Therapeutics. The biomedical and received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and a phd in biology from cambridge university. Doctor robert is chairman and ceo of cellularity inc. An accomplished surgeon, biomedical scientists and aviator. Its a graduate of Columbia College in columbia university, engineering and applied science. He also earned his md and phd from cornell university. Doctor Cynthia Kenyon a pioneer in the field of aging. An Vice President of aging research at lifesciences. In Google Alphabet company. She spent many years on the u. S. Avenue at the molecular biologist and geneticist. And earned her chemistry degree from the university of georgia and phd from mit. And finally, chp walter is a science journalist, National Geographic explorer filmmaker and author of immortality inc. Renegades science and silicate valley and the quest to live forever. Chp was one of the original employees at cnn. And then didnt beautiful san francisco. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming. These doctors and chp walter. They will be joining me on stage shortly. Science and business of antiaging. [background sounds]. So tonight we have the honor of some specialist here. Some experts in the field. We only have about 50 minutes. Toys for the science and quest for longevity. So i would like to keep us on a story line. Jim and i have discussed this previously. Who going start by defining your missions, then we will dig into the science of aging, and explore the strategy as well is the pros and cons of extending our lifespan. And then we will take your questions from the audience. So lets start with chp. You have written this amazing book, immortality, inc. What are you hoping to achieve. Ive always been fascinated with the idea of long life, longevity. I think all of us are fascinated in the human race. Its been fascinating from the beginning going all of the way back. There is been plenty of myths. Philosophies, religion, theres also been plenty of snake oil. I think whenever i was looking at this, i began to wonder is it possible that we are actually other place in Human History where science, not snake oil orbits, could solve one of the great mysteries that we have all wondered about. That is basically solving aging. I thought, i think this is beginning to happen and i wanted to go out and look at that question. Its really no way, you might think of it as a science book really is kind of a history book. Then i am trying to look, with the book i wanted to ask if this happens. For the people behind it. What would be the motivations. What kind of forces would need to take place. The staff and then tell the story. In this country do this book i try to find who the key people with big deep thinkers. What kind of money has to be behind it when we even want to do this. In the end i hope that i was able to read together a story that tells the tale. We read like a novel. Your leading research. What is your mission there. And what is your definition of success. I was a professor for about 30 years. This was before i went to calico. I became interested in aging partly because if youre at the time, most people saw the aging was just out, this marked disorder in decline. Thats all there is to it. What you see very different lifespans with different species. Some with very short and some of long so that means that gene changes during evolution has changed lifespan. Savings there has to be genes somehow determine the rate of aging. Thats me. The make us age much more slowly than a dog for example. So a tiny little roundworm. It just was a few weeks. And for my left, we look for gene changes that could extend five. There were very lucky to find a mutation in a single chain could double the lifespan of the animal can become went over the normal. Six times as long as normal. And so, that in the work that we deal with these mechanisms trying to understand them, really got me interested in trying to go beyond my own lofgren and try to help find out whether you could first of all translate this to humans in some way. The worse you some of the information that we know from studying the basic biology of animals, to improve our health. In longevity. And i also when i learned about kimco, if any company they wanted to do path this basic research. In the idea is being able to do creativity, driven basic research and really kind of moonshot way. Rats which dont seem to age for those mouselike creatures that seem to live for really long time. For example, counsel to be in a position where we can actually try to take to the clinics some of the information that we glean more on animals. And also make discoveries it cackled that could make. It was just too exciting and to become an opportunity for me to turn down. So success to me, there is two kinds of success actually. One i hope we can talk about this. A lot of really fundamentally fascinating discoveries about aging. How works. Emmy different ways you can slow down. I hope that we find another. Maybe two or three more. I think there is more picked discoveries. I hope that we can really can apply what we know. To humans. Weve been, i will stop in just a second but as you know, for a long time weve been trying to cure diseases. Which is fantastic. Didnt really, none perfect job people just dont dive in section four these two. Heart disease the way these two. But the people still age at the same rate so you have more people who are older in some cases are living a very healthy condition present hope is that we can find ways like these little worms the stay healthy for a really long time. I maintain your health for longer. So that is another goal. Its not just michael. As a goal for the whole field. As a shared goal. What is your mission at the Research Foundation and was what is success for you. Personal is this working. Second. Really its very similar to her similai the understanding that e having aging of their medical control is a controversial subject. Nobody told me that it was not a medical problem. It was so actually it was 1993, the same or which cynthia published her piece that it i went through transformation of my own. I had married a biologist having previously been researcher of Artificial Intelligence. And i accidentally learn biology but