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Copyright: © Richard Jacobs
Ageing: it's an inevitable part of life, it affects us all, and there's just no way around it. Or is there? "Ageing is a major societal problem that we're turning our attention to in the biotechnology industry as something that's treatable...and that we can modify biologically to improve the health span of people in our country and worldwide," says Dr. Joshua Hare, co-founder, and chief science officer at Longeveron. Founded four years ago after receiving a technology license from the University of Miami Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute, Longeveron is a biotech company bringing over 20 years of clinical research and 40 years of basic research to address the problem of ageing.
The team at Longeveron proposes that allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells can be used to treat ageing frailty, a condition that affects 50 percent of people over the age of 65. Dr. Hare discusses the evidence in support of his hypothesis, the regenerative and reparative potential of these stem cells, how to determine the best method of delivery, why ageing frailty is a condition that's particularly likely to respond positively to these types of stem cells, roadblocks to the development of research in this field, and what he thinks will happen over the next few years.
Tune in for the full conversation, and visit longeveron.com to learn more.
Dr. Stuart Williams, founder of Bioficial Organs (cvregen.com), delivers an interesting overview of the future of bioengineered organs and tissues, and the medical advances that we are seeing daily. Williams has extensive experience in the areas of biomedical engineering, surgery, physiology, as well as materials science and engineering. He is the former director of research for the Department of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College, former faculty at the University of Arizona, and founder of the University of Arizona Biomedical Engineering Program. In 2007, Williams was appointed as the scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, a collaborative partnership between the University of Louisville and Jewish Hospital. Williams received a Ph.D. in cell biology from the University of Delaware and did his postdoctoral training in pathology at the Yale School of Medicine. His strong interest in medical devices and regenerative medicine paved the path toward his development and patent of one of the first methods to use fat-derived stem and regenerative cells for therapeutic use.
Dr. Williams discusses the Bioficial Organs Program and their work to create human tissues and organs for clinical therapeutics and in vitro drug efficacy and toxicity testing by utilizing a patient's own cells. He gives a detailed overview of the fascinating process of creating organs and tissues from biological parts. As Williams explains the human body has at least eleven different types of organs and tissues, some that are extremely complex, but some that are simpler, that can be created via the Bioficial process. He explains how the complexity is often based in the number of specific cells that are used to perform functions. As he states, the liver and the kidney are perhaps more difficult to bioprint than other organs, but that parts of tissues, such as skin, are easier to tackle successfully in regard to regenerative medicine. He discusses work they are very excited about, including their active lab program to use 3D bioprinting to create an artificial pancreas, in order to produce insulin on demand in a patient.
The biomedical engineering expert discusses specific organs that can regenerate, and those that cannot. Unfortunately, for example, the heart does not have cells within it that will repopulate a damaged area, but it may be possible to put organoids into a damaged part of the heart such that they may take up residence and begin to create a functional part. Williams discusses his extensive work focused on developing new and successful ways to remove patients' cells and build new blood vessels from those cells that can be reinserted into the body. He cites examples of some specific work with patients that helped to advance the regenerative medicine field.
Dr. Williams discusses their exciting new plan to move bioprinting to the international space station, which will allow them to avoid the effects of gravity that can adversely impact some of their work. He relates how the fetus is formed in amniotic fluid, and thus is somewhat defying gravity as it can move about freely in its environment. And this study of those conditions, in fact, creates more questions as well as answers to how growth happens regarding organs, and the conditions and mechanisms that are involved in that complex process. Further, he discusses the shapes of organs, and how it may not be necessary to recreate organs in the same shape in which they naturally occur in the body. Additionally, he muses about regeneration, and why some organs will regenerate, but others will not, and he states that he is very interested in studying all of these issues in detail to find the answers.
Dr. Williams has authored more than 300 scientific publications and his work has generated 22 issued US patents with nearly countless patents pending. He's the founder of six biotechnology companies and is a fellow of the American Heart Association as well as the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Most women who've been pregnant are familiar with the strong, sometimes strange food cravings that occur to them—cravings that might not always be for nutrient-dense, healthy, and unprocessed foods. As a mother herself, Erica Mock is all too familiar with the battle between satiating those cravings and eating healthy during pregnancy, but she has an interesting take on the matter, stating, "Our bodies have an incredible innate intelligence. I craved sushi every day, started supplementing high-quality omega-3 supplements, and the cravings went away…the body knows what it needs."
