also had a great time with them.
49:45
Like,
49:45
I think they're you just have to understand what their roles
49:50
and responsibilities are.
49:51
And one of the first ones protecting the safety of the lives is
49:55
which they are
49:56
SPEAKER_01: responsible in the agency,
49:59
SPEAKER_01: in our case of veterinary lives,
50:00
SPEAKER_01: of canine lives.
50:03
And we designed our entire strategy around that to tell a
50:06
really clean and
50:08
data-backed story of why this won't do harm and maybe it'll
50:12
have a benefit and why
50:13
SPEAKER_01: that benefit will actually reduce the harm in the future.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: I feel like you made a face when I said this has got more mainstream.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm too midline.
50:23
If you make a documentary about Brian Johnson,
50:25
you might not be like Joe Public.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: No, the field has definitely gotten more mainstream, which is good.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: I feel that way.
50:35
And I think people...
50:36
I mean,
50:36
there's literally a documentary on Netflix now.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: And the...
50:41
SPEAKER_01: Brian.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Is it on Netflix?
50:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: That was the one I worked on.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if you were talking about some broader look at the.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: No, no, not yet.
50:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
50:53
SPEAKER_00: So the,
50:55
and I do feel like the GLP one stuff has like opened people's
51:00
minds up in a
51:02
SPEAKER_00: different way.
51:03
SPEAKER_01: I think so too.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: It means also consumer driven pharma.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: Um,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: which is kind of our,
51:08
SPEAKER_01: um,
51:08
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:09
SPEAKER_01: our product is obviously going to be a veterinary prescription product,
51:12
SPEAKER_01: but also very consumer driven.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: Similar to how we enroll these clinical trials.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, where does China fit into all this?
51:21
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, are they looking at what you are doing in particular?
51:26
Are they,
51:27
I know that they can run clinical trials more quickly than we
51:32
can.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah.
51:34
Is this,
51:34
are they,
51:36
do they sprint ahead of us in some of this longevity stuff?
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you mean like your longevity or like loyal specific?
51:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
51:43
I was curious if you've caught the attention of somebody over
51:46
there that you'd know
51:47
SPEAKER_00: about.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: And then more broadly,
51:50
I was talking to somebody today and they were telling me it's
51:53
like cheaper to run a
51:55
SPEAKER_00: human trial in China than an animal trial.
51:59
here and then that just got me thinking you know that that so
52:04
you could just you
52:05
can do things that you can't you can't yeah i mean it doesn't
52:09
mean you can use the
52:09
SPEAKER_01: data afterwards but yeah um
52:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so I haven't heard a peep from China on our stuff.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how much of a dog culture there is there.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Like this kind of dog is our child is a very American thing.
52:25
It's,
52:26
you know,
52:26
also happening more in like Singapore and Korea and Japan.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: Anywhere that has like a declining birth rate.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: actually is a very strong association.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: With like dog,
52:37
SPEAKER_01: uh,
52:38
SPEAKER_01: dog love or like socioeconomic disparities too,
52:42
SPEAKER_01: because sometimes people can't afford kids,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: but they can't afford a dog.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: Um,
52:45
SPEAKER_01: man,
52:46
SPEAKER_01: all the like,
52:47
SPEAKER_01: um,
52:47
American dynamism people are going to come after me now because
52:49
they're going to be
52:50
SPEAKER_01: like,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: Celine is promoting people not propagating the genetics of Americans.
52:55
SPEAKER_01: Man, I just, I just got myself canceled.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: Um,
52:58
SPEAKER_01: But no,
52:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
53:00
SPEAKER_01: we're mostly,
53:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
53:01
SPEAKER_01: we're only looking at the US right now for a multitude of reasons,
53:05
SPEAKER_01: predominantly bandwidth constraint.
53:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: Um...
53:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I know that clinical trials in non-U.S.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: places have always been a thing, right?
53:13
SPEAKER_01: Like,
53:13
SPEAKER_01: I remember when I was looking at human stuff,
53:15
SPEAKER_01: there was a lot of talk about doing stuff in Australia or France.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: And I hear about Australia all the time.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: Some sketchy people do things in,
53:22
SPEAKER_01: like,
53:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
53:23
SPEAKER_01: jurisdictions where there's basically no protections or regulations.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: I went with Brian to Honduras, got some gene therapy.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a choice.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: It's a choice that one human being can make.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's a choice I would make, but...
53:38
SPEAKER_01: I think in the end,
53:39
something I felt that was very important was doing everything
53:45
at the highest
53:46
possible bar and kind of self-imposing maximal rigor because
53:52
nobody believes in
53:53
SPEAKER_01: longevity.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: right?
53:54
SPEAKER_01: It sounds crazy.
53:55
It sounds like billionaires trying to live forever,
53:57
fountain of youth,
53:58
like all this crap.
54:00
When like my whole thing is like an aging drug is just a
54:02
preventative medicine,
54:03
right?
54:03
SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's a stat, right?
54:05
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing crazier than that.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: It's the most boring shit ever, honestly.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: But I think because the field has had these like over-promising,
54:13
SPEAKER_01: under-delivering for such a long time,
54:16
SPEAKER_01: and honestly like shoddy science,
54:18
SPEAKER_01: people have this association.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it was really important to
54:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:23
SPEAKER_01: everything we need to do from a regulatory,
54:25
SPEAKER_01: from a scientific,
54:26
SPEAKER_01: from a clinical perspective,
54:27
SPEAKER_01: just at the highest possible bar.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: So nobody can question anything.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: And they still question it anyhow,
54:32
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
54:33
SPEAKER_01: but it's at least quite a bit more impervious than if we,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: went into something crazy.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: You brought up one point.
54:40
SPEAKER_00: Every time I write a longevity story,
54:42
SPEAKER_00: everyone says,
54:43
SPEAKER_00: oh,
54:43
SPEAKER_00: this is just a bunch of rich dudes who want to live forever.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: And you and Laura obviously stand out as, you know,
54:51
SPEAKER_00: Not falling into that stereotype.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Is this predominantly a field for rich dudes that want to live forever?
55:00
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a correlation with the loudness.
55:04
I think Laura and I have both taken a very different approach
55:08
than maybe the
55:10
SPEAKER_01: standard longevity dude bro.
