When Foresight Institute and Longevity Biotech Fellowship joined forces, a one-of-a-kind longevity occasion emerged.
One thing totally different
There’s a time-tested recipe for a scientific convention: folks come on stage one after the other, give talks, and obtain tepid-to-warm applause, after which there’s a rush to the corridor, the place everybody grabs a snack and engages within the Brownian movement often called networking. Infrequently, 4 to 5 folks collect on stage and have a moderately contorted dialog: that’s a panel.
Don’t get me unsuitable: I like conferences and acknowledge their worth. You get to listen to about new analysis, together with unpublished information, forge new connections, and nurture outdated ones, and there’s all the time an opportunity for a karaoke evening. Jokes apart, conferences are vital.
But, there’s additionally this nagging feeling of extra of the identical that many conference-goers can relate to. Conferences can really feel like a testomony to each the longevity subject’s rising prowess and to its sluggish advance.
One group fearful in regards to the charge of progress is the Longevity Biotech Fellowship (I recently interviewed its founders, Mark Hamalainen and Nathan Cheng). LBF has been pushing boundaries, advocating for the boldest attainable lifestyle extension in addition to for main adjustments in regulation and public notion of longevity. Accelerating progress within the longevity subject is LBF’s overarching purpose, and the group is continually on the lookout for new types of collaboration and ideation.
Then, there’s Foresight Institute. Not like LBF, which has been round for less than a few years, Foresight Institute was established in 1986 to speed up advances in nanotechnology. With time, it expanded into different areas, together with longevity.
Foresight Institute has been perfecting the workshop formulation for years. In keeping with Foresight CEO Allison Duettmann, it’s been fairly profitable, with quite a few concepts, which have been initially thrown round at workshops, changing into tasks and getting funded. As an illustration, a molecular machines undertaking finally received tens of millions in funding from the Division of Protection and was an organization.
Longevity-oriented workshops began in 2022. This yr, the 2 organizations joined forces to create the LBF/Foresight Longevity Workshop 2024.
How did the collaboration with LBF come about? “I’ve been a giant fan of LBF since its basis and know the founders nicely,” says Allison. “LBF’s Roadmap and Foresight’s Longevity Tech Tree spotlight the identical matters as high-impact, so we thought we might collaborate on a workshop to convey our communities collectively and speed up progress.”
Framing the issue
The 2-day occasion was held at Stanford College, the supply of a number of the most interesting analysis in longevity. It was modest each in attendance and period, however it simply didn’t really feel that means.
From the get-go, one thing was totally different. The co-working place close to Stanford was buzzing with good vitality emanating from a bunch of smiling, over-caffeinated folks. It took a while for the organizers to calm everybody down and begin the proceedings.
After opening remarks by Allison and Sonia Arrison, head of 100 Plus Capital, it was the flip of Mark and Nathan to current this yr’s focus areas: Acceleration (instruments to extend the speed of progress in biotech), Alternative (bypassing ageing complexity by swapping outdated for younger tissue), Bioengineering (measuring, modeling and gene supply to unravel ageing ), Biostasis (saving lives with reversible stasis for organs and full people), and Healthcare 3.0 (inexpensive well being and lifespan extension for all of humanity).
Mark Hamalainen states the apparent in his opening keynote speak.
In his keynote speak, Mark defined LBF’s Roadmap to Fixing Growing old. Amongst different issues, he offered a easy diagram of “a number of bets”, which signifies that we must always assault ageing from each attainable angle.
The pharmacological strategy is closely favored at present, however it has its limitations. Whereas it requires sure understanding of ageing, it may in all probability add simply 5-10 years to human lifespan (“shopping for time”). Biostasis (which principally means cryopreservation) is one other means to purchase time – an indefinite quantity of it, in actual fact, and that’s with out understanding ageing.
Organ and tissue substitute is one other approach to “hack” or bypass ageing with out actually understanding the way it works. It’s in all probability essentially the most cost-effective route proper now (Mark advised measuring prices in “Apollo applications”). Lastly, superior bioengineering has few limitations and may doubtlessly remedy ageing utterly, however it requires a a lot deeper understanding of biology than we presently have and immense quantities of cash.
Maintain it quick!
After the keynote, it was time for the themed classes. Every one started with a string of flash displays of simply seven minutes every. This is able to be thought-about an insult at a daily convention, however right here, the audio system appeared to benefit from the guidelines of the sport, dashing to make their level and a joke or two.
Within the spirit of the workshop, let me make a really rushed presentation of a number of the audio system. One of many first on day 1, Michael Antonov, co-founder of Oculus, talked about his firm, DeepOrigin, which builds AI fashions of biology and instruments for lab automation.
Jean Hebert is without doubt one of the only a few individuals who work on radically tackling mind ageing utilizing progressive mind tissue substitute. Mixed with innate neocortical plasticity, he mentioned, this may reverse mind ageing with out discontinuity of self.
Omri Amirav of Renewal Bio reported on his firm’s distinctive success in creating embryo-like constructions (“embryoids”) from human stem cells. Such constructions may be worthwhile analysis fashions, with out moral issues hooked up, and open alternatives for creating varied anti-aging therapies.
Christopher Bradley represented Matter Bio, one of the vital attention-grabbing corporations within the longevity house. Matter goes after somatic mutations, a trademark of ageing that, till lately, was thought-about untargetable. Now, with the novel strategies of figuring out mutations and repairing DNA, this drawback is beginning to budge, and it’s an enormous deal.
