Good Life Project - Future of Medicine: Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells & Peptides [Ep. 3]

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Dr. Adeel Khan reveals why many current stem cell therapies may be based on outdated science, and introduces a revolutionary discovery from Japan that could transform medicine: Muse cells.From cutting-edge peptide therapies to gene treatments that could reverse aging, this episode explores how regenerative medicine is making science fiction real, and why these breakthrough treatments might soon be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy.You can find Adeel at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode, don't miss a single conversation in our Future of Medicine series, airing every Monday through December. Follow Good Life Project wherever you listen to podcasts to catch them all.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount CodesWatch Jonathan's new TEDxBoulder Talk on YouTube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zUAM-euiVI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, before we dive in, a quick note, the video from my new TEDx Boulder Talk just went live on YouTube. It's this love letter to making things with your hands in a world that's being eaten by screens, machines, and AI. And I share this story that I've never told publicly before. It'd mean the world to me if you'd go and check it out. You can watch it now on YouTube, just open up YouTube and search for Jonathan Fields and TEDx Boulder. Or just click the link in the show notes. Hey there, every Monday in November and December, we'll be featured sharing our Future of Medicine series, where we'll be spotlighting groundbreaking researchers, cutting-edge treatments, and diagnostic innovations for everything from heart disease, cancer,

brain health, metabolic dysfunction, aging and pain, and also sharing breakthroughs in areas like regenerative medicine, medical technology, AI, and beyond. It's a brave new world in medicine with so many new innovations here now and so much coming in the next five to 10 years. And we're going to introduce you to the people, players, and world-changing discoveries that are changing the face of medicine today and beyond in this powerful two-month future of medicine series. So be sure to tune in every Monday through the end of the year and follow Good Life Project to be sure you don't miss an episode. And today we're bringing you a fascinating exploration of how our bodies might already hold the key to healing themselves

from everything from joint and physical pain to neurodegenerative disease. What if modern medicine was just beginning to unlock this code that could transform how we think about healing, aging, and recovery. The landscape of medicine is really rapidly shifting with new discovery showing us how to tap into our body's innate regenerative abilities, from cutting-edge stem cell therapies to gene treatments and peptides, which have really been all the buzz lately. We're witnessing this remarkable fusion of ancient wisdom and modern science, but there's also a ton of questions, myths, and misinformation. My guest today is Dr. Adil Khan, a board-certified physician who's pioneering innovative approaches in regenerative medicine and leading research in the

field. He's earned the trust of world-class athletes and celebrities, even members of royal families through his work at Eterna Health and collaborations with scientists across the globe. Dr. Khan is reshaping our understanding of what's possible in healing and recovery. In this conversation, we explore why certain popular stem cell treatments might not be as effective as you've heard or even effective at all and may even cause harm and why a lesser known type of stem cell could transform medicine as we know it. We also unpack how these treatments and others might become more accessible in the coming years and the surprising role artificial intelligence could play in accelerating these breakthroughs. So excited to

share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. Let's start out with a really big question, because you decided to enter a field of medicine that has been emerging, and it feels like it has been a bit of a response to the way that things have been done for a long-time regenerative medicine. What is regenerative medicine? To me, it's basically rebooting the body's original design. We're just giving you the right signals, the right. the right tools so your body can heal itself. This doesn't necessarily have to be limited to

advanced therapies like peptides or stem cells, which will go into, but even something like shockwave, which is just these like little signals and that help to reset your body's own healing pathways and kind of stimulate regeneration. So they can be non-invasive too. And even, I mean, even if you think at a very simple level, fasting, if you fast for a certain amount of time, that triggers autophagy, which is cellular repair. So our body can clearly heal itself, as we know. That's very well established. And now we're just starting to really unlock what tools do we need to give your body

so we can actually regenerate and repair tissue as opposed to doing drugs or surgery for it, which is why I believe regenerative medicine is the future of medicine. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny, right? Because the way you describe it, it's both the future, but it's also the ancient past simultaneously. Yes, exactly. Yeah, in Ayurvedic medicine, the use of fasting, all the time, right? Yeah. Where does regenerative medicine come from? Because I feel like it's really the last decade or so where you've seen this just kind of becoming a conversation in the broader

