Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Hidden Science Behind Perfect Skin That Doctors Don't Tell You | Kyle Landry - President at Delavie Sciences
Transcript
- 0:00In this lessons episode, explore how a journey from food science to longevity research reveals
- 0:04unexpected connections between what we eat and how we age. Learn how scientific tools used in
- 0:08food labs can apply to genetics and space research, discover the truth behind food myths,
- 0:12and the role moderation plays in health, and understand how bacteria, biofilms,
- 0:16and even bean sprouts are influencing the future of DNA protection and human longevity.
- 0:20You have a very interesting life. I'm just going to say that because we're going to go through it,
- 0:31and your life is actually very interesting, all the different things that you've done. But
- 0:35at this point, what is your passion? What kind of science do you care about? After four
- 0:43year undergrad in food science, you do your masters in food science. So now you love PhD in food
- 0:49science. So it makes a lot of sense that you're probably going to figure out how to have a career
- 0:53in food science. When you go through everything, you have your PhD, and then you're going to your
- 0:58postdoc and also food science. I know longevity, longevity. What does that mean? What kind of job is
- 1:04food science? What are you solving for humanity with food science? So every single thing people drink
- 1:10from that water or any food they touch a food scientist has worked on it. And food science, in my
- 1:15opinion, is one of the most applied sciences you can go for, because your goal is to make something
- 1:22that everyone will eat or touch. So you could be in food micro, food safety, product design,
- 1:28so developing cookies or chips or the next snack bar, or healthy foods, or you can be food
- 1:35engineering. So actually working on the machines that make the food processing in the food processing
- 1:40plants, it's phenomenal. I think, you know, based on my experience of what I know being on the board
- 1:47of a department, a few other things, it's one of the most underappreciated jobs with one of the
- 1:51highest job placement rates in general, because everyone needs to eat. We have finite land. The
- 1:57population keeps growing. So somehow we have to provide food for all the people while we're losing
- 2:04resources and food science is an interesting thing. So originally I was going to be a professor.
- 2:10So I started teaching at Boston University when I was 23. That's young, no? Yeah, it's pretty
- 2:17young. So I was teaching classes in the graduate and undergraduate for in the Department of Health
- 2:23Sciences at Boston University. My goal was after I graduated with my PhD, go there full time
- 2:29and teach there, but the opportunity at Harvard came up. And what made you switch from food
- 2:34sciences to longevity? That was an opportunity. So I was doing my PhD and I remember I got a phone
- 2:41call, Boston area coach, I thought it was BU, pick it up. And this is Guy Davidson,
- 2:46Claire from Harvard Medical School. He's a big deal. I had no idea who he was. And he's like,
- 2:51hey, Kyle, I read some of your papers. You're the only person in the world doing this type of work.
- 2:55How about you come to my lab and work on this when you don't have your PhD? And what he was asking
- 3:02me to do was in the wheelhouse of what I did. So like, let me step back. Like, you know how math
- 3:08is like a universal language. Science is the same thing. Like even though I'm in food science,
- 3:14all the techniques that I learned and used can be applied to all other sciences, whether it's
- 3:19running protein gels or sequencing or doing enzyme assays. Yeah, I applied it for like,
- 3:25in my case, bean sprouts. But all those techniques I could use in the year of genetics and longevity.
- 3:30So even though it seems like a big stretch scientifically, the toolbox I had fit like a glove.
- 3:37So I decided to go there. Was there ever a point in your career when you went back and used
- 3:42some of the food science? Oh, all the time. All the time. So believe it or not, cosmetics are
- 3:48very similar to food. A lot of the ingredients in cosmetics are food ingredients. So you making
- 3:53emulsions or delivery systems or stability, even the cadence of creating things and the business
- 4:01sense for margins and production scale timelines kind of mirror that of the food industry. So I use it
- 4:06all the time. Believe it or not. What we're spending so much time studying food and food science.
- 4:12What are some I would say scary unnerving things about the food that we eat that people don't
- 4:20quite know. There's a few things. I'm in the mindset of moderation is key. So yeah, there's some
- 4:31negative attributes to foods, maybe some of the preservatives or the colorants, but
- 4:36everything in moderation should balance out fine. It's even like if you McDonald's like fast food,
- 4:43like eating it now and then isn't going to destroy you. But having a moderation mindset is good.
