It's all great to be here today, speaking with 2 of my favorite people, Alex and Joe, on my favorite subject, longevity. At NFX, we call longevity, the transition from seek care to health care, Morgan instead of the current state of waiting for somebody to get sick and playing a game of whack a mole with the different diseases that manifests as we get old, why not tackle the root cause most diseases, which is AG. So let's start with a quick introduction.
Joining us today is a Jo from Retroviral Sciences, and Alex from the age one fund. So let's start with Joe. Can you please introduce yourself and say a bit about the company's mission? Yeah. I'm Joe. That's the and CEO of retro Biosciences, which is, sort of medium sized biotech startup in California. That's about sixty people now, and we are very focused on our mission of adding 10 years of healthy lifespan to humanity. Yeah. I love the mission.
Always when we meet, I ask myself why only 10 years? I think that if we are successful in our mission that I will be so incredibly proud of all of us and that the impact on so many facets of society and people's lives will be so great, but it feels enough for me as a person. Impact wise. Yeah. And we can always have stretch goals. Great. Alex, can you please introduce yourself and the age one fund? Yeah. Absolutely. You so much, Andre, for having me on. But my name is Alex Coeville.
I'm the general partner and co founder of age 1, which is venture firm focused on longevity biotech specifically. So specifically focused on catalyzing and funding very early stage companies that are working to this goal exactly like Joe's amazing goal of increasing healthy lifespan. We don't put a year on it. We're running we're on it.
Maybe that's less ambitious or more in I don't know, but what I do know is that age 1 in essence came from the longevity fund, which my co founder Laura Deming made back in 2011 as kind of the first venture capital fund focused on the theme of longevity. And we're super, super excited to have introduced age one last year and just to have closed our first fund out of this new vehicle. So, yeah, congratulations. I know what drew me to the space, but, Joe, what drew you to longevity space?
I guess I went through a bit of a life transition I guess backing up, the only thing I really know how to do is startups. That's like the hammer. And so I go around the world looking for nails that I wanna pound in. And originally, it was doing things that were cool. That was enough for me. I think that's maybe it's a young person's James. But then after succeeding reasonably well at something, well, I decided I wanted to make something meaningful.
And meaningful to me means people because people are special compared to, like, everything else in the universe that we know of. And so of the things that are meaningful to Pete? Like, you know, what affects, like, people's lives? Like, war, famine, poverty, displaced homes, all that kind of stuff. Pretty much all that requires extreme political acumen, which I don't have. I'm a nerd.
So, like, what can a technologist do of the things that I could work on technologically by far in a way the greatest source of human misery. And therefore, the thing that could, if it were eradicated, could create the greatest source of human joy and thriving is dealing with disease, which sounds like a huge giant, you know, like boiling the ocean kind of task, but then looking at disease, like just stacking it up, like, what are people suffering from at hospitals?
What is money spent on at hospitals? It's like 85% age related disease. It's not like I have to go around and, like, fix kidney disease and fix psoriasis and fix, like, to fungus or whatever. Like, all these diseases. It's like, aging is basically it. It's basically, you know, pretty much all of disease that we ultimately deal with in the hospitals and so age related disease. So that, that makes it more focusing for me. Well, I should figure out why they happen.
What is this process called aging? And is there some way by addressing that itself? It could make the biggest difference That's great. And by the way, it's always amazed me how the kind of the backlash we're getting in the longevity space where some people say, oh, you know, it's, the tech bros want to live forever, or other people think, oh, I don't want to be ninety year old for 50 more years. And in my mind, what longevity is is just staying healthy.
The best health care is to be twenty two years old, right, to be young and healthy for meal longevity is staying young for as long as you want and involuntary Right? So that's my mission at least. So, Alex, you're a scientist, now investor. What made you Flint realize that this is what you want to spend your time on? Yeah. For me, it was kind of like the eight year old moment of watching people go through the worst parts of age related disease.
And kind of seeing somebody go through dementia, seeing somebody else go through cancer and kind of starting to ask why. And, you know, you kind of ask why a lot and, like, why there aren't more options to do something about, like, how horrific both of those diseases are and how much suffering comes with it and, like, it's just that game of why that you, like, keep asking why, and it it's just, like, you don't really get the answer to your question.
