We Can All Live to 120...and Beyond
The Harry Glorikian Show
Sergey Young – for October 24, 2023 Episode
Final Transcript
Harry Glorikian: Hello. Welcome to The Harry Glorikian Show, where we dive into the tech-driven future of healthcare.
There’s a good chance that we’re all going to live a lot longer than we think.
Or at least, that’s what my guest Sergey Young argues in his book The Science and Technology of Growing Young.
Sergey is an investor who leads a $100 million venture capital fund called the Longevity Vision Fund.
And through his investing, he says he meets innovators who are coming up with the technologies that do a healthy human lifespan extension not just by years but by decades.
Those technologies include better drugs, of course, but also gene editing to rejuvenate our DNA and methods for regenerating or replacing old organs, just the way you’d replace the worn-out parts in an old car.
All these human life extension technologies are coming faster than we think, Sergey says, and the big question is how widely they’ll be available and whether everyone who wants them will have access to them.
That’s the theme of Sergey’s work at the Longevity Vision Fund, which focuses on companies creating affordable and accessible life expectancy extension technologies.
And it all leads to some pretty mind-blowing questions.
Just think about it: Would you want to live to be 120 years old? Will human lifespan increase?
Most people would say no. But Sergey says that’s only because they have an outdated picture of what it means to be old.
What if you could reverse the aging process until you were as healthy as a typical 45-year-old, or 25-year-old?
Then living to 120 might be pretty great.
Especially if you figured out how reinvent yourself every so often, maybe have two or three separate careers, stay socially active, and keep doing all the things you’re passionate about.
Sergey’s writing is full of intriguing possibilities like that, and it was fun to talk through some of them with him.
For this conversation I reached Sergey at his home base in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates — where it was a balmy 35 degrees. Celsius, that is.
Harry Glorikian: Sergey, welcome to the show.
Sergey Young: Hi, Harry. Hi, everyone. I’m so excited to be here with you. As you can see, I’m dialing in from a warm, even hot Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates.
Harry Glorikian: And you were saying it’s 35, so it’s cold.
Sergey Young: Yeah. Yeah, it’s actually cooled down a little bit. It was last 42 Celsius earlier this week. And right now it’s plus 35. So it’s considered very enjoyable weather here. Again, it’s celsius, not Fahrenheit. Yeah.
Harry Glorikian: Yeah. No, no. Totally understand. So, Sergey, I want to sort of give everybody a sort of a grounding, right? So a couple of years ago you wrote, you know, I think it was 2021, you published the Science of of Technology and Growing Young, which you’re holding up now. And I think it’s still the best single guide to your own thinking about science of longevity and what people can do to take advantage of the latest advances in that area. And I, I think everybody should read it. But but for the people who have not read it, can you give us sort of a 2 or 3 minute summary?
Sergey Young: Sure. Of course. I’m always. But before I do that, obviously I’m super happy to do that. Uh, it’s always funny, like when we humans, we always try to find, like, the solution, the silver bullet, right? So and even in my early days when I started to do more longevity investing and working on longevity program for myself, like everyone I would meet in longevity field, I would like, Okay, Jack or David, like, this is all great. I appreciate the complexity of human biology, but like, can you tell me one thing? Like, it’s so this is, you know, look, I say it with a lot of love to all of us and I’m doing exactly the same. Okay. So here’s the thing. Well, first of all, I actually think there are a lot of, you know, great books on on longevity field Not not not necessarily on like longevity investing and different technologies, the overview of that. But like I think on the scientific front, the choice, um, you know, are extremely wide from like David Sinclair, you know human lifespan extension. Yeah Okay so a lot of books there. But so the overall idea of the book is, is we’re all going to live longer or much longer than we expect. And if you think about this, there are a number of implications around that from, you know, how do we think about our own lives? Because, you know, in the past when we live, you know, 70, 75 years, you have like three parts life, you know, education, like adult, you know, career, you know, having kids, growing kids and like retirement.
Sergey Young: And it was all pretty binary, actually. You had like in one stage or another. Um, so we’re looking at series of mini lives that all of us will will have to live and make our own choices. Relationships. He’s from many generations, you know multiple generations for us careers, education, you know, new passion, etcetera. So I think it’s fascinating, but it’s even more fascinating to look like, how are we going to do this? How are we going to break the sound barrier of 122 years? This is the human lifespan extension maximum on Earth. And with the help of, you know, what kind of technologies and scientific breakthroughs and the book structured in two parts and one is dedicated to what I call the near horizon of longevity innovations. And these are the technologies that we are investing in now through Longevity Vision Fund and many other people all around the world and even you, Harry, are supporting development of that. So and these are technologies which will help us to live significantly longer, like add 20, 30, 40 years to our life, healthy and happy years to our life. This is extremely important. And when people ask you, So what are the main drivers of this longevity revolution in the next five, ten and 15 years, I’m always, you know, telling about three things. One is gene editing and gene therapy. I think it’s it’s fundamental. It’s just transformational. If we find a way to amend human DNA in a very ethical, obviously, and socially acceptable way, I think, you know, it’s a platform for a lot of breakthroughs, not only in terms of human lifespan extension but healthspan as well.