- 4:50My biggest thing, pet peeve is kind of the marketing side where people market things as the cure for
- 4:59something or help alleviate something. And the science is there, but it's not science that's
- 5:05actually been proven how as rigorously some people think. Well, I see it. So where I'm going with
- 5:11this is people speak a lot about seed oils. Oh, yeah, that's people speak a lot about why they feel
- 5:18every time they go to Europe, they lose weight and they feel healthier versus when they're in the US.
- 5:23Obviously pesticides and plus like every second fitness guru on Instagram has their own view
- 5:29about food and what you should eat in this diet and that diet. But not many people are scientific.
- 5:36And I'm curious what actually holds weight or what actually is true outside of just some
- 5:43Instagram influencer spouting off the latest trend. So like seed oils and other things that
- 5:48are pro inflammatory things that drive inflammation. You know, inflammation is bad.
- 5:54Information causes a lot of problems. But there are a lot of other things that are inflammatory as
- 6:00well. Like my favorite is like, you know, I don't want to eat, you know, seed oil or something,
- 6:06but I'll go drink alcohol every night. And you know what I mean? It's like you have to
- 6:11in the it has to be a whole lifestyle change, right? And even some diets like paleo diets or
- 6:19or some of these other things, they're not necessarily sustainable for a long period of time.
- 6:23They're good to cut weight or they're good to like, you know, get you feel good for a little bit,
- 6:28but you can't live on those your whole life. It's difficult. So like, I always say like moderation
- 6:34and try to stick within the 2000 calorie 2500 cal because that alone that would sleep in good
- 6:41hydration will make you feel amazing because a lot of people don't realize how many calories
- 6:46are actually taking in. And if you try to stick with the 2000 calorie 2500 calorie, whatever you
- 6:52want to do, you'll be like, wow, I actually like can't eat the snacks or the chips or the things
- 6:57I go to all the time. But there is one, you know, things to say to whole whole foods or minimally
- 7:04processed foods, we get a lot of fiber, a lot of nutrients, right? Nothing will replace those.
- 7:10It's just our biology and how fast things absorb, how you feel after glycemic index, things like
- 7:15that impact your feelings is part of the work that food scientists do. And I guess this,
- 7:24it's not like a conspiracy, but it sounds like something that is a little bit nefarious,
- 7:28like including ingredients and foods that make them addictive. Is that?
- 7:33So I guess I'm going to say no, like it's not intentional, but food is designed for what?
- 7:40To sell, right? Like if you're a food company and your goal is to sell, you want to make foods
- 7:47that people want. And people want certain foods because we're biologically designed to want high
- 7:54calorie foods because back when we were in the caves, we didn't know when we would eat. So we have
- 8:00that craving for high calorie foods, like high fats, stuff like that because we want to pack on as
- 8:07much as we can. But now with our sedentary lifestyle, you know, all these different things is kind of
- 8:13counteracting are also craving the same foods, but we don't move. And everything's accessible,
- 8:19right? I can go down to the store and buy a bag of chips for 99 cents. That's amazing. That's
- 8:25great. You know, so it's a different, you have to look at all facets. You were working with
- 8:31bean sprouts. Yeah. So bean sprouts, I think they've sort of carried through all of your work
- 8:38because what I'm looking at here, they impacted your work with David St. Clair. They also impact
- 8:44some of the things that you did in space with NASA. A whole bunch of so talk to me about bean
- 8:50sprouts. And this is work that you were doing when you were still in school. Yeah. So my PhD was all
- 8:55about bean sprouts of all things, but bean sprouts are incredibly dirty. And I say dirty as they
- 9:03have a lot of bacteria, a lot of bacteria on bean sprouts in their minimally processed, which means,
- 9:10you know, if you have some foodborne pathogens on there and you eat them raw, you get sick. So one
- 9:14of the things around bean sprouts is bacterial biofilms. And these are basically structures that
- 9:22bacteria build. It's like on your teeth. You know, like, you don't brush your teeth and you scrape
- 9:26it like the stuff. That's a bacterial biofilm. It's the same thing happens on produce on bean sprouts.