conversation around medicine. Whereas, I want to say a generation ago, there were elements of what would have been now, I guess, bundled under regenerative medicine that were being practiced. But it's really emerged in a powerful way. I feel like in the last decade or so, why and why now? Why now is very important because stem cells and regenerative medicine, medicine has been around for decades. And there was always this kind of quest for immortality and people trying to look into healing their own bodies and sustaining health for long periods of time. But the reason why it took off in the last, especially last decade, is because the science has evolved in terms of understanding single cell populations. So what that means,

there's something called single cell RNA sequencing, which is basically looking at individual cell populations and their gene expression profiles. And there's a field called spatial transcriptomics, which is essentially mapping out how these cells behave. And before, we didn't really understand that, for example, if you take a cartilage cell in your knee, it turns out there's actually like three or four different type of cartilage cells. They're not just one type of cartilage cell, which is what we thought before. So this is called a condorcite, and so there's different type of subpopulations. And so this has allowed us to really look at the body differently as a system of cells, which we can manipulate or reprogram or change.

So that's why regina medicine is becoming such a hot field now, because the science of understanding cellular biology has evolved so much. So when we talk about regenerative medicine, you just use the example of something that's fairly mechanical. And I think, so if you injure a shoulder, a knee, a hip, if there's wear and tear in a joint, this is one area where regenerative medicine can really step in and do some interesting things,

whereas a lot of times it used to be, like, let's give a steroid injection, let's do some PT, and then if that doesn't work, it's time for surgery. Yeah. And regenerative medicine is kind of saying, like, not so fast. Yeah, exactly. And that's how I started out as a sports medicine doctor. It was basically that was the paradigm. And unfortunately, for the most of the world, that still is the paradigm.

So it's a shift. It's happening rapidly, I think, now because the results are very good, and you're able to get consistency in kind of what you're using as well. So let's talk about some of the specific modalities. what they are, how they've been evolving, and where they apply. And I think the big, it's certainly the hot button conversation around regenerative medicine, it seems to be around the idea of stem cells. There is a lot of fact, there's a lot of fiction. There are these ethical questions, political questions. When we talk about stem cells, just broadly, what are we actually talking about?

Yeah, so a bit of a history lesson. But we have to kind of go back into 1992, Dr. Arnold Kaplan, who was the one who coined the term mesenchymal stem cells because these are the cells that are found from umbilical core tissue or from fat or bone marrow so they're naturally in our body and at the time it was thought that these cells could turn into anything and they're going to you know like cure everyone of disease because stem cells have the ability to turn into different cells and they have the ability to repair damaged tissue

but the problem was the research just didn't pan out because when you put these stem cells in the body, most of them would die. And a lot of them, if you do them infusions of them like IVs, most of them get trapped in the lungs, like 99%. So then you just wouldn't get great results. And then in 2006, there was Professor Yamanaka who discovered something called induced pluripotent stem cells, which are basically stem cells. Imagine if you just reprogram, you take one of your cells and you reprogram them and make them back into an embryonic-like state so they can turn into anything. But then the risk with those cells was unfortunately they can also turn to cancer or tumors and have uncontrolled growth. Again, there was, when the IPSEs were discovered, they were kind of like, oh,

they're going to cure everything. We're going to fix all disease. And it didn't pan out because the risk of them. Now, there are some trials happening with IPSEs, but I think there's still a long way to go before we can use them safely. And then in 2010 was when Professor Mari DeZawa discovered something called Muse cells, M-U-S-E. And that was a big breakthrough as well, because she discovered these stem cells which basically can turn into any cell in your body, but they're non-cancerous or non-tumorogenic. Now you have a stem cell that has best of both worlds. It kind of has a safety profile of mesenchymal stem cells because mucells are just what's called