And, you know, people Beller you, oh, because that's the way it is. Or, like, oh, that's life, that's aging. That's just like what we deal with, and people keep asking you why, and you just get more frustrated. And eventually, I kind of, like, sat with that for probably, like, 5 or 6 years pretty silently, just like very unhappy about it. And eventually that led to kind of late teens googling more about it.
And during undergrad James across through my googling this field of the biology of aging and longevity biotech that we're here to about today. And that was when I was like, holy cow, found my tribe, these are my people, and haven't looked back since. Perfect. It's a great segue because I really want to talk about the scientific history of longevity. In my mind, one of the rate limiting steps for longevity is a lack of scientifically valid things to do. Not a lot of things you can do.
And when we found one, there is a lot of energy behind it. Right? So it's so important, to discuss what's already have been discovered. So, Alex, you've been doing research in this space for a while. Age 1, I think, is the first longevity Pete, right, that's the name of your So can you please talk a little bit about the kind of scientific history of longevity?
Yeah. So the scientific history of longevity is very interesting and, you know, it's certainly not up to me, to determine when exactly the field went from mythology to actual science, but the answer probably lies you know, I think a reasonable answer to it would be maybe sometime in kind of like the early 1900 with the study of calorie both done in model organisms and also in humans.
And this kind of eventually led to the work of Leonard Heyflick and Lenny Hey life, in essence, he worked a lot on telomere biology and kind of showing that cells in a dish do not divide indefinitely. There's this in essence, distinct replicative lifespan in a dish, and I think this was very transformative to people in terms of realizing maybe the limits of aging or what may be, you know, a distinct part of the aging process.
And then, you know, pretty much in kind of same era of a decade or so later, we got to see the very first quote unquote longevity genes, which, yeah, you're spot on age 1. It originally came out in a paper from Michael Class.
I think it was 1983, and it came from an unbiased screen in worms where they, in essence, gave worms a mutagen that caused a bunch of single gene mutations, and they ended up getting, I think, like, 8 or 10 strains that were long lived out of that, and they didn't realize until kind of subsequent follow-up papers, but eventually they were able to characterize that I think all of those mutations were a part of age one this gene that
was shown to be kind of the first to increase lifespan and increase lifespan in the worms by about 50%. And then this eventually led to a second longevity gene down to from Cynthia Kenyan's work at UCSF. She several times called it the Grim Reaper Pete, and this kind of eventually led to more of this modern field being able to study kind of single gene mutations and look at their effect on health span and lifespan.
Cool. I guess the question is what range, right, because, you know, people ask me if somebody interested in longevity, what should I do? Right? You know? And I think even 5 years ago, what I would tell people is, you know, don't die from stupid things, you know, drive carefully, you know, eat well, sleep well, exercise, but other than that, there was nothing really to move the needle. Has something changed in the last 5 years that, you know, you're excited about? I'll start with Joe again.
I think as a secular trend, 1, we're just getting a lot better at biology in the last 5 years, and we're made of biology. And aging is caused through biological mechanisms. And that just makes it faster to figure out what's going on and how it works. And 5 years has been a really meaningful time. Like, people started doing single cell. Like, I think single cell was one of the most significant steps forward in understanding biology.
Before that, people thought of, you know, there was this epic moment of sequencing the human genome that happened in, you know, 2001 ish Right? But it turns out that all our cells are not exactly identical. We seem to be composed of all these different cells that are doing different like skin cells and brain cells and germ Beller.
And getting to the point where we could actually look at our tissue as an assembly of this rich extremely diverse multi interacting assembly of all these different dozens and hundreds of cell types. I think that picked off another inflection point. In bio. As far as I like just, I have observed it. And, you know, we started doing single cell sequencing earlier, but it seemed like roughly within the last 5 years, I think the bioinformatics have started to catch up.
You know, because there's this interplay between kind of, like, people making tools and then people figuring out how to use the tools and learning a much about the biology or any science in general. And then the toolmakers think saying, Hey, there's some new stuff in making new tools. And, you know, there's these cycles that go back and forth.
