David Sinclair on the Longevity Pill, Age Reversal Timelines, and Updated Protocols | EP #250

David Sinclair (0:00)

This feels like another Ripe Brothers moment. Once you can fly, everything changes, and I think we're about to learn whether we can fly or not. I'm pretty sure we can.

Peter Diamandis (0:08)

They used to your, you are days away from the first human epigenetic reprogramming trial.

David Sinclair (0:15)

Three of the Yamanaka genes, a subset of them, they're going into the eye of a patient shortly to see if we can cure blindness. We find that every tissue that we go into as a field, we see benefits. Brain age reversal, improvement in memory, motor neurons, so ALS, the immune system, muscle, kidney, mentioned liver, skin.

Peter Diamandis (0:36)

A true longevity therapeutic, when given, would work throughout the entire body. And that's the objective here. Is there an upper limit to how long humans can live?

David Sinclair (0:47)

I'm not saying that, but I am saying that.

Peter Diamandis (0:52)

Now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

David, please, I'm going to grab my hot water and lemon. What are you drinking?

David Sinclair (1:03)

Coffee.

Peter Diamandis (1:04)

Coffee, all right.

David Sinclair (1:05)

I couldn't find any matcha.

Peter Diamandis (1:07)

Well, you know, I mean, coffee actually is good for you. The studies show caffeine is, you know, I probably do about three cups. And I think it's also that decaffeinated coffee, it's all the other molecules in the cocoa, in the caffeine bean.

David Sinclair (1:22)

Yeah, coffee comes in and out of fashion, but the fashion is definitely in the positive right now for longevity. It's not a bad way to start the day. Caffeine is fine. People ask me, is it okay to drink caffeine? And Serena and I drink tea all day, pretty much until, you know, we can't take any more caffeine, but it is good.

Peter Diamandis (1:41)

And we're going to talk about your longevity protocols as well.

But what I'm excited about is to give everybody an update on our approach towards longevity singularity, to add that term together. The moment in time that we really know that we're extending the healthy human lifespan. Let's begin on the news. Dejor, you are days away from the first human epigenetic reprogramming trial. Tell us about that.

David Sinclair (2:12)

Well, if you've been under a rock, let me tell you that we've worked out.

Maybe we could talk a bit about the science behind it. But we have a drug candidate that came out of my lab. It was published first in 2020 on the cover of Nature magazine, and the title on the cover was Turning Back Time.

We reported, and I want to give big credit to my student, Wan Cheng Lu, who worked for many years to try and find certain genes and combinations that could safely reverse aging, but not go so far that you could cause cancer or lose identity of the cell. And he found it. It took a long time. And in retrospect, it looks easy, because we now know the answer. But it was tough at the time, and he was ready to quit. He was in my office, almost crying. And I said, you got to try. I have a good feeling. And so he found three genes, three of the Yamanaka genes, a subset of them. These Yamanaka genes, I think you all know what we use to make stem cells. But we don't want to use the technology to make stem cells. If I turned you all into a giant lump of stem cells, that would not be good.

And mice die within two days if you use all of Yamanaka's genes. So anyway, we have three of the genes. We call them OSK for short. They're going into the eye of a patient shortly to see if we can cure blindness, having succeeded really well in mice and monkeys to cure their blindnesses.

Peter Diamandis (3:38)

So, life, yep.

I know a number of you are investors along with me in life biosciences. So, super excited about that heading towards reversing blindness. What would be in success, and fingers crossed, where would you head next? Which organ systems would you go after after that?

David Sinclair (4:00)

Yeah, so what's remarkable about technology is we didn't choose the eye because we thought it would work best. In fact, I was recommending against it because the eye, curing blindness is not something that's easy. I thought the liver would be a good way to go. And that's probably the next place we go in the human body.

What other labs and ours now are showing, and seemingly now every month or so another lab publishes on this technology, so it's not just my lab, it's great, it's being reproduced and expanded now, that we find that every tissue that we go into as a field, we see benefits, and so it's not just the eye, we see benefits, well, I'll just list my lab's work. Brain age reversal, this is all in mice currently. Brain age reversal, improvement in memory in old age and Alzheimer's models. Motor neurons, so ALS, which is clearly an incurable disease currently, but we think we can help there. The immune system, muscle, kidney, mentioned liver, skin. The list goes on, and the liver, joints, a new paper came out from a different group just last week that I tweeted about.