Sergey Young: So that’s number one. Second thing is it’s in the field of regenerative medicine. So many great things happening. But for me, the most important part is organ regeneration there. Because if you think about the old car, this is not my metaphor. It’s a metaphor from Aubrey de Grey. If you want to extend the life of the old car, like, what are you doing is just like replacing spare parts, right? You can even replace an engine and similar things happen in there. You can 3D print an organ, you can use animal materials for to like regrow organs or and this is what we’re doing through one of our companies. You can use your liver lymph nodes to regrow organs inside your own body. And this is a new technology prolonging human life. It tested on humans this year. So this is very exciting. And then number three is, is longevity in appeal. Um, I’m talking about the new class of drugs. It’s going to be called anti-aging drugs or age reversal drugs or longevity drugs. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that unlike today, when you go to the pharmacy like CVS or Walgreens and like, you know, can I have a, you know, drug against aging, they will think you’re crazy or they would send you to cosmetics or sell you supplements. But like in 5 to 10 years, you’re going to bring prescription and it’s going to be anti-aging drug. It can easily be drug from the past like metformin or rapamycin, just existing substances repurpose for that right And I’m part of American Federation of Aging Research Board and Federation is working on starting the image forming trial here in the US next year with 3000 people.
Sergey Young: That’s going to be a huge breakthrough. I know it’s an old drug. It’s actually less expensive than placebo for the trial. Can you think about this? Yeah, yeah, I think it’s amazing. Yeah. But I think the the the trial is not about metformin. The trial is about the introducing the concept of longevity drug of the, you know, reversal drug or slowing aging drug rather than just, you know, drug against any particular disease or it can easily be, um, drug developed with the help of AI because, you know, artificial intelligence is now used to compress like years of drug discovery and drug development into month. And again, your work and your investments are supporting that as well. As long as we have a number of companies in our portfolio to support that. So again, five, ten, 15 years from now, it’s all in the making. Now, I’m not talking like the good news about the book. There’s nothing there which is sci fi. It’s all based on the actual work of amazing scientists, entrepreneurs that we honored to support, uh, gene editing, gene therapy, organ regeneration or regenerative medicine overall and longevity and in, in a pill. And then so but that’s this is helpful. This is plus 20, 40 healthy and happy years. But then if you want to live beyond and 50 years and it’s huge if behind that, you know I’m not a big fan of immortality, obviously, and I still need to sort out what I’m going to do after, you know, I’m 51 today, so I just have another, you know, 100 years to decide. But will immortality be possible in our lifetime?
Sergey Young: But then, uh, if we’re going to live beyond 150 years and this is a little bit like, you know, sounds like a sci fi now. I don’t think we’re going to remain, you know, a biological species, right? It’s going to be engineered humans, combination of biology and technology, um, things like human brain, AI, integration, nanobots flowing inside our blood, and then fighting cancer cells or doing diagnostic. Human avatars either like robotic ones or the virtual ones. Augmented humans overall, but again, this is far horizon of longevity innovations. This is it’s going to be 25, 50 years from now. And, and there are a number of ethical issues and regulatory issues, societal issues that we need to resolve before we embrace it. But again, like I would not worry about this. This is more like a concept, like where are we going and and is there anything useful that we can take from this concept for our work or for our life today? So that’s the two parts of the book. Obviously, it’s mostly the near horizon of longevity innovation. Two last chapters are, uh, one is about life extending technology so far Horizon, the other one is about ethics of longer living. It’s called morality of immortality. And then and there’s and the biggest chapter in the book called Bonus Chapter is about, um, ten longevity choices, 40 pages, what you can do today to live healthy and happy life.
Harry Glorikian: Yeah. So I. Some point I want to later on in the as we’re talking about, I want to talk about accessibility because this has got to be accessible to lots of people. But a very basic question. But I think it’s important. What is aging? You offer a bunch of different definitions of it, But I’m curious, like your own personal opinion, right? If you had to boil it down, what do you think is happening inside our bodies, our cells, and our minds when we age?