And I think in the last 5 years, people really started figuring out how to make a meeting out of the data that that single cell sequencing tool was generating. Now we're seeing a rush of new machines being built. Then they have to catch up and figure out what to do with the data and so on. I think that's been the biggest trend, but that's just a sort of a general biology trend.
Then I think in terms of the aging field, One of the things that happens when you're watching from afar in any given overall exponential process, like, I think things sort of get or steam with time First, it's just a few kind of fringe researchers, you know, like, throwing mutagens on worms. They're interested in aging. One here or there, people saying what if in a very open minded scientific way.
And then there's another one, and, and someone else reads their paper a year later and thinks, okay. That was a pretty disciplined scientifically rigorous way of studying this. I guess I could do that too. This isn't all just like, you know, live forever religion weirdos that don't do real And I think more people read those papers and more people get involved. And that's an exponential process, you know, more than 2 people read a paper.
And so I think that this field has been taking hold as a rigorous and legitimate scientific endeavor exponentially. If you're looking at it from an outside linear point of view on an exponential process, tends to look like nothing's happening. And then all of a sudden, something's happening. You know, there's this elbow in the curve. And I think that's where we are right now. We're at the point where this exponential process is starting to make a linear dent in all of bio academia.
And then usually academia kind of starts something and says, hey. This is possible. But look at these phenomena, and then business can then jump in afterward and say, Wow. Yeah. It's possible. Let's make it actualized for Pete. Yeah. For me, I have to say my excitement for the space always started the science behind the space, always started with just basic understanding of the rule of nature, like nothing in what we are trying to do doesn't invalidate the rules of physics.
Like, it seems like we should be able to solve the problem, and I just gave a token. Conference. And I started it by staying 1st Nature solved aging. Right? If you think about an AT or old, we can have a baby with forty year old, then that baby will have the same lifespan as a baby boy to 2 teenagers, right, that you're something magical about nature. Otherwise, we won't exist that Joe might disagree, but when you zero everything out, when you start with an embryo, you kinda reset lifespan.
Right? It's kinda magical Otherwise, we won't exist. Any species would exist. And the second thing I'd like to say is humans for aging. When you think about aging of our cars or our buildings, how we solve the aging for cars, we just keep replacing parks. So the basic, I think, can be solved. Like, there is nothing in what we're trying to achieve that is impossible. We just need to find some typically valid ways of doing it. And that takes me to the state of the art. Right?
You know, Alex, you're investing in the space, So to move things forward, what would you consider as the most cutting edge topics in the space right now? Yeah. I think probably along those lines, because I mean, in part what's so funny is, like, well, a lot of the things that we're so excited about today, scientists and folks were very excited about in the 1990s.
For example, and, like, the whole notion of replacement parts or, you know, being able to target biological pathways that slow or prevent the rate of aging more broadly. Like, both of these, were, you know, extremely hot topics of discussion in the nineties. Amongst among the among the very niche scientists in this community. And so then it's like, okay.
Well, why the heck are, like, now we're, like, still just as excited about it and yet feel so much more just defied in our excitement about it versus them. And I think it really is, like, the progress of tools and the basic science behind these things.
And kind of to segue into your question of, like, you know, a cool example is, you know, the fact that, you know, back in the nineties, everybody's talking about this ability to have a replacement part and, you know, you give this reference to the car and, like, this was something actually that Len Hayflick talked about a decent amount where he was like, oh, we actually haven't solved aging in car because you can only replace parts for so long before the car still fails to some point.
I mean, what's so interesting from like the human version of that is, you know, we wanted replacement parts back in the nineties, people talked about it, and people talked about it all throughout the early 2000s in terms of having the ability to place a cell in the human body, and we really weren't able to actually feasibly do it and show that we could do it in humans safely and effectively until the past 3 years or so. And this part is really remarkable to me.
And then it's a question of, like, what changed to enable us to get to this place where we actually have the ability to have like cell therapies that are, you know, derived from off the shelf that we can, in essence, put in human, and they'll long term survive and engraft and kind of serve a useful purpose. And in part, it was like Shonya Yamanaka's amazing Nobel Prize winning work around Beller reprogramming.
In part, it was on the boat of a lot of scientists who had to optimize the process of kind of differentiating cell types from IPSCs.
