- il y a 8 heures
AI vs. Aging: The Quest for Longevity in the Age of Machine Learning
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00:00Ok, so here we are, welcome back.
00:03So, in popular culture, there are so many movies about turning back time or discovering that fountain of youth.
00:13Did movies inspire my next guest? Well, let's ask him.
00:16He's a scientist and entrepreneur who has a bioscience company that wants to add 10 years to human lifespan.
00:23I'm very much intrigued.
00:26So, audience, please give a warm welcome to Joe Bet-Lacroix. He's the CEO of Retro Biosciences.
00:36So, Joe, take us through it then. Why have you made longevity your mission?
00:43Well, I guess I see everything that I might do through the lens of companies.
00:51I compulsively have to start companies in order to do the things that I want to do.
00:54So, after I did a purely tech company, and I guess we're at a tech conference,
01:01that making the world's smallest computer, I had some time to think.
01:06And I wanted to do something after that that I felt that would be a little more lasting than making
01:13some very cool, fun gadget.
01:16And the thing that kept coming to me, what if I succeeded at it, because I like very difficult technical
01:26challenges,
01:27then afterward, imagine succeeding really, really well.
01:33What does the world look like then, in my vision?
01:37And there are various technical things to work on.
01:41But then, if you sort of max on them, as you would like to say, it's not necessarily that much
01:47more interesting of a world to live in.
01:48But, when I think about more health, when I think about, you know, less people like lying there in a
01:56hospital bed suffering,
01:58that it just, I just, there's nothing for me to get cynical about.
02:02It just like keeps getting better and better in my head.
02:04So, was it a little bit more personal or professional, would you say, that sort of triggered this desire, this
02:09need in you?
02:11Oh God, I've never really thought about the concept of professional.
02:17I made this commitment to myself when I was 10 years old, that I always wanted to work on things
02:22that sort of mattered,
02:24or were interesting to me, or that got me excited.
02:26And if I had to work on something purely for money, but I didn't like it, then I would just
02:29rather be poor.
02:32That's really lovely.
02:34So, talk us through the idea of adding 10 years to a lifespan.
02:39I mean, is that really sort of, I mean, why 10 years?
02:42Is that sort of the contract you want to have with people?
02:45Because, I mean, obviously 10 years is a very long time.
02:48And so, if you tell someone, I can help you elevate and, you know, increase your lifespan by 10 years,
02:55I mean, that's something that they'll buy into.
02:56So, what's the sort of reason behind the 10 years?
02:5910 years, I mean, humans right now only live so long, and 10 years is a pretty reasonable chunk of
03:08time.
03:08You know, it's like, it's kind of hard.
03:09Usually, it's hard for people to kind of even imagine what they'll be 10 years from now, even though, in
03:15other respects, it's not that long.
03:17You know, when I first started founding startups, I think, oh, this is going to be easy.
03:21I'll finish this in like 18 months, and then we'll have this product out, and who knows what I'll do
03:25next.
03:27And then it takes eight or nine years, or 10 years.
03:29And like, companies just take that long.
03:31So, now I have a little bit of a feeling for what a decade is.
03:36I think there are already medicines out there that will add a few years to lifespan.
03:44There are also things you can do for your own life that will add, you know, years to your healthy
03:50lifespan right now.
03:51For instance, go to the gym every day.
03:53Not that they're fun, right?
03:56But I think that 10 years is attainable with a number of different therapeutics, and that feels like the right
04:02level of challenge for a company.
04:04Because companies can't, you know, just invent the entire future.
04:08They have to work on something tangible and something practical.
04:13But I also, it's really important for me to distinguish our work and our mission from the other side of
04:21the whole longevity world,
04:22which is, you know, we want to be, like, a space alien civilization where everybody lives forever.
04:30And, like, kind of utopia, quasi-religious land.
04:34And, like, to be working in a startup, it has to be, like, practical, tangible stuff that you can do
04:44in the next, you know, 10 or 15 years.
04:45So, talk us through the sort of technology and how you're trying to achieve your goal then.
04:52Yeah, okay.
04:53So, we divide presently the ways that we approach extending healthy human lifespan into either replacing old cells in your
05:08body with young cells,
05:10or rejuvenating the young cells, I mean, the old cells that are already in your body to make them younger.