Sergey Young: Yeah. Um, yeah, very interesting question. I mean, it’s a simple question, but like, we were trying to find the answer for that for so many centuries and 1000, I think for a million years. So, look, first of all, we need to realize, again, trying to boil it down, like if I would tell my mom, like if she would ask me that exactly the same question. Right? So first of all, um, aging is not something kind of one. It’s not a one thing, right? It’s it’s a complexity of factors. Remember our, you know, the start of our conversation today. So it’s a it’s a combination and like really complex interplay of different factors. So some of them are happening inside our body and you know obviously believe that it’s mostly internal, but also a lot of environmental factors influence us as well. So inside our bodies, there are a number of mechanisms, uh, you know, different mechanisms and processes started to manifest around 40, 45 years when we becoming 40 or 45 years old or 40, 45 years young. And it’s, it ranged from genetic factors. Sometimes people are lucky with their genetic setup. Sometimes people are unlucky. It’s a common belief. I mean, if you look at the studies, it’s anywhere between 20 to 40% of our longevity is defined on the genetic front. Um, I tend to believe, like almost all centenarians, uh, they live a good life, but also they’ve been lucky in terms of expression of the longevity genes, 3000 longevity science genes that we already know. So they work better in their bodies.
Sergey Young: But the most important part is, is actually, is outside genetics. It’s a number of things. Like it’s so okay, you have this genes, but then how they project themselves in the body, how they influence your own biology. So that’s called epigenetics. Um, and sometimes, you know, if you remember, uh, once in a while I even stopped sharing, uh, results of genetic, um, it was a genetic sequencing, like genetic tests with people without, um, and they, they, they, they insist on sending them only to your doctor so he or she can then explain you what is happening with you because people like, took genetic information for granted. And sometimes if you have like a cancer risk and, you know, this particular cancer risk, it doesn’t necessarily automatically mean that you’re going to get it, right, where it’s only like 20 to 40% probability in, in, in statistical terms. So but then the other things would be like, um, many different processes, like, um, so what is your body doing with the dead cells? Right? Does it still have the coping mechanism to take out the dead cells from or it’s called cell waste from your body and, and eliminate this. So this is kind of really important. Uh, the other mechanism is, um, uh, you know, when cell is dividing itself, that seems to be like a limit of, you know, what’s the division, what’s the number of divisions, Right.
Sergey Young: And reproduction. Yeah. Can be made as well. And the other factor is about role of mitochondria like the powerhouse inside the cell which produce the energy and make everything work as well. And I could go on and on with. Yeah, yeah. Factors. Yeah. So in LVF, in our scientific board like, um, uh, Gary Kramer, one of the authors of the Nine Hallmarks of Aging, just joined us. And actually, um, they published this paper ten years ago. They just done a revision of that earlier this year, 2023. So they added more hallmarks of aging. So it’s very complex. And, and the way to think about this, if aging would be about one thing, then either Mother Nature or God or, you know, beautiful human brains would solve it. So it’s not one thing. It’s it’s always complexity thing. And finally and I think this is very powerful message from the book as well, is that finally, through the whole history of humanity, we have something which can appreciate and solve the complexity of human biology, which is artificial intelligence. So human brain is just not really good to like appreciate this whole complexity of that. And that’s why like 80% of the companies in our portfolio, they’re using AI as an enabler. And I think it’s very important to realize that we’re really living in this unique time, moment of time.
Harry Glorikian: So how did you get into the science of aging and longevity? Was was there like this? Were you in the shower and was this like wow moment when you realized, you know, how much science and aging is going to…r
Sergey Young: Yeah. You know, I mean, and I actually I invite our audience to observe this, the, the unfortunate reality about human mind and, and us humans is like, we all need a wake up call, like external shock to start to be, like interested in health and longevity. Just I was living my life. Successful investment manager. Um, you know, I was working on Korea, you know, from the age of 17. I’m from very poor family, from very poor part of Far East of USSR. And, uh, and I just got, you know, I went to the doctor and they were like, Oh, Sergey, you have extremely high cholesterol level, apparently. You know, I have a genetic, I’m genetically predisposed for that. And and I’m like, Oh, this is great. Give me the pills. And, you know, I’ll just continue my work. And they say, Yeah, sure, here’s your pills. And my question was like, Is it just for one month or so? And they’re like, no, no, no, no. Every day for the rest of your life. And I’m like, okay, we need to stop here, Uh, because, like, I at this time, I think it was 43 or 44, I’m like, why do I need a pill to survive for the next 40 years. At this time. You know, I thought, I’m going to be living to 80 years right now. My expectations are significantly inflated, uh, hopefully in, in a very kind of fact based way. Um, but I was shocked like that. Why would my body require something like that to, to live and survive? So and I basically open up this whole field of longevity and health, human health. And I realized there are so many misunderstandings and myths that we have about this. And, and and it’s a little bit like with crypto. I mean, you can read about Bitcoin, but if you have your own, like Satoshi, uh, which is, you know, part of Bitcoin, where you have your own Bitcoin, you can look at this and your learning goes under your skin. So I thought like, if I like this space and it seemed to me like developing, uh, I need to set up an investment fund because I’m an investor. So I set up it’s, it’s $100 million fund called Longevity Vision Fund. We’ve been working now, we’re celebrating our fifth anniversary this year. People thought I’m crazy because longevity is still an orphan for big Pharma. But we get in there and it was amazing.
