Ned David, Ph.D.: How cellular senescence influences aging, and what we can do about it

**Peter Attia, MD** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you wanna take your knowledge of the space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you wanna learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe.
Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Ned David. Ned is the president of Unity Biotechnology, a company that he co-founded in 2011 In this episode, we're gonna talk a little bit about Unity, but more importantly, we talk about the science upon which Unity is developed, and that is the science of senescence, or cellular senescence.
We begin this episode by putting that into context. I think if you're interested in the space of longevity, you're listening to this podcast, you've undoubtedly heard the term senescence, but it might not mean much to you. And I think what Ned does a great job of here is explaining not just senescence, but where it fits in the overall lattice, if you will, of all of the different cellular processes that occur during aging. So where does it fit in with the role of MTOR inhibition, caloric restriction, mitochondrial dysfunction, stem cell exhaustion, methylation of DNA, and epigenetic change, all of these sorts of things. We also talk quite a bit about Ned's background as a serial entrepreneur in biotechnology. Ned is at least partly responsible for the development of a number of FDA-approved compounds, and he talks openly about what he learned, good, bad, and indifferent along the way, and how that helped him at the beginning of this process of creating this company, Unity, define sort of the jugular questions that needed to be addressed as sort of a proof of principle. In fact, I found that part of the discussion most interesting, and I think you'll know what I'm talking about when we get to that part of the episode, because I found that exercise that he and his co-founders went through between about 2011, 2015, to be some of the most interesting thinking around this idea of company creation. Ned is a prolific innovator. I think when he was about 30, he was named to the top 100 innovators in the world by MIT Technology Reviews. He holds a PHD from Cal Berkeley, and he got his undergrad degree in molecular biology at Harvard. So without getting into too much more of the details of this, please enjoy my discussion with Ned David.
Ned, awesome to see you today. Thank you for coming by.

**Ned David** (2:58)
Oh, thank you for having me.

**Peter Attia, MD** (2:59)
I feel like I haven't seen you in person in way too long.

**Ned David** (3:02)
Is this true? We tried to get you to come to dinner.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:04)
Oh God, I feel horrible about that. Yes, sorry.

**Ned David** (3:08)
You were distracted, it's all good.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:09)
No, you know what I was doing?

**Ned David** (3:11)
You were doing a podcast.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:12)
I was doing a podcast that I thought would take two and a half hours. It ended up taking six hours.

**Ned David** (3:18)
That must have been an intense experience.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:20)
It was a very intense experience and I felt horrible after, I'm sorry. So I owe you an apology for that.

**Ned David** (3:26)
It's okay, we love you.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:28)
There's so much I wanna talk with about you. In fact, I have been bugging you for about a year to come on the podcast, because what I was hoping we could do, and we can never do it when there's a microphone in front of us, but was sort of reproduce a dinner conversation that we would have ordinarily, which would be pick some topic and we go way off on a tangent about it. And it could be energy, it could be biotech, it could be whatever.
But some of the most interesting discussions we've had over the past five years have been around longevity. Something that we both share an interest in and God, it's been probably nine years since you talked to me about what became that which you're doing today. Is that about right?

**Ned David** (4:10)