a subpopulation of mesenchymal stem cells. So they're just part of that naturally occurring group, but they're kind of like the elite soldiers, as I like to say, or the Tesla of stem cells. So it's basically the best of the best stem cell in that population. that we're isolating, and that was a technology that Professor Dezawa discovered by accident, as many discoveries are in medicine. And essentially, now we have these stem cells that are naturally occurring, not gene modified, so there's less risk, and we can isolate them, and then we can use them for different injuries, like you were saying, but also for longevity

and all sorts of things. But the reason, I think, new cells are going to be definitely one of the future kind of ground, kind of the future of a lot of areas of medicine is because of their high safety profile and their ability to actually survive in the body because they're stress enduring and their ability to turn into new tissue. So now you have a real, what's called pluripotent, non-tumorogenic stem cell. So that's basically what we want. We want a cell that can turn into anything and repair things and it's not going to give you the risk of cancer. So that's a mu-cell. So pluripotent meaning it can differentiate into other cells and non-cancergenic, meaning like it's not going to actually differentiate into cancer in your body.

Yes. Because it sounds like there's like a kill switch here. It's mother nature, right? And I not to, you know, I know sometimes in nature you have things that are harmful, but like mother nature, in terms of our biology, at least, I think in terms of our cell biology, our system has this ability to heal itself and the muce cells are part of that system. So they're naturally occurring in our bodies. They're circulating right now in your bloodstream.

We just didn't know they existed until 15 years ago, right? But they've been there since the beginning of humanity. So now we can use these powerful cells to help with healing. So do these cells exist in every person of every age? Is it more when you're younger? Does it change as we age? Yeah. So there's something called stem cell exhaustion, which is one of the hallmarks of aging.

So as you get older, the ability for your stem cells to do their job decreases significantly. And also the number of stem cells that you have decreases significantly. And a lot of this has to do with the bone marrow. the bone marrow microenvironment is where stem cells are made and that's basically what's called the hematopoedic stem cell and they can differentiate and turn into basically any cell in your body and so over time that bone marrow microenvironment ages and as that ages then the stem cells that are being made aren't as effective as they used to be and then the number of them that are being made also decreases so that's one of the reasons we age so that's part of the reason

also why there was such a hot area of interest in stem cells because it was kind of like, oh, if we can harness these natural cells in our body that can heal and regenerate, maybe we can cure age-related diseases. And that's kind of, I think that's where the paradigm is, shift is happening now. Here's my curiosity around that. You know, when you hear about regenerative medicine, especially in the U.S., I think a lot of people are talking about stem cell, stem cell injections, stem cell infusion, for all sorts of different things.

And we'll talk a little bit about some of the different things, right? But one of the things that I've heard, and I've known other people experience, is that the stem cells that are involved in a particular treatment, they get harvested from your body. Oftentimes, you know, like there is a procedure where they go in. And I think those were the mesenchymal stem cells that you were talking about earlier, where they take them from, you know, like a piece of your hip or somewhere like this. They sort of extract them. They're a whole process. And then they put them back into your body, either systemically or in a particular area. And I guess With what you're describing now, I'm wondering, like, if you're a 50-year-old adult with joint degeneration and you're trying to do a stem cell procedure to see if you can avoid surgery and actually have some regenerative or whatever the issue is, and the procedure that's being done is to actually withdraw your stem cells in some way to harvest them from your body and re-inject them, is that going to be effective? It can be effective, but the consistency of results is not there.

So there's always going to be anecdotal reports of people getting better with these procedures, but the most important thing for people to understand is that you're not getting a true stem cell when you're getting that procedure done. We just define what a true stem cell is, right? It's a pluripotent stem cell, which can differentiate into different cells. When you take that stem cell from your bone marrow, that's not a pluripotent stem cell. That's what's called a multipotent, meaning it can only, it can really only turn into muscle, tendon, and cartilage and fat. It doesn't have the ability to actually regenerate and repair tissue throughout your body systemically. It may still have an effect for some cartilage injuries, but the problem is most of those stem cells also

