In this week’s newsletter

✅ Repairing damage with a little bit of magic. ✅ A big bet on solving all diseases. ✅ Eat your berries - but don’t count on them. ✅ A new milestone for Verve Therapeutics. ✅ New database tracks longevity interventions. ✅ Replacing the brain without replacing you. ✅ Funny pictures.

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Just some quick housekeeping before we begin in earnest. As you know LEVITY is sponsored by Vitalism Foundation (free subscribers can see the ad above - PREMIUM subscribers gets the ad free version of this newsletter).

Now Vitalism has opened the doors to Vitalist Bay, an 8-week longevity zone in Berkeley, California bringing the world’s best minds together to extend human healthspan and solve aging. It’s billed as the biggest longevity event in the world and their line-up of speakers and conferences are absolutely stellar.

LEVITY is proud and honored to be a partner to Vitalist Bay. My co-host on the LEVITY podcast, Patrick Linden, will be a speaker at the Longevity Policy & Media conference May 24-25 and I will be staying there between May 19-29. Come and say hello! 👋🏼

Repairing damage with a little bit of magic

You may have heard of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And as I’m trying to wrap my head around what startup ThirdLaw Molecular is doing, I begin to understand why it chose that name.

Because if they’re right, ThirdLaw has found a way to build molecules that can not only target previously ”undruggable” proteins - but maybe even reverse parts of the aging process that have stumped researchers for a long time.

The company, a spinout from Temple University, Philadelphia, and backed by the U.S. Department of Defense, is led by Dr. Christian Schafmeister, a chemistry professor with a magician’s ambition.

Schafmeister’s creation is a new class of synthetic molecules called Spiroligomers - engineered, Lego-like macromolecules, that mimic the best properties of both small molecules and biologics, while avoiding the limitations of either.

Small molecules can be taken orally and slip easily into cells, but often hit unintended targets. Biologics, like antibodies, are precise - but fragile, expensive, and often injectable only.

Spiroligomers do both: they’re modular, cell-permeable, stable in the body, and can bind to protein surfaces with extreme precision.

ThirdLaw’s technology could open up new therapeutic frontiers, especially in aging. One very interesting target? Glucosepane*, a stiff, complex cross-link that forms between collagen proteins in your body as you age. It’s one of the culprits behind tissue stiffening, arterial hardening, and other forms of age-related decline. No one has been able to break it - yet.

* Glucosepane is one of the advanced glycation end-products (AGEs): proteins or lipids that become glycated as a result of exposure to sugars. They’re highly implicated in many chronic diseases caused by aging.

But ThirdLaw is attempting to build molecules that act like tiny surgeons: identifying glucosepane, binding to it with engineered specificity, and catalytically breaking it apart.

”Tiny surgeons”? Turns out it’s more than a metaphor. As Schafmeister told Longevity.Technology, ”We can make the smallest surgeons imaginable - molecules that can recognize specific chemical damage, enter the body, fix that precise damage, and then be cleared through the kidneys without causing broader systemic effects.”

Aubrey de Grey highlighted ThirdLaw on X, agreeing that ”crosslink-breaking is a particularly interesting potential application”.

News from around the longevity and health space.

A big bet on solving all diseases

If recent history has taught me anything, it’s this: never bet against Demis Hassabis. When a Nobel laureate says he’s going to solve all disease - and when that claim is backed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs - you’d be wise to take it seriously.

Now, Isomorphic Labs has announced a $600 million raise in its first external funding round, led by Thrive Capital.

That’s big news. But what I’m really excited about is what’s still to come - specifically, more details on their work to create a virtual cell.

Eat your berries - but don’t count on them

Look, whenever I hear the term ”healthy aging”, I get the same creeping dread that Ron Weasley feels when someone says ”Voldemort.” It’s like calling drowning “pleasant.”

And yet, the aging biology field won’t stop using it. Case in point: a major new nutrition study in Nature Medicine that tracked over 100,000 people for 30 years - all in the name of promoting, yes, healthy aging.

So, what should you eat to achieve healthy aging reduce the amount of damage to your body as you age?