Sergey Young: I mean, you know, Harry, like hundred million dollars is like peanuts for financial industry. So but we’ve been able to support like 18 brilliant companies. We’ve made money for our investors. But think what is more important? We focus on affordability and accessibility aspect. So I’m not interested in supporting anything which would help like billionaires and will be available only to billionaires, right. Affordability, accessibility is a is an amazing filter for us to see whether we invest or not because our companies, they bring like 10, 20, 50, not percent, times improvement. cost wise or efficiency wise, like early cancer, diagnostic affordable ultrasound devices, you know, or like liver transplant/replacement, as well. So I’m really proud that, you know, we’ve been able to support a number of breakthrough technologies and scientific discoveries which would help us to create completely affordable, super accessible version of digital medicine and digital health care. In fact, my dream is like, I don’t see any other reason apart from economics, regulation, you know, capitalism, philosophy. I think in the future, like substantial part of healthcare services should be for free. Just democratize. Yeah, gotta democratize access to that. Like it’s and like because it’s digital like any incremental patient is, is like nothing it’s just a little bit of more work by AI.
Harry Glorikian: You know, do we know if there’s a natural upper limit to human lifespan extension? You talk about in your first chapter that it may turn out that the human body is technically unable to carry on much farther than 115 to 120 years. Right. But beyond just looking at demographic data, right, how long people live today—are there any indications that an upper limit really exists?
Sergey Young: Look, I think it’s all statistics. And, you know, we have like, what, 8 billion people on the planet now. Many more live on this planet as well. So, you know, I think it’s like the our record shows that it’s 22 years. Like I’ve just been to China where I published the Chinese version of the book. They they seem to believe 130. Um, yeah, statistically, we can live to that and that’s number one. Um, are we going to break this limit in the next, you know, 50 years? I’m pretty sure we are because technologies and science become better. But this is all incremental additions, right? It’s only with the help of genetic engine therapy, old organ replacement, regeneration, um, age reversal, not slowing down age, but actually age reversal substances. We can achieve that. But again and it’s more like but yeah, it’s more like a philosophical question, like if the Greenland whale can live to 200 years, like why us humans could not live to this age, right? I like, you know, we obviously different species, but in the end of the day, I mean, it’s just our neighbor on this planet, right? Um, so I think it’s but, but again, and, and this is the part of the book and think about this. I think people are fragile like in our, in our biological form is, um, is a very fragile form of existence. So, um. I think we can then extend it to 130, 140, 150 years. But beyond that, I think we would. Human mind would find something that would augment us or engineer us. I’m not talking like we’re all going to be robots or we’re all going to be in Matrix, right? But like and we already use some of the technology, like, you know, um, right now inside our bodies. But I’m pretty sure that beyond 150 years, it’s going to be completely different kind of humans. And we might be one of the few remaining generations of humans on this planet which are living in existing biological form.
Harry Glorikian: It’s interesting, right? If I think to myself, if I thought for a minute I was going to actually live to 130. I mean Sergey, I would have to rethink, I mean. Oh, there’s a whole bunch of rethinking that would need to go on, right? Because I’m like, Holy, what am I? What am I going to do? Maybe I’ll go get another degree. Maybe I’ll go. Like, I mean, you would have to reinvent yourself a few times over 130 years, otherwise you’d get bored.
Sergey Young: Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, well, let’s talk about this. I think this is a very interesting concept and and a number of things that are different in today’s world and in the future world from our current view of that, our current paradigm. And I think it’s important to understand. So people think that we’re working on immortality or almost endless life extension. You know, I don’t think it’s the case for the overall longevity sector in the industry. So knowing what I know about, um, technologies, what’s going to happen every 5 to 10 years, you would need to decide you’re going to, you know, would you want to extend your life for another 5 to 10 years? So this, so it’s going to be like serious of a life extension decision points that, you know, each of us will have a freedom to decide. So if you think you like completed your mission on Earth, I mean, you can go to Mars or, you know, you can allow yourself to die. So I think it’s, you know, we can think about this with the with certain relief that, no, I don’t think anyone would push anyone to like be, um, you know, to live 200 years. Okay. And immortality. I just don’t like the whole immortality thing. I think if you take the that from the human cycle, like, we cannot really appreciate this, um, uh, we cannot start appreciating and extending human life overall. So. So this is the first thing to realize about the future. So it’s not like no one will, you know, ask you to stick on this planet for two for 200 years. That’s number one.