don't survive. And that's also something that's been studied. So the name, unfortunately, needs to be changed. And the guy who wrote the paper on mesenchymal stem cells wrote a paper in 2017 saying, we need to rename this immediately to medicinal signaling cells. Because, meaning they're just signaling molecules that reduce inflammation and trigger your body's own regenerative cells to help with the healing process, but there are not true stem cells of themselves. So that was a paper that unfortunately didn't get as much attention as it should, and a lot of doctors just don't realize when they're injecting these stem cells. They're not really stem cells. So they're either medicinal signaling cells is more appropriate or the other word is a committed progenitor cell, which is a more

technical term for saying they've already committed to a cell lineage and they're not able to differentiate into whatever they want. So then if somebody goes in for a procedure, and this is sort of the basis of it. I mean, I guess part of my curiosity here is also, even if these are injected, whatever's harvested, if you're a human being in the later seasons of life, whatever level of that efficacy that would have had, even if you had this procedure in your 20s, will it be less if you had this procedure like with each passing decade? Yeah, there's data on that actually showing that 20 to 40 seems the cells are still somewhat. Their gene expression profile is still, let's say, somewhat good.

But then after age 40, it just falls precipitously. So meaning that the stem cells in your own body start becoming pro-inflammatory. And after age 50, or especially after age 60, they can even become pro-cancerous. So you really don't want to be taking your old stem cells and then culture expanding them too, which is where they grow them. And that puts more DNA stress on the cells and then infusing them back in. You may actually be doing harm to the patient, and they don't know that. And that's what a lot of these clinics are still doing, unfortunately.

That's where education is so important to understand the difference between these mesenchymal stem cells and other pluripotent stem cells. Yeah. So if the research on these other pluripotent stem cells, let's just use mucell as sort of like the main example here, right, has been around for 15-ish years now, why is the old way still happening? That's a big box to unpack. So the long story short is there was scientific suppression of her work. And this was primarily because Professor Yamanaka discovered his IPSE and he saw her cell discovery as a competitor and went out of his way to make sure that her work wasn't as well known as his. And so that was one reason. So the scientific community just never found out about the Mucels, despite their amazing discovery and amazing benefits.

And then number two is just medicine is always slow to change. And even if there is something new and groundbreaking, people are always going to be skeptical. And I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time, as a doctor, you should try to stay up to date on the latest science. And especially if you're offering regenerative medicine, because that's an evolving science that's changing rapidly. So that's where I always tell patients or clients who are looking to get stem cell procedures done, make sure the doctor that you choose or the group that you work with is, is actively involved in research, because if they're not, they're just not going to know what's going on and how this field is so rapidly changing

and what's the latest science on this field. No, that makes a lot of sense. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So on the muse cell side, Ben, or on the pluripotent stem cell side, where do those come from? So you can get them from your bone marrow as well, right? But again, do you really want your muse cells

that are 50 years old? And even though their muce cells, they still have that aging process in them that has gone through these hallmarks of aging. So a cell becomes more dysfunctional at which each replicative cycle. It makes sense to use the freshest source, which in this case would be umbilical cord tissue. After C-section bursts, we can collect the muce cells from there and we can isolate and standardize the cell population to be 95% or 99% muice cells. So the consistency of the cell population is important because then it becomes more like a drug where it's reproducible versus when you're using the other process of taking your bone marrow or my bone marrow, we're going to get a completely different profile of stem cells and of a magnitude of effect. So there's no standardization. And this way you have a standardized off-the-shell product.

So it makes a lot more sense to use it and lead to more consistent results. But the other thing to understand, because a lot of people, obviously, when they hear, oh, you're getting it from a donor, Shouldn't I be scared of the DNA or wasn't your chance of rejection? This is where mucells become really fascinating. So they actually have something called HL-A-G antigen. It's a specific type of antigen that they express that protects them from your immune system attacking them. And this is, funny enough, this is the same H-L-A-G antigen that babies express in their cells to prevent the mom's cells from attacking the baby. So it's a protective mechanism for cells to know that this is a good cell for your body.