55:12
SPEAKER_01: We're very careful about what we claim.
55:14
SPEAKER_01: We're very careful about how we approach it.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: We're very careful about...
55:22
Again,
55:22
not over promising and under delivering as much as within,
55:25
you know,
55:26
drugs are hard.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: So kind of inevitably always end up doing that.
55:29
But and I think it's it's it's difficult because I know people
55:35
get annoyed when I talk about it.
55:36
They're like,
55:36
well,
55:36
just tell me you're going to extend my dog's lifespan 10 years.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, well, I could say that, but it's not true.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: And so it's less sexy.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: It's less like, you know, headliner type story.
55:48
Um,
55:49
but again,
55:49
I think for the path we're going,
55:51
it's,
55:52
it's,
55:53
it's the better way to do it.
55:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:56
You,
55:56
I'm going to play a game with you called,
55:59
you like to tweet,
56:00
you wrote a tweet.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: You went through my old tweets.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: I did.
56:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is horrifying.
56:05
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not that bad.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: This is, you wrote a tweet about some of what we were talking about.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: You said Silicon Valley and men,
56:13
many of the major VC firms have gotten so much more bro-y in
56:18
the last couple of
56:19
SPEAKER_00: years.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: Is that, is that true?
56:20
SPEAKER_00: I saw a lot of bro, bro criticism tweets.
56:23
SPEAKER_00: You're not a fan of the technology brothers.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh,
56:30
SPEAKER_01: I actually love them.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm like a lot of my good friends are like the gundobros,
56:34
SPEAKER_01: like Chris power is my best friend and all that shit.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: And we like started our companies together.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it is a vibe and I, it's like,
56:46
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
56:47
It's both funny and also I'm just like,
56:50
I could never get away with that in a million years.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: Which part?
56:54
Just that over- Boisterous,
56:57
overclaiming,
56:59
definitive,
57:00
we're saving America,
57:02
saving the world.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: Fuck yeah.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Right?
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Like, I could never do that shit.
57:07
SPEAKER_00: You don't think so?
57:08
SPEAKER_00: No.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely not.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: Who's the closest woman?
57:12
SPEAKER_00: Lucy Gao.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't know a ton about Lucy, but she's in AI, right?
57:17
SPEAKER_01: She was the co-founder of Scale AI.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: She's a loyal investor and now is doing passes.
57:24
And she's like very like famous for like being one of the
57:29
youngest female billionaires.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: That part I know, but what is she, what is she kind of like champion?
57:33
SPEAKER_01: You should follow her on Instagram next, dude.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: She's way more interesting than neon and stuff.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: She like,
57:39
SPEAKER_01: it's just,
57:40
SPEAKER_01: um,
57:42
SPEAKER_01: very like she's like,
57:44
SPEAKER_01: she's been described as like the female Keeler boy.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: She's like very loud and declarative,
57:49
but people honestly give her a lot more crap for it than they
57:52
do any of the dude
57:53
SPEAKER_01: bros who do it.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: She gets pushed back.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: She gets like roasted.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: You gotta, you gotta look this up.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: Well,
57:59
SPEAKER_00: and there is a thing,
58:01
SPEAKER_00: because I like the Gundo guys,
58:02
SPEAKER_00: too,
58:03
SPEAKER_00: although I feel like...
58:04
SPEAKER_01: I like their mullets.
58:05
But it goes...
58:06
It has to be off-putting to women who might...
58:11
I mean,
58:12
I would think so.
58:13
It's just a very specific pattern match that is pattern matched
58:17
with competency in
58:19
SPEAKER_01: deep tech spaces that you just...
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm all about adapting a space.
58:23
Like,
58:24
pick your hills,
58:25
die on,
58:26
you know,
58:26
don't die on hills that don't matter,
58:27
right?
58:28
SPEAKER_01: Pick your battles, blah, blah, blah.
58:29
SPEAKER_01: But,
58:29
SPEAKER_01: like,
58:30
SPEAKER_01: sometimes there are pattern matches that if you don't hit them,
58:34
SPEAKER_01: it goes against you,
58:35
but you also cannot physically hit them because that would also
58:37
go against you,
58:38
SPEAKER_01: right?
58:38
SPEAKER_01: Like, I just, like, I'm always going to have this different style.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: Laura's always going to have a different style.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: And...
58:45
that's fine but like it it just like i think we've had like
58:49
this over correction
58:50
from woke which i agree was also annoying to now we've gone all
58:55
the other way to
58:56
like americana crap and it's like can we just be fucking normal
59:02
yeah so too and
59:03
just like talk about our like talk about our tech and our
59:05
science like come on guys
59:06
SPEAKER_01: um
59:08
SPEAKER_01: My favorite Silicon Valley bros are like the autist tech bros.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: Those, we got some in common, right?
59:16
SPEAKER_01: I can do that better match.
59:18
SPEAKER_00: All right, you do have a website where you list your vanity goals.
59:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've done it.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: I've done it.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: Shit, I need to go through all that.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: Number two,
59:25
SPEAKER_00: I think quite along the lines of what we were talking about,
59:30
SPEAKER_00: your number two vanity goal.
59:32
Okay,
59:32
let's do your number one first,
59:34
but I'm going to ask you about number two.
59:36
I don't even remember what's on here,
59:37
so this is going to be a live reaction.
59:39
Number one is that you would like to be the youngest woman to
59:42
IPO a company.
59:43
SPEAKER_01: I missed that.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: You missed that because you were turning 27 that year.
59:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think the only youngest was Whitney Wolf Hurd at 30.
59:50
SPEAKER_01: At 30.
59:51
SPEAKER_01: She just turned 31.
59:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: I know, I've gotten old.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any idea what your number two vanity goal was?
59:59
SPEAKER_01: I know one of them.
1:00:00
I can't tell if this is going to be shocking or if you're just
1:00:02
going to stand by it.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: One of them was to be on the cover of a cool magazine.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: It was.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: And you said, that was number seven.
1:00:09
You said,
1:00:10
be on the cover of a magazine,
1:00:11
but a cool one,
1:00:12
not a business one.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: And I saw you were just on the cover of Forbes,
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: although they did something quite strange looking to you.