And in part, it was just a lot of people who made all the other sort subtle optimizations that needed to happen from a delivery perspective and otherwise to, like, get the conditions just right to show that we could do it with just a couple of cell type And, you know, the evidence and reward of this has been we saw just a couple weeks ago, a company in the Parkinson's disease space that was in essence able to show that they could take these
cells derived off the shelf and Flint them in a human Parkinson's brain and and show that they could survive and and have function for up to 18 months in humans. And so, like, yeah, this is an area I'm just absolutely incredibly excited about. That company being Bluerock Therapeutic with several others working in that same space and showing some really cool preliminary evidence in humans. Like, are we actually at that point that we can now replace any cell type in the body? Right?
And then, like, what could get us from now to that goal? Or, you know, likewise with human Morgan, also insanely excited about that right now. As, obviously, you talked about partial reprogramming. Joe, I think your company is known to be working in that space. What drew you to that specific modalities? I would say a ex sizes, like the things that people talk about in the longevity biotech space. You know, there are these molecules that you could take, for instance, metform.
And, yeah, it seems like it probably slows aging. If you give it to mice over long periods of time. They'll live, like, 10% longer if you give them metformin. But I have this kind of impatient entrepreneur blood in me that I like things that are fast moving and make big changes. And the phenotypes that I saw in the reprogramming literature were just huge.
You know, you treat these animals for a relatively short period of time and then the shifts and the Morgan of aging characteristics of their tissues of various kinds were quickly changed. You know, animals had improved memory outcome. DNA had less damage, a pretty wide range of differences across tissue and quickly induced.
So I think I would rather work with something as an entrepreneur that's kind of like a bit of a wild bucking bronco and kind of learn to tame it and to coax it into a particular direction than to take the sort of slow worn out mule and try you're, like, girded into action. It's just more exciting for me as an entrepreneur. So it's a founder. What do you think your product will be in the end?
Will it be small molecule or antibody or whatever modality that will slow down aging or will be something old people take to rejuvenate and to be younger, what do you think your product will be in the end? I'm definitely biased toward rejuvenation over slowing aging. You know, at some point, probably I have to acknowledge a bit of personal bias too.
Because, you know, if I were in my twenties, I would probably wanna be at developing things that I could take over the whole course of my life and slow me down, but I'm older than that. But it's not about me I just like to be able to acknowledge my viruses if they do exist. So we're not a single product company. We're a single mission company. I have 5 parallel research teams working on different aspects of aging, different modalities. And they have different intervention methods.
So we have a small molecule program. Our atrophage group. We have 3 different cell therapy programs. And then another one that's basically gene therapy program. So a bunch of different products, and a pretty intensely product oriented. Like, we are not academia. We make products for people to take and make their lives Beller, but I'm not focused on any particular modality, like a therapeutic intervention agnostic. But how do you get it approved? Suddenly aging is not a disease.
That's what the FDA said. Need to get approval for a disease. So how do you get approval for rejuvenation? Yeah. Funny. I was visiting Japan recently, and but the prime minister was interesting. In Japan, you you can put that someone died of old age under a certificate. And I'm kind of interested in the conversation there that if that's true, then theoretically you should be able to make a therapeutic prevent that cause of death. Right? So I wanna continue that conversation in Japan.
However, right now, I'm in the US, and that is not a thing. Aging is not a disease or a cause of death. So what we have to do is use what I call proxy indications, which means that diseases that are caused by the same mechanism that we're working on, but that typically are more acute or there's a more kind of immediate need, preferably in unmedical needs.
And the ones that, you know, there's an existing ICD code Morgan that, you know, you can actually get an approval from FDA to market a drug for that. So that's basically every single program has to have one of those. And then the idea is that we deliver on medicine for a proxy indication first, and that establishes the mechanism is functional and people that gets the therapy out there can establish a safety track record for it.
And then for open minds and doors, to being able to expand into larger indications. And then I think this should be the ultimate path as you alluded to Currier, Umadi, for all medicine. Ultimately, it should be able to be used preventatively yeah, the best health care is to stay healthy. As I like to say, interesting what you said about Japan and dying from old age. I think in the US, they call it natural reasons, right, know, natural causes.