Emil Kendziorra heads TomorrowBio, a comparatively new participant within the subject of human cryopreservation. Based in Europe, TomorrowBio is already increasing to the US with state-of-the-art cryopreservation know-how. This “insurance coverage coverage” could be a sensible wager, given all of the uncertainties of human life and the less-than-satisfactory present charge of progress within the longevity subject.
Day 2 began with a keynote speak by an area: Michael Snyder, professor at Stanford College. The speak revolved round utilizing multi-omic evaluation to grasp ageing. Michael’s central premise was that everybody ages in a different way, as multi-omics present convincingly (many researchers say that this implies that ageing just isn’t a program).
Michael then talked about “Amazoning healthcare” utilizing the ever-expanding universe of wearables, akin to good watches and fixed glucose displays. Apparently, wearables can already be used for diagnostic duties, akin to early detection of Lyme illness and COVID an infection simply by measuring easy parameters like coronary heart charge.
Steady glucose monitoring (CGM) highlights the wonderful heterogeneity in response to numerous meals. Some folks see the best glucose spikes from bread, whereas others don’t. For some, it’s potatoes, and for others, it’s grapes. Michael implored the viewers to ditch sweetened breakfast cereals as the most typical denominator.
Michael’s speak was an ideal segue to Day 2’s subject: Healthcare 3.0. The overarching theme was that healthcare should develop into way more customized, offering bespoke options to the extremely heterogeneous ageing trajectories that individuals develop.
One prerequisite for it, in addition to for anti-aging analysis normally, is having dependable biomarkers of ageing. An entire session was dedicated to them. Vadim Gladyshev of Harvard offered an awesome overview of the place the sector is standing on biomarkers, and Nikola Markov of Buck Institute gave a chat on the necessity for a “consumer-accessible measuring platform for biomarkers of well being.”
A number of talks have been devoted to constructing a long life ecosystem. Nathan Cheng wore a distinct hat and informed the viewers about Vitalism, the pro-longevity motion he co-founded with Adam Gries.
NIklas Anzinger talked about Vitalia, a “longevity metropolis” which exists because the final yr in Prospera, a particular financial zone positioned on Roatan, a Carribean island that belongs to Honduras. Vitalia, co-founded by Niklas, started as a pop-up metropolis, however now, it sports activities a steady presence of a number of dozen longevity lovers and presents attractive situations to longevity biotech corporations.
Stefanie Dainow, Lifespan.io CEO, took the stage to inform the gang about the upcoming merger of Lifespan.io with one other vital non-profit within the longevity subject, SENS Analysis Basis. The merger is creating a company with an excellent wider attain and vary of actions, which now embody state-of-the-art analysis tasks run out of SENS’ Bay Space headquarters (the place you possibly can lease high quality lab house).
Stephanie additionally mentioned methods to speak about longevity to most of the people and resolution makers. “Advertising and marketing longevity” just isn’t easy contemplating that most individuals view significant life extension as science fiction. Folks concerned within the subject know that attaining that is going to be arduous but additionally that it’s attainable, perhaps within the not-so-distant future. This understanding drives them ahead, and so they should have the ability to talk it to the skin world – one thing that Lifespan.io has excelled at for years.
Massive concepts on huge Submit-it notes
Seven minutes per speak won’t be sufficient to significantly educate the viewers on a given subject, however that wasn’t the purpose. The talks, fascinating and informative as they have been, have been there before everything to set the temper for working in breakout teams.
After every session, the attendees have been divided into teams via a believable reproduction of the Hogwarts sorting hat. Over the course of 40 minutes, every group needed to give you three concepts on the given subject, concise sufficient to be placed on a large Submit-it be aware.
Typically, it felt like a enjoyable sport, an train in creativity, or an undesirable chore, relying on the group’s temper and dynamics. There have been additionally quite a lot of profound moments after we excitedly thought we have been on to one thing, however it was for the viewers to resolve. After every session, the Submit-it notes have been held on a wall for everybody to see and choose, and on the finish of every day, folks got a bunch of tiny stickers to vote on the tasks. The most effective undertaking of the day was awarded 1,500 {dollars}.
Scribbling on large Submit-it notes may appear unserious, however I firmly imagine that even non-realized concepts make an imprint by engendering new ones. Additionally, e mail me if you wish to fund any of my workshop concepts, haphazardly sketched on the final second, akin to changing atherosclerotic arteries with lab-grown ones!
Workshop attendees choose one another’s half-baked concepts.
All this buzz created quite a lot of wholesome urge for food which we quenched with the meals impressed by Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint. Bryan was there in individual, apparently content material with the dishes’ high quality. Nonetheless, if you wish to know what an actual Don’t Die Dinner at Bryan’s home seems like, read this.
I can’t communicate for all of the attendees, however for me, the workshop created a long-lasting feeling of optimism and camaraderie. Importantly, it additionally mirrored the truth that many concepts that, only in the near past, have been thought-about outlandish and fringe are actually mentioned with way more seriousness and respect alongside extra typical ones.
Nathan Cheng agrees: “It was refreshing to have the ability to freely talk about concepts past the mainstream longevity Overton window, all the pieces from whole-body substitute to biostasis and radical genetic engineering.”
“The distinctive energy of the LBF + Foresight workshop”, he added, “was bringing collectively very smart and rational scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and buyers all aligned on the express purpose of fixing ageing utterly — not merely learning or partially ameliorating it.“