05:17So, you can, you know, you can sort of divide conceptually the things.
05:22Ultimately, it all relies on an academic branch of research called aging biology.
05:29And the reason that I got excited about aging biology is because, you know, probably around 80 to 85%
05:37of all of the suffering that occurs in our, for instance, in our medical system is spent on age-related
05:44diseases.
05:45So, where do those diseases come from? Like, why do you get age-related diseases? It's because of aging.
05:51And yet, our medical system and our, like, pharma company apparatus isn't really thinking in terms of the root cause
05:59of these diseases,
06:01but rather trying to kind of whack a mole, put them out one by one.
06:05So, in replacement, we can remove old cells from the body and put younger ones in to replace them.
06:14And that way, we don't have to understand what's in the cell because cells are really complicated still for us.
06:20Sadly, in 2025, we don't fully know how to change the operation and understand the function of cells.
06:27And then for rejuvenation, much harder, but you leave the cells there because not all cells can be replaced.
06:32And then we have to work on reversing some of the damage that accumulates with time in the cells.
06:37So, it's both rejuvenation and replacement that you're looking into?
06:42For sure. Yeah. So, for instance, replacement.
06:47Like, one example is a program we have where we're replacing the cells that make all of the blood.
06:56And the blood is amazing.
06:59And so, they're blood stem cells. They're called hematopoietic stem cells.
07:04And they give rise to all of the different types of blood.
07:08And blood is really complicated, weirdly.
07:10We think of it as just this sort of red liquid.
07:12But it's got, like, red blood cells and many different types of white blood cells.
07:16And platelets and, you know, neutrophils.
07:19And so, there's this very complicated cascade of all these different subtle cell types, which end up making up about
07:2980% of all the human cells in our bodies.
07:33And so, and they all come from this one type of stem cell that's in our bone marrow called a
07:39hematopoietic stem cell.
07:40So, the vision here is that when, say, someone is, you know, 80 years old and they're starting to experience
07:48immune decline, for instance, yeah, that we can remove their old blood stem cells and replace them with young blood
07:59stem cells made from their own DNA.
08:02And so, starting over with a completely young, zero-age blood system at 80 will help give a lot more
08:13health.
08:14Now, in the last panel, we were talking a lot about drug discovery.
08:18So, can you talk to us a little bit how you're sort of training and deploying your AI models?
08:23AI models, yeah.
08:23And perhaps with the use of OpenAI as well.
08:26Okay, yeah, yeah.
08:26So, I think I mentioned that the cell is very complicated and sadly, I mean, it's this tiny little thing
08:34about 10 microns in diameter.
08:36And then we have billions of people trying to figure out how it works and we still don't know.
08:43And I love people and that's why I work on this project because I want people to be happier.
08:48But, like, their brains are actually kind of puny.
08:53Like, I don't mean this in an insulting way.
08:55I just mean, like, I go to Harvard and, you know, I was, like, educated at Harvard and I'm talking
09:01to super brilliant professors
09:03and asking them about cellular biology and talking about various genes and the gene networks and regulatory pathways.
09:10And there's only, you know, they can only hold, like, maybe 20 or 30 genes in their head at all.
09:16And, you know, it's very sophisticated and they can talk about them in compelling and interesting ways.
09:21But there's 20,000 of them and then they interact with 20,000 other genes.
09:26And this is, like, extremely complex, you know, trillions of different possibilities that occur.
09:31And the human brains just can't do it.
09:32So, I've always had this idea that we're going to need computer models of the cell to figure this stuff
09:37out.
09:39And so then I had the, you know, the great fortune and privilege of being funded by Sam Altman,
09:49who later kind of became, you know, someone who runs this, like, pretty exciting company that I think is changing
10:00our world and seemingly in really good ways.
10:04But that seemed like, ha, this is my opportunity finally for I can start building an AI model that can
10:12help us understand the cell.
10:13So, the one we, yeah.
10:15Can I just quickly ask, how long were you doing what you're doing until OpenAI came in and gave that
10:21investment?
10:21So we can sort of understand it as well.
10:23Yeah.
10:24So, we were operating for a couple of years, at least, and doing biotech.