And I think there is nothing natural of dying of old age. You know, natural is dying when you're 22 from infection. Know, and and we don't call it natural today. And I think, in a 100 years, looking back, dying at the age of seventy from old age will be looked very primitive and very sad thing. Beller, let's talk about investment and how investors Pete the longevity space. You know, my day job is general, permanent, and effects. A big seed fund. You know, we take money from LPs.
We invest in companies. We need to show returns. And the reason we like longevity is, a, we think it's the biggest market. It's for everyone, be it's very magical. Like, if you really invent something that rejuvenate you and make you younger, like, who won that. And it will be totally magical defensible thing to do, and it drives the most passionate people to the space. So you get the best founders. Like Joe. So maybe Alex, you know, you're a investor like us.
So what's the framework that you use to evaluate companies in the space? Yeah. Well, obviously looking for Joe's, I don't know. Maybe we should need to clone more of him. That's the easiest solution, but I can do it. I can do it. I have a company for that.
In essence, like, you know, I think there's kind of like the 3 things that I'm constantly thinking about with potential founders, which is just like, one, do they have extraordinarily high judgment and like ability to make right decisions to our, you know, as at least somebody on a founding team mission aligned to the aging fields and the long term goals of the field. And 3, are they willing to be a founder?
Kinda like think on those 3 James as of, like, evaluating potential founders or potential talent that, you know, are the kind of next generation Joe's that kind of help push the field forward. And that's kind of like the immediate access that I'm evaluating. I think at least at age 1, we take a super kind of founder focused viewpoint, and that kind of under that first bucket of like a founder's judgment. So many other of the standard kind of VC evaluations come into the picture, right?
Because, like, how do you evaluate somebody's judgment? Well, I wanna know, like, how they view Pete to market, how they view science in a specific area who they can attract to, you know, associate with from a, like, scientific advisor perspective. Kind of, like, what is their ability to, like, run through walls to make that happen?
And so I think, like, all of those kind of fold into this bucket of, is this agent company investable on, you know, adventure scale, like, 7 to 10 year timeline, right, that kind of fits in that higher order framework, which I think it really comes down to, like, just a founder's judgment. Cool. So you talked a lot about fathers. Obviously, funnels are very important, but let's talk about a little bit about the risks of longevity companies. One of them is something that Joe just mentioned.
Right? The FDA still don't recognize aging as a disease. You need to find an adjacent indication. I call it take longevity indications because, you know, some people go after osteo for ease of the knee, and they don't develop a drug for tougher raises. You develop a drug for aging that might also help with the stopper raises, but might not be, you know, the best efficacy for that. Right? So it's harder to get approval. What other risks do you see for companies this space?
I think losing your way. Losing your way is a risk. I think it happens to people in any kind of mission focused situation. This isn't really the full mission, but it's practical for us to work on in the short term. And then they focus on that forever, and they never kinda make it I guess that's more of, like, getting back to, like, personal founder risk.
But it's something that I constantly repeat back, like, if we're in strategy sessions, which we do twice a and I'll constantly be bringing back up. Yes. We could go that direction, but I think it would take us off track, and we need to keep moving our focus back. Even if it means we face more risk of certain kinds are less immediate reward, it's worth it.
And we're in a privileged position of having patient capital, like just our investor, I guess, the equivalent of your LPs have a reasonably long term view. I mean, also, personally, from a founder perspective, impatient, and obsessed with PACE as MI. A really hard problem. And I think one needs to think on longer time scales to get there. Like, I don't necessarily think that we're gonna hit our entire mission within 7 year venture time frame. I believe we'll make a dent. For sure.
We'll, for sure, ship our first drug and then our next one. And then our next one. And then I got next eventually, we'll hit our mission. I guess there's business risks. Like, one thing I see happening over and over again in the biotech industry, and it makes me sad is that you see a lot of companies start off with toward a mission, with a particular discovery platform and really believing in the science and the power of the science and in the depths of their pipelines. We have this platform.
It's a novel way of discovering therapeutics against particular, you know, set of diseases or whatever. And then gonna be able to generate, like, dozens of cures for all these things. And they get one thing that's kinda started heading for the clinic. They derisk certain aspects of it, and they start running out of money. And then they go talk to investors, and the investors like, I don't know about all this, like, kind of, like, nerdy stuff.