1:00:20
photo i know it was a bit weird it was a very zoomed in well i
1:00:24
tried to convince
1:00:24
them to do a photo of me and della yeah i had a sneaking
1:00:27
suspicion this is what
1:00:28
they were going to use the photo for and i was like okay guys
1:00:30
wait stop dog yeah
1:00:32
they didn't let me so what's a cool what's a cool one cool is
1:00:35
like vogue okay right
1:00:37
it's like checking it's not checking it's not you know all
1:00:41
right number two oh no
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: invited to elon's house to talk aging
1:00:52
SPEAKER_01: That has not happened yet.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_00: Is that, is that still a vanity goal?
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
1:00:56
SPEAKER_01: I still admire him a lot.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: obviously it's a lot more controversial now and you know,
1:01:01
SPEAKER_01: there's things I admire less,
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: but holy shit.
1:01:05
Like to have that degree of impact on the world and create all
1:01:09
these futures that
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: like probably wouldn't exist if he hadn't done them.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: Like hands down.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: Epic.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Stan.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: He's weird, though.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: He's kind of like have more babies, but he's kind of anti-aging stuff.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he is, I guess.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to live, but just enough.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe he's got an old enough yet.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_01: Back hasn't started hurting enough yet.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: Invited to the Met Gala?
1:01:35
SPEAKER_01: That one has not happened yet.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: It's not happened.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: So is that still a goal?
1:01:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: Probably.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: I think it'd be cool.
1:01:43
I think I would now find it probably stressful because,
1:01:46
like,
1:01:46
the outfits are such a thing.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: And I find it stressful even to get dressed for something like this.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, fuck.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: I can't wear my gym shark.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Like, what am I going to do?
1:01:55
SPEAKER_01: This is going to live forever.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: We did.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: You wrote a tweet.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: Now this is you like to tweet.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: Wait, you can see what tweets I like?
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: I thought they blocked that.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_00: I cheated on this a little bit.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: You reposted it, which I'm going to take as a tacit line.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_01: Got nervous there.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_00: San Francisco men are afraid of mRNA,
1:02:15
but would happily inject themselves with something called Chex
1:02:19
Notes Chinese
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: Peptides.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_00: Explain.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've seen the whole peptides thing.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_00: I have friends making their own GLP-1.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're talking about, right?
1:02:33
SPEAKER_01: There's that.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_01: There's, like, tons of random peptides that are, like,
1:02:38
derived or synthetic emulates of whatever peptide is in your
1:02:43
body that goes down
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: with aging that you need to crank up.
1:02:47
And it is funny because one of the things about building a drug
1:02:50
is you become very
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: cognizant of all the ways a drug can fuck you up,
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: but also all the way manufacturing can go wrong and that can fuck you up.
1:02:58
And so when I think about people taking random ass Chinese
1:03:01
peptides,
1:03:02
I'm just like,
1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: What's the quality control on that?
1:03:07
SPEAKER_01: Have they tested it for infectious agents?
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: Was it temperature controlled when it was shipped across the ocean?
1:03:13
SPEAKER_01: Like, I just think about all the things that could go wrong.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: I would never in a million fucking years inject myself with that shit.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: Now, GMP stuff is actually manufactured by somebody legit.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I would maybe do something like that.
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: But like, yeah, Chinese peptides, way scarier than the COVID vaccine.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: I have people asking me, though, you think this is like a big thing?
1:03:32
SPEAKER_00: Like the dudes are doing this.
1:03:34
I mean,
1:03:35
it was like I was at some tech thingy conference and there was
1:03:39
a lot of questions.
1:03:41
There's always like the topic du jour that I ended up getting
1:03:44
asked a ton of questions about.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: And like peptides is definitely it right now.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: Compounded GLP-1s were a thing for a while.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit chiller now.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: Everybody kind of has an opinion on it now.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_00: Do people say GLP-1?
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm like out of the...
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: I think it's, no, I think it's, it's so funny.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: Somebody else asked me this too.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: And I actually texted one of our scientists who used to work at Pfizer.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: And he said that the way scientists do it is GLP-1.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: But that's just like so many syllables.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: Like GLP-1 is like GLP-1.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: I saw Trump today.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_00: He said he calls it the fat pill.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: Subtle.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_00: Subtle.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_00: He said it doesn't work.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_00: All his friends.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, he shouldn't.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: If he's taking it as a pill, that's probably why it doesn't work.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, he said it's friends.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work on them.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:04:31
SPEAKER_01: when you take peptides by the mouth,
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: generally speaking,
1:04:35
SPEAKER_01: they get eaten up by your stomach acid.
1:04:37
That is how,
1:04:38
in fact,
1:04:38
your stomach acid is designed to break down peptides and
1:04:41
proteins.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_00: You, you had a, you know, pharmacodynamics.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_01: What's that?
1:04:47
SPEAKER_01: Never heard of her.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: You've got another section on your website.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: No, this isn't even bad.
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: And I, this is the last thing I'm going to torture you with.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_01: I've been telling my team we need to clean up all this shit.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: You, you.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: Are we going to go through my Instagram next?
1:05:01
SPEAKER_00: No, cause I only, I just got, I just got permission.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_00: So I haven't had time to.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:05:06
I have literally thousands and thousands and thousands of
1:05:10
Instagram follow requests
1:05:11
SPEAKER_01: and it's all from dudes.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: Every single time we have an article.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: I was trying to do my research.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_01: Look, Ashley, you made it through.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_01: You made it through the filter.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: You have been accepted into the fold.
1:05:22
You will now get to see all my dog photos and horse photos and
1:05:27
just get ready.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_01: And coffee shop photos.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_01: My life is actually very boring.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: I like the animals.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_00: You said, and I shamefully did not...
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: because you write update on this,
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: and so I forget the exact wording of the thing that this is updating,
1:05:42
SPEAKER_00: but you wrote,
1:05:43
SPEAKER_00: I've become pretty bearish on academic scientific founders.
1:05:47
I'm more interested now in the idea of non-scientific founders
1:05:52
building biocompanies.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_00: And I brought this up because this is a theme I hear...
1:05:58
SPEAKER_00: From people I tend to gravitate towards,
1:06:02
SPEAKER_00: which is that the traditional kind of bio thing is too conservative.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_00: But there's like this massive dilemma,
1:06:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:06:09
SPEAKER_00: because you,
1:06:10
SPEAKER_00: at least when you're in my shoes as a reporter type,
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: which is you,
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: you want,
1:06:17
SPEAKER_00: it's not like I want to see the PhD or the MD or the experience.