10:32Well, I wouldn't say, like, necessarily the traditional way of doing biotech because both I and Sam come out of
10:38this startup accelerator in San Francisco called Y Combinator or YC.
10:42And, you know, we like to try to do things a faster way and sort of hack the existing systems,
10:48et cetera.
10:49But nonetheless, we had mostly the tools available to us of the standard biotech ecosystem.
10:53And then we got, we had this idea that we should, maybe we could partner with OpenAI and build a
11:01new model.
11:02So we kicked off that project probably a year and a half ago.
11:06And we decided to work on proteins because proteins are essentially the functional machinery of the cell, if you will.
11:19And they're sort of, I guess, where the rubber hits the road for function.
11:24And so if we could design new proteins, that means we can figure out how to make our therapeutics, you
11:29know, be faster or make, you know, make the cell, make certain aspects of the cells more durable, et cetera.
11:36So is a lot of your work so far theoretical?
11:39And when can you see it actually being used practically for it to touch, you know, the people that you
11:44talk about with so much?
11:46I mean, you seem to have a lot of humanity, a lot of love for people and a need to
11:51help.
11:51So when do you think all of what you're doing can actually reach those people?
11:56I would say we're fundamentally practical.
12:00I think the, it's, there are other realms where people, like, are theoretical.
12:07So, like, I think we rely a lot on academia and I'm a little sad that America seems to be
12:13kind of destroying academia right now.
12:15But hopefully it'll bounce back.
12:16Like, it's a great place for people to think, do a lot of thinking, theorizing for the long term.
12:23But in the context of a startup, which is my great love and my vehicle for action and impact, you
12:30have, there's this, like, there's this point where you draw the line between, between sort of science and then engineering.
12:39So it's, it's sort of, I guess it's sort of a tech mindset, but it's the place for us to
12:44grab the knowledge and it's right at that juncture where it becomes engineering.
12:50And so, and that's a fundamentally practical thing.
12:53There's, there's probably a theory of bridges, you know, like, why do we have bridges or whatever?
12:58You can write philosophical books about why you should stay on your side of the river, but then it comes
13:02down to actually building the bridge.
13:04And then, you know, this is how we're going to do it.
13:06And let's step one, step two, step three.
13:09And so we're, we're, we're fundamentally practical right now in terms of these are the medicines we're going to make.
13:15These are the steps we're getting on them there.
13:17Then we do preclinical, then phase one clinical trial, phase two clinical trial, et cetera.
13:22Ultimately, I think we're going to get to the point where we've exhausted academia.
13:26So academia has come up with a bunch of really great things.
13:30And I think industry and, and the, the pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies, they're behind right now,
13:37at least from the perspective of aging on, on bringing what has been already discovered in the academic field of
13:44aging biology to humans.
13:47And to people and to, to actually change people's lives.
13:50So we can catch up for a while, but what we're building is a large pharma company.
13:55So we're in the early stages of it.
13:56And eventually say just before the end of the decade, we'll have products that are actually out in the market.
14:01We'll be making a lot of revenue.
14:03And that revenue will go back into R and D and then we're going to run out of stuff in
14:07academia.
14:09So we're going to, then we're going to have to pull back and become a little bit more theoretical or
14:12at least have multiple divisions.
14:13And some of those divisions will be more theoretical.
14:15It's a really exciting time to your company.
14:17But can you find a way to get rid of someone's predisposition to a disease?
14:23And when we were speaking earlier, we spoke of the possibilities around COVID and understanding how that vaccine worked,
14:30because obviously this pandemic happened.
14:33You know, everyone was basically in flight or fight mode and there wasn't that much research into it.
14:38People still don't to this day, I think, understand something like that and how it happened.
14:42So is there a way perhaps to get to understand predisposition and to cancel that out in a way?
14:49Oh, for sure.
14:50So if you look at a sort of a distribution of the population or just think in terms of your
14:55families,
14:55since almost all of us were impacted in one way or another, our families or our family networks,
15:01it wasn't your 30-year-old friend that was dying of COVID.
15:05You know, it was your grandmother or your friend's aged uncle.
15:13COVID is an age-related disease.
15:16Like from one perspective, it's an age-related disease.
15:22So, which I guess, backing up, I would define as diseases that derive from this predisposition.
15:34So there's two different kinds of predisposition.