The, like, the sciency discovery stuff with all those Pete, like, I can't quite figure. I don't really understand it that well, but this drug that looks like it's about to go into phase 1, that makes sense. I see the business sense of that. So I'll invest into that, but you have to lay off your discovery team. So you see these companies constantly start off more optimistic and idealistic. And, like, I guess I have a bias toward deep tech, I guess you would call it.
I mean, that's the buzzword in the investment community. But I believe that the important changes that have happened throughout human history credible lifestyle today have been from not so much from, you know, just like figuring out that we should have curbs be 6 inches high on the street instead of 8 inches high or whatever, but have been more like putting in their research and figuring out how to make a really good rocket engine or how to advertise clone DNA, etcetera.
And so it said to me to see these organizations getting deep tacked over and over again. That's kind of a business risk in a way it's inspiring to me when I see a company starting to do well in the investors. And I guess they've done a good job at communicating with their investors and helping share the vision not only of this first item, but their whole pipeline and the thesis behind it, and they can keep R and D funded.
Yeah. The only thing that matters, if you look back in history, the only thing that matters is is science and technology. Everything else is just games. That's the only thing that moves productivity and the human condition forward. I think we all agree on that. And let's talk a little bit about the fundraising side because all of us had to fundraise for longevity.
So, Alex, you had to fundraise from LPs to raise your fund and Joe, you had to fundraise from other funds or angels to raise money for longevity. So, Alex, let's start with you. You'd think that every person with money, if you scratch him, you know, he's a longevity buff. He wants to be healthy and live longer. Was it easy, or was it hard? How was your experience? Raising money for all this fun.
Yeah. I mean, I think I don't know if there is ever easy fundraising unless you're maybe, like, a machine learning company or something at Silicon Valley these days. I think almost any fundraising is hard even in, like, the easiest of circumstances. So I'd say it was, like, way easier than I expected, but I also expected to be swallowing glass for a year.
And I would say it was like a slightly more pleasant experience than that, but it was definitely a year grind of just making it happen even though it was a pleasant experience. So in essence, what was the experience? Like, yeah, I mean, I think I found out, for example, that, like, through some global travels, people now just when you mentioned longevity anywhere kind of outside the they just think of Brian Johnson, and they ask you if that's what you mean by the longevity field.
So I've learned kind of how global the field is gone and turn of getting name recognition in in terms of exactly kind of how that process goes and kind of people's comfort with the field. I mean, I think people do start to see it as one of these opportunities that they need to track. And even a lot of the more standard, Beller, traditional funds It's on their radar now.
Maybe not as something that they're actively investigating, but it's at least on their radar, which I think is a crazy difference. You know, I think back just 10 years ago, 11 years ago to Laura launching the first fund out of the longevity fund vehicle and, like, how hard that must have been to a approach people for an industry that didn't even exist Pete.
And now we get to sit here with a luxury of saying, you know, there's, you know, what, like, over 180 different companies in this space, and people have heard about it for better or worse, sometimes in either direction. So I think that's a really cool change that's happened in the fundraising landscape is just it's more on people's radars than it's ever been before. Yeah. I think we all agree that longevity might not be the best names.
I think there's a big vandaigram of people thinking about longevity. What does this mean? Some people think it's screams. Some people think it's extreme biohacking like Brian Johnson. I think we're in the camp of, like, the deep science, you know, rational thing that can move the needle and, you know, prevent diseases. I think that's the camp that we're if I can generalize, that we're all in. But I want to talk bigger about the business case for longevity.
Right, because, you know, not only it's the biggest market in the world, I'm about to write a blog post about the business of longevity. I wanna call it longevity, the l in LTV. So LTV means lifetime value. Right? So in my hypothesis that not only everybody would to have the longevity drug, but it makes all other markets better because it increases the lifetime of your customers. They just live longer to consume whatever product or service you grading.
Somebody made a business case for, you know, the economic value of adding 1 healthy year for adults in the US. It was suffering in the trillions of Beller. So, again, it's so surprising why there are no more investment in longevity than they are. So, you know, Alex, like, why do you think longevity companies are great businesses to invest in?