1:06:23
Like you kind of do a little bit,
1:06:24
but hopefully you know me well enough that I'm
1:06:27
SPEAKER_00: quite open-minded.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: You're an independent thinker.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: But,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: it is that field where,
1:06:31
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: when I do have other people coming to me who are,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: 24,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: and they're like,
1:06:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm growing organs in,
1:06:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:06:41
SPEAKER_00: my lab,
1:06:41
SPEAKER_00: and then I'm kind of like,
1:06:42
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:06:43
SPEAKER_00: are you?
1:06:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:06:44
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: I remember I went with,
1:06:47
when I went with Brian to Honduras and the two dudes from
1:06:51
Minicircle who made the
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: gene therapy,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:06:53
SPEAKER_00: they,
1:06:54
SPEAKER_00: I think,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: one had kind of done
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: either an undergrad or like maybe a master's from Duke.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: And anyway, it was not like your traditional academic pedigree.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_00: When you talk to them,
1:07:05
they're clearly super bright guys and they could definitely
1:07:08
walk through the
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: science.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it gets very hard to tell like who's real, who's not.
1:07:14
So like I kind of get this desire that you have and why it
1:07:17
would make sense.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_00: And then when I go to,
1:07:19
I don't mean to wholly disparage Boston and Cambridge because
1:07:22
there's so many smart
1:07:23
people there but when i go there it's just like it feels so
1:07:26
traditional and
1:07:28
everybody's kind of doing the same thing yeah and and like you
1:07:32
can you don't have
1:07:33
to be like super in tune with the world let's just know that
1:07:38
it's it feels very
1:07:39
conservative so i get i get where this is coming from but um
1:07:42
isn't this like it
1:07:43
seems like an impossible problem to say oh my god i could talk
1:07:47
about this for hours
1:07:47
because it's also a problem when you're thinking about building
1:07:49
a biotech company
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: of like,
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: and the thing I think about in building an executive team,
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: how much of it is like first principles,
1:07:57
SPEAKER_01: generalists,
1:07:58
SPEAKER_01: whom,
1:07:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:07:58
SPEAKER_01: you need to have enough bio context to be dangerous,
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: but you certainly don't need to be a,
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: multi-decade biotech executive.
1:08:05
And then how much of it is just like inject as much experience
1:08:09
as possible.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, with bio founding, it's,
1:08:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's hard.
1:08:15
Like,
1:08:15
I think knowing what I know today,
1:08:16
I never would have started loyal.
1:08:18
Because I could have told myself a hundred reasons why this
1:08:20
company didn't work.
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: And I just had no idea what I didn't know.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_01: I was super naive and super optimistic.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_01: And I was wrong about a lot of shit.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: But, like, being wrong actually...
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it in some ways was like better.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_01: Because I was like, let's just go for it.
1:08:38
SPEAKER_01: Let's see what happens.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_01: Gene therapy makes total sense.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: It didn't make any sense.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_01: But like the broad overtures were correct.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: And,
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:08:44
actually all the biotech investors passed on our seed round
1:08:47
because they're like
1:08:47
SPEAKER_01: gene therapy for.
1:08:49
uh dog longevity doesn't make sense and like also what the fuck
1:08:52
dog drugs why would
1:08:53
you do that and then the tech guys invested because they didn't
1:08:56
understand that the
1:08:57
gene therapy idea didn't make sense but they thought i was cool
1:09:00
and they thought
1:09:00
the thesis made sense and they like at least so far have like
1:09:04
at least plausibly
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: made a good investment right
1:09:07
SPEAKER_01: And so it's really difficult because,
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:09:10
SPEAKER_01: the reality is that there's certain portions of building a drug where you
1:09:13
SPEAKER_01: absolutely need expertise in the room.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you just don't know what you don't know.
1:09:17
SPEAKER_01: And you can first principle,
1:09:18
SPEAKER_01: still the end of the earth,
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: but then you just can't always get there,
1:09:22
SPEAKER_01: right?
1:09:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_01: And there are certain aspects where the super trad,
1:09:27
SPEAKER_01: Boston,
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: Cambridge,
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: transactional,
1:09:30
SPEAKER_01: whatever,
1:09:30
are just never going to do something like crazy or something
1:09:34
that violates the
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: priors that they've had previously.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that there needs to be a middle ground.
1:09:42
SPEAKER_01: This is like the thing I'm always lobbying for is we need kind of like,
1:09:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:09:47
there was a whole like swath of like the Silicon Valley firms
1:09:50
getting into bio.
1:09:52
But then they're,
1:09:52
like,
1:09:53
I think they didn't know how to handle this problem.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_01: And then now they're kind of,
1:09:56
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:09:56
SPEAKER_01: kind of doing East Coast biotech,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: but just,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: they happen to be in Silicon Valley.
1:10:00
And,
1:10:00
like,
1:10:00
they did some weird things,
1:10:01
and the weird things didn't work out.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_01: And then they kind of got,
1:10:03
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: gun shy,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: and they don't do weird shit,
1:10:05
SPEAKER_01: and they just do the deals that,
1:10:06
SPEAKER_01: like.
1:10:07
you know venrock or whatever follows on in and or arch or
1:10:11
whatever and that's fine
1:10:12
um but i think we kind of need the middle ground of like
1:10:16
technically competent
1:10:17
enough to be like okay here's where you need an adult in a room
1:10:20
here's what makes
1:10:21
sense here's where this is completely fucking idiotic and you
1:10:27
know first principles
1:10:27
thinking and open-minded enough to not just be like well this
1:10:30
is how i've done it
1:10:31
for the last 50 years and you know you're not proposing to do
1:10:34
something like how
1:10:35
SPEAKER_01: i've done it and i you don't have
1:10:37
white hair and you don't have enough wrinkles so like you can't
1:10:40
be ceo and also
1:10:40
give me my 5x lick prep right um and i somebody needs to build
1:10:47
this um there's some
1:10:49
like there's some contenders for who are like trying to build
1:10:52
this but yeah it
1:10:53
SPEAKER_01: needs to happen
1:10:54
SPEAKER_00: Would you have to build it in a different location?
