Podcast appearances and mentions of laura deming

"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob WiblinIt's that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each episode, including:How to use the microphone on someone's mobile phone to figure out what password they're typing into their laptopWhy mercilessly driving the New World screwworm to extinction could be the most compassionate thing humanity has ever doneWhy evolutionary psychology doesn't support a cynical view of human nature but actually explains why so many of us are intensely sensitive to the harms we cause to othersHow superforecasters and domain experts seem to disagree so much about AI risk, but when you zoom in it's mostly a disagreement about timingWhy the sceptics are wrong and you will want to use robot nannies to take care of your kids — and also why despite having big worries about the development of AGI, Carl Shulman is strongly against efforts to pause AI research todayHow much of the gender pay gap is due to direct pay discrimination vs other factorsHow cleaner wrasse fish blow the mirror test out of the waterWhy effective altruism may be too big a tent to work wellHow we could best motivate pharma companies to test existing drugs to see if they help cure other diseases — something they currently have no reason to bother with…as well as 27 other top observations and arguments from the past year of the show.Check out the full transcript and episode links on the 80,000 Hours website.Remember that all of these clips come from the 20-minute highlight reels we make for every episode, which are released on our sister feed, 80k After Hours. So if you're struggling to keep up with our regularly scheduled entertainment, you can still get the best parts of our conversations there.It has been a hell of a year, and we can only imagine next year is going to be even weirder — but Luisa and Rob will be here to keep you company as Earth hurtles through the galaxy to a fate as yet unknown.Enjoy, and look forward to speaking with you in 2025!Chapters:Rob's intro (00:00:00)Randy Nesse on the origins of morality and the problem of simplistic selfish-gene thinking (00:02:11)Hugo Mercier on the evolutionary argument against humans being gullible (00:07:17)Meghan Barrett on the likelihood of insect sentience (00:11:26)Sébastien Moro on the mirror test triumph of cleaner wrasses (00:14:47)Sella Nevo on side-channel attacks (00:19:32)Zvi Mowshowitz on AI sleeper agents (00:22:59)Zach Weinersmith on why space settlement (probably) won't make us rich (00:29:11)Rachel Glennerster on pull mechanisms to incentivise repurposing of generic drugs (00:35:23)Emily Oster on the impact of kids on women's careers (00:40:29)Carl Shulman on robot nannies (00:45:19)Nathan Labenz on kids and artificial friends (00:50:12)Nathan Calvin on why it's not too early for AI policies (00:54:13)Rose Chan Loui on how control of OpenAI is independently incredibly valuable and requires compensation (00:58:08)Nick Joseph on why he's a big fan of the responsible scaling policy approach (01:03:11)Sihao Huang on how the US and UK might coordinate with China (01:06:09)Nathan Labenz on better transparency about predicted capabilities (01:10:18)Ezra Karger on what explains forecasters' disagreements about AI risks (01:15:22)Carl Shulman on why he doesn't support enforced pauses on AI research (01:18:58)Matt Clancy on the omnipresent frictions that might prevent explosive economic growth (01:25:24)Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration (01:29:43)Annie Jacobsen on the war games that suggest escalation is inevitable (01:34:59)Nate Silver on whether effective altruism is too big to succeed (01:38:42)Kevin Esvelt on why killing every screwworm would be the best thing humanity ever did (01:42:27)Lewis Bollard on how factory farming is philosophically indefensible (01:46:28)Bob Fischer on how to think about moral weights if you're not a hedonist (01:49:27)Elizabeth Cox on the empirical evidence of the impact of storytelling (01:57:43)Anil Seth on how our brain interprets reality (02:01:03)Eric Schwitzgebel on whether consciousness can be nested (02:04:53)Jonathan Birch on our overconfidence around disorders of consciousness (02:10:23)Peter Godfrey-Smith on uploads of ourselves (02:14:34)Laura Deming on surprising things that make mice live longer (02:21:17)Venki Ramakrishnan on freezing cells, organs, and bodies (02:24:46)Ken Goldberg on why low fault tolerance makes some skills extra hard to automate in robots (02:29:12)Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on the ups and downs of founding an organisation (02:34:04)Dean Spears on the cost effectiveness of kangaroo mother care (02:38:26)Cameron Meyer Shorb on vaccines for wild animals (02:42:53)Spencer Greenberg on personal principles (02:46:08)Producing and editing: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic ArmstrongVideo editing: Simon MonsourTranscriptions: Katy Moore

One day soon when you see a robot squirrel on a 10-foot unicycle, think of Danielle Strachman. These are the types of ideas Danielle Strachman sees and backs on a regular basis at her VC fund, 1517. The fund, which proudly backs “dropouts, students, and sci-fi,” has had several fund multipliers in their portfolio, including Loom (Acquired by Atlassian) and Luminar Technologies (IPO 2020). Plus, her star-studded community includes Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Laura Deming of The Longevity Fund, and Dylan Field of Figma – all of whom she first met when they were teenagers. Danielle's commitment to bringing freedom and autonomy to young people is much of the reason behind 1517's work with upcoming founders — which includes children as young as 10 years old! We talk to Danielle about why her firm hands out cash grants to kids, where she sees the future of deep tech headed and how she's helping it get there, the right characteristics (and anti-characteristics) to look for in founders. Danielle invests $100k angel checks and $500k pre-seed checks out 1517 Fund focusing on dropouts and sci-fi / deep tech founders.Highlights:1517 exists to address the lack of capital for young people and for the deep-tech sci-fi space. Danielle is particularly drawn to “dropouts” who skipped the higher education path to focus on their work and start their companies. Danielle likes to think of her fund as Grand Central Station, a place that helps people get to where they want to go next. She uses her relationship building skills to stay in touch with founders and connect them with new opportunities.  Danielle loves meeting “crazy scientists” and people who are working on solving the future's problems. 1517 is unique because it makes two investments in these types of companies: a $100k angel check for R&D and a $500k pre-seed follow-on check. Danielle understands the power or relationships and mentorship in a space that can often feel impersonal and transactional. She's kept in touch with many founders over the years, including the founders of Loom and Luminar Technologies – whom she met back when they were teenagers! (00:00) - FIFU 15 - Danielle Strachman (06:41) - The 1517 Differentiator: An anti-establishment fund for dropouts (08:15) - The Why: Bringing freedom and autonomy to young people (18:49) - 1517 as Grand Central Station: Helping people get to their next destination (26:35) - Lessons from the Worst Investment: Listen to your gut (35:24) - Best Investments So Far: Loom and Luminar Technologies (37:54) - The Fund Formula: 85% dropout and 15% sci-fi (51:47) - Nurturing Young Talent: How Danielle sources next gen founders (57:34) - Speed round

This week on Turpentine VC, we're releasing a conversation between Erik Torenberg, Laura Deming of The Longevity Fund and Will Eden of Sylvan Consulting (prior to that, with Thiel capital) focused on the past, present and future of biotech. Recorded in 2019, they discuss platform companies and the evolving biotech investment landscape, examining segments like therapeutics, cell and gene therapies. Will and Laura share insights on the historical waves of biotech, the FDA's role, and the intersections of biotech and tech investment strategies. They address challenges in evaluating biotech startups, the growth in longevity research since 2011, and the potential for extending life spans through various scientific advancements.

Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/@optispan Related episodes: You Can Live Longer!: https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/you-can-live-longer Estriol Shown to Increase Lifespan as Winner of Intervention Testing Program: https://youtu.be/1DQEuT0dtWk The Best Strategies for Living Longer RANKED: Longevity Tier List: https://youtu.be/41WUYgEkQeA Reversing Biological Age: Have we finally found the answer?: https://youtu.be/ivP3QTyQ2d4 In June 2024, the Aspen Ideas Festival held a three-day health-focused event in which speakers discussed new breakthroughs, policy developments, and possible futures in healthcare. "You Can Live Longer!" was a panel discussion during the festival that consisted of Altos Labs founder and chief scientist Rick Klausner, Cradle CEO and cofounder and venture capitalist Laura Deming, BioAge Labs CEO and cofounder Kristen Fortney, and NPR News Food and Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey discussing developments in the longevity field. In this episode, Matt and Nick react to the panel discussion and discuss the potential of epigenetic reprogramming for improving organ transplants and reversing organ aging, the limitations of current techniques, the relevance of aging models in disease research, and more. Producers: Tara Mei, Nicholas Arapis Video Editor: Jacob Keliikoa DISCLAIMER: The information provided on the Optispan podcast is intended solely for general educational purposes and is not meant to be, nor should it be construed as, personalized medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is established by your use of this channel. The information and materials presented are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We strongly advise that you consult with a licensed healthcare professional for all matters concerning your health, especially before undertaking any changes based on content provided by this channel. The hosts and guests on this channel are not liable for any direct, indirect, or other damages or adverse effects that may arise from the application of the information discussed. Medical knowledge is constantly evolving; therefore, the information provided should be verified against current medical standards and practices. More places to find us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/optispanpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/optispan Twitter: https://twitter.com/mkaeberlein Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optispan https://www.optispan.life/ Hi, I'm Matt Kaeberlein. I spent the first few decades of my career doing scientific research into the biology of aging, trying to understand the finer details of how humans age in order to facilitate translational interventions that promote healthspan and improve quality of life. Now I want to take some of that knowledge out of the lab and into the hands of people who can really use it. On this podcast I talk about all things aging and healthspan, from supplements and nutrition to the latest discoveries in longevity research. My goal is to lift the veil on the geroscience and longevity world and help you apply what we know to your own personal health trajectory. I care about quality science and will always be honest about what I don't know. I hope you'll find these episodes helpful!