Yeah. Like, in part, like, some of the biggest returns and, you know, examples or areas of the best financial returns ever seen are kind of in areas where historically the opportunity has just been completely overlooked and you have massive, massive markets at play. And I think that sums up the longevity space to a tee. We wrote a blog post about it probably like 3 or 4 months ago just in terms of the, like, possible market that's achievable with the 1st FDA approved longevity drug.
And, you know, we included, it would be about a 150 to $200,000,000,000 per year in annual revenue. So this would be in essence 3 to 4 times the size of the entire market of GLP 1 receptor agonists, your Ozempic Wagovi, that Munjaro that has been, you know, totally transforming economies of European Countries. Like, if you look at the growth of Novo Nordisk, just becoming like the most valuable company in Europe, I'm pretty sure. Right?
It's like and that's you know, a third or a 4th of the size and magnitude of the effect that the longevity field is going to see an experience. And we just know that that's gonna be the The market poll is there, it will happen is just a matter of when. So I think you're spot on. I'm super excited to read your post because it's the massive market that's involved in the very few shot that have been actually taken to achieve that market.
It's a huge mismatch in terms of shots on Pete and the rewards for scoring. One of the challenges space has is the proud to be in a space that has this category. This this is is characteristic, but there is a lot of sort of external value created And what I mean by internal and external is there's a system in which the investment is made and the product is produced and revenue directly generated from the product And then there are the other effects on the rest of the world.
You can make, like, high speed race car or whatever, and you can get paid x number of dollars every time someone buys 1. I don't know about the externalities for that. You know, maybe it's just, like, incredibly inefficient and cost lots of pollution and noise and, like, people die often from them and, like, whatever. It's like, maybe they make the world a little bit worse place. But, you know, you can categorize products that way.
I think there have been really good Beller reasoned and detailed carefully calculated cases made for longevity therapeutics that produce them, and pretty much everything gets better society wise. The amount of time that you have to support Pete, there's, like, the younger population support the older population that there's this sort of like ratio that has to do, you know, it's like terrible in Japan and Korea right now.
You know, the retirement versus non retirement, how long can people work basically versus that's a huge, huge effect. People are healthier or longer and can remain productive rather than being a burden to society. You don't necessarily get paid for that by making your longevity drug, not necessarily, just effect on families, on a society, on productivity, on forward progress.
And there are a bunch of things like that that all ripple out from making good, healthy longevity drugs that you don't necessarily get paid for directly. But I think there are enough still that and be money that flows back into the same industry that produces them, which is a virtuous cycle where they can produce more such drugs using that money, because it takes money to fuel R and D, that there are enough that will still incentivize people to continue. This exponential growth?
Yeah. Totally agree. And, Alex, by the way, I think it's kinda funny that you mentioned GLP drugs, like Ozempic, etcetera, because when I look back at the biggest pharma Pete in the last 5 years, which is GLP drugs and even the COVID vaccines, in my mind, those 2 things are longevity drugs. It's things that you give to healthy Pete, so they won't become disease, right, you know, overweight take that drug. So you won't get NASH. So you won't get diabetes. Right?
So you you won't get heart attacks. So we see the value of those drugs, and those are the biggest drugs categories ever. It's something you give to everybody to keep them healthy. So, yeah, I think the business case has already been made by other drugs, but now let's attack the root cause let's talk about the future and kinda advice for founders. Let's start with, what do you think the long term society effect will be if this space will be developed as we think it will?
How the world would look different if we have those drugs? I mean, the easiest way to think about that for me is, well, how does the world look different today from how it looked? 100 years ago when people lived shorter lifespans. You know, it was life was, you know, nastier, shorter, and more brutish. I think people will look back on now from the future and just be like, ugh, man, that sucked. I'm sorry that people had to live back then. I get it.
You know, I read the 20 century literature, and it's pretty brutal life. And you don't know, you know, people are, like, dying of Alzheimer's and all these other, like, fundamentally treatable things because they just I guess they just didn't have the medicine then. Yeah, so it'll be a little bit of sort of gritty reality and a bit of Pete, probably Yeah. Definitely. So we talk about vaccine. You know? So, again, you take something and you never get viral infection if we get better vaccine.