- 9:31Same thing happens on the international space station, the water systems. Same thing happens with
- 9:37some of the stuff we're working with David with. And I was trying to figure out how to stop them.
- 9:44And so I developed a novel disinfectant. It's as patented where I would make spontaneous
- 9:50nanomulsions of carver crawl oil. It's a essential oil. And we're basically disinfect bean sprouts
- 9:57and seeds and make them safer. We actually went and pitched this to commercialize it. But the
- 10:03manufacturing process and the overall like cost per unit was just a little too high for farmers to
- 10:11really adopt because the margins on bean sprouts are like razor thin. You're not making a lot. So
- 10:16adding, you know, an extra 10 cents per. But the technology was sounding great. It just
- 10:23was an example of something that wasn't commercially viable because the economics didn't plan out.
- 10:29So how do you take that into longevity research? So there's another technology I was working on
- 10:35with a bunch of these enzymes. And these enzymes break, broke down components of bacterial biofilms.
- 10:41And there's one specific part that broke down DNA. And believe it or not, bacterial biofilms
- 10:47are held together by extraneous DNA. So DNA that bacteria release and acts like a glue. So
- 10:55longevity wise, the organisms that this came from are called extremophiles. So these are organisms
- 11:02that live in extreme environments. And this one organism was able to grow at 55 degrees centigrade.
- 11:09That's like 135, 137 degrees Fahrenheit. And why David was interested was how can this organism
- 11:18survive for a long time without taking on a bunch of mutations and mutating and dying, right? So
- 11:25we're looking at like DNA repair mechanisms. And the enzymes associated with it because with
- 11:30longevity, damage to your DNA accelerates the aging process. And this is some called epigenetic
- 11:37drift where over time all the environmental stuff we get exposed to whether it's food,
- 11:41pollution, sunlight makes these damages over time where eventually we were not what we used to
- 11:48be in this series of cancer. So we were trying to figure out how we can hijack these extremophiles
- 11:54and use them to protect ourselves and understand aging. And that led to another patent that ended
- 12:01up bringing us into the bio defense space, which is a whole other
- 12:06things. Was there was there anything that you discovered that is currently used commercially?
- 12:12Yeah, yeah. So the enzymes are used in some of our commercial products like face plungers,
- 12:20toner, stuff like that. Now the commercial, okay, okay. And then the stuff from space is
- 12:26using sunscreen stuff like that. But the delivery system, that hasn't been licensed or incorporated,
- 12:32but the technology, the fundamentals around the technology are being incorporated in other areas.
- 12:36Well, I meant like in terms of DNA protection. Yeah. So not commercially used, but in a lot of
- 12:45research for whether it's astronauts' health on the way to Mars. Not how that gets one of the
- 12:52things. Okay. One of the things. Yeah. So I wouldn't say it's not on the market, but it's the
- 12:56foundation for a lot of research now that's moving forward in the space. When you when you when you
- 13:03patent these like very novel technologies, or is that the right word technology?
- 13:10What's the path from when you start working on it until somebody can go buy it and then use it
- 13:18for themselves for whatever longevity practice? So it depends on the type of product, right? So for
- 13:22example, with the space ingredient, which we'll cover, we proved it in lab, we did all the clinical
- 13:30testing, we submitted it for patent, but then we have to go from a test tube to scale, right? Like
- 13:36doing something to lab is great, but if you can't scale it to the masses, it's useless. So
- 13:41then you have to scale that. And then once that scale, then you got to put it in products,
- 13:45and then you got to scale the products, you got to test the thing goes to market. So for like
- 13:50the ingredients for a lot of the products, we have maybe three, four years,
- 13:57maybe five years, depending on how complex it is, the the space ingredient that was when you say
- 14:04space ingredient, just to clarify that solves the DNA protecting ingredient. That one that's
- 14:09sun protection and some protection and DNA protection, DNA activation. That's one of them.
- 14:15Yeah, that's one of them. Yeah, six, five years. Give it a take. Thanks for tuning in. If you found
- 14:20this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you
- 14:24want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the
- 14:29full episode. See you in the next one.