Can You Reverse Decades of Drinking Damage? Perhaps. - EP 75 Jacob Kimmel Is Back

**Ashlee Vance** (0:01)
I come this week with terrific news. It is possible that the hangover has been cured and that liver damage from years of drinking might be cured. So if you are an imbiber or no one or an alcoholic, rejoice possibly. Our guest is NewLimit's co-founder and president, Jacob Kimmel. He is a repeat guest. This episode really is about the cutting edge of longevity technology. NewLimit is one of the most fascinating companies working in this area. Jacob has been on the podcast before. He is our very rare repeat guest, and we have shot a YouTube video at NewLimit's laboratory, which not enough of you have watched and you should watch.
The NewLimit is doing just some of the most pioneering, groundbreaking work in the longevity field, and Jacob is eloquent. He is a genius. He is brilliant. This is why we've had him on again. What the company has seen is that they can get mice drunk and then give them their therapy, and there are old drunk mice that are waking up from their big night out, and then they're running around like young mice who are healthy, and it's incredible. We've got some video to show you in this podcast of these old drunk mice being unfazed by booze, and more importantly, it appears that this therapy is reversing severe liver damage that would have accumulated over time. We must pump the brakes, of course, because this is in mice and not in humans, although NewLimit is going to head toward a clinical trial very shortly, which we talk about in the episode with this new therapy. It's incredibly encouraging, remarkable, really, and Jacob is fascinating to listen to. Please leave us a review or a like wherever you listen to this podcast so more people can know about the end of The Hangover and reversing liver damage. I am Ashlee Vance. This is Core Memory. You're gonna love this episode. Off we go.
Jacob, you're a rarity, you're a repeat guest.

**Jacob Kimmel** (2:31)
Privilege to do so.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:33)
It is our fortune. I don't know, this will air before our Max Hodak episode airs, I think, but Max is our only other.

**Jacob Kimmel** (2:42)
If I'm second only to Max, all is right with the universe.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:46)
So we love talking to you. We love watching what NewLimit is doing, which is the purpose of this particular podcast and in some ways, there's a newsy angle to some of this that we're gonna get to. You guys have, well, I'm gonna tease it.
I'm gonna tease it. You guys have broken ground on the hangover and on liver function. So many people, you're gonna have to stay tuned to figure out exactly what has happened.

**Jacob Kimmel** (3:16)
I feel like you're giving away the whole game, man. You're just telling them.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:18)
Well, it's a tease, it's a tease.
You know, we'll have to find out what you've done with the hangover. And so, but for people, if you checked out or you can check out our previous episode, we'll really get into the heart of NewLimit, the history of NewLimit, what you guys are doing. But let's assume not everybody's gonna do that. And this is a field, people know the longevity field, but they don't know the specifics of what you guys are doing. Yeah, you want to take a crack at it instead of me? Just the basic overview?

**Jacob Kimmel** (3:50)
I'll try my best. So we're working on developing medicines for aging, and the technology we're working with is called epigenetic reprogramming, which is way too many syllables for a pretty simple concept.
The basic premise is that all the cells in your body have the same DNA code, and each cell actually uses a different set of genes from that DNA code. This is how your eyeball has a different function than your kidney, despite the fact that you have the same genome everywhere.
Now, this is controlled by a set of chemical marks on top of your DNA and the proteins your DNA is wrapped around, like string upon a spool, and those chemical marks are called epigenetic marks, and collectively they're known as the epigenome. So basically, you can think of these kind of like the control flow in software. When a user uses an application, not every line of code runs at the same time in the same way that every cell doesn't express every gene. Rather, it's controlled by these epigenetic marks. Unfortunately, as we get older, these marks get degraded, and cells stop using the right genes at the right time. They aren't able to keep you healthy, and you become way more susceptible to disease. So what we're working on doing is trying to make medicines that activate very special groups of genes called transcription factors that can actually rewrite these marks back to the way they were when you were young. So the hope is if we find the right group of these transcription factors, we can take any old cell in your body and actually reprogram it, so that it acts just like its young self did before, helps keep you healthy longer or treat diseases that have emerged as you've gotten older.