1:10:57
SPEAKER_00: Like we've tried San Diego, Silicon Valley, Boston.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_01: Bring back Miami.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: No, I think Silicon Valley is the best place in the world.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: Thank God.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: I actually kind of liked Miami.
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: I like the Cortados.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_01: Very good.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: But I was like, man, I am neither hot nor rich enough to be in Miami.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: Really stresses me out every time I'm there.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_01: Being interesting doesn't get you very far in Miami.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, having really big boobs does.
1:11:26
So,
1:11:27
but,
1:11:28
um,
1:11:28
I think Silicon Valley is actually a really good spot for it.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: It's just, um,
1:11:34
Yeah,
1:11:35
it's just,
1:11:35
I think the bio and deep tech is like still pretty incipient.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_01: So we probably need to have this generation of founders,
1:11:41
some portion of them succeed or be successful enough and then
1:11:44
they'll go and start
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: funds.
1:11:45
And then they can bring along the next generation of founders
1:11:48
and maybe like AI and whatnot.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_01: It does make information discovery much easier.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:11:54
So maybe people can get to a degree of competency in an amount
1:11:56
of time that doesn't
1:11:57
SPEAKER_01: require six years,
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: like a PhD.
1:11:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_01: We'll see what happens.
1:12:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't like VC, so I'm not going to do that, but you don't like VCs.
1:12:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't like VC for myself.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_00: I see.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_01: Cause it's very, um, I like operating.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_01: But maybe I'll like,
1:12:12
SPEAKER_01: if law is successful,
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: I'll like be the LP for whoever does this or LP for whoever does this.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:12:17
SPEAKER_00: it's,
1:12:18
SPEAKER_00: uh,
1:12:18
SPEAKER_00: it's funny cause people keep telling me biotech is really,
1:12:21
SPEAKER_00: um,
1:12:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: low or is,
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: is like VCs have turned,
1:12:26
SPEAKER_00: um,
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tried biotechs on it.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_01: Like nothing is happening right now.
1:12:30
I guess my worldview is so tilted because I have people
1:12:35
pitching me all the time on
1:12:37
these sorts of things because I just look at like Retro and New
1:12:42
Limit and all these
1:12:43
SPEAKER_00: other companies I'm interested in raising just enormous amounts of money.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: But then people keep telling me that this is a problem.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_00: People aren't funding interesting big ideas.
1:12:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, those are a little bit different too, right?
1:12:56
Because they're really backed by like the...
1:12:59
Like they all have like a sponsoring billionaire.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:01
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: Like New Limit has Brian.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_01: Retro has Sam.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:08
SPEAKER_01: And...
1:13:09
it's you know that's not a model that a lot of these companies
1:13:14
have like we we we
1:13:15
have obviously you know uh individuals and i know earth and
1:13:18
family offices but we
1:13:19
don't have us we don't have a quote unquote sponsoring
1:13:21
billionaire yeah right we
1:13:22
raise from funds and so um there's lots of different ways to do
1:13:28
these things but if
1:13:31
SPEAKER_01: if the traditional infrastructure
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:13:35
SPEAKER_01: isn't going to fund stuff like this,
1:13:36
then the only people or only companies that will get funded are
1:13:40
those that are
1:13:40
SPEAKER_01: connected to the individuals who can make individual decisions.
1:13:44
And that is just it's another slice of Swiss cheese that like a
1:13:49
good idea has to get through.
1:13:51
to become viable um so it's hard yeah it's hard but i'm glad
1:13:56
those people are
1:13:57
investing in that stuff because otherwise you know these
1:13:59
companies might not exist
1:14:01
um and it's better they exist and then we can build the
1:14:05
infrastructure later i'm
1:14:06
gonna let you go in a second and then i'm gonna ask one last
1:14:09
question which now i'm
1:14:10
realizing i don't know how touchy this question is oh no well
1:14:14
along the lines of
1:14:14
SPEAKER_00: what we're talking about
1:14:15
SPEAKER_00: Are you going to make me cry, Ashley?
1:14:18
SPEAKER_00: No, no, definitely not.
1:14:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this would be in 3D.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_00: 3D crying.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_00: I've done it to people, but I'm not going to do it to you.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_00: Definitely not with this question.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_00: You'll laugh when you hear this one now.
1:14:30
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, of all the big...
1:14:33
tech companies that had made a ton of money who really took a
1:14:37
massive swing at this.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_00: It was Google with Calico and, what is it, Verily?
1:14:43
SPEAKER_01: Verily, yeah.
1:14:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
1:14:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:14:44
SPEAKER_00: sort of going after...
1:14:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:14:46
they were always kind of a little clandestine about exactly
1:14:49
what they were working
1:14:49
SPEAKER_00: on,
1:14:49
SPEAKER_00: but it was like,
1:14:50
SPEAKER_00: we're going to cure death kind of somewhere in that ballpark.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I think they're...
1:14:56
if I remember one of them shut down or they're both like going
1:14:59
along,
1:14:59
but you don't hear a lot.
1:15:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, they've always been kind of secretive.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: You had Arthur Levinson at Calico who's,
1:15:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:15:06
SPEAKER_00: he,
1:15:06
SPEAKER_00: he,
1:15:06
SPEAKER_00: what,
1:15:07
SPEAKER_00: he started Genentech and,
1:15:08
SPEAKER_00: and,
1:15:09
SPEAKER_00: and is like a God in this field.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, is, does that, um,
1:15:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's too soon to sort of write them off,
1:15:17
SPEAKER_00: but it feels like that has also kind of cast something of Opal,
1:15:21
SPEAKER_00: which was,
1:15:22
SPEAKER_00: oh,
1:15:22
SPEAKER_00: if this company with,
1:15:23
SPEAKER_00: like,
1:15:24
infinite resources and Larry and Sergey behind these projects
1:15:28
can't do it either.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's funny.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_01: I always...
1:15:34
It's always interesting to me that you'll have these like
1:15:36
companies or individuals
1:15:37
SPEAKER_01: that were started by like young,
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: disruptors.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_01: And then when they become successful,
1:15:46
SPEAKER_01: instead of investing or facilitating other young disruptors,
1:15:50
SPEAKER_01: they sometimes will go to like the cannon,
1:15:52
SPEAKER_01: right?