Today's guest is Danielle Strachman, co-founder of 1517 venture fund which, in their own words, backs dropouts working on hard problems and sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their startups. Prior to starting 1517, Danielle worked with Peter Thiel, and Michael Gibson (who I Interviewed in Series 8, Episode 60) and together, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don't know, The Thiel Fellowship was set up to fund students who were 22 or under, giving them a total of $100k over two years so that they could dropout of the traditional education system and pursue important work. The Fellowship guided them through this process which would often involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Past founders backed by the Fellowship include Vitalik Buterin  who was still a teenager when the fellowship allowed him to drop out and work on Ethereum full time, as well as Laura Deming, the founder of The Longevity Fund and Dylan Field of Figma.In this episode, we discuss how Danielle went from tutoring to starting the Thiel Fellowship to venture capital, what common traits the founders she has backed share and the lessons she learned from Peter Thiel.Please enjoy my conversation with Danielle Strachman.Danielle Strachman on Twitter / 1517 venture fund  / 1517 SubstackDanielle on Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter / Sponsorship / YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Innovations Academy, San DiegoDanielle's writeup of recent 2E camp for teens Noor Siddiqui, Founder of Orchid

This is a selection of highlights from episode #181 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast.These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — and if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode:Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyondAnd if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing podcast@80000hours.org.Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong

"The question I care about is: What do I want to do? Like, when I'm 80, how strong do I want to be? OK, and then if I want to be that strong, how well do my muscles have to work? OK, and then if that's true, what would they have to look like at the cellular level for that to be true? Then what do we have to do to make that happen? In my head, it's much more about agency and what choice do I have over my health. And even if I live the same number of years, can I live as an 80-year-old running every day happily with my grandkids?" — Laura DemingIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Laura Deming — founder of The Longevity Fund — about the challenge of ending ageing.Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.They cover:How lifespan is surprisingly easy to manipulate in animals, which suggests human longevity could be increased too.Why we irrationally accept age-related health decline as inevitable.The engineering mindset Laura takes to solving the problem of ageing.Laura's thoughts on how ending ageing is primarily a social challenge, not a scientific one.The recent exciting regulatory breakthrough for an anti-ageing drug for dogs.Laura's vision for how increased longevity could positively transform society by giving humans agency over when and how they age.Why this decade may be the most important decade ever for making progress on anti-ageing research.The beauty and fascination of biology, which makes it such a compelling field to work in.And plenty more.Chapters:The case for ending ageing (00:04:00)What might the world look like if this all goes well? (00:21:57)Reasons not to work on ageing research (00:27:25)Things that make mice live longer (00:44:12)Parabiosis, changing the brain, and organ replacement can increase lifespan (00:54:25)Big wins the field of ageing research (01:11:40)Talent shortages and other bottlenecks for ageing research (01:17:36)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuireAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

If you are interested in the longevity scene, like I am, you probably have seen press releases about the dog longevity company, Loyal for Dogs, getting a nod for efficacy from the FDA. These have come in the form of the New York Post calling the drug "groundbreaking", Science Alert calling the drug "radical", and the more sedate New York Times just asking, "Could Longevity Drugs for Dogs Extend Your Pet's Life?", presumably unaware of Betteridge's Law of Headlines. You may have also seen the coordinated Twitter offensive of people losing their shit about this, including their lead investor, Laura Deming, saying that she "broke down crying when she got the call".And if you have been following Loyal for Dogs for a while, like I have, you are probably puzzled by this news. Loyal for Dogs has been around since 2021. Unlike any other drug company or longevity [...]--- First published: December 12th, 2023 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vHSkxmYYqW59sySqA/the-likely-first-longevity-drug-is-based-on-sketchy-science --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The likely first longevity drug is based on sketchy science. This is bad for science and bad for longevity., published by BobBurgers on December 12, 2023 on LessWrong. If you are interested in the longevity scene, like I am, you probably have seen press releases about the dog longevity company, Loyal for Dogs, getting a nod for efficacy from the FDA. These have come in the form of the New York Post calling the drug " groundbreaking", Science Alert calling the drug " radical", and the more sedate New York Times just asking, "Could Longevity Drugs for Dogs Extend Your Pet's Life?", presumably unaware of Betteridge's Law of Headlines. You may have also seen the coordinated Twitter offensive of people losing their shit about this, including their lead investor, Laura Deming, saying that she " broke down crying when she got the call". And if you have been following Loyal for Dogs for a while, like I have, you are probably puzzled by this news. Loyal for Dogs has been around since 2021. Unlike any other drug company or longevity company, they have released almost zero information (including zero publications) about their strategy for longevity. These thoughts swirling around my head, I waded through the press releases trumpeting the end of dog death as we know it in order to figure out what exactly Loyal is doing for dog longevity. And, what I found first surprised me, then saddened me. Loyal did not prove efficacy in dog longevity. They found a path around the FDA instead. That's the surprising part. The sad part is that, in doing so, they relied on some really sketchy science. And I think that, based on their trajectory, they won't just be the first company to get a drug approved for longevity. They will be the first one to get a longevity drug pulled for non-efficacy as well, and put the field back years. So let's start with how they got their drug approved in the first place. Well, they didn't. To get drugs approved in animals, you need to prove three things: efficacy, safety, and manufacturing consistency. Normally, efficacy is the hardest part of this, because you have to prove to the FDA that your drug cures the disease that it's supposed to. This is especially hard in aging, because any aging trial would take a long time. Loyal found a way around that. If you can instead prove to the FDA that it would be too difficult to test your animal drug for efficacy before releasing it, they allow you to sell the drug first, and prove the efficacy later. This is a standard called "reasonable expectation of effectiveness". So, what exactly did Loyal show to the FDA to prove that there was a reasonable expectation their drug would be effective in aging? Well, it's hard to tell, because, again, Loyal has released very little data. But, based on the NYT article and their blog post, I can sketch out a basic idea of what they did. Loyal's longevity drug is an injectable insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, inhibitor. As the name suggests, IGF-1 is closely related to insulin and is regulated by insulin. Also as the name suggests, IGF-1 causes things to grow. High IGF-1 causes acromegaly, the condition that makes people look like storybook giants. Loyal gave their IGF-1 inhibitor to healthy laboratory dogs (and possibly diabetic dogs, although it's hard to tell). Lo and behold, it lowered IGF-1. It probably also reduced insulin. They then looked at healthy pet dogs, and found that big dogs had higher levels of IGF-1, which is one of the reasons they're big. Small dogs had lower levels of IGF-1. Small dogs, as we all know, live longer than big dogs. Therefore, Loyal said, our IGF-1 inhibitor will extend the life of dogs. Needless to say, this is bad science. Really bad science. There are holes big enough in this to walk a Great Dane through, which I'll talk about in a sec. Apparent...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The likely first longevity drug is based on sketchy science. This is bad for science and bad for longevity., published by BobBurgers on December 12, 2023 on LessWrong. If you are interested in the longevity scene, like I am, you probably have seen press releases about the dog longevity company, Loyal for Dogs, getting a nod for efficacy from the FDA. These have come in the form of the New York Post calling the drug " groundbreaking", Science Alert calling the drug " radical", and the more sedate New York Times just asking, "Could Longevity Drugs for Dogs Extend Your Pet's Life?", presumably unaware of Betteridge's Law of Headlines. You may have also seen the coordinated Twitter offensive of people losing their shit about this, including their lead investor, Laura Deming, saying that she " broke down crying when she got the call". And if you have been following Loyal for Dogs for a while, like I have, you are probably puzzled by this news. Loyal for Dogs has been around since 2021. Unlike any other drug company or longevity company, they have released almost zero information (including zero publications) about their strategy for longevity. These thoughts swirling around my head, I waded through the press releases trumpeting the end of dog death as we know it in order to figure out what exactly Loyal is doing for dog longevity. And, what I found first surprised me, then saddened me. Loyal did not prove efficacy in dog longevity. They found a path around the FDA instead. That's the surprising part. The sad part is that, in doing so, they relied on some really sketchy science. And I think that, based on their trajectory, they won't just be the first company to get a drug approved for longevity. They will be the first one to get a longevity drug pulled for non-efficacy as well, and put the field back years. So let's start with how they got their drug approved in the first place. Well, they didn't. To get drugs approved in animals, you need to prove three things: efficacy, safety, and manufacturing consistency. Normally, efficacy is the hardest part of this, because you have to prove to the FDA that your drug cures the disease that it's supposed to. This is especially hard in aging, because any aging trial would take a long time. Loyal found a way around that. If you can instead prove to the FDA that it would be too difficult to test your animal drug for efficacy before releasing it, they allow you to sell the drug first, and prove the efficacy later. This is a standard called "reasonable expectation of effectiveness". So, what exactly did Loyal show to the FDA to prove that there was a reasonable expectation their drug would be effective in aging? Well, it's hard to tell, because, again, Loyal has released very little data. But, based on the NYT article and their blog post, I can sketch out a basic idea of what they did. Loyal's longevity drug is an injectable insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, inhibitor. As the name suggests, IGF-1 is closely related to insulin and is regulated by insulin. Also as the name suggests, IGF-1 causes things to grow. High IGF-1 causes acromegaly, the condition that makes people look like storybook giants. Loyal gave their IGF-1 inhibitor to healthy laboratory dogs (and possibly diabetic dogs, although it's hard to tell). Lo and behold, it lowered IGF-1. It probably also reduced insulin. They then looked at healthy pet dogs, and found that big dogs had higher levels of IGF-1, which is one of the reasons they're big. Small dogs had lower levels of IGF-1. Small dogs, as we all know, live longer than big dogs. Therefore, Loyal said, our IGF-1 inhibitor will extend the life of dogs. Needless to say, this is bad science. Really bad science. There are holes big enough in this to walk a Great Dane through, which I'll talk about in a sec. Apparent...

Earlier this week Celine Halioua (ODF2), founder and CEO of Loyal — a dog longevity biotech startup — announced something truly groundbreaking.Loyal (ODF2) has earned what they believe to be the FDA's first-ever formal acceptance that a drug can be developed and approved for lifespan extension. As Celine says in her announcement; “I started Loyal 4 years ago with the explicit goal to get the first drug FDA approved for lifespan extension itself - no disease, just healthy, longer"..."We can't start selling the drug yet - we need to complete the safety and manufacturing technical sections - but this represents the lions share of the 'existential risk' of both the drug program, and of Loyal AKA - we are doing it!!!”Laura Deming is a longevity biotech investor with an incredible batting average. 5 of 18 startups she's backed so far have gone public. She was the first investor in Loyal and had this to say:"This just dropped - the most important milestone in the history of longevity biotech. put simply, this is the FDA's first-ever formal acceptance that a drug can be developed and approved to extend lifespan. the longevity field is evolving quickly. No one I know in the field would have said this was possible 5 years ago. Celine got it done in 4. It's a massive win for both biotech founders and regulators, in establishing a pathway by which drugs (initially for dogs) can get approved for lifespan"You're about to listen to an archival interview with Celine just one and a half years into starting Loyal which is now 4 years old. It's an incredible conversation with interviewer Marshall Kosloff and shows just how much can be accomplished in a few short years.Congrats to Celine and the entire Loyal team on what is truly an unparalleled milestone.Are you exploring starting a company we've got a program for that?ODF has helped 1k companies like Loyal which was ODF2 get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our 20th cohort in San Francisco are now . Learn more and apply at beondeck.comloyalfordogs.comCeline's personal websiteCeline on X/Twitterbeondeck.comOn Deck on X/Twitterpodcast episode archive and show notes

View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com/episodes/theoretical-vs-practical-reason Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out. Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