Harry Glorikian: No, I was going to say, I mean, if you think about it, like when I think about like my grandmother or even, you know, like my mom’s friends, like at some point, they’re like, look, all my friends are gone. Like. Absolutely. Like I. What’s the point of if I don’t have that community? Like at some point. Exactly. You know, what am I going to do, sit by myself in sort of, you know, my it’s it’s the the meaning of life, which whatever that is right. For that person is gone. So living longer…
Sergey Young: Okay, let’s discuss that. I think it’s very important. And and this is the second mistake that we always making, assuming this is how it’s going to happen in the future. Think about this. Right now we’re talking about. The technologies which will help us to define our target biological age and arrive to this age. Okay. Like, um, later this year, we launching a pro bono competition where a group of 65 years old people, 65 and above, will test different technologies and scientific breakthroughs to reverse their biological age from 65 to 45. Right. So and again, I mean, we in the beginning of the road, I mean, it’s it’s just, you know, science and technology and regulation and ethics should take as much time as possible. But like we started this process. So think about this right now. Like, you know, I’m I’m 51, right. And one I’m thinking, oh, I need to reinvent myself. Like if I’m that and that at 51 like, you know, how will look like how do I feel at the age of 75. So you assuming when you’re going to be like 65 or 75, you will not have a power hormonal balance, energy. So obviously, like if you need to decide at the from the point when you’re 70, 75 years old, like you don’t want to live longer, right. Or you need, you know, more convincing reasons to live longer and people find them. But like if I’m chronologically like 75, but biologically I’m 45, you know, I have completely different mindset. I’m full of energy. You know, I’m reproductively I’m yeah, I can reproduce myself, right? So and again, because if people are healthy like their reproductive period will also extend. So like if I would feel like 45 and I’ll be biologically like 45, this might change your perspective on starting a new life, starting a new career, starting a new relationship, starting in a new cohort, new generation of kids.
Harry Glorikian: Such a I mean, everything we know would have to change. I mean, you know, if you look at. Right. What is it? Al Pacino just had a baby. And I forget the other actor. Right. And they’re not they’re not they’re not spring chickens. De Niro. De Niro just had another. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, uh, okay. I mean, seriously.
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And now, back to the show.
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Harry Glorikian: So, okay, let’s shift for a moment, right? Because long time listeners know, like. The central theme of this show is, is how is data about our health going to revolutionize medicine? Right? Because now we can really gather much more data about ourselves, patients, and because of advances in computation and AI, we can really do a lot more with that data. I’ve used, as you’ve sort of said a few times, so I have a few like questions about that, right? So do you think we’re doing enough to make personal medical data shareable, actionable? What excites you about the area and what are some of the biggest barriers to progress, especially as it relates to the kinds of personal data we need in order to be smarter about the way that we age?
Sergey Young: Yes, obviously we’re not doing enough. Um, and and I think situation even more terrible than you would expect. Um, two facts. Um. I’ve seen I think it was an article published a couple of years ago, that majority of data. Uh, exchange between different health care providers are still happening, by the way, of fax messages.
Harry Glorikian: Yes.
Sergey Young: I’m not sure it’s actually like it’s. I’m not sure. It’s actually like a fax machine like we’ve seen 20 years ago, but like, it’s scanned kind of copy and and send by fax. So and the figure I remember is like 60%. So like, what are we talking about? Like, I think it was UK and, and I think it was three years ago they even created a regulation which prohibited the purchase of fax machines by hospitals. Okay. Like people were just like, buying and buying them, like just using facts to for the data interchange. And I think it’s awful. That’s number one. Number two, I also think it’s. Um, health care as, uh, as a very traditional conservative industry. And as a patient. I want it to be that way because I don’t want to. I don’t want them experiment with my health. Okay, Well, on the other side, it works against that. Like if you go to the hospital next door, you almost like traveling back in time because it takes 17 years in the US from something being approved for the use to be in actual use like in in majority of places all around the country. So like today is what, 2023 Like, you know, it’s you’re traveling back in time. And it and I think it’s it’s you know it’s pretty sad story. So I actually think and and again I’m you know I’m I’m intentionally provocative to get the message across like I’m not saying this is going to happen.
Sergey Young: I’m not embracing big tech. Big tech is a lot of problems and I have a lot of problems with big tech. But I don’t think they change. And disruption in the form of digital healthcare will come from existing healthcare players. I think it’s going to be impossible. Yeah, Yeah. Like I think ten years from now, the largest healthcare companies on earth are going to be called Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Again, like just don’t try to buy their stocks right now. Right? This is not advice about this and it might be different names, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be digital players disrupting the healthcare. Yeah, it’s very unlikely that the current industry will disrupt itself, but this is normal for everything we know about the business and about the construct of human human minds as well. But what I like about that, we get in a lot of data and we seem to solve the data security and safety concerns on many fronts. Like in a way, like people ask me, Well, Sergey, what do you think about data privacy? I’m like, you know, I thought we responded to this questions like 10 or 20 years ago with with our phones. Right. I’m like, I’m outsourcing everything to that. And I think it’s a it’s in the past, right? Um, so, um, I think that’s the beauty of new digital devices, like, you know, the ordering to use, you know, Apple Watch and you can use whatever you want, like a number of choices is that we start to collect data, we start to analyze them.