1:15:53
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, oh, well, in this place, it needs to be the cannon.
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think you're just seeing the difference of
1:16:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, think about like a, maybe a good example is like a SpaceX, right?
1:16:05
SPEAKER_01: If you listen to,
1:16:06
SPEAKER_01: obviously to your book or,
1:16:07
SPEAKER_01: um,
1:16:08
SPEAKER_01: the Isaacson book about SpaceX,
1:16:10
SPEAKER_01: like...
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: We don't talk about that.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_01: There's only one biography on Elon.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and...
1:16:19
SPEAKER_01: You have to read it.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_01: But if you read it,
1:16:22
SPEAKER_01: right,
1:16:22
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: and you look at,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: the trials and tribulations that SpaceX went through,
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: the only person who could have pulled that through is a founder,
1:16:30
SPEAKER_01: right,
1:16:30
SPEAKER_01: who is so emotionally and,
1:16:34
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:16:34
personally intergrained with the organization and the mission
1:16:40
and it's who they
1:16:41
SPEAKER_01: are.
1:16:41
Like,
1:16:42
otherwise,
1:16:42
any sane person would have stopped 100 times before,
1:16:44
right?
1:16:46
It's way too painful,
1:16:47
especially if you're super wealthy like Elon was even at that
1:16:50
time.
1:16:50
Obviously not relative to how he is today,
1:16:52
but way more money than the vast majority of people.
1:16:55
And so I think a lot of these initiatives and you need to have
1:17:02
someone who has an
1:17:03
SPEAKER_01: unreasonable view into the future.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't have to be decorrelated with experience.
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: But I think I've seen that experience goes two ways.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_01: It either is like
1:17:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't give a fuck.
1:17:16
SPEAKER_01: Like I've already done it.
1:17:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to go for it and like go big or go home because whatever,
1:17:21
SPEAKER_01: I still got my mansion out back.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I love it when people go that way.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_01: A lot of our executives are that way actually.
1:17:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, or it's, I can't taint my reputation.
1:17:33
This can't be like the thing that,
1:17:36
you know,
1:17:36
this can't ruin who and what I did previously.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_00: So I can't fail.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_01: You can't fail.
1:17:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:42
And,
1:17:42
you know,
1:17:43
I think sometimes biotech talent on average falls more into
1:17:47
that ladder.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:17:50
And again,
1:17:51
has this like desire and this kind of predisposition to be more
1:17:55
conservative.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_01: Also,
1:17:56
you just get really jaded working in bio because you just see a
1:17:59
thousand ways
1:18:00
SPEAKER_01: something can fail and in one way something can succeed.
1:18:02
And it's just like I have to remind myself constantly to stay
1:18:06
super optimistic when like,
1:18:07
young idiot founders come to me pitching me their crazy idea i
1:18:10
have to be like
1:18:11
selene you were once a young idiot founder too listen to them
1:18:15
it's okay i know
1:18:16
everything is wrong but it doesn't like what matters right it's
1:18:18
like but like i was
1:18:19
that person and i still struggle with it it's like bio just
1:18:23
it's really difficult
1:18:24
to keep an open mind um because you just become so cognizant of
1:18:28
how hard everything
1:18:29
SPEAKER_01: is yeah and so i don't know i think
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:18:33
SPEAKER_01: this kind of goes back to what you were previously saying,
1:18:35
SPEAKER_01: but how you kind of need that naivety,
1:18:41
SPEAKER_01: but you can't be too naive or you're going to fail.
1:18:43
And I think this is something the bio field really,
1:18:46
really,
1:18:46
really,
1:18:46
really struggles with.
1:18:47
And my hope is that there'll be some company like the
1:18:51
equivalent of what SpaceX did and
1:18:53
you know normalize these like young crazy founders and like
1:18:55
spun out these people
1:18:56
who then started like all these companies around this like
1:18:58
aerospace industries
1:19:00
right um this next gen like i hope that occurs for bio too yeah
1:19:04
yeah that's funny
1:19:05
it reminds me when young people come to me asking for advice on
1:19:10
writing a book and
1:19:11
you're just like you should not do this because you will spend
1:19:15
a lot of time you
1:19:16
will sell their books and you'll make no money you know and
1:19:19
yeah that is like
1:19:25
SPEAKER_00: 99.5%, probably even higher chance of what is going to happen.
1:19:28
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: I just always tell them,
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
1:19:31
SPEAKER_00: you have,
1:19:32
the only reason you should do this is because you feel
1:19:35
compelled to do this.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_01: This is what I tell founders all the time.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_00: You just cannot live unless you write and you're happy.
1:19:43
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: Just going through the exercise,
1:19:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:19:46
SPEAKER_00: like if you and your parents are the only people who read this,
1:19:49
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
1:19:50
SPEAKER_00: you just have to have this out in the world.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_00: And you should expect nothing else from this.
1:19:55
No,
1:19:55
as I tell founders all the time,
1:19:57
it's like,
1:19:57
if you can't imagine the world without this...
1:20:00
and like you're just obsessed with it,
1:20:01
then maybe you should consider starting a company.
1:20:04
Everything less,
1:20:05
in my opinion,
1:20:06
I don't know how you have the discipline or the desire.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like, I mean, it really is like eating glass.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_01: Like there's good moments too, but it's also like eating glass.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_01: Like it is a, I'm pretty like stable.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_01: And even for me, it's a roller coaster, right?
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
1:20:25
SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting thing.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting space to be in.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_00: I promised I would not keep you forever.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_00: Can I speak one last question?
1:20:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I saw you kind of, you were dismissive of AI a couple times.
1:20:39
Is it mostly you're just tired of people slapping AI on
1:20:43
everything or do you have a deeper?
1:20:45
I don't,
1:20:46
there's nothing particularly like,
1:20:48
well,
1:20:49
let's say there's a couple of things.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing particularly insightful.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_01: But I think one is just like the, when you,
1:21:00
SPEAKER_01: I feel like it's just me being a...
1:21:03
SPEAKER_01: A bio deep tech douche a little bit.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, I'm trying to save you from disease.
1:21:09
And you're figuring out how to write sales emails with AI so I
1:21:14
can get 100 more
1:21:15
SPEAKER_01: spam emails per day that,
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: my spam filter can't differentiate.