15:36One is you're born with certain genetics just by, you know, the bad luck or good luck of the parents
15:42you happen to be dealt in this game of life.
15:45And then there is sort of what happens over time afterward, what people theoretically called the environment.
15:53So I think that age is sort of what happens in cells over time starts slowly changing how our cells
16:03are functioning.
16:04And then we become more predisposed to these things called age-related diseases.
16:10And what we understand now is that a bunch of the things that change in cells over time can actually
16:16be cleaned up or reversed or repaired.
16:19And then so that changes predisposition, technically, as you're thinking of it.
16:24But also, you know, for things such as cancer, I mean, can you see breakthroughs happening with that as well?
16:34Or is there a way to prolong someone's life longer with your technology?
16:38So we all of our programs and we've explored about six things fairly deeply, three of which have made it
16:45through sort of the gauntlet and checked all the boxes and are we're now taking like into clinical trials.
16:52They have to pass a number of criteria that fit with our mission.
16:57And our mission is, you know, extending healthy human lifespan broadly among people.
17:02And, you know, our job is not just to extend the lifespan of Sam Altman.
17:06It's like technically it's the upper healthiest half of humanity is who we want to help.
17:16But one of one of the sort of checkboxes we have to fill is that ultimately any therapeutic we make
17:24has to be usable in the full deployment preventatively.
17:30And so that means cancer is something where almost all the work on it is on the flip side, where
17:39most of the pharma industry is here is like, oh, there's a disease that see if we can do something
17:43about it.
17:43And most of it is most of it is can we give them three more months or six more months?
17:49Or is there something we can do to slow it down or shrink the tumors a bit?
17:55Whereas I think there will be an aging biology inspired approach to cancer.
18:03But it's going to be difficult.
18:05And so one of the fundamental drivers of cancer is the slow buildup over time of DNA mutations.
18:13And if you, you know, it's okay to kind of flip the sort of the DNA code tiny bits here
18:21and there and like, you know, maybe the protein that's made from it doesn't work quite as well.
18:24Or if it's in some sort of junk area of the genome that doesn't do anything.
18:31But every now and then, and if you, if that happens just by great chance, you have these DNA codes
18:37that are flipped in exactly the right genes that are all the genes that say, you know, don't grow too
18:42much.
18:42Or let's make sure you pay attention to the checkpoints around you and all the, all the feedback saying don't
18:47grow too much.
18:47You happen to check, you happen to flip all of those at random chance in exactly the wrong way, then
18:54you get cancer.
18:55And so that, you know, that's a probability times time thing.
18:58And so the, the aging biology approach to cancer right now largely comes from looking at species that don't get
19:07very much cancer or that have long life spans.
19:10And for instance, bowhead whales have very, very similar biology to ours.
19:16You know, they're mammals that they nurse their young, they, you know, they, they, they have the same body temperature,
19:22you know, they don't, they, they didn't diverge from humans that long ago.
19:26And like the grand scheme of evolution, but they live for 230 years.
19:32So what, what's different in their cells and people have put a lot of works academics have put a lot
19:37of work into trying to like, what's different between a human cell and a, and a bowhead whale cell.
19:42And one of the fundamental differences is that they have turned on their DNA repair mechanisms to be sort of
19:52more, you know, at a higher volume, basically, you know, it's looking harder.
19:56For places where there's changes in the genome and quickly fixing them while before it's too late.
20:01So the, the aging biology approach and one that I would, that I would plan to, to implement and sort
20:10of our next phase of growth, which is, you know, presently we're fundraising for our next level of expansion.
20:14Um, is, um, drugs or therapeutics that increase DNA repair for people, uh, because then you can use that preventatively
20:22for cancer.
20:23Cause I'd much rather not get it than have to try to try to fix it a little bit.
20:29Sort of.
20:29Yeah.
20:30But let's come to the, I mean, we've, we've got a few minutes left now.
20:33Let's come to the more philosophical questions.
20:34Then when it comes to whose life are we extending?
20:38I mean, you've spoken about it already that, I mean, obviously you've got a massive investor there, someone who's extremely
20:44wealthy and rich, but will this technology be able to be translated to the masses?
20:48Well, because it seems if that's your mission and goal for everyday people to also have access to this, how
20:53do you ensure that there is that equitable access and this, um, equitable access to this idea of longevity of
20:5810 years?