And what does the body need before, during, and after pregnancy? High-quality, nutritious, individually-curtailed, and of course deliciously mouth-watering foods. This is exactly what Erica Mock set out to provide for women when she founded twenty-fiveEIGHT. Customers can simply visit the website to choose from several subsections and menu options, including foods that increase the volume and quality of breast milk, vegetarian foods, homemade black sesame almond milk, bone broths made from 100% pastured animals, a dairy-free chickpea noodle macaroni and "cheese" dish, and a flourless seed bread that's excellent for digestion. All foods on the menu are organic and local, and Mock has been mindful enough to opt for the most sustainable packaging materials so you can feel good about your purchases.
The company is still in the beginning stages, with a launch party scheduled for just after the holidays this year. Tune in for all the details—including a sweet story that explains how she came up with the name of the company. Visit twenty-fiveeight.com to learn more.
McLean Wilson, co-founder, and manager of Spark Invest (sparkinvest.com) discusses the many new opportunities that exist in the marketplace for the average investor, and how his company is helping promising companies to take the next step to their success. Wilson is a seasoned alternative investment and asset-based lending expert. He has extensive experience in asset management and capital raises for alternative investments, as well as structured transactions, transactional operations, recourse and nonrecourse purchase agreements, negotiation, and management. Wilson's knowledge of the aforementioned, along with his keen understanding of the underwriting processes and the elements of secured and unsecured transactions makes him exceptionally qualified to lead his team at Spark Invest.
Wilson's considerable past accomplishments in business include his tenure as vice president of SouthStar Capital, an asset-based lender strategically focused on factoring. While at SouthStar, Wilson structured and funded many equipment leases and purchase order financing transactions. Other notable points on Wilson's extensive resume include his work as an investment advisor with ING Financial Partners and Money Concepts Capital Corporation and Wilson's focus was on financial planning, investment planning, and portfolio management. He holds a bachelor of science and a master of science in civil engineering from Clemson University and is a registered investment advisor representative.
Wilson explains that his company, Spark Invest, is an equity crowdfunding platform that provides an opportunity for average retail investors to invest in early-stage nonpublic companies that are poised for growth. He states that Spark Invest has higher expectations and qualifications for the start-ups and companies that are given an opportunity to exist on their platform. They typically need to have proof of concept, to have ideally already raised some capital, and have a good use for their capital. Simply having a 'good idea' is not enough for Spark Invest, as the Spark Invest team is comprised of many entrepreneurs who have extensive experience with starting companies, closings, and exit strategies, and understand what it takes for a company to launch and succeed. As Wilson acknowledges, they really don't want companies on their platform that they would not personally feel great about investing in themselves. Wilson explains their vetting process and gives detail on the specifics they look at, such as audited financials, etc., to ensure that the companies who are given the opportunity to exist on the Spark Invest platform are quality, vetted, legitimate, and promising companies worthy of an investor's time, and dollars.
In the past, these types of alternative investments in promising private companies were only available to qualified institutional investors, but thanks to a major change in securities law, these companies can now be owned by the public without the usual standard initial public offering, or IPO. This opportunity works well for new companies who have a great concept or product that has already had some success and are now looking to take on investors, but want to avoid the typical VC investor who might mandate that the entrepreneur become an employee of the VC upon taking in their investment dollars. Additionally, the platform is a unique opportunity for smaller investors to make investments in promising new companies that they typically have not had access to in the past. Thus, the platform can be beneficial to all parties involved.
Wilson discusses some of the types of companies and ideas that they like to bring to their platform, as well as some that they don't. He explains their marketing, and how they attract some of their most interesting companies. And he provides detailed information on the various investment platforms that exist and how Spark Invest takes a different view than some of their competitors, as they monitor the kinds of companies that come into the platform and prudently review their financials. While Spark Invest is interested in many types of companies, Wilson states that they are certainly drawn to practical companies that are solving problems via incredibly innovative ideas. Through Spark Invest, intelligent retail investors can invest in companies that may someday yield higher returns than traditional platforms are able to offer. And the platform allows investors to choose the level of risk that they are comfortable with.
As it currently stands, the only way of making metal parts in small and medium volumes is through the use of CNC machines, which is a fast and accurate yet wasteful method. In fact, 90-95 percent of the metal blocks purchased for this purpose are ultimately thrown out.