Dr. Alex Colville, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and General Partner of age1 ( https://age1.com/ ), a venture capital firm focused on catalyzing the next generation of founder-led, longevity biotech companies, with a strategy of building a community of visionaries advancing new therapeutics, tools, and technologies targeting aging and age-related diseases. With a recent initial closing of US$35 million, age1 will be focusing on founders and companies at the earliest stages of first-money in, pre-seed and seed funding, and is resourced to continue to support companies through later rounds. Dr. Colville previously established the biotech arm of Starbloom Capital and served as founding Chief of Staff of Amaranth Foundation, where he led: the foundation's support of skilled researchers and ambitious moonshot projects in the longevity field, and helped to advance their lobbying efforts; the TIME Initiative (a group with mission to activate undergraduate students' interest in aging biology); the Marine Biology Laboratory Biology of Aging Summer Course, among other programs. Dr. Colville completed his Ph.D. in Genetics at Stanford University studying the biology of aging in Dr. Thomas Rando's lab while consulting for several family offices, the R&D team of Rubedo Life Sciences, and the business development team of Maze Therapeutics. Prior to his Ph.D., while at Northeastern University completing his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Chemical Engineering with a Minor in Biochemical Engineering, he advised pharma companies as a management consultant at Putnam Associates, a boutique life sciences consulting firm. Support the show

Dr. Alex Colville is the co-founder and General Partner of Age1 Ventures, a recently launched VC firm focused on funding contrarian, founder-led biotech companies aiming to extend healthy human lifespan. In this episode, Alex outlines Age1's thesis of identifying and empowering talented founders with ambitious visions for the longevity field. He shares his own journey to VC, including early interests in aging science and entrepreneurship. Alex provides an inside look at Age1's approach to community building, sourcing high-potential founders, investing at the pre-seed/seed stage, and supporting companies technologically and strategically. He also discusses Age1's very first investment in Aperture Therapeutics. Listeners will gain insights into how Age1 aims to catalyze change in the longevity biotech ecosystem.Key topics covered:Origins of Age1 in the pioneering Longevity Fund and Laura Deming's visionAlex's path from aging researcher to VC investor and community builderHow VCs raise funds from different types of investors (LPs)Age1's focus on early-stage companies and contrarian, ambitious foundersSourcing and identifying high-potential founders through networks and eventsThe importance of founder motivation and pragmatism in Age1's investmentsAge1's first investment in Aperture Therapeutics targeting neuroinflammationUnique value-add Age1 provides with specialized aging expertiseEmpowering founders by showing people "like them" can build startupsAge1's moonshot goal of enabling agency over healthspan and lifespanNotable Quotes:(quotes have been lightly edited for clarity)"A fund is a vehicle of money devoted to making investments to return capital with more money than you started with.""Once you have the money, your focus becomes finding the best founders and supporting them to increase the odds of success.""The best founders don't necessarily realize they could be a founder. We can help show people they can just dive in.""What matters most to us is not the idea, but the founder and their potential.""We want somebody with a very strong mission motivation towards aging. This core focus ends up being a huge strength of the company.""We look for a combination of pragmatism and moonshot mentality.""Our goal is to give people agency over how long they live in good health.”“Age1 needs to exist in order to convince some of the raw, ambitious talent that they can do things they don't yet know that they can do—in order to pull off moonshots.”Links: Age1Alex's recent paperEmail questions, comments, and feedback to podcast@bioagelabs.comTranslating Aging on Twitter: @bioagepodcastBioAge Labs Website bioagelabs.comBioAge Labs Twitter @bioagelabsBioAge Labs LinkedIn

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Loyal founder Celine Halioua, to talk about extending the life of dogs (3:00), pushing to get first product on market in 2025 (6:10), the regulatory path (10:40), growing up in Texas (15:40), how health anxiety seeded her passion for longevity science (21:00), leaving Oxford after being sexually harassed (25:10), coming to San Francisco to work with Laura Deming on longevity (28:50), choosing to work on dogs (31:30), raising money (39:35), convincing top people to join Loyal (42:30), the development timeline (47:00), and the future of longevity science (50:45). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is Michael Gibson, co-founder of 1517 – a venture fund he started in June 2015 with Danielle Strachman which backs, and I quote, “dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists, at the earliest stages.”Prior to starting 1517, Michael worked with Peter Thiel, and alongside, Danielle Strachman, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don't know, The Thiel Fellowship was set up to fund students who were 22 or under, giving them a total of $100k over two years so that they could dropout of the traditional education system and pursue important work. The Fellowship guided them through this process which would often involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Past founders backed by the Fellowship include Vitalik Buterin who was still a teenager when the fellowship allowed him to drop out and work on Ethereum full time, as well as Laura Deming, the founder of The Longevity Fund and Iddris Sandu, co-founder of Spatial Labs.Michael is also the author of Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University which I absolutely loved.It's a book about startups, creating a fund with Peter Thiel, founders, reimagining education to empower the young to create great companies without the limitation of credentials, and it also tells the story of identity, specifically, Michael's own challenging path to finding out who he is after his father - a suspected CIA agent was found murdered when Michael was still a toddler.Honestly, I can't tell you how good the book is but trust me, it's well worth your time as is this episode so please enjoy my conversation with Michael Gibson!---------------Michael on Twitter / 1517 Fund / Buy the book hereDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham   / Newsletter      

In this episode of The Good Time Show, Aarthi and Sriram interviewed Laura Deming. Laura Deming is a partner at and founder of The Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm focused on aging and life extension. At age 8, Deming became interested in the biology of aging, and at age 12 she joined the lab of Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California, San Francisco. Deming was accepted to MIT at age 14 and later dropped out to accept the Thiel Fellowship and start a venture capital firm. We covered topics on aging, longevity research, the philosophical implications of living 'forever', contrarian thinking, beauty of mathematics (and the number 28), homeschooling and why research funding is a popularity contest now.