21:00Yeah.
21:00Okay.
21:01Um, no offense, Sam, but, uh, yeah, it's, this is, this is for, for, and I, as I mentioned that
21:07sort of the upper healthy half of the population and also like, you know, if someone doesn't have access to
21:13medical care at all, there's, there's nothing I can do for them.
21:15Right.
21:16You know, if you're living in, in Sudan or whatever, and you're going to get shot on the way to
21:19the hospital, um, then, then, you know, modern biotechnology is not super helpful yet.
21:25Um, or if you're just, if you're actively trying to kill yourself in some particular way, like smoking three packs
21:30of cigarettes a day or whatever, um, that's not my job.
21:34Um, however, it is another one of our mission criteria that, that all of our therapeutics ultimately should be deployable
21:44on a broad scale and affordable.
21:47Uh, and so making medicines is extremely expensive work.
21:54Um, you know, these, these machines that, that all of our people, we have, you know, just, just approaching 70,
22:00mostly scientists.
22:02And, uh, in order to get their work done every, you know, every hour of the day, there are these
22:06beautiful pieces of instrumentation that sit on, sit on the lab benches, um, that are like, they cost hundreds of
22:12thousands of dollars each.
22:13Um, or tens of thousands for some of them. Um, I like, I like those on my approval list better.
22:20Um, but that money has to come from somewhere.
22:23Um, and these are highly trained people and they have these long educations that have to get paid for somehow.
22:28So ultimately medicines have to be expensive, but the sort of, I guess the biotech social contract, as I see
22:38it, uh, is that even though they're initially expensive, um, they become ultimately inexpensive.
22:46Uh, and as part of our orientation, there's something has to be, there has to be a plausible method of
22:51making it inexpensive.
22:52So for instance, in these cell therapies presently, you know, if, if a pharma company charges for a cell therapy,
22:58they can, it can be like hundreds of thousands of dollars or even a million dollars or more, um, just
23:03to treat one patient.
23:04And largely that's because there's a vast quantity of labor from highly specialized people that go into making these, these
23:11therapies, especially if they're customized to the individual person, um, which all of ours are because we want them to
23:16be the same DNA as the person.
23:19For instance, if you're getting a therapeutic cell and it's from someone else's DNA, um, like a lot of the
23:24not very scientifically sound stem cell treatments out there.
23:29Um, then ultimately you have issues with immune rejection, uh, and it's not good for longterm health.
23:35Um, so the way we treat the production of cell therapy is such that they can be widely deployed is
23:42through automation.
23:43Uh, and, and, and, you know, like I said, I sort of come from a tech mindset.
23:48Uh, so we've built automated microfluidic production systems for cell therapies such that you can just basically push the button
23:56and it'll sit there and chug for 17 days and spit out a dose.
24:00Uh, so that, that, that way they could ultimately be produced for, you know, just ultimately it can be hundreds
24:07of dollars.
24:08Um, you know, plus all the therapeutic costs of having to interact with people in hospitals and that kind of
24:14thing.
24:15Well, it's like we have just a couple of seconds left.
24:18So, I mean, I think your mission is amazing.
24:21The fact that you want to, you know, you really have this need and desire to really help people.
24:25And it's not just, you know, it's longevity.
24:27It's not anti aging.
24:29So what's the final hope you can give our audience about where possibly you could be in the next five
24:33years?
24:35Well, the next five years is a very exciting time for us there.
24:38I mean, the whole thing is very exciting and I, I, I love it, but, uh, the, uh, the next
24:44very exciting mile for milestone for us is end of this year.
24:47We will be dosing our very first patient and our first clinical trial.
24:51Uh, so that's going to be huge.
24:53Uh, it's going to happen in Australia.
24:55Uh, but that's phase one and phase two, phase three.
24:58Um, but by the, by the end of the decade, which is what I'm thinking roughly five years is, uh,
25:04is our mark for when the first therapeutic will actually be able to be sold.
25:09Having gone through this gauntlet of development.
25:11Well, listen, I really hope that you get to get to that stage.
25:14Joe, thank you so much.
25:15Audience round of applause for Joe, please.
25:18Thank you so much.
25:19Thanks.
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