don't attack it. So mus cells are considered immune or privilege. So there's no chance of rejection or your body trying to amount to significant immune response to it, as has been shown in clinical trials. And also with, you know, the hundreds of patients we've treated, we never had any issues in that sense. And whereas mesenchymal stem cells, 10 to 15%, if you get umbilical core stem cells that are not muce cells and are just like mesenchymal stem cells, 10 to 15% will have an immune reaction to it and form what are called auto-antibodies. So they are not immunoprivilege, but they're what's called immunovasive. They can evade your immune system for a period of time and still do some potentially beneficial things. But eventually they will be cleared up by your immune

system. They're not engrafting or turning into new tissue like the muse cells are. Right. Could they also potentially create an autoimmune response in your body where they actually cause harm? Yes. That is very possible and has been reported before. And I've unfortunately seen some people have immune reactions that lasted for several months, and with the old stem cells. But with the mute cells, you just don't see that. Yeah. Ethical issues here. So if it's coming from umbilical tissue. Yeah, there's no harm in embryos. There's no aborted fetuses. They're being donated. So it's not like you're incentivizing people to have babies. And just so people understand as well, 90% of the samples that are manufactured gets are thrown out because they don't have enough new cells or they're not enough

high enough quality standards. So there's a lot of quality control that goes into manufacturing and creating these cells. Is this then publicly available in the United States, or are there still? Yeah, so Florida just passed a new law allowing for allogenaic cells. Okay. You have to be careful because I don't think you necessarily want to use them as a chymostem cells because of some of the risks we talked about, but muce cells will be available in Florida as of December.

We're actually opening a clinic there, so that's where we'll be offering them. And then there's obviously going to be other, I'm not going to be the only one, And I'm sure new cells are going to spread like wildfire once people become educated about them. And I know there's lots of doctors already switching. I was just the first doctor to really raise awareness about them and talk about them outside of Japan. And so I'm proud to be the one to help bring new cells to the world because I think they can help millions of people. And I think that's the transitioning is starting to happen now. The question that folks should think about if they're dealing with an issue and they're considering regenerative medicine as an option,

and they're considering stem cells as part of that, if they're going to a practitioner, they want to know, A, are you involved, actively involved in research? And B, tell me more about the stem cells we're talking about. Are you actually using muce cells? Are they actually pluripotent? Pluripotent. Now, there are other pluripotent stem cells that, such as IPSCs, right, induce, but there's a risk of tumors. And there's also embryonic stem cells and fetal stem cells, which are pluripotent, but they also have risk of tumors and cancer. So there's tradeoff, right? And there are clinics offering that stuff? I mean, is there 100% chance you're going to get a tumor if you do those? No. But there is a theoretical risk.

and there are case reports published of people developing tumors after those procedures. So obviously, if you can do something that's safer, why not do that, right? As far as I know, there's no other non-cancerist or non-tumor-driving pluripotin stem cell that's available on the market besides the mucell at the moment. I mean, this is so fascinating. And it also really speaks to the fact that we, as patients slash consumers, we've got to be really well informed. Like, this field is evolving so quickly, and it sounds like the educational burden is probably pretty high for practitioners. So we've got to take on some of that educational burden ourselves

and really get informed and ask a lot of questions because one thing, which on the surface seems like every other thing, actually, when you start to drill down, it can be profoundly different in both the treatment and the effect and the risk. No, exactly. And that's why I'm doing all this stuff is because I want to educate the public and educate other doctors. And at the end of the day, most doctors want to do the right thing, but they just don't, a lot of of them don't have access to their information or learn about this. And obviously this isn't taught. I mean, there's absolutely zero teaching on regina medicine and medical school. So it's not like something you'll learn in med school. And then the industry sponsored ongoing medical education

is usually about drugs or the latest surgical techniques, which is fine. But then you're just not going to learn about this stuff. And then when, if you're a regular consumer and you ask your orthopedic surgeon about stem cells, they're just going to say, oh, there's no science. And they're quoting science from 10 years ago, which was true at that time. But now the science has evolved. And if you're not an expert in this field, or if you don't keep up to date on regenerative medicine, how would you know? Yeah. And that makes so sense. Talk to me about some of the things that these are, that you've seen to be incredibly effective at treating. What sort of like shows up on a regular basis where this, this is really powerful?