Sergey Young: And as always, you can see the a lot of evolution is like you start collecting and then like you have enough data to, like, draw conclusions. And this is how they do, right? Like, if you ask me, you know, wearables became our personalized healthcare devices already today. And I think it’s only with the addition of two features, which is continuous glucose monitoring and blood pressure monitoring, we’re going to get like 90% of the data we need about our health. Like right when I’m about to get sick, my shrink will tell me like 24 hours in advance that your body temperature is like elevated. And this is and then I, you know, felt sick like 24 hours later. And I mean, this is amazing. And and I think Apple Watch saved so many lives in the last few years. People falling down on the street they call an ambulance. Yeah. Detecting five different types of arrhythmia. Right. And heart problems as well, doing electrocardiogram, measuring oxygen level. I mean, and I can go on and on with that. And I think it’s exciting.
Harry Glorikian: Oh, yeah, Yeah. And so I was talking to someone at Google in one of my previous episodes and we were talking about how countries like India, Singapore and China want to access their medical large language model and how they’re really putting it into use on a regular basis. But the US is going to. You know the US is going to be I don’t want to say last, but it’s going to be farther behind those. And I almost think we’re going to be at that point of, if you remember, cell phones, right? At some point, all the other countries just they just jumped over the whole landline thing. Right. And they went to cell phones because they didn’t want to go through that evolution. They just leapfrogged. I think the same thing is going to happen in certain parts of health care where other parts of the world are going to be so much farther ahead than the US just because well, the way you do it here is just this way. And you know why? Why? I almost think we need a central facility in the US that does. Real cutting edge like fast iterations and then push that out to. The existing systems to say, Hey, guys, you know, this is a way to sort of move things forward. Because if you think about industry, if we’re not competitive and we’re not making changes on a regular basis, we’re never going to win. Right. We’ll we’ll lose. The competitor will beat us. But there is no competition in health care, if you think about it in a sense, right. The hospital down the street is where you’re going to go. It’s not like there’s a competition between, you know, two hospitals and you’re going to pick one or the other because one…. So it’s just a different dynamic that I don’t know how it’s going to change here in the US relative to what I’m seeing happen in certain other parts of the world.
Sergey Young: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I see a lot of examples where governments take more active role in not only regulation but like, you know, developing and promoting, um, much more advanced than digital based version of health care. And I think it’s important to realize that we should not be only like US centric. We should try to learn from the other parts of the world. Like, remember I was speaking at Singapore May this year and I went to the the website of Singapore Health Promotion Board, and I thought, I’ll just go there like for like 15 minutes to be relevant for the audience. That’s it, right? I was just like, What are you guys doing there in the health promotion? And so I spent there like four hours on that day. It’s amazing. I mean, what they do in there is just go on and on. And China, again, just spend like a week in China. I was invited to speak in Beijing University for all the medical students. I mean, the scale of China is just massive. Like I was speaking at the interface of like 1 million people audience. And I’m like, okay, we’re going a livestream. You usually it’s anywhere between million and 3 million people watching.
Sergey Young: Yeah, it’s going to be at least 1 million today. Okay. But yeah, what they doing there is I think is extremely important. And because the future of health care is a digital digital health care and it’s and use of AI. Well, let’s talk about this. So a few years ago, if you do an MRI scan and it’s human radiologists look through your scan. It’s only 34% of chances that early stage cancer will be detected because doctors it’s human AI has its limitation. It’s early stage cancer. It’s like really difficult to like see beyond this spot on on the MRI scan. What it’s actually, you know, early stage cancer or not. And third, human doctors always working under time pressure. Right. So this reality of their work. But right now, same human doctor empowered by ice like 99% chances to do early stage diagnostic of cancer. And this is amazing because you know, stage one cancer is 90 to 100% probability of recovery. And stage four, like a late stage cancer is, you know, anywhere between 8 and 25 depending on cancer type. I’m generalizing here. Yeah.
Harry Glorikian: But don’t forget that it’s not profitable to cure everybody, right? So I hate saying it, but there is a business here and. Sometimes you know, what’s good for the patient may not be good for the business.
Sergey Young: Absolutely. Well, that’s why people would like people tell me like, Sergey, why don’t you set up Longevity Vision Fund and in the US? And I’m like, you know, and let me give you some figures so then people can reflect on that. Us has the largest and the most inefficient health care system in the world, okay? 18% of GDP. And it’s probably one of the it’s probably the only one of the developed nations where the human lifespan extension is decreasing, even pre-COVID. Right. So think about this. Uk spends 8% of its GDP on health care. Singapore spends 5% of the GDP on health care, and they have much better numbers. So like, you know, obviously there are a number of things that you can discuss with your friends over the dinner. Let me put it this way.
Harry Glorikian: So let me swing back to AI and machine learning. Right. There’s there’s a lot of things going on right now. I mean, so many things that I’m I’m honestly having trouble sort of keeping up with with the.