1:21:20
SPEAKER_01: Like, F you, man.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, go spend your life on something about... Again, douchey.
1:21:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it's the right way.
1:21:26
SPEAKER_01: LPs need to make money.
1:21:27
SPEAKER_01: Lots of LPs are like hospital systems and schools and shit.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, blah, blah, blah.
1:21:31
SPEAKER_01: Whatever, right?
1:21:31
SPEAKER_01: But, like, I'm just...
1:21:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm a dickhead about this stuff.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm never going to respect it.
1:21:36
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:21:39
SPEAKER_01: there's also a lot of like interest of like AI and bio,
1:21:41
SPEAKER_01: which like is going to be interesting.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was like.
1:21:45
I didn't know if you were so underwhelmed that when you hear
1:21:48
about the AI,
1:21:50
SPEAKER_00: like I was reading,
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: what was it?
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: That Chai 2 where the AI is developing.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_01: I think it's actually a smart application of it.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, medicines, you know.
1:21:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're doing antibody.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_00: Antibody.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_00: Antibody development.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: And so I was just curious if you thought that stuff is,
1:22:05
SPEAKER_00: if there's anything real or if you thought it was.
1:22:07
SPEAKER_01: There's definitely real things.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's like.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_01: The fundamental problem with bio is not actually the AI.
1:22:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an AI expert, but obviously AI is pretty damn epic.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_01: I'd be an idiot not to acknowledge and see that.
1:22:22
SPEAKER_01: But the problem isn't the models for most AI problems in bio.
1:22:28
SPEAKER_01: The problem is the data sets.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, we just can't model a human being, right?
1:22:33
SPEAKER_01: If I'm like,
1:22:34
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:22:34
SPEAKER_01: I have this small molecule and I put it into Ashley,
1:22:37
SPEAKER_01: is it going to extend his lifespan?
1:22:39
SPEAKER_01: And like, what is it going to do?
1:22:41
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:22:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, there's just so many, like, infinite, infinite interactions.
1:22:47
And you can,
1:22:47
like,
1:22:47
boil it down to like,
1:22:48
okay,
1:22:49
well,
1:22:49
these are the top five,
1:22:50
like...
1:22:51
SPEAKER_01: adverse events or these like,
1:22:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:22:53
SPEAKER_01: moieties on a small molecule are associated with X or,
1:22:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:22:56
that's why I think the antibody thing is smart because like a
1:22:58
classical challenge
1:22:59
with antibodies is just optimizing basically antibodies like a
1:23:03
designed protein.
1:23:04
SPEAKER_01: It's like a Y shape usually.
1:23:05
And it's designed to like float around your blood and bind to
1:23:11
other protein targets.
1:23:12
And it's designed in a way to like last a longer time because
1:23:16
peptides normally
1:23:17
SPEAKER_01: only last like 30 minutes.
1:23:19
even your fancy chinese peptides um these can last like a month
1:23:23
or so and like some
1:23:24
of the most successful drugs in the world are antibodies but
1:23:26
like the way they like
1:23:27
optimize the binding of that antibody to whatever you're trying
1:23:29
to block whether
1:23:30
it's like a receptor or something is like actually very archaic
1:23:33
and so it makes
1:23:34
sense that like okay you know this protein structure of the
1:23:37
receptor and then you
1:23:38
have an amino acid profile like how can you design the best
1:23:42
mapper like that is a
1:23:43
SPEAKER_01: perfect problem
1:23:44
SPEAKER_01: for AI, right?
1:23:46
Predicting,
1:23:46
you know,
1:23:47
protein folding off of genome sequences,
1:23:49
perfect problem for AI.
1:23:52
But there's a whole other category of things like curing cancer
1:23:58
or understanding
1:24:00
SPEAKER_01: how a drug will behave in a body or how a cancer will react to something.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_01: We just don't have the data sets or the quantification.
1:24:07
Like this is one of the challenges we have is how the hell do
1:24:08
you actually quantify
1:24:09
SPEAKER_01: quality of life?
1:24:11
SPEAKER_01: It's actually really hard.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:24:13
SPEAKER_01: It's really, really hard.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_00: Especially when the dog can't talk.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, your cells can't talk either.
1:24:19
SPEAKER_01: Right?
1:24:20
SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, things are like, oh, things go up, things go down.
1:24:23
SPEAKER_01: It's associated with X.
1:24:24
But it's actually very hard to detangle what's going up because
1:24:27
a bad thing is
1:24:28
SPEAKER_01: going down and it's causing this thing to go up.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_01: What is,
1:24:31
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:32
SPEAKER_01: this thing going up is actually causatively driving,
1:24:34
SPEAKER_01: actually detangling,
1:24:35
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:35
SPEAKER_01: you know what,
1:24:37
SPEAKER_01: you should just,
1:24:38
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:38
SPEAKER_01: flash a picture of,
1:24:39
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:39
SPEAKER_01: those posters of,
1:24:41
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:41
SPEAKER_01: the inside of a cell and,
1:24:42
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:42
SPEAKER_01: the chemical reactions and signaling cascades because that's just,
1:24:47
SPEAKER_01: like,
1:24:48
SPEAKER_01: literally in one cell.
1:24:49
and there's god knows how many in a human right it's just
1:24:53
ridiculously complex so i
1:24:55
obviously think it's interesting i'd be an idiot not to think
1:24:57
it's interesting and
1:24:58
it's not like there's so much foundational work that needs to
1:25:02
be done in like
1:25:03
actually quantifying the human body um i hope we get to do some
1:25:07
of that work i'm
1:25:07
sure others will do that work too this will be a great problem
1:25:09
for parma to work on
1:25:11
SPEAKER_01: um
1:25:12
And I think that's actually the rate limiter to AI doing cool
1:25:15
things in bio and
1:25:16
SPEAKER_01: directly in drug development.
1:25:17
There's a ton of other augmentative stuff that will be
1:25:20
valuable,
1:25:20
I'm sure.
1:25:21
SPEAKER_01: Like reg writing and whatnot.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_01: But like that's a, yeah, we need better data.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:25:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:25:27
So I'm sorry,
1:25:28
I'm not going to be able to make you immortal with AI,
1:25:30
Ashley.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_01: I tried.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_01: Somebody will.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I called Sam.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_01: I said he can't do it.