Yeah. I mean, chronic pain is definitely where this has, definitely shines the most. So degenerative osteoarthritis, cartilage issues, tendon issues, musculoskeletal, spine issues. We can help with that very consistently, and we have internal data where we've been keeping track of our results, and it seems about 90% success rate, which is really high for chronic issues. Usually chronic issues, if you get 50% success rate, that's considered good. So if we can get 90%, that's incredibly promising. And the other conditions where we're helping, honestly, is almost any chronic disease.

that doesn't fit into, like, let's say, the nice box of traditional medicine. So, like, long COVID, fibromyalgia, these conditions where they just have these chronic diseases, and there's not really a great pill solution for them. And plus, most people don't just want pills anymore. A lot more people are looking to fix their body. So even autoimmune conditions, we've helped people with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus get into remission, and the reason is because these muce cells can reset your immune system.

They reprogram it and retrain it to function better. So it's just, it's an evolving science, but the results are very promising to shift our understanding of immune dysregulation from being one of just wanting to suppress the immune system with prednisone or steroids or biologics to one of rebalancing the immune system. So the immune system is infinitely complicated, but this is a high-level macro intervention that's very simple with just an infusion, an IV drip that can reset your immune system and get people better. So, I mean, it sounds like there are different ways to do this type of treatment also, one, as you just described, an IV drip, like an infusion. So that's systemic, right? Like you basically, this is going into your body. When you do it on a systemic basis, how, maybe this is a really silly question, but how does your body know where these cells should go? I know. No, it's a great question because this was actually one of the other ground baking things about or features about mucells, which is they have a homing mechanism. So it's a great question. sounds like science fiction because you probably in it and when i first heard it it sounded like how's this even possible but the japanese scientist has published this and this is out there and again clinical trials as well in humans which i i'll explain in a second but basically the

mucells they're kind of like the emergency paramedics they can sense a signal that there's tissue damage that tissue damage is called sphign monophosphate s1p and it's a signal that damaged tissue sends especially in flame tissue to the mucells to know where to go. So this is, again, this sounds crazy, but they can go from your heart and from your lungs and find out where the area, the problem areas are and repair those tissue. Now, direct injections, of course, are going to work better because when you do an infusion, they're going to spread out all over, but for certain organ conditions, injecting into the organs directly obviously has more risk with them. So doing an IV is a simple way to introduce them to

your body. And this was shown in two very interesting clinical trials in Japan. One was for heart attacks and one was for stroke. And both which conditions you don't really, there's no regenerative options available as of yet. And this was shown to be effective for both those conditions. And they didn't inject the mucells into the brain. It's not like the muce cells were injected directly into the brain or the heart. They were just done systemically in an IV and they found their way to the brain and heart and then were able to repair the damage there. I mean, that's amazing. So then Would this also be an effective treatment for neurodegenerative conditions? Yes, it can be.

She just published a paper this year showing how it can help with Alzheimer's. And she just published a paper this year showing how it could help with Alzheimer's dementia because it can help to reverse the plaques and the underlying neuroinflammation, which is the big driver of these diseases. So we don't know the exact dosing yet, so the dosing still has to be figured out. But for my, you know, just clinical experience, people often need multiple treatments, but it's very promising. And you do what's called intranasal inject. So you can do, you administer intranasal from the olfactory bulb, and that way goes directly kind of to the brain.

And then you can combine that with an IV. And I think that's going to be a very promising avenue for this condition. So like next five years or so, there'd probably be a lot of trial with what is the most effective dose and also what's the most effective sort of mechanism to actually get it to where it'll be most high. helpful. Exactly. I mean, that's fascinating. What about things like also like MS or Parkinson's? Yeah, an MS is an autoimmune condition. So I just had a follow up with MS patient last week who said, her neurologist told her you don't have MS