Why is hibernation something that bears and squirrels do, but humans don't? Even more interesting, what's going on inside a hibernating animal, on a physiological and genetic level, that allows them to survive the winter in a near-comatose state without freezing to death and without ingesting any food or water? And what can we learn about that process that might inform human medicine?Those are the big questions being investigated right now by a four-year-old startup in California called Fauna Bio. And Harry's guests today are two of Fauna Bio's three founding scientists: Ashley Zehnder and Linda Goodman. They explain how they got interested in hibernation as a possible model for how humans could protect themselves from disease, and how progress in comparative genomics over the last few years has made it possible to start to answer that question at the level of gene and protein interactions. The work is shedding light on a previously neglected area of animal behavior that could yield new insights for treating everything from neurodegenerative diseases to cancer.Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. 6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.7. Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner. 8. If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out. 9. After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.That's it! Thanks so much.TranscriptHarry Glorikian: Hello. I'm Harry Glorikian, and this is The Harry Glorikian Show, where we explore how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare.It's April and spring is well underway, even though it's been a pretty cold one so far here in New England.It's the kind of weather that makes you want to pull the covers over your head in the morning and just sleep in. Or maybe just hibernate like a bear until summer is really here.But when you think about it, what is hibernation? Why is it something that bears and squirrels do, but humans don't?Even more interesting, what's going on inside a hibernating animal, physiologically, that allows them to survive all winter without freezing to death and without ingesting any food or water?And what can we learn about that process that might inform human medicine?Those are the big questions being investigated right now by a four-year-old startup in California called Fauna BioAnd my guests today are two of Fauna Bio's three founding scientists: Ashley Zehnder and Linda Goodman. I asked them to explain how they got interested in hibernation as a possible model for how humans could protect themselves from disease.…And how progress in comparative genomics over the last few years has made it possible to start to answer that question at the level of gene and protein interactions.We've always looked to the natural world, especially the world of plants, for insights into biochemistry that could inspire new drugs. But what's exciting to me about Fauna Bio is that they're shining a light on a previously neglected area of animal behavior that could yield new insights for treating everything from neurodegenerative diseases to cancer.So, here's my conversation with Ashley Zehnder and Linda Goodman.Harry Glorikian: Ashley. Linda, welcome to the show.Ashley Zehnder: Thanks, Harry, we're excited to be here today. It's going to be fun.Linda Goodman: Yeah, thanks for having us.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I mean, well, you guys are someplace sunny and warm, and I'm actually I shouldn't say that it's actually sunny right now on the East Coast. So I'm not I'm not.Linda Goodman: Don't jinx yourself.Harry Glorikian: But the temperature is going to drop. Like to I think they said 18. So everything will freeze tonight for sure. So it'll, you know, it's one of those days, but. I want to jump right into this because we've got a lot of ground to cover. Like there's so many questions that I have after sort of looking into the company and sort of digging in and, you know, but even before we jump into what you're working on. Right, I really want to talk about hibernation. Maybe because I'm jealous and I'd like to be able to hibernate. I have sleep apnea. So sleep is a problem. But humans don't hibernate. But there's a ton of other mammalian species that that do. And sometimes I do feel, though, that my teenager hibernates, but that's a different issue. So, but, what what is interesting to you about hibernation from a physiological point of view. What what goes on with metabolism or gene expression during hibernation, that's that's not found in humans, but that could be relevant to human health?Ashley Zehnder: Yeah, I think this is a great question, Harry, because I think both Linda and I came to fauna from different backgrounds. I came from veterinary science, Linda from comparative genomics. We can go into our details later, but neither of us really appreciated the amazing physiology of these species. There are some of the most extreme mammals on the planet, and there are hibernating bears and literally every group of mammals. Right. This is something Linda specializes in. But there are primates in Madagascar that hibernate very similar to the 39 ground squirrels that we tend to work with. So it's this really deeply conserved trait in mammals, including primates. And, you know, it kind of highlights for us what our genes can do when they're adapted for extreme environments. And so that's kind of the lens that we take when we look at hibernation. It's how do these species protect their own tissues from being nearly frozen for six, seven months out of the year, having to protect their brains, their hearts, all their vital organs? They're not eating, they're not drinking. They're not moving for these really deep bodied hibernaters. When you think of 100 kilogram animal that's not eating for seven months, how do they survive that? Right. And it has to do with metabolic rates that change 200- to 300-fold over the course of a couple of hours. It has to do with oxygenation changes and protection from oxidative stress and ischemia reperfusion. And so if you look at a tissue by tissue level, you can start to see how these animals are finally adapted to protecting themselves from from damage. And then we can start to say, well, this is similar damage to what we see in human diseases. And that's why this is such an interesting system, because it's so dynamic and because it happens across so many groups of mammals, it really lends itself to this comparative genomics approach that we take to drug discovery.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. Because I was wondering sort of like what ways of healing from different sort of traumas and conditions do hibernating animals have that that humans don't, that we sort of maybe wish we did? It's sort of like, you know, almost Marvel or one of those things where you like go to sleep, you wake up, you've totally healed again, which kind of be kind of be cool. Yeah. So, you know. But when did scientists first begin to think about whether having a better understanding of hibernation might help us solve? Some of these riddles that we have in human health. I mean, it surely it can't be like a new concept. It has to go further back. I mean, what has changed recently to make it more actionable? I mean, is it, you know, omics, costs coming down that are making it easier, computational capabilities that are, you know, making all these come together? I mean, those. What do you guys. What's. What's the answer? You guys know the answer better than I do.Ashley Zehnder: I'll comment on a little bit on the physiology, and I will let Linda talk about the data revolution, because that's that's really what she knows very intimately. So from a physiology standpoint, these are species and not just hibernaters, but a lot of other species that we've been studying since the early 1900s, 1950s. I mean, these are some of our earliest biological experiments and our earliest understandings of biology. We're not necessarily done by studying humans. A lot of that was done by studying natural disease models, right? How did we figure out that genes cause cancer? So it's a little bit of a tangent, but bear with me, it was not by studying human cancer, it was by studying Rous Sarcoma Virus and how that virus picked up bird genes and then turn them on. Right and other in other individuals. So but then kind of this almost the same year in 1976 that we figured out that genes cause cancer by studying chickens. 1974 we figured out how to genetically modified mice. And we sort of figured out that like, okay, maybe we don't need to study natural biology anymore. And so I feel like we sort of lost a lot of those skills and figured out we had humans and we had model organisms and we were done. And I think now we're kind of in this renaissance where people are realizing that actually there's still a lot of natural biology that we can learn from. But it's being powered now by this data revolution and the decrease in cost and sequencing and availability of omics data like RNA. Seq and then I will pitch that over to Linda because that's really what she knows best.Linda Goodman: Yeah, yes, absolutely. You know, Ashley's right. And I think just to add on to that, that there was this issue in which there were a lot of field biologists out there working with these really fascinating hibernating animals. They knew a lot about what these animals could do, the extreme environments they were exposed to, that they could overcome, they could protect all of their tissues. And there was so there was a group of field biologists who knew all that information. And then on the other side, you have all of these geneticists who are studying the genomes of probably humans and mouse and rat. And they weren't really talking to each other for a long time. And I've been in the genomics field for at least a decade, and not until very recently did I even hear about all these amazing adaptations that these hibernating mammals have. So I think some of it was just a big communication gap. And now that the genomics field is starting to become a little more aware that all these exciting adaptations are out there that we can learn from, I think that's going to be huge. And yes, of course, it certainly does not hurt that there's been a dramatic drop in sequencing costs. We can now sequence a reference genome for around $10,000. That was unheard of years ago. And so a lot of these species that people would previously consider untouchables because they were not model organisms with a pristine reference genome, we can now start to approach these and thoroughly study their biology and genomics in a way that was not possible several years ago.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I was thinking I was, you know, I was laughing when you said $10,000, because I remember when we did the genome at Applied Biosystems and it was not $10,000.Ashley Zehnder: Yeah.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. And it took I remember Celera, we had an entire floor of sequencers working 24/7 I mean, it was an amazing sight. And now we can do all that, you know, on a.Ashley Zehnder: Benchtop. Benchtop. Exactly. On a benchtop.Harry Glorikian: So. But, you know, it's interesting, like in a way, studying animals to learn more about disease mechanisms seems like a no brainer. I mean, we share a, what, about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees. And for those listening. Yes, we do. You know, I'm sure there's people out there that, like, bristle when I say that. But what is it, 97.5% of our DNA with rats and mice. That's why we use all these things for sort of safety and effectiveness of drugs meant for humans. But. Still, I'm not used to drug hunters starting out by looking at animals, you know? Why do you think it's taken the drug industry, although I'm I say that very loosely, [so long] to wake up to that idea?Ashley Zehnder: Yeah. I think it's I think it's again, this almost reversal of the paradigm that exists today, which is let's take a human disease that we want to make a new drug for. Let's take a mouse and let's try to genetically manipulate that mouse to mimic as closely as possible what we see in the human disease. And those are always imperfect. I mean, I did a cancer biology PhD at Stanford, and there's that trope of like, Oh, if I had a dollar for every time you occurred mouse in a human right, it would need to work anymore. That's replicated across many fields, right? They're not good models. And so we're saying like obviously that doesn't really work for discovery. It's fine for preclinical and safety and you have to use those models. But for pure discovery, that's not where you want to be, right? Instead, you want to take the approach of saying, where has nature created a path for you? Where is it already solved this problem? And I think there are companies like Varian Bio who are doing this in human populations. We're saying, let's look at humans that have unique physiologies and a unique disease adaptations. And of course then you have to find those niche pockets of human populations.Ashley Zehnder: So that's not a not a simple problem either. But the approach is very analogous. What we're saying is we can use that rare disease discovery approach and just expand that scope of discovery. Look at highly conserved genes, look at how other species are using them to reverse how phosphorylation in the brain to repair their hearts after damage, to reverse insulin dependence. To heal, we'll heal their tissues or regenerate stem cells. Let's just see how nature did it right and just mimic that instead of trying to fix something that we artificially created. So it's literally reversing that paradigm of how we think about animals and drug discovery. But you have to know how to do that. You have to know which models are correct. You have to know how to analyze 415 genomes together in an alignment which is really complicated. Linda knows how to do that, so you have to know how to do it correctly, although you could screw it up very badly. So there's a lot of expertise that goes into these analyses and also again, the data availability, which wasn't there nearly a decade ago. So.Harry Glorikian: So I asked this question out of pure naivete, because I'm not sure that I could sort of draw a straight line. But, you know, which drugs were have been discovered through research on genetic mechanisms of disease in animals. Is there, are there?Ashley Zehnder: You know, I think directly it's a new field. Right. So I think, Linda, you and I have looked at some examples of looking at drugs for narcolepsy, looking at dog genetics and studies, looking at muscle disorders in certain species of cattle that have naturally beefed up muscles and translating those into therapies. I mean, there are examples of looking at animals for things like genotype, right, came from Gila monster venom, although that's not strictly a genetic program. Right? So I think this idea of looking at natural animal models is a source of innovation. It's just that, again, the data wasn't really available until fairly recently, but we know the strategy works by what's been done on things like PCSK9 inhibitors in humans, right? It's a very similar approach to that. It's just expanding that scope of discovery.Harry Glorikian: So because you guys raised money and you guys are moving this forward, sort of and I don't want you to tell me anything that's confidential, but. So what was the pitch when you when you put that in front of everybody?Ashley Zehnder: It was really that, look, drug discovery right now is really been hampered by a lack of innovation. And we're really stuck in looking at these very kind of currently limited data sources, which is humans and again, these handful of really imperfect animal models. But we can take what we've learned from working with human genomics and really greatly expand the opportunities for a number of diseases that still don't have good therapies. Right. We've had the human genome for really close to 20 years now. We spent a lot of money sequencing it. And still, if you go back and look at the FDA approvals in the last two years, which I did by hand a while ago, or more than three quarters of those are not new targets. They're new drugs for a new indication or new drugs, same drugs before a new indication or they're kind of meta pathway drugs or they're drugs for which we still don't know the mechanism. It's some small molecule. It's been around since fifties. And so like where is the innovation in the top ten diseases of people still have it changed? So like where I pulled these two headlines right not too long ago, one from 2003, which is like the era of the genomics revolution. Right? And then one from 2019, which was the genomics revolution question mark. Right. Like we're still sort of waiting for it. And so what is that missing piece of data that's really going to allow us to really leverage the power that's in the human genome? And to do that, we have to put our own genes in an evolutionary context to understand what's important. That's been that third dimension of genomics that's been missing. So it's really not necessarily about any particular species that we work on, all of which are amazing. It's really about using that data to shine a better light on what's important in our own genome. And so that's a lot of the pitches, like how are we going to use our own genome better and find better treatments?Harry Glorikian: Yep. Understood. So. You have a third founder, Katie Grabek. Right. So. Tell me about yourselves. I mean, did the three of you get interested in comparative genomics and hibernation? How did you come together? How did you decide like, oh, hey, let's do a startup and get this thing going in this area? So tell tell me the origin story.Ashley Zehnder: Linda, do you want to kick off?Linda Goodman: Sure. I think it all really started, Ashley and I initially started batting a few ideas around. We both had this understanding that that drug discovery today did not look outside of human mouse rat very much. And we both understood there was this wealth of animal data that's just waiting to be used and no one was doing it and we couldn't really figure out why. And we were having trouble figuring out exactly which animal we wanted to study and which diseases we wanted to study. And it just so happened that we lucked out. There was another woman in our lab at Stanford, Grabek, who had the perfect study system for what we were thinking about. She had these amazing hibernates our animals that have exquisite abilities in terms of disease, resistance and repair. And once she started talking about all the amazing phenotypes these animals have, we thought, wow, that would make a great study system to make the next human therapeutic. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that both Katie and Linda have human genetics PhDs. Right. So I think both of them and Linda can expound on this. But from Katie perspective. Right, she she went in to do a human genetics Ph.D. trying to understand how genes can be used to improve human health and shouldn't be rotating the lab of somebody who studied the 39 ground squirrel and said this physiology is way more extreme than anything we see in humans, but they're doing it using the same genes.Linda Goodman: What are those genes doing in these animals that we can adapt for human therapeutics? And so she brought that work with her to Stanford and was really one of the preeminent researchers studying the genetics and genomics of these species. My background is I'm of Marion, so my clinical training is in exotic species. So as a clinician, I treated birds, mammals, reptiles and saw that they all presented with different kinds of diseases or in some cases didn't present with diseases like cancer that were super interesting. And then coming to a place like Stanford to do a PhD, it was working with a bunch of human researchers, human focused researchers. They're all generally human researchers, but you know what I mean? It's a little bit tricky with the nomenclature. Generally, I have my doubts about, you know, maybe there's some chimpanzees doing research somewhere, people studying human diseases, right from a human lens who are completely ignorant of the fact that animals often also had these disease traits or in some cases were resistant to them. So there was this huge disconnect there of of biologists and veterinarians and physiologists who understood all these traits across different species and the people who knew the molecular mechanisms, even though a lot of those are shared.Linda Goodman: And so one of the things that I found really interesting just from a cancer perspective was that a lot of our major oncogenes are highly conserved because these are core biological genes that if you screw them up, will give you cancer. But there's an evolutionary pressure to maintain these genes. And so there's a reason why they're conservative, because they're really important biologically, and that's true across many other diseases as well. So from that perspective, I was really interested in this intersection of human and animal health. I always wanted to do more genomics myself and just never had had the training. Linda had always been interested in veterinary science, and so we kind of immediately started collaborating and saying, Look, look, there's a huge opportunity in this, again, third space, third dimension of genomics that people are not looking at. What do we do trying to start a comparative genomics company? I'm using air quotes here for the podcast listeners is a little bit broad. Where do you start? And I think Katie really gave us that start in saying, here's a model. We have a biobank of samples that are proprietary to fauna. We have an expert in this field. We have a model that's good for so many different diseases. Let's prove that the process works here and then we can expand into multiple disease areas.Harry Glorikian: You know, you got to love, people I think, underestimate that magic that happens when the right people get together and the spark happens, right? I mean, I'll take that. Any day. I mean, I love coming up with a plan and then, you know, working to the plan. But when it happens, when the right people in the room and they're all get excited, those are those are the most incredible start ups, in my opinion. Yeah. So you're starting off with targets in heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes, very different areas, right? Cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and metabolic. So. Why start with those areas in particular?Linda Goodman: So I think for us it was really again showing showing what we can translate from this model. So some of the phenotypes that we see, the traits that we see in the ground squirrel, which is predominantly one of the species we use for our work, is that they're exquisitely resistant to ischemia, reperfusion injury. So the kind of injury that gets, if you have a heart attack and you go and get the heart attack on block, you get this rush of warm, oxygenated blood back into your heart that can actually be damaging. And that's a lot of what causes damage after a heart attack, what these animals happen, they do this 25 times over the course of a 6 to 7 month hibernation cycle. And if you look at their hearts in the peak of one of these periods, there is an upregulation of collagen, which is cause of fibrosis. There's an upregulation, there's histologically, there's a little bit of damage. It's less than you would I would have, but there's a little bit there. But if you get to the end of that whole cycle and look at their hearts, they look normal and they do it again next year. Right. So you and I could not survive 25 of these attacks over six or seven month period, right? Obviously not. So let's pick the strongest phenotypes we have in these animals and let's show that we can use information from that and come up with genes and compounds that are protective in our more standard models of these diseases.Linda Goodman: And that's what we did really with the first round of data that we had is we generated four genetic targets and two compounds that came out of the heart data that we had from hibernating and that we tested them in human cardiomyocytes in a dish and said if we take oxygen and glucose away from these cells, they get really unhappy and die and we could double survival of human heart cells in a dish. And then we said, okay, great, let's actually move this into animals. And so we used AAV or some of these viral vectors to then knock down genes in vivo in hearts of rats. So we literally tied off a coronary artery and then let the blood come back in and saw that we could almost fully protect these hearts from damage by knocking down genes that we found in the hibernating data. So it was really closing that loop and saying, where are the strongest traits? Can we show that this works? And then it was really figuring out where are the really large areas of unmet need. And so in terms of metabolism, we end up connecting with Novo Nordisk, which is a publicly disclosed partnership. They are very focused on obesity. We have a model that increases this metabolism, 235 fold over an hour. Name another model that can do that, right?Harry Glorikian: I need that. I need that. I need like, because...Ashley Zehnder: We all need that!Harry Glorikian: I could get rid of a few pounds right around here.Linda Goodman: Exactly. So then it's really just figuring out where are the unmet needs, who is really interested in these areas we're looking at and do we have unique data that speaks to those models? And that's really we just try to be guided by the biology and saying, where do we have unique data sets that can answer high unmet needs?Harry Glorikian: Okay. Well, all I mean, all sounds super exciting if we can make the translation, you know, in the right way and find those targets. But. You guys have built up a significant biobank, right? I understand you have a huge database of genomic readout from various hibernating animals. Can you tell us a little more about the extent of that biobank? How did you collect the data and how unique is that database in the industry?Ashley Zehnder: Yeah. Linda, do you want to talk a little bit about the data sources that we're currently using at Fauna?Linda Goodman: Yeah. So maybe, you might be the best person to talk about the Biobank and then I can talk about all the other data sources layering on top of that.Ashley Zehnder: Yeah, I'll talk a little about the BiobanK. So we have yeah, we have a number of different data sources. The Biobank is one of them and probably one of the main ones that we use. So Katie, during her PhD, built a really unique biobank of very precisely time tissue samples from 39 ground squirrels across the whole hibernation cycle. And the reason why that timing is so important is because the cycle is so dynamic. If you don't have really precise sample timing, you end up with a big kind of smush of data that you can't tease apart by having really precisely timed data points, you can separate these genes into clusters and know exactly kind of where you are in time. And that timing relates to the physiological injuries that we study. So we know what time points their hearts are protected because those physiological studies have been done. We've looked at those time points very specifically. So we have that biobank of samples that we in licensed as founding IP at Fauna CANI literally drove it across the country in a U-Haul because we didn't trust anybody to move it. So that's that's now in our freezers and Emeryville with a cadre of backup batteries to protect it.Ashley Zehnder: So that's the founding data that we have. And that's been really crucial because I look at other companies trying to use data for drug discovery, particularly in the early stage. A lot of it is kind of publicly available data or cell lines or kind of shared data sources. And part of what is unique about font, as we literally have truly novel data sources that we're starting with that are wholly owned that we control and we know the quality of those. So that's really the Biobank that we have is and it's 22 different tissues. I mean, it's brain, it's kidney, it's lung, it's hard. It's liver or skeletal muscle. Right? Pretty much every kind of tissue you would want in that founding biobank. But then on top of that, I think what we've done with the other data is super important. Yeah. And so we layer on top of that all sorts of publicly available data and also data we've been able to source, such as human data from the UK Biobank. But I really want to hit on the point of, of why the model species hibernate or data is so different. All of the other data that most people work with is trying to compare animals that are healthy to animals that are diseased, or people that are healthy to people who are have disease. What's really unique about the model species that we're working with is we're trying to figure out why they have these superpowers in terms of disease, resistance and repair.Ashley Zehnder: So it's kind of the other end of the spectrum that we're making this comparison between a normal, normal hibernate or during, say, the summer months and then a hibernate or that has gene expression patterns that mean that it's resistant to many diseases and it can repair tissues when it gets damaged. So it's actually quite different from the normal types of comparisons that others would make. But yes, and then we integrate publicly available data from sources like Open Targets Reactance. And one of the other data sets that we work with that's that's valuable is that we go back through literature that is relevant to the disease, indications that we're going after. And we have a team of curators that mines these papers that where the biology is relevant and we integrate those transcriptomic studies generally into our database. And that that really helps with our comparisons. And I can kind of give you an example of the way that we would do this type of cross-species analysis compared to what other what others in the industry might do if they were just looking at humans or say, just looking at mouse and rat is that, you know, if you're if you're just looking at at a human study and you're trying to say, look, for what genes do we think are involved in heart failure? You would look at, say, transcriptomic, differences between healthy human hearts and failing human hearts.Ashley Zehnder: And then you would have some type of gene list where you'd see the genes that have differential regulation between those two groups. And it fa not we we look at that type of data and then we also look at hibernate or data and then we can compare that. And that's really where the magic happens because we can look at hibernate hours when their hearts are protected during the winter months. So we have an example of these are genes that are involved in protection and then compare that to the summer months where they're not protected. And then we can integrate both of those to analyses so we can say what's really different about a human heart when it is failing to a hibernating heart when it is protected. And we do very fancy types of network analyses and then we layer on all of these data from external sources and the really exciting moments where we see these networks light up with the exact regulation patterns we are expecting that is relevant to our biology. Those are really fun. And I would say the other data source, Linda, that would be good to touch on is the genomic data, right? I think the comparative genomics data. So maybe give a little context on that. I think that really broadens the the views point of what we work with.Linda Goodman: Yeah, absolutely. So that's another data source that we work with. We have a collaboration with the Broad Institute that is one of the leaders of the Zoonomia Project that has in the neighborhood of 250 mammals in a in a big alignment. So we can do comparative genomics across all of these animals. And what we like to look for are comparing the genomes of animals that have a specific phenotype to others that don't. So for example, what is different in the genomes of hibernaters compared to the mammals that cannot hibernate? And we typically do this with how fast or slow evolving genes are, right? So if a gene doesn't accumulate very many mutations in hibernate hours, then it's probably pretty important for hibernation because there's a lot of purifying selection on that versus say, in other mammals that are not hibernaters, like like a human or a rat. It got a lot of mutations in it because it didn't matter as much for those animals. So that's another way of pinpointing the genes that are really important to hibernation. And we know, of course, that some of those might relate to the overall hibernation trait, but many of them are going to be disease relevant because they've had to evolve these genes in a way to protect their hearts and their other organs from these extreme environments they're in during hibernation.Harry Glorikian: So that, if I'm not mistaken, so did the Zoonomia Consortium, there was a big white paper about comparative genomics published in Nature.Ashley Zehnder: Nature last year? Yep. Two years ago. Yeah. A little bit.Harry Glorikian: Yes. Time seems to blur under COVID.Ashley Zehnder: Yeah.Harry Glorikian: How long have I been in this room? Wait. No.Harry Glorikian: But. Can you guys I mean, because doing comparative genomics is not, you know. It's not new necessarily, but can you guys summarize sort of the. Arguments or the principles of that paper, you know, quickly. And then, you know, my next question is going to be like, do you feel that Fauna Bio is part of a larger movement in science and drug discovery that sort of gaining momentum? So I'll, I'll I'll let you guys riff on that launch.Ashley Zehnder: Linda, you're you're the best one to do a perspective on that paper for sure.Linda Goodman: Sure. Yeah. You know, I think this is really born out of the concept that in order to identify the most important genes in the human genome, we need to be looking at other animals and more precisely, other mammals to see their pattern of evolution. Because if you see a gene that looks nearly identical across all other mammals, that means that it's really important. It means that it has been evolving for somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million years, not accumulating mutations, which really translates to if you got damaging mutations in that gene, you were a dead mammal. Those have been selected out. And that's really how you can tell these are the key genes that are important to to your physiology, the difference between life and death. And you can't understand those things as well by just looking within humans and human populations. We're all too similar to each other. But it's really when you get to these long time scales that the statistics work out where you can see, okay, this has been this mutation has not happened in 100 million years. We don't see it in anybody's genome. So that is obviously very important. And that's just this other way of looking at our own human genome that helps highlight the genes that are going to be important to diseases. And I think, you know, another side to this paper related to conservation and the fact that a lot of these animals with really exciting genomes, the ones that are exciting to people like us, are those that have these really long branch lengths where they're they're kind of an ancient lineage. And that's really where the gold is, because that helps us even more understand how quickly or slowly some of these genes are evolving, and it related to trying to conserve some of these species as well.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: Let's pause the conversation for a minute to talk about one small but important thing you can do, to help keep the podcast going. And that's leave a rating and a review for the show on Apple Podcasts.All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for The Harry Glorikian Show, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but you'll be doing a lot to help other listeners discover the show.And one more thing. If you like the interviews we do here on the show I know you'll like my new book, The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer.It's a friendly and accessible tour of all the ways today's information technologies are helping us diagnose diseases faster, treat them more precisely, and create personalized diet and exercise programs to prevent them in the first place.The book is now available in print and ebook formats. Just go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and search for The Future You by Harry Glorikian.And now, back to the show.