Apparently: berries, leafy greens, whole grains, olive oil and legumes. Avoid the usual suspects: trans fats, sugary drinks, red and processed meat, and anything ultra-processed that comes in shiny packaging.*

* Yes, this is completely shocking news!

But commentary on social media was more illuminating than the study itself.

Andrew Steele, aging biology researcher and author of Ageless, pointed out the inconvenient truth hiding in the data: even among the healthiest eaters, more than 85% had at least one chronic disease by age 70. That’s ”healthy aging” for you.

Kevin Klatt, a nutrition scientist, added another twist: even the best diet group in the study wasn’t eating all that well. They scored maybe 60% on the “optimal diet” scale. So really, we’re comparing bad diets to slightly less bad ones - not to what might actually be possible if people followed an ideal diet.

What this really tells us? Well, your take-home message should not be that if only we all ate perfectly, we’d be just fine. It’s that humans, as a species, are simply not capable of following strict or optimal diets long-term - even if we knew exactly what those diets were.

And that brings me to why this is a longevity newsletter that’s mostly not about diets or other present-day interventions: they won’t defeat aging.

If we want to reach a 100 and beyond with our minds, bodies, and dignity intact, it will take more than berries and willpower.

A new milestone for Verve Therapeutics - and Lilly

Here’s a quick follow-up to my newsletter post on Verve Therapeutics I did a few week’s ago: the FDA has now cleared their IND (Investigational New Drug) application for VERVE-102, allowing Verve to begin U.S. trials of their one-shot gene editing treatment for heart disease. It’s a big step forward - and brings us one step closer to making permanent cholesterol reduction a clinical reality.

My post on Verve also briefly mentioned that the startup is collaborating with pharmaceutical giant Lilly on another program aimed at inactivating the LPA gene to reduce Lp(a) levels. Lipoprotein(a) is a genetically determined variant of LDL and an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Now Lilly has announced that lepodisiran (separate from what Lilly is doing with Verve), an investigational small interfering RNA (siRNA) therapy, reduced levels of Lp(a) by nearly 94% from baseline at the highest tested dose in adults with elevated levels.

Replacing the brain without replacing you

NewBrain is an extremely ambitious biotech venture in incubation, aiming to replace parts of the human brain - starting with the hippocampus, the memory center that breaks down in Alzheimer’s and aging. But this isn’t about replacing you - it’s about preserving identity by gradually restoring the brain’s failing components, a little like swapping out parts in a complex machine without turning it off.

Incubated by HydraDAO, this early-stage DeSci (decentralized science) project plans to engineer transplantable brain tissue from iPSC-derived cells, recreating the cellular and extracellular environment needed for functional repair. The idea is inspired by neuroscience professor - and Replacing Aging author - Jean Hébert.

Backed by DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) capital NewBrain is kicking off mouse experiments and -omics work to gather the early data needed for major U.S. grants and future venture funding.

It’s the type of risky, moonshot science that DeSci was made for.

I wrote about the so-called replacement strategy a year ago, did a newsletter post about DeSci a few months back and we recently had VitaDAO’s Laurence Ion on the podcast - if you want to dig deeper. Come to think of it, we also discussed the concept of gradually replacing the brain with Aubrey de Grey, who is less enthused by the idea.

And while we are talking about replacing things, check out this MIT Technology Review piece about ”bodyoids”.

I’m not sure what prompted Peter Diamandis to post this - but it’s a hopeful signal nonetheless. If you're curious about the XPRIZE Healthspan, check out our LEVITY episode with Jamie Justice, who’s heading the project.

Worth your time.

New database tracks longevity interventions

All longevity interventions in rodents in one place? Here you go!

What I’ve been up to lately.

Picture this

As so many others I’ve fallen in love with the OpenAI:s new image tool (available through ChatGPT and the model GPT-4o). I asked it to make comic panels about David Sinclair’s information theory of aging and Cynthia Kenyon’s discovery that a single-gene mutation could double the lifespan of C. elegans. It’s certainly not perfect yet, but it’s getting there.

I also thought these were fun:

Hey, you’ve made it all the way here! Thank you so much for reading! 🫶🏼