3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing), on the other hand, allows for a less wasteful process and extremely geometrically flexible products, but cannot produce the necessary surface finishes. Until now, there's been no way to use the most beneficial aspects of each process by combining them into one system. This is where Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies comes in, a company that has introduced the first-ever commercial system that integrates the best of both worlds.
As the CEO of Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies, Dr. Jason Jones offers a detailed explanation as to how exactly their machine works, gives examples of several interesting use cases and argues that the system itself represents the ability to overcome the biggest hurdle that faces 3D printing today. "Additive [manufacturing] has been developed in isolation from mainstream manufacturing...by combining it with CNC machines, there's automatic uptake into mainstream manufacturing, which is exciting," says Dr. Jones.
Press play to hear the full conversation, and visit hybridmanutech.com to learn more.
Right now in today's vast agricultural fields, teams of semi-autonomous, low-cost, and intelligent robots are scanning fields of corn and providing measurements that will allow breeders to better characterize the environment and breed better seeds. The next task will be for these robots to autonomously collect more complex information that will allow for earlier detection of plant diseases and nutritional deficiencies.
Drones are commonly used for the collection of data in large-scale farming today, but the robots that are being designed in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Illinois can detect what's unobservable by drones by harnessing a higher level of resolution that can only be achieved from working under the canopy. What's the third task planned for these robots? Acts of manipulation, such as weeding and pruning, which will be unprecedented.
As an assistant professor working on this project, Girish Chowdhary discusses how the deployment and development of these robots will cause us to rethink the way we do agriculture and allow for the globe to be fed in a sustainable way from small gardens with multiple plants. However, he also discusses some of the biggest challenges, which involve the varying and unpredictable nature of outdoor environments. Will robots be able to learn to operate intelligently enough to mitigate uncertainty and unforeseen changes?
Tune in for the full discussion, reach out to Girish via email at girishc@illinois.edu, and visit daslab.illinois.edu for more information.
Rachel Burke, the ketogenic enthusiast and founder of Aussie Keto Queen (aussieketoqueen.com), discusses the ketogenic diet and lifestyle. Burke's journey to better health was a long one, as she spent many of her earlier years battling weight, feeling uncomfortable with her body, and being unhappy about it all. From the tender age of just 10 years old, she began weighing herself and struggling with her weight issue. She spent a significant amount of time, unfortunately, experimenting with this diet plan and that diet plan, magic diet shakes and pills that really weren't so magical, along with massive amounts of exercise, but nothing seemed to work for the long haul. It was all of these years of frustration that finally brought her to nutritional ketosis—which was a game changer. After she made the decision and stuck with it, keto transformed her life. Burke describes how she reached her goal weight even sooner than she expected, and how she has more energy than ever before. In addition, when checking with her doctors through the process she found that the ketogenic lifestyle was not only helping her to lose weight but that her overall health markers were improving too. Burke is living proof that you are what you eat.
Burke recounts how she was so satisfied with her results that she wanted to share all that she had learned, through her exhaustive research, with everyone. She began posting her favorite recipes and helpful tips online, which led to the site she currently inhabits, aussieketoqueen.com, which is full of helpful information for those who want to find their own success. With tens of thousands of visitors to her site on a regular basis, it's clear that there is a keen interest in the ketogenic diet and lifestyle. She discusses the importance of mindset. As Burke states, changing one's mindset is perhaps the most important step, and it is not something that happens for everyone immediately. For some, it takes time, a gradual change, but committing to the nutritional life change pays off in the end for those who are ready to make a difference in their diet and health.
Burke talks about how, in Australia, that doctors and nutritionists are now beginning to advise patients and clients about the possible benefits of switching to a ketogenic diet. She discusses the options people have when eating out and trying to stay focused on their ketogenic diet. And she expects that perceptions will continue to change as ketogenic options become more widely offered everywhere.
The nutrition and health advocate states that it is really all about finding what works for you as an individual considering your own body, lifestyle, work, and timetable, etc. Burke provides an overview of her site's recipes, the types of foods she prefers, and also what she recommends. From the basic meat and veggie options to sweeter options, her website offers something for every keto-conscious eater. And while she does not recommend many sweets, she includes some sweets recipes as the keto community appreciates a full range of food options. However, as Burke states, when people really take on the keto nutrition lifestyle and are eating ketogenic regularly, they often find their taste buds change a bit and begin to taste the natural sweetness in foods more obviously. Some have found that this effect is so pronounced that they no longer crave traditional sweets.