You know, you take GLP 1 inhibitors and you're always fit and, sexy. Right? You know, you take partially programming creams and you're skin looks young and you grow the hair back, that's something that I feel personally about. Yeah. Like, some people hate their birthdays. I always celebrate my birthday.
James a milestone, I survived another year in my goal of living in the future because the future is going to be awesome if, the company we invested and the company you are working on, Joe, will work out, right, because we'll have the solution for all of that. And I think some people are worried about, oh, it's going to go to reach Pete. To that, I say an expensive solution is better than no solution, and expensive solution tend to get cheaper over time.
You know, patent runs out and everything becomes cheaper and more accessible to everybody Beller, and I'm excited about the future. I want to live in that future.
Even if it's cost a lot, one of the science fiction books I read, the way they fund the longevity treats is people saved instead of saving for retirement, they saved for the longevity treatment that took them back to eighteen years old and they call it 2nd life and 3rd life and one saying in the book is, life sucks, then you rejuvenate and do it all over again, which is way better than our option right now.
So, again, for both of you, I guess, same question just to close this, really inspiring discussion. You know, if you think about, you know, a bunch of funnels will be listening to this podcast. What's the one thing you want to tell them? About the space and why they should be part of it and, you know, the future of longevity. I mean, I guess, again, my hammer is making companies. So that's pretty much the only thing I consider myself qualified to speak on.
But and you also asked earlier about, like, So what is the process of fundraising like? Me, it's been the absolute peak experience of my career to focus on something that isn't incredibly exciting and inspiring mission. It makes hiring easier. It makes fundraising easier. It makes motivation for myself for everyone just automatic. But I think that for people wondering, what should I do with my life? What should I do with my career? Whatever that is.
Always been confused by the concept of what a career is because it's always just me and, like, what should I do today? If you realize that you personally really feel this world view in a deep and vivid way. Like, yeah, it makes sense that the world will be a better place if people are not dying of such horrible age related diseases at the ages that they're dying of then. It makes it easier for you to live an authentic and successful life.
Just seek out companies that think and believe like you do and work with the people. You'll get up every day being excited to be working on the problem that you're working on. You'll be working with Pete who get you and who are also excited about it. Make team work easier. It's less sort of every person for themselves, just sort of how I see much of academia and more of, like, what are we gonna as a team, which is an incredible feeling. I'm the happiest I've ever been running this company.
And if I'm making decisions, they're not based on, well, this is what I want you to do for me. It's like, I think this is the right thing for us to do as a company in order to achieve our mission. So I'm out of the way. Like, my ego is out of the way. So I guess as I'd advise someone Pete involved something that you deeply believe in and, like, many other obstacles will just, like, melt away in your life. Very cool. Alex? I love that.
So, I mean, for those people who that speaks to, I'll go a little bit more tactical. I think there's, like, 3 massive, you know, I mean, there's way more than this, but three core challenges I'd identify that, like, are actually semi feasible on a like 30 to 50 year time scale and would be the most transformative to society that we've ever seen in terms of a company transformed society, which I think is like, 1, is like figuring out how to manipulate aging for each tissue in the body.
I think there's probably like pretty tissue specific targets to aging and figuring out ways to do that, whether that's with reprogramming modalities or transcription factor based screening or, you know, the who knows, like, whatever the intervention is, just figuring out how to do would be unbelievably remarkable.
2nd one would be to figure out a way to be able to replace any single damage cell in the body or age cell in the body with a young fresh one and get to be where it needs to be and have it be happy and performing its functions. And the third would be to be able to do the same with every tissue in the and I think these are, like, grand challenges. They sound insane, but on a 30 to 50 year time scale, who knows?
Like, maybe feasible with the pace that we're seeing, things accelerate and machine learning. Like, who knows? So I would say take Joe's advice. Go after one of those three buckets. And you may build the most transformative company that's ever graced the earth. Amazing. Amazing. So, again, you heard it first. You know, aging is a disease. It's a root cause of most diseases. We can tackle it. People are tackling it. People are investing in it.
So please, you know, if you're excited about what you heard right now, get up and join a company, start a company, and do something in this space. You know, we can do it. Thank you very much. All of you. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks, Hillary. Pleasure speaking Thanks a ton.