gradually, he underlies she just wasnt interested aging. That was the other thing i was interested in. Affect is going on. After your two, i had switched fields. I had to work on it because the other biologist just werent doing it. And as time went on, i became able to and i do want to mention something else. Extraordinarily important. An often overlooked these days when the medical applicability of this field is more established. In the 90s, this was in the extreme. The idea of actually saying we want to do something about aging. If you have the anda grant application, and sunday it was one of the very first people actually went out and said this. And so often feel that im kind of standing on her shoulders and doing what i do. But to me success is all about helping wives. And saving lives. And about the quality of work have to have to remind people that longevity is just an effective health. And during medical research, this is that they are working a specific degree. Keeping people healthy, and we think that we have a striking chance of doing it so well that the magnitude of that side effect of longevity will actually have a bad side effect pretty. Can you find largehearted. We cannot qualified that. Its a really complicated machine. We need to look at what happens with simple machines. We know that the car for example can be maintained in as functional state as a had the date was built. For as long as you like. Their cars than a hundred years old today that were not designed to last only about ten years. And they are simple enough that we already know how to do with comprehensive preventative maintenance on them. So the goal of our work is biomedical intelligence and to develop medicines that do exactly the same thing. This eventually comprehensive preventative maintenance to eliminate that damage the body just to itself throughout life. And thereby, to completely transcend lets call it the warranty. The devolution has built into our bodies. Roberts, you said that you believe aging is a stem cell problem. The genomic based health and ten will induce Company Human law inc. What are you striving for exactly and where you have arrived. Cellularity was born of the company that was teaching to turn living cells into medicines and leaves the platform took advantage of a very unique biology in the placenta. The organ that we all know its hard to collect support system for the developing fetus. It turns out that time, i manure us surgeon returning. I was mostly interested in finding a way to include the i come as patients when stem cells first the airway and i said will this might be a tool for me to improve the neurological outcome. This will come into the field and link made a lot of advances during the cells and fuels to control inflammation which themselves are very good at doing. A stimulating regeneration. In the conflict of the medicine as a means to provide health is not new. In their longtime is during the period when the Company Became part of a growing enterprise. It is really cancer focused company that i first saw data that impressed me. In the database, we showed that in patients as they age, there was a very abrupt decline in the number of stem cells and one organ system that we were looking at. The bone marrow. Turns out that if you look at a bone marrow, when in about 20 to 30000 cells, fuel to the bone marrow of 80 yearold is 130 million. So what is it tell us surgeon is not a smartest the the rest of the folks on this panel, and we just had stem cells patients. So we did was we ran a very simple experiment here, we collected the placental stem cells from new Born Research animals and give the vector stem cells after sexual maturity on a real basis. And this will stoke study showed out those animals lived 30 to 4. But that wasnt obviously enough to launch a big research program. But in an treatise enough to say that stem cells may impact payroll and doing two things. Preserving performance. Anatomic performance. Maintaining the structure and function of her body as we age. And allowing the immune system to perform at optimal levels throughout our lifespan. God is there. Were showing these products are meaningful in the age related diseases. Immune diseases and cancer. But i think the future is going to be very bright. For applying them to Human Performance. The preservation of Human Performance to me is a nice way of saying longevity. I like that. So lets take a little bit more signs of aging. I think cynthia, youre probably best to explain basic terms, why do we age. What is happening to our bodies. The tissues ability to withstand stress and function, and the proper way is declines. Many levels cells lose the tissues their integrity to some extent. The cells within the tissues lose their ability to carry other functions in the way they behave. They dont coordinate their behavior with one another as well as these two. It is really interesting if you take the materiality rate, of a species humans. As you know, the chance that you will wake up one morning and i that day, is up with the older you are. He goes up and very regularly. If you plot it on exponentially straightline. Starting in about age 30 chance of death, known it is. So that is the human right. And especially right now. The dog, doubles much more quickly. Obviously dogs have a much more shorter lifespan. Especially her puppies. Its very interesting it says that theres something inside on young person you dont know where it is in the person. All of the cells in just one place. Two but to program the person to age insert right. And start start when theyre young. Tims arms. So thats what i think is most interesting thing is to find out what is the programming. What is it that creates this resilience. That is different in different species. Even this simple genetic mutation that can double or make six times the lens or lifespan roundworms. Can you explain in simple terms how that happens and whats going on. Yes it turns out the very early in evolution, it looks as though simple organisms develop, the capacity to withstand stressful conditions. Like the removal of food for the presence of a large radiation for hot temperature. Defecation, or for the different sources. What they seem to do, is to first proclamation of any of the stresses. They