Burke discusses her future plans for ketogenic consulting and what she is excited about. She states that the ketogenic lifestyle's impact on her friends and family has been so profound that she is determined to bring all that she has learned to a wider audience, and help everyone reach their personal goals for health and wellness.
An estimated 10 percent of all people have some level of kidney disease--a disease that's most commonly associated with diabetes and high blood pressure. The numbers are only growing, but much of the research has been limited in the sense that the progression of kidney diseases in humans is difficult to track.
For example, polycystic kidney disease--a very common one that's genetic in nature and affects millions of people--is usually diagnosed in the later stages, only once the changes can be visualized via ultrasonographic imaging. At that point, many people are faced with just two options: dialysis, or a kidney transplant. But the team at the University of Washington's Freedman Lab are doing something that's never been done before: using pluripotent stem cells to grow kidney organoids which have many of the same properties and characteristics as human kidneys in order to create the genetic mutations that are seen in this disease and to study the origination and progression of it.
The creation of organoids aren't just limited to kidneys though; given how powerful pluripotent stem cells are, they can be developed into any organ in the body. Just imagine being able to conduct experiments on miniature brain and liver organoids, for example. In the long run, this technology could result in the creation of more complex structures with the capability of replacing functional human organs altogether.
Benjamin Freedman is the head of the Freedman Lab and offers an in-depth discussion on the observations his team has made so far, and hypotheses as to what exactly is at play in the development and progression of common kidney diseases.
Tune in for a compelling conversation and visit freedmanlab.com to learn more.
Just a few years ago, Angela M. Poff noticed that a lot of leading scientists and clinicians were studying ketosis and metabolic therapies for different diseases, but weren't getting together to share their ideas and have productive conversations; this all changed when she decided to found the Metabolic Health Summit in 2015, which now serves as a hub for those who want to work together to develop ideas and move new information in the field to the next level.
The goal of the 2019 Metabolic Health Summit is to foster a global conversation about the ketogenic diet and how to implement it in the real world and will feature several personal stories from those whose lives have been affected by the adoption of the keto lifestyle. The conference is not just for scientists this year; it's for everyone. The best scientists and clinicians will lead sessions dedicated to different uses of the ketogenic diet, including for Alzheimer's, mental health, obesity, migraines, cancer, and longevity.
Poff also works as a research scientist at the University of South Florida, where she focuses primarily on the effects of metabolic therapies on cancer. In particular, she studies how the ketogenic diet affects cancer models, the role of exogenous ketones in the development of cancer, and the role of metabolic targeted agents, such as dichloroacetate and metformin. Poff discusses a variety of topics, including how and why hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be successful in treating tumors and the biggest roadblock to continued research in the field.
If you or a loved one is dealing with cancer, Poff suggests visiting clinicaltrials.gov and working closely with your oncologist.
Visit www.metabolichealthsummit.com for more information about the upcoming Metabolic Health Summit conference.
Stemina Biomarker Discovery was founded about 11 years ago by Elizabeth Donley, who aimed to use the study of metabolism (metabolomics) to understand how the underlying biological and biochemical reactions differ between various disorders. Donley works primarily within the neurological disorders division for NeuroPoint DX and is focused on applying metabolomics for the detection of autism spectrum disorders. The most recent paper on the subject looked at amino acid dysregulation in autism spectrum disorders and showed a strong association between low levels of branched amino acids and concurrently high levels of three other amino acids. The association accurately identified 17 percent of kids with autism and suggests that the outcome for those affected by autism spectrum disorders could be improved with a high protein diet.
The metabolic markers are identified by subjecting a sample of blood to mass spectrometry, which will show whether or not a child is positive for any of the 13 metabotypes that have been identified to date and that describe 30 percent of kids who fall on the autism spectrum. As it currently stands, the average age at which a child will be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder is 24 months based on behavioral characteristics, but many children do not receive diagnoses until they are much older, which means that time that could otherwise be spent using valuable behavioral therapies is being lost; it is Donley's goal to change this.
The team at NeuroPoint DX plans to launch its first panel before the end of the year and has already received lab certification to accept blood samples from children in 45 states. They're currently raising money to support further testing and validate the second panel, looking for partners for distribution, and exploring options in foreign markets.
Tune in for the full discussion and send your questions to info@neuripouintdx.com.
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