1:25:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm out of credits.
1:25:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much.
1:25:41
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to get you in trouble with the FDA.
1:25:43
SPEAKER_00: So if we can't say things, let me know.
1:25:46
But if all goes well and according to plan,
1:25:49
then people have an older...
1:25:51
Which plan?
1:25:54
SPEAKER_01: Which version of the Gantt chart?
1:25:56
SPEAKER_00: People could perhaps go to next year if they have an older dog.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_01: Next year or 27, yeah.
1:26:04
SPEAKER_01: We're working as fast as we can.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_01: It's just hard.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_00: So,
1:26:07
SPEAKER_00: but it could be within the next year or two,
1:26:09
SPEAKER_00: if you have an older dog,
1:26:10
SPEAKER_00: you might be able to have an even older dog.
1:26:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_01: And healthier dogs.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_00: And healthier.
1:26:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:26:16
SPEAKER_00: And what?
1:26:17
SPEAKER_00: People should go to Loyal to get the updates on all this?
1:26:22
SPEAKER_00: You can't get in a trial still, can you?
1:26:26
SPEAKER_01: The trial I was talking about is fully enrolled.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_01: But we're going to be recruiting other studies.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_01: We're going to run a lot of these big lifespan extension studies.
1:26:32
So if you'd like to be on the list or potentially enroll,
1:26:35
you can register interest.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: We have a newsletter where we update people and
1:26:39
SPEAKER_00: At loyal.com.
1:26:40
SPEAKER_01: At loyal.com.
1:26:41
SPEAKER_01: You can follow me on Twitter for some hot bro takes.
1:26:44
SPEAKER_01: I need to stop tweeting about bros.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting outed here.
1:26:51
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:26:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:26:52
SPEAKER_01: lots of bro takes also posted a picture of our,
1:26:54
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:26:54
SPEAKER_01: some drug today,
1:26:55
SPEAKER_01: some beefy drugs.
1:26:56
SPEAKER_00: I saw that beefy.
1:26:57
SPEAKER_01: They're beefy.
1:26:58
SPEAKER_00: Meaning they're just big or they're beefy.
1:27:00
SPEAKER_01: No, they're like literally beefy.
1:27:01
SPEAKER_00: Beef flavor for the dog.
1:27:02
SPEAKER_00: They're beef flavor.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_01: They smell like beef ramen.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:27:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, they're really cute.
1:27:06
SPEAKER_01: I was going to bring some,
1:27:07
SPEAKER_01: but I was like,
1:27:07
SPEAKER_01: oh,
1:27:07
SPEAKER_01: he's going to have cameras and he'd have it on camera.
1:27:10
I was,
1:27:10
I was going to bring the,
1:27:11
I was going to bring that photo up,
1:27:13
but I,
1:27:13
I didn't.
1:27:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, you can, you can bring the photo up.
1:27:15
I was just,
1:27:16
I was going to bring you like,
1:27:17
uh,
1:27:17
the,
1:27:17
I'm going to get myself in trouble.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to stop talking now.
1:27:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:27:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for coming in.
1:27:25
SPEAKER_00: I really, we really appreciate it.
1:27:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's just some of the most like,
1:27:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:27:31
Sometimes you just run across a person in a company that just
1:27:33
goes about things
1:27:34
SPEAKER_00: very smartly and interestingly.
1:27:37
And I remember meeting you for the first time and just being
1:27:40
like,
1:27:40
that's really clever.
1:27:42
And kind of like we were talking about,
1:27:43
I was like,
1:27:43
why hasn't somebody done this?
1:27:45
SPEAKER_00: And then,
1:27:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:27:45
SPEAKER_00: it's just,
1:27:46
it takes so much effort and will and everything to something
1:27:52
like this off.
1:27:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think you guys,
1:27:55
SPEAKER_00: I was always into the idea in my head,
1:27:58
SPEAKER_00: you got here faster and farther than I would have predicted.
1:28:03
SPEAKER_00: So.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
1:28:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
1:28:05
SPEAKER_01: we've,
1:28:05
SPEAKER_01: I think I've always,
1:28:07
SPEAKER_01: I remember fighting with some investor about this where I was like,
1:28:10
SPEAKER_01: they had like written me off and I was like,
1:28:12
SPEAKER_01: you don't understand.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_01: Like this company is going to be successful.
1:28:14
SPEAKER_01: Like you're wrong.
1:28:15
SPEAKER_01: And I said this like six or 12 months into starting loyal.
1:28:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I, I, I think the idea is inevitable.
1:28:23
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:28:24
you know,
1:28:24
even if we don't pull it off,
1:28:25
which I will literally be heartbroken forever.
1:28:28
SPEAKER_01: If we don't, I will never recover from that.
1:28:31
Um,
1:28:31
but even if we don't pull it off,
1:28:32
we've blazed a path or somebody else too.
1:28:35
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:28:35
SPEAKER_01: and that already is,
1:28:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:28:37
SPEAKER_01: the honor of my life to have,
1:28:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:28:40
SPEAKER_01: created and normalized this idea that just was,
1:28:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:28:43
SPEAKER_01: very niche five years ago.
1:28:46
And yeah,
1:28:47
we've done more than I think literally anybody thought we
1:28:50
would.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_01: Um,
1:28:52
SPEAKER_01: And we could have done a lot of things better,
1:28:54
SPEAKER_01: but honestly,
1:28:54
SPEAKER_01: we did a lot of things better than many other people who have tried,
1:28:57
SPEAKER_01: too.
1:28:57
SPEAKER_01: So I'm pretty proud.
1:28:58
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
1:28:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for coming in.
1:29:01
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:29:06
SPEAKER_00: The Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashley Vance.
1:29:11
SPEAKER_00: It is produced by David Nicholson and me.
1:29:14
SPEAKER_00: Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sortland.
1:29:19
SPEAKER_00: And the show is edited by the John Sortland.
1:29:25
SPEAKER_00: Thanks as always to Brex.com.
1:29:28
SPEAKER_00: Anyone Ventures for making this possible.
1:29:31
Please visit our Substack,
1:29:34
YouTube,
1:29:34
and podcast channels to get more of what Core Memory makes.
1:29:38
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, y'all.