have a system at least that can make them resist the stresses. All the ones. And it turns out, the mutation that we, the change in the genes, gene change so what we found as we change this one jean, just one base pair in the whole dna. That is all. The animals, everythings changed and the animals age much slowly. How did we do that with one base change. It turns out the regulatory like a Computer Program any kind of have an hierarchy of control systems. We had intervened at a very high level without knowing what we did at the time. Now we know. He came in and a very high level and we did is essentially the cost of the animal to kind of on site sink. Then it was under stress. So what happened is this animal had changes in reprogrammed itself. So now much more resistant to any kind of damaging going to do it is they had proteins and repair the dna, all things that they do at different levels. There were all coordinate leak switch on. It was very interesting. And those animals lived twice as long. No really know exactly but at least some of these things, these same properties or systems that can protect animals from stress, also protect them from the stress of aging. This kind of a high level not very nuts and multi explanation but i think it really is true. The thing that is really cool about this is if you change the same genes in a like mice, they all live longer. Mice are mammals like we are. So its universal had a programming mechanism. There are hints that is present in humans as well. In fact we are ready little pretty long time for someone my fears that perhaps the system is already a little bit turn ominous on evolution allowing us to be naturally more resistant to the stresses of wear and tear in time. Youve identified seven aspects of aging damage as you call it, accumulated side effects from metabolism and eventually kills us. Can you briefly explain a couple of key side effects. I will answer this quickly. The best way for me to do this is to jump off from what cynthia said. Having said this, we focus for long time not slowing aging down but actually reversing it. Actually repairing the damage their body does to ourselves throughout life. Truly rejuvenate people. And of course in principle, this would be far more valuable than just aging down. But also one of the things that i am the concept, 20 years ago is that has now been taking more seriously is the idea that this actually might be easier to do medically and slowing aging down. One thing the cynthia just touched on is that in humans who may already be somewhat adapted to doing the kinds of things that we can confer. In fact it does seem to work. For example, if you put longlived animals under stress, in particular under the stress of famine, then they tend to live longer. The proportion by which they live longer in this organism is much more than what you get in shorter living organisms. Theres a lot of complications that we certainly dont understand. Into people is to figure out how much we need to understand. Look at this is a technology, i dont find things out just for the sake of it i find them out in order to figure out what to do to manipulate the desirable amount. So the kind of damage that we are look at, waste products. New organisms, but a different way different cell types in different organisms. For example, stem cells, to resort the number of sales and organ is not producing them. Ultimately the driver of aspect of parkinson disease. Many examples, the approach it that we are taking, rejuvenation of drugs, is very much a divide and conquer thing. We have to repair a bunch of different times of damage simultaneously in the same person. And this is kind of complementary to the more unitary approach that has dominated the field of verses and really made this leave this whole thing open. Youre a pioneer in the sense of research, and the use of the placenta as you said to treat lifethreatening diseases. You called the placenta natures stem cell factory and he said youre to turn stem cells into medicine. Can you put in simple terms how do Stem Cell Therapy works and what you anticipate in the next five to ten years. To try and simplify the way we believe stem cells exert their therapeutic of facts, i think of it in terms really consistent with what cynthia and aubrey are talking about witches Underlying Health and adaptability, the ability to do with disease or injury. You have to have good programming system that is in fact, uncorrupted. In some cells can be thought of as a way of preserving the full transcriber will uncorrupted genome in a form can be used to reprogram the body over time. And what stem cells do and all of us, as they allow for continual process of renovation and renewal. All of us sitting in this room most of the cells in your body are less than a few years old. They have been derived from a stem cell reservoir that had been called upon to renovate your organs and tissues over time. Aubrey you said something which i love. As a pilot i see the same thing they talk about it with an automobile. You can keep it airplane in remarkably Good Condition if you always have perfect uncorrupted replacement parts. If you replace them on a regular schedule, and you actually replace them before they feel, failure in a system, is like a disease. You replace a before hand, we can do that with a cell, replace advanced self, before it goes bad, you might never ever develop any of these diseases. In our world what were trying to do is provide a reliable, high quality scalable and economical part. The beauty of the placenta is the cells are onesizefitsall. You take a placental sale and put it into an unrelated recipient and not have to match that. We seeing this hundreds of hundreds of patients with the stem cells never had to match them for the recipient and other pretty young thing is the sign from being universal cells in that regard, we collected a birth, process them expend them, then freeze them. Put them into quire preservation of their in state of suspended animation so that programming is in the cells, can be corrected. People probably dont know this but the cryo reserve sale, it is impervious to all of the things which damaged dna. Given radioactive source next to take in the cells will not be damaged by it. We saw them,