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: I should say congratulations because you guys did raise a $9 million seed round last fall from a group of venture funds, some in life sciences, some more general. Right. What does that funding do? What is it? What does that unlock next?Ashley Zehnder: You. I will answer that question. I do want to jump back to your other question that was kind of is this part of a larger movement and comparative genomics? Right. I think that's an important question. I think you sort of hit the nail on the head there. We were invited to a symposium in August of 2019 called Perspective and Comparative Genomics that was held at NHGRI in Bethesda. And I think there's a recognition and actually some of our grant funding is also through NHGRI. And I think there's a recognition from the folks who sequenced the human genome, that they don't have all those answers. And so it's an interesting time where we realize that there is this kind of other data out there that can help us really understand that better. And it does feel a little bit like a rising tide. And so that's that's something that I think is important to recognize. But in terms of the seed round, really, that was meant to expand the platform and the pipeline that we built with our initial funding back from Laura Deming and Age One and True Ventures, who led around for us in early 2019. It's really saying like that initial $3 million or so is really to say like, does this work or is this crazy, right? Can we it's just a crazy idea.Ashley Zehnder: And that's what we really started to generate those first few animal studies that said, yes, actually we can find genes and compounds from this data that meaningfully affect not only human cells, but animal models of human disease. And now we're really expanding into new disease areas. We're looking at areas like fibrosis. We're looking at areas like pulmonary disease. We've got some really interesting data coming out of animal models of pulmonary hypertension with a compound that we found on our platform. We've got the collaboration with Novo Nordisk, which of the five genes that they tested in animals? We have one that has a significant obesity phenotype. So I mean, 20% hit rate on a novel target discovery in vivo is not bad, right? So we've gotten to the point now where repeatedly over multiple disease areas, we've seen that between 20 and 30% of our either compounds or genes are hits, which shows us that this is not only kind of a we got lucky in cardiac disease, but actually this is a process for enriching for important drug targets. And now it's a matter of really expanding the pipeline. We brought on a really experienced head of Therapeutics Discovery, Brian Burke, who spent 20 years at NIBR running very early discovery programs and then seeing programs go into the clinic.Ashley Zehnder: He worked on drugs like Entresto and then worked on a couple of startups after that. So he's kind of gotten both big pharma and startup experience, and his job at Fauna is to really look at the menu of things that we're presenting him from an early research and discovery phase and picking the winners and really figuring out how to take them forward and also killing the programs that are less exciting to him for a number of technical or practical reasons. So that's been really, really helpful to have someone come in truly from the outside and take a look at the science at Fauna and say this is as good or better as anything that I've worked on before. I'm really excited to work on this, and that's been kind of a nice external perspective on on the science and the pipeline at Fauna. So that's really what the $9 million is for. It's really expanding a lot of the computational expertise and and progress and Linda can talk a little bit about that, but also just expanding into new disease areas as well.Harry Glorikian: Understood. So, you know, on this show, like, I talk a lot about, you know, technology, data, and how it's all affecting health care, which this all fits into. But one of the things we talk about a lot is how crappy, terrible, I should use, you know, terrible, right, electronic health records are in the lack of interoperability between them. And Ashley, you actually wrote a paper.Ashley Zehnder: I did, yeah, veterinary medical records are just as bad, actually, veterinary medical records are probably a little bit worse, if it's possible.Harry Glorikian: And to be quite honest, I'm sorry, I just hadn't thought about Fifi or Rover and their...Ashley Zehnder: Their medical records.Harry Glorikian: EHR. Is like is the problem bigger, even, when it comes to functional genomics? I'm trying to think of like obtaining and storing and analyzing 'omics of different species. I mean, who's working on this? Is that part of the Zoonomia consortium? Right. I'm just trying to think it through, like, how do you get all this information and then look at it across all these different species. And at some point, you know, look looking at it against humans also.Ashley Zehnder: Yeah. I'll let Linda talk about the genomics side. I'll comment on sort of some of the validation, some of the externally curated data that Linda talked about. I think this is actually becoming a really important data set. It was a little bit of a slow burn to figure out how to get it and to curate it. But there are a lot of studies now coming out and not just your traditional model organisms, but naked mole rats and long lived rock fishes and primate studies and bats and all kinds of people looking at genomics and RNA seek metabolomics and proteomics across these species that have interesting phenotypes. The problem is, every one of those researchers really heads down on their own species of interest, right? Nobody's saying, oh, well, actually, we're seeing the same genetic signature in these bats that we're seeing in the naked mole rats that we're seeing in some of these long lived fish. Right. But that data is not in a very friendly format. So we were like originally we were like, okay, we're going to write some scripts, we're going to try to pull some of the stuff out of supplemental tables. It's going to be awesome. No, no, no. We have very highly trained curators who work on this data and bring it in. And we have a very standard pipeline and a process and a way to normalize the data across different studies and standard ontologies and ways to clean up this data in a way that it can be integrated with the genomics coming out of the platform. And that is a tedious and painful and ongoing effort to bring in all this data.Ashley Zehnder: Now, we have data from well over 330 individual studies, over 30 species. I think Linda, you told me it was like more than 800,000 gene entries at this point that's curated and that's kind of growing month over month. So now that's becoming part of our defensible moat, is that we've taken the last two or three years, again, slow burn, pulling all this data together in a way that it can be reused. And now we can turn a paper around and put it on a platform in a week or two. So we're kind of always scanning for these studies. But yeah, it's, it's, it's out there, but it's not always in a usable format without a lot of pain and effort. And so we've kind of put that pain and effort into getting that data in a place that we can use it. And then, of course, the comparative genomics is like a whole 'nother level of complexity.Linda Goodman: Yeah, so I can talk a little bit about how we do that within the comparative genomics community and how we've done that for Zoonomia. Because I referenced before that we like to do these sorts of studies to examine the genomes of hibernate ers and non hibernate and figure out what's different. And you'd think it would be a trivial question who is a hybrid nature amongst mammals? But it's actually not. And so along with our collaborators Alison Hindle and Cornelia Santer, as part of the Genome Project, Fauna tried to go through and categorize every every genome that was in Zoonomia. So we're talking about around 250 mammals for is it a hibernater, or is it not? And you'd be surprised how often it was digging through literature from the 1970s and someone would say, this animal is not often seen during the winter. So we think it hibernates and it's not always the most satisfying. And so it is an extremely tedious effort, but well worthwhile to go through and say this animal, I'm very sure, hibernates. This one, I'm very sure does not. And then there's this third category of animals that were unsure about we're going to remove those. And it's tedious, but you have to do that part, right? Because if you do the analysis with bad data, you're never going to find the genes that you want. And Linda, I remember you telling me when you were going through this very painful process, I think your threshold for being a perpetrator, quote unquote, was that you could drop your metabolism like 50%. Correct me if I'm wrong, and humans could go down to like 40 like in certain instances, like humans are almost there. You know, it's it's hard to know when there is only one paper about it, but certainly there are some really deep meditative states and humans and low oxygen environments where, you know, we're getting kind of close to the area where we might say that that's a hibernated, but certainly not the duration that you get out of hibernation. But it's it's it surprised me to see how close how much how much metabolic flexibility there really is when you start to look at it. Yeah.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. We've got to go talk to the monks.Linda Goodman: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, we have that in mind. It sounds like an interesting travel experience. Yeah.Harry Glorikian: So I want to jump back for a second because. You guys don't necessarily have from what I have pieced together, the normal sort of like startup story. Right. First of all, you're an all female founding team, right? Highly unusual, right? Not something I see every day. You guys started at an accelerator program in San Francisco called Age One.Ashley Zehnder: Age One.Harry Glorikian: And then you moved to QB3 and the East Bay Innovation Center.Ashley Zehnder: Yep.Harry Glorikian: And then I think they helped you with some paid interns.Ashley Zehnder: Well, we got some from Berkeley. Yep, we did.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. And then you went through a SBIR grant.Ashley Zehnder: A couple of them.Harry Glorikian: From the Small Business Administration. And then a small business technology transfer grant from the Human Genome Research Initiative at NIH. Right.Ashley Zehnder: Yep.Harry Glorikian: I'm hopeful, hopefully my notes are all correct. Talk a little bit about the on ramp or infrastructure today for sort of seed stage startups like you. I mean, what were the most important resources?Ashley Zehnder: This is such an important conversation. I'm really glad you're asking this question. We had a call with a reporter from Business Insider yesterday who was talking to all three of us about this early founder ecosystems in biotech and sort of East Coast versus West Coast ways of starting biotechnology companies. Right. And that is a whole do a whole podcast on that, let me tell you. But I will say that there are a lot of resources for, let's call them founder led bio. Right. In the West Coast, which is kind of the buzzword these days, but people really supporting the scientists who originate the concepts and training them to be founders as opposed to assuming that you need to bring in an experienced CEO to run a company at this stage. Right. So I think we were very fortunate to meet Laura Deming at Stanford, who is one of the founding VCs. And longevity before that was a buzz word, right? She was one of the first longevity funds, literally Longevity Fund, and is really been a champion of founders, starting companies and really training founders to start companies who are deep science founders. So we started in age one. It was the first batch of age one. We're still very close to that cohort of companies doing interesting things from machine learning and image analysis through pure therapeutics development. And then Laura really helped us, her, her. We asked her later, like, why did you end up investing in us? She said, Well, the science was amazing.Ashley Zehnder: This is totally a field with so much promise. I just needed to teach you guys how to pitch. The science was there, right? So she helped me just how to pitch and how to use less science words in our pitches, which we're still working on to some extent. But then it was this balanced approach of taking in some venture money to really support the growth of the company, but balance with some of this non-dilutive funding for specific projects where it made sense and some of that was some of that in the early stage is validation, right? Having having funding through groups like NHGRI, having an early partnership with a company like Novo Nordisk, which provided also some non-dilutive funding for the company, really validated all of the science that we were doing because we were first time founders, because we're a little bit outside of the normal profile. For me, I don't feel weird being a female founder only because 80% of veterinarians are female. Like, I'm used to being in a room with all women. You go to a bio conference, it's not the same thing, right? So for us, we're just we are who we are. Right. But it's helpful, I think, to get some of that external validation and then really be able to use that to to start to build on programs and show progress.Ashley Zehnder: And then it becomes more about the data and the progress and what you can do with it. So that's a lot of how we started the company. There's I said there's a lot of support in the West Coast for this kind of thing. There's great programs like Berkeley Foreman Fund Talks, which I worked, which I was in as well, just about logistics around starting companies. There's a lot of good startup accelerators. I've got a really amazing all of us, how amazing a network of founders who we can reach out to on different. I got four or five different Slack channels of founders that I could reach out to for all kinds of advice. And usually it's always good to have a company that's one or two stages ahead of you, like talking to folks who IPO'd or something last year is is not as helpful as folks who recently raised a series B, right. And figuring out what those milestones look like and then particularly those that have taken mostly money from tech investors like we have all the lifeforce capital who led our last round is also has funded some very good therapeutics companies, Sonoma Therapeutics and Second Genome and other therapeutics companies as well. So I think it's it's helpful to see how people balance the needs of the companies at different stages in what you need.Harry Glorikian: But so do you guys think that you could have started Fauna ten years ago? I mean, did the support systems exist for starting a company like this?Ashley Zehnder: Well, no, for two reasons. We couldn't have started Fauna ten years ago. One is the data just simply wasn't in a place that the company was a tractable strategy. Everything was still too expensive and we had really shitty genomes for a few species at that point. And B, I think there really wasn't the kind of groundswell of support for deeply scientific technical founders to start their own companies and train them to be the kind of leaders they need to be to run those companies for a longer term. So I think it's a confluence of those things and being in an environment like Stanford that really encourages people to to try startups, it's not a crazy idea. Like people don't look at you like you're your heads backwards. If you start to start a company at Stanford, it's like, okay, cool. Like, when are you launching? You know.Harry Glorikian: I think it's the opposite.Ashley Zehnder: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, why aren't you have a company yet? Whereas you know, a lot, many, many, many, many other places like that is seen as a very strange thing to do. So I think the environment plays a huge role. Yeah, for sure.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. I think between East Coast and West Coast too, there's.Ashley Zehnder: That's a whole, we should have a whole 'nother podcast on that.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I live here and I was I was born and raised on the West and I remember there and I came here and I was like, Oh, this is where you are not in Kansas anymore. Like, this place is different. So, I mean, I'm hoping that the East Coast is actually embracing risk a little bit more and sort of stepping out on the edge. But it's really slow. They don't call it New England for nothing. So. But, you know, it was great having you both on the show. I this was great. I we covered a lot of ground. I'm sure people's heads are spinning, thinking about, you know, you know, different animal species and how that's going to play into this. And I mean. It really does sound like I know we have to do the hard work, but there's a lot of computational effort that has to go on here to sort of. Make sense of this and bring it all together and align it so that you can be looking at it properly and make the right decisions going forward.Ashley Zehnder: Yep. Millions of data points coming together to find drug targets for sure.Harry Glorikian: So thanks for being on the show. And you know, I wish you guys incredible luck.Ashley Zehnder: Thanks, Harry, so much. This was fun.Linda Goodman: Thanks for having us.Harry Glorikian: Thanks.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's episode. You can find a full transcript of this episode as well as the full archive of episodes of The Harry Glorikian Show and MoneyBall Medicine at our website. Just go to glorikian.com and click on the tab Podcasts.I'd like to thank our listeners for boosting The Harry Glorikian Show into the top three percent of global podcasts.If you want to be sure to get every new episode of the show automatically, be sure to open Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player and hit follow or subscribe. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And we always love to hear from listeners on Twitter, where you can find me at hglorikian.Thanks for listening, stay healthy, and be sure to tune in two weeks from now for our next interview.