Sergey Young: You need the AI to support your AI, you know, to keep an. Yes. Yes.
Harry Glorikian: And we’ve we’ve we’ve built something that’s helping us look at, you know, papers. Right. So that we can make sense of it. But. You know, transformers, large language models like these things have been able to predict or generate, you know, good information on human level communication. But, you know, we’ve also found that these things also identify chemical and patterns in proteomic data. And I think it’s going to be the next big biotech area, as far as I can see, to accelerate drug discovery, drug design. If you were writing the book today, would you have a whole chapter on just that?
Sergey Young: Are you talking about drug discovery and drug development?
Harry Glorikian: Right. Using these large language models, though, right? Not not anything that existed in the past.
Sergey Young: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, it is in the book we talk about this. It’s the whole chapter dedicated to the use of AI for drug discovery and drug development. But, um, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, we have two companies in silicon medicine and health in, in our portfolio. And I was just looking, I think it was in silicon medicine. They took like the first two years. It’s called drug discovery process and compressed this in two months. And it’s just amazing. And sometimes I and like all the companies that I know in the AI drug discovery space, they have massive collaborations with Big Pharma. You know, it’s $100 million of obviously it’s a milestone based. But um, it’s yeah, I think.
Harry Glorikian: Was it Valo? Valo just announced a deal.
Sergey Young: Yeah. Yeah. We were one of the early investors in Valo. I mean, this is massive and this company I think you know because the structure of Big Pharma is relatively consolidated, it’s a no brainer for them. And I’m, you know, we don’t work a lot with Big Pharma. Like $100 million is like nothing for them. But everyone I know on a formal basis is like, Well, Sergey, we have this whole AI revolution happening inside Big Pharma now. Yeah, so and this is actually easier. I think it’s easier to comprehend and easier to imagine that, you know, drugs in the future will not take 12 years to to develop. It will not take $2.6 billion per drug R&D per drug to develop. And but I’m also but what is different, it’s not going to be only faster, it’s going to be personalized. We I mean, I’ve seen a lot of startups. It was too early for us to invest, you know, on the basis of your, um, genetic, not only genetic, like on the basis of your health data, they will just find the personalized combination of cancer treatment for you. And I think efficiency improved by like 43%. Think about cancer, right? Cancer was kiss of death like just 20 or 40 years ago. And for some of us, it’s still kiss of death because we wear this old lenses of, you know, how the medicine, medicine and diagnostic tools look like 20 to 40 years. But like with cancer, 43% improvement in in success. I mean, it’s a it’s a big deal. Yeah.
Harry Glorikian: So, Sergey, you you’re working with Peter Diamandis on the X Prize Foundation now. I think you guys have proposed something called, what is it, Age Reversal X Prize. Which is still, I think in its early form. What’s the nature of the challenge. I mean, meaning what will the team have to do to win the prize? You know, how much do you need to raise to actually create the prize? How’s the fundraising going? I mean, just give me, you know, for the audience to sort of understand.
Sergey Young: Yeah, we going to launch by the end of November this year in a few capitals in the world I’m speaking at one of the conferences is going to be called Healthspan X Prize. Uh, the idea of the competition, you take just a little bit above $100 million, you go to the world and you say the first team is going to solve this problem. The aging problem is going to get $100 million. I mean, it’s a little bit more complex than that because you support you have a two rounds. You then you support like ten finalists with the grants out of this hundred million. And then sometimes it’s not one winner, but 2 or 3. But like in the end of the day, it’s totally pro-bono. So I was the one who put the first money into this thing five years ago to design this Healthspan X Prize competition. But obviously, you know, I’m not the richest guy in the world. Then for the last four years we’ve been fundraising for this. And finally we reach our goal of. Million. This is going to be this competition going to be bigger than the one we’ve done with Elon Musk two years ago. It’s called Carbon Removal X Prize. It was $100 million for to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Sergey Young: It was funded by Elon and the winning team. It would need to do is to again take a group of 65 years and above all people and reverse their biological age by 20 years in the course of one year. And then you you actually measure the, um, um, like a degradation rate. So you measure, in fact, not only in the end of this, not in the end of the 12th month of treatment, but then a year later and then a year later to see how sticky is, um, you know, a reversing effect and that’s it. I think we’re on the final stage of development of it, and it’s going to be launched by the end of the year. We expecting at least 4 to 500 teams all around the world. It’s usually 50 plus countries to participate in this competition. But again, this is all pro bono. This is not the the only commercial project that I’m doing in in Longevity field is Longevity Vision Fund. And this is only for accredited investors to invest. But, you know, it benefits the whole world because we invest only in affordable and accessible version of it. We disrupt, you know, things by ten, 20, 50 times. Yeah.