Show LinksCeline on Twitter: @celinehaliouaLoyal's website: Recent coverage of Loyal in Bloomberg by Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk's biographer): If Dogs Live Longer With Anti-Aging Science, Humans Could, TooWhy I Hope to Die at 75What I Wanted to Build: Can Corporations Bring Socialized Healthcare to the United States?Laura Deming's Longevity FAQ

Laura Deming is not your typical VC. She is the founder and partner of The Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm focused on the study of aging and life extension in humans. Home-schooled in New Zealand, she moved to the U.S with her family to work in an age genetics lab at just twelve years old before dropping out of MIT at fourteen following her acceptance as a Thiel Fellow.  In this episode, Laura and I discuss her journey to become an effective leader, taking risks, dealing with failure, and being motivated to change the world for a better place. Beyond her impressive resume, she is a reminder that great founders can come from anywhere, so long as you have the passion to pursue something relentlessly and are not afraid to step outside your comfort zone. If you are interested in discussions about pushing the boundaries of science, technology, and concepts of biological immortality, you definitely don’t want to miss this episode. You can find Laura on Twitter and check out her blog here.  

Laura Deming joins the salon to speak with Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton about education, where talent comes from, and the state of longevity research. Discussion topics included how to cultivate talent, where the most fruitful life extension research is happening, and whether intellectually productive communities are necessarily doomed to stagnation.Laura Deming is the founder of The Longevity Fund, a Venture Capital firm that focuses on life extension. She was homeschooled in New Zealand, taught herself mathematics, literature, and history, and was working in a biological research lab on aging research by age 12. She was accepted to MIT at age 14, but later dropped out for the Thiel Fellowship.

Welcome to the first episode of Bio Eats World, a brand new podcast all about how biology is technology. Bio is breaking out of the lab and clinic and into our daily lives -- on the verge of revolutionizing our world in ways we are only just beginning to imagine.In this episode, we talk all about the science of aging. Once a fringe field, aging research is now entering a new phase with the first clinical trials of aging-related drugs. As the entire field shifts into this moment of translation, what have we learned? What are the basic approaches to developing aging-related drugs? How is studying aging helping us understand diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s -- and increasing the amount of time we are healthy -- today? In this conversation, Laura Deming, founder of The Longevity Fund; Kristen Fortney, co-founder of BioAge, a clinical-stage company focused on finding drugs to extend healthspan; Vijay Pande, general partner at a16z; and host Hanne Winarsky discuss the entire arc of aging science from one genetic tweak in a tiny worm to changing a whole paradigm of healthcare delivery.Be sure to subscribe to 'Bio Eats World' if you want to keep getting it (and please feel free to rate it as well). To learn more about the expanding a16z Podcast network, please visit a16z.com/podnetwork.

with @LauraDeming, @kpfortney, @vijaypande, and @omnivorousread Welcome to the first episode of Bio Eats World, a brand new podcast all about how biology is technology. Bio is breaking out of the lab and clinic and into our daily lives—on the verge of revolutionizing our world in ways we are only just beginning to imagine. In this episode, we talk all about the science of aging. Once a fringe field, aging research is now entering a new phase with the first clinical trials of aging-related drugs. As the entire field shifts into this moment of translation, what have we learned? What are the basic approaches to developing aging-related drugs? How is studying aging helping us understand diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's—and increasing the amount of time we are healthy—today?  In this conversation, Laura Deming, founder of The Longevity Fund; Kristen Fortney, co-founder of BioAge, a clinical-stage company focused on finding drugs to extend healthspan; Vijay Pande, general partner at a16z; and host Hanne Winarsky discuss the entire arc of aging science from one genetic tweak in a tiny worm to changing a whole paradigm of healthcare delivery.

RIGHT NOW Spotlight, NRN+ Original Series where various members of NRN interview the top conservative politicos and people of interest. Right Voice. Right Now. https://NRNplus.com/spotlight Laura Deming proudly served her country as a Navy veteran and is currently an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse that treats and advocates for autistic and other special needs children, including and especially her 14 year old son Beau, who very much just wants to go back to school.. - Aired on July 23, 2020 ➜ Become an NRN+ member https://NRNplus.com ➜ Subscribe on Youtube https://bit.ly/2tRQNCG ➜ Join RIGHT NOW Newsletter https://newrightnetwork.com/email NRN broadcasts on-demand programming produced by a dynamic community-based network - everyday individuals and experienced reporters broadcasting their lives and values of faith, family, and freedom. NRN partners with a range of freethinkers; everything they and their guests say may not reflect the views of NRN and their hosts. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/right-now-podcast/message

Don Hoffman (@donalddhoffman) joins Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) and Laura Deming (@laurademing) to discuss the Illusion of Reality, Religion, and Morality.

Geoffrey West joins Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) and Laura Deming (@laurademing) to discuss scale, exponential growth, and cross pollination in scientific research.

Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) joins Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) and Laura Deming (@laurademing) to discuss humanism, reconciling science and morality, and the role of physics in evolution.

Matt Riddley (@mattwridley) joins Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) and Laura Deming (@laurademing) to discuss the Evolution of Everything.

Brian Nosek (@BrianNosek) joins Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) and Laura Deming (@laurademing) to open science, the replication crisis, and incentives in scientific research.

Laura Deming explains the new age of investing in longevity. Laura Deming is the founder and full-time partner at The Longevity Fund, an early stage venture capital fund backing companies which target the ageing process to treat disease, with investments in gene editing, small molecule therapeutics, and novel methods to treat disease.

The longevity industry aims to let everyone enjoy a healthy, active life well past the age of 100. But the question everyone will be asking is... will it happen in my lifetime? Manuela Saragosa reports from the Longevity Forum conference in London, where hundreds of researchers, investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers have gathered to try and answer this question. Among them, she speaks to billionaire investor Jim Mellon; London Business School economist Andrew Scott; the youthful venture capitalist Laura Deming; Columbia University geriatrician Linda Fried; and cryonics fan Anders Sandberg of the Future of Humanity Institute. Producer: Laurence Knight (Picture: Retired couple larking about on a moped; Credit: stevecoleimages/Getty Images)

Joining Erik on this episode are Laura Deming (@laurademing), creator of Longevity Fund, and Will Eden (@williamaeden), entrepreneur in residence with Errik Anderson at Ulysses and formerly of Thiel Capital. They talk about:- The history of biotech and the big trends and companies in the space over the past several decades.- The breakdown of the different areas within biotech.- The new business model in biotech that’s been driven by VCs.- How the public market in biotech companies is impacting the private market- The history of the FDA and how it has evolved over time, including the fact that in the beginning, the FDA only looked at whether a drug was safe, not whether it was effective.- How they would change the regulatory environment if they could wave a magic wand.- Why Laura says that the most effective individuals in biotech have a determinate worldview.- How longevity has emerged over the past several years, and the future of work in the space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik on this episode are Laura Deming (@laurademing), creator of Longevity Fund, and Will Eden (@williamaeden), entrepreneur in residence with Errik Anderson at Ulysses and formerly of Thiel Capital. They talk about:- The history of biotech and the big trends and companies in the space over the past several decades.- The breakdown of the different areas within biotech.- The new business model in biotech that’s been driven by VCs.- How the public market in biotech companies is impacting the private market- The history of the FDA and how it has evolved over time, including the fact that in the beginning, the FDA only looked at whether a drug was safe, not whether it was effective.- How they would change the regulatory environment if they could wave a magic wand.- Why Laura says that the most effective individuals in biotech have a determinate worldview.- How longevity has emerged over the past several years, and the future of work in the space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Laura Deming (@laurademing) joins Erik in downtown San Francisco on this episode of Venture Stories. She is the creator of Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies that will let humans live both longer and healthier.Erik starts by asking about the state of longevity science and which discoveries about aging Laura is most excited about. It turns out that certain animals don’t age the way that humans do and that there are certain animals that are similar to each other (like rats and naked mole rats) that nevertheless have wildly different life expectancies. These discoveries have Laura very excited about the possibilities for extending the human lifespan — in fact, she compares them to “finding gold in your living room” and says they don’t get enough attention.They talk about why creating a venture fund is the best way for Laura to make an impact on this problem as well as the realities of venture funding in the life sciences space. Laura explains why returns are so important.Erik asks how those of us who are not scientists can get involved in the space and which companies Laura is most excited about. She also runs through some of her requests for startups in the field.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Laura Deming (@laurademing) joins Erik in downtown San Francisco on this episode of Venture Stories. She is the creator of Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies that will let humans live both longer and healthier.Erik starts by asking about the state of longevity science and which discoveries about aging Laura is most excited about. It turns out that certain animals don’t age the way that humans do and that there are certain animals that are similar to each other (like rats and naked mole rats) that nevertheless have wildly different life expectancies. These discoveries have Laura very excited about the possibilities for extending the human lifespan — in fact, she compares them to “finding gold in your living room” and says they don’t get enough attention.They talk about why creating a venture fund is the best way for Laura to make an impact on this problem as well as the realities of venture funding in the life sciences space. Laura explains why returns are so important.Erik asks how those of us who are not scientists can get involved in the space and which companies Laura is most excited about. She also runs through some of her requests for startups in the field.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Laura Deming is Founding Partner @ The Longevity Fund, the first VC firm dedicated to funding high-potential longevity companies. To date, Laura has raised $26m across 2 Longevity funds and has backed the likes of Unity Biotechnology, Precision Biosciences, Metacrine, Navitor, and Alexo Therapeutics. Prior to Longevity, Laura was accepted to MIT at the age of 14 to study physics and then dropped out to join the Thiel Fellowship and start The Longevity Fund. If that wasn't enough, Laura most recently founded Age1, a four-month startup accelerator program focused on founders creating longevity companies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Laura made her way from studying physics at MIT at just 14 to founding The Longevity Fund and dropping out to join The Thiel Fellowship? 2.) As a 16-year-old, looking to raise a fund to invest in longevity, how was the fundraise process for Laura? Why does Laura believe that raising your first fund is very much like raising a seed round for a company? What was the catalytic moment when the fundraise started to come together? What were the biggest challenges of the raise? 3.) Why does Laura believe that there is a shortage of young biotech founders today? What can be done to solve this and increase pipe? How does Laura find biotech founders compare to more traditional consumer and B2B founders she engages with? How does what they look for from their investor base differ? 4.) Laura has spoken before of "the importance of going against the herd"? How does Laura assess the current landscape for biotech investing? Is Laura concerned to see the entrance of much more traditional VCs into the space? How does Laura look to try and avoid groupthink? What is crucial to this? 5.) How does one need to think about portfolio construction when investing in an inherently riskier biotech space? Does Laura agree with the conventional wisdom around the lack of follow-on funding for biotech companies? How does Laura think about reserve allocation with Longevity today? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Laura’s Fave Book: The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain, Laura’s Most Recent Investment: System1 As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Laura on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

The idea came easy for former Navy Officer Laura Deming. After hearing Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables” she new it was time to act. That was followed by Peter Strzok texting his friend Lisa Page, “I’m in a Walmart in Southern Virginia and I can just smell the Trump support”. Thus was born - 'Deplorable Fragrances' (www.cult45llc.com). "I figured I'd create a scent to go with the Trump movement," says Deming. Now she and her business partner, and former host of 'RedNationRising', Timothy Shea are selling 'Deplorable' & 'Deplorable Dude' perfume and cologne coast to coast (see short client bios below). "We needed to make sure the Trump support we are seeing also had a fragrance that every liberal could smell," says Shea. "With Deplorable & Deplorable Dude' we have such a scent and one that's a perfect Christmas gift for the Trump supporter in your family." Cult45 LLC., is a veteran own business and 'Deplorable' and 'Deplorable Dude' fragrances are made entirely in the USA. SUGGESTED QUESTIONS: How did the two of you get the idea? What's it smell like? Why it's the perfect gift for Trump supporters? Why it's important that it's made in the USA MEET ENTREPRENEURS LAURA & TIMOTHY Laura Deming is a former Navy Officer (LT); the widowed single mother of a teenage daughter and a 12-year-old son, who has autism; a breast cancer survivor; a nurse practitioner helping parents with special needs children, and someone who simply has no quit in her. Timothy Shea has been active in politics deep behind enemy lines in the Northeast for 50 years. Timothy is an award-winning competitive public speaker, a political pundit, and a former host of Radio RedNationRising. As a serial entrepreneur and sales and marketing consultant, he is advising Laura on her business.

Laura Deming is a partner at The Longevity Fund. They invest in companies that will allow us to live longer and healthier lives.You can learn more about them at Longevity.vc.Laura’s on Twitter @LauraDeming.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics00:22 - Why focus on longevity now?2:12 - How did Laura get started in longevity?3:22 - Why raise a fund?5:52 - What does Laura do personally for longevity?9:07 - Worm and mouse studies10:44 - Craig's personal habits12:37 - Human studies15:22 - Mica asks - Do you think immortality is going to be achieved by: 1. Curing all disease and stop aging so we could live with our own bodies forever 2. OR is going to be something like porting our brain, "mind" to a computer/robot?17:37 - Most likely strategies to increase lifespan19:47 - Ryan Hoover asks - Ask about the ethics of longevity. Jack J. Fernandes asks - Do people actually want to live longer?21:44 - Mica asks - How would immortality change society? Wouldn't we become more complacent? Since we have "forever" to do things wouldn't that diminish our rate of innovation? And since less new individuals are being created we would have access to less new ideas. We would just stop creating new Newtons, Einsteins, Mozarts…24:52 - Cognitive enhancement25:52 - Daily habits34:12 - Tech environment changes in the past 5-10 years39:22 - What percentage of people in labs want to start companies?41:37 - Pioneer43:57 - Confidence45:52 - Podcasting49:12 - Choosing media to consume52:17 - Sam Betesh asks - The last thing that led to a step function change in average life span was germ theory. What new areas of research might provide the next step function change?55:07 - Extending fertility windows57:22 - Jason Choi asks - What % of longevity is attributable to lifestyle choices vs genetics and the progress of technology in influencing both.58:37 - Fatih asks - is blood transfusion a thing or just a hoax1:00:42 - Rapamycin1:02:27 - Testosterone1:04:37 - Chris asks - Aubrey De Grey, IIRC, mentioned a number of times that we might, in the future, replace organs and tissues with new organic ones before they fail. Is this actually a reasonable idea, or is it more likely that we'll replace them with synthetic ones, if we replace them at all?1:06:07 - Mica asks - Laura did a "cookie diet" for one month. Why did you do it? How did you feel? Doesn't it go against all the research on longevity? ;-)1:08:07 - Is Laura actually not doing anything strange in her diet?

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Laura Deming, a 24-year-old longevity investor to talk about young scientists (3:05), the goal of the Longevity Fund (4:30), her incubator Age 1 (5:55), starting out as a 11-year-old (7:00), skipping school (10:00), getting funded by Peter Thiel (11:40), raising a venture capital fund as a teenager (13:15), targeting ageing through specific diseases (15:00), her goal (16:20), trying to become superhuman (18:45), “de-ageing” beetles (21:00), whether we should actually try to defeat ageing (23:00), how a little money can go a long way (25:10), who has invested in her fund (27:25), the key scientific advancements (28:35), the effects we’ll start to see first from this revolution (32:30), turning off menopause (34:45), the next step in our evolution (38:50), and winning over the sceptics (40:45). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio I'm joined by two incredible people, Laura Deming and Daniel Gross, that have accomplished more before the age of 30 than most people have realized in a lifetime. Laura grew up in New Zealand and came to San Francisco when she was only 12 years old to join a lab studying aging. She was accepted to MIT at 14 before leaving to form Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies aimed to help us all live longer and healthier lives.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio I'm joined by two incredible people, Laura Deming and Daniel Gross, who have accomplished more before the age of 30 than most people have realized in a lifetime. Laura grew up in New Zealand and came to San Francisco when she was only 12 years old to join a lab studying aging. She was accepted to MIT at 14 before leaving to form Longevity Fund, a venture capital firm investing in companies aimed to help us all live longer and healthier lives. Daniel came to the Bay Area from Israel, accepted into Y Combinator in 2010, the youngest founder to go through the program at that time. His startup, Cue, was later acquired by Apple which led him to a leadership position across a number of AI and machine learning teams at the company. He left Apple to work at Y Combinator and recently launched Pioneer, a program to identify and support brilliant people in the world. In this episode we talk about: What it was like for Laura and Daniel to move to the Bay Area from overseas. How Pioneer is aimed to find the “world's lost Einsteins, Marie Curies and Elon Musks”. Why some animals don't age and how humans might be able to learn from creatures such as the tortoise or the naked mole rat. The challenges posed by living much longer than humans do now and how society might change as a result. Why you should sometimes call what you're creating on a project or experiment, rather than a startup. How to find your passion through experimentation. Advice Daniel and Laura have for founders and young people looking to start something big. Of course, we’ll also cover some of our favorite products that you might not know about. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support.

Chad sits down with venture capitalist and scientist Laura Deming. Together they discuss Laura’s past as a scientist and how she got her start funding organizations that help prevent aging. Today’s episode of The Mission Daily is brought to you by Twilio. More than 2 million developers around the world have used Twilio to unlock the magic of communications. This October, Twilio is hosting SIGNAL, the customer and developer conference of the year. The Mission Daily listeners receive 20% off tickets when going to signal.twilio.com and using code MISSION20. The Mission publishes the#1 newsletter for accelerated learning each day on Monday through Friday. Join hundreds of thousands of subscribers at: www.TheMission.co/subscribe You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @TheMissionHQ The Mission Studios creates custom podcasts and sponsorships for world-class companies like Salesforce, Twilio, and Katerra. Our campaigns are customized to help accomplish your biggest goals for the year. So whether you need to reach a few dozen C-Level decision makers (we’ve done that) or get your logo and brand 8M+ impressions in ~3 months (we’ve done that too!) we would love to help! To connect with our world-class team of creatives, please reach out here or email Ian@TheMission.co