Harry Glorikian: If you think about drastic human lifespan extension, right? Like what is the average human lifespan? For the average person in the US it’s…
Sergey Young: Probably 75.
Harry Glorikian: What is the average life span of a human? 82, I think it is? Yeah. Okay. And then and I know it’s going down, but let’s hope it stays in. For a guy in the US, I’d like it to stay a little higher. Right. Yeah, but. But why do you think I mean when you look at the last I think I looked at a research interview by the Pew Research Group, they were asking people, Would you like to live to 120 or longer? Right. And the majority of people said no, right? A bunch of people were like, nope, nope, nope. That’s not going to work for me. Right? Yeah. Why do you think that is? And what do you think? It would take to change their minds.
Sergey Young: Okay. Very interesting question. I remember my whole journey in longevity started with this research. Right. And I think they published this back in 2016 and they done it in the US and UK, I think as well. And figures are fascinating, by the way. I just want our audience not to be confused with the numbers like 75, 82 as well. Just, you know, Google. Take a look. A number of terms that we use. One is like, um, expected life or expected life span at birth. The other one is the average age of the people who are dying this year. So, I mean, but I mean, it’s a range, obviously 75 to 85, but it’s there are different statistical cohorts that they use to define these numbers. So don’t be confused by that. Um, so and I remember the outcome of this research like it was only 15% of people who wanted to be immortal. 15. And there was only 30%, I think around 30% of people who wanted to do a human lifespan extension to like 70%, do you want life extension of 10, 15 years, No. And, well, if you think about this is, where do we put it? So. Yeah. Think the best example of it, like Psalm 51. And imagine people asking me like Sergey, when you are going to be 100 or 120, do you want to extend your life? And I’m like, No, I’m not sure because today, whatever exists today in the world of life extension is risky, untested, right. And frankly, not available and super expensive. It’s almost like the, you know, asking people 150 or 120 years ago, you want to fly in a plane? And we’re like, they’re looking at these balloons. You know, they’re looking at the, you know, this early generation of planes, which are extremely risky only for various, you know, selected group of people. You know, things are changing. So we always underestimate technological progress and availability of that and quality of it for the next 10 to 20 years. That’s number one. Number two, we have the wrong model of aging today because we’re looking at, you know, ourselves, our, you know, parents and grandparents. And obviously, you know, the life extension today, you just sit and observe how your body is aging and your brain is aging. Right. The the longevity field that we and technologies that we’re working on would give all of us the opportunity to take my much active role in that. So we’re not thinking about aging five, ten, 20 years, right? In the end of your life, we’re thinking about aging this number of years right in the middle of your life when you’re in the active stage. So right now, like the maximum you can do, you can slow down the aging.
Sergey Young: But in ten years from now, you can do age reversal. So you can, you know, say, you know, I’m you know, I’m 65. I just want to feel a biologically I want to be 45. And when people think that would be awesome. Yeah, yeah. They’re was like, yeah, I can tell you the secret. We can do it even today by 3 to 5 years. And when people tell me like, Sergey, this is crazy, you cannot do it. And I’m like, okay, um, the study in the US eight for eight weeks, um, they changed the protocol. They use one protocol for people for male part of the group, it was -3.2 years. Biologically, it’s just eight weeks. And for women, for the female part of the group, it was -4.6 years. Biologically, just in the course of eight weeks, it was worked by Doctor Kara Fitzgerald and her colleagues. She has a great book. Younger You and and people were like, oh, wow, what did they use for like eight weeks to, you know, people to be like five years younger, Three magic things, sleep, exercise and diet. Okay. So if, like, if using this lifestyle interventions, you can like you can be five years younger, why, why you think it’s crazy if we will develop like a longevity in a pill genetic engine therapy why we cannot be 20 years younger. I mean, it’s the same trajectory of the change if you want, right? This is just. Yeah. To make all of us a little bit more comfortable with the idea of reverse.
Harry Glorikian: Sergey. It’s been. I hope you’re right. I mean, actually, you know, I don’t know if I want to live to 150. How close are we to living forever? I’m trying to figure out what I would do for that for that long. And if my friends didn’t go with me, I don’t know. It would be sort of lonely. But I. I would like to. If irrelevant of how long I live. I would like to be as healthy as long as possible and then just drop dead. I agree. I agree something quickly. But you know, I hope you’re Uber successful in everything you’re trying to do because I think we’ll all benefit from it. And it’s been great having you on the show.
Harry Glorikian: Likewise.
Sergey Young: And I wanted to thank everyone for joining us today on our discussion of how to extend your lifespan. Thanks for your questions. It’s always great to spend time with you. And for anyone who wants to find me, I’m SergeyYoung200 on Twitter and Instagram and the book’s called The Science and Technology of Growing Young.
Harry Glorikian: Thank you.
Sergey Young: Stay healthy and happy.
Harry Glorikian: Thank you.
Harry Glorikian: That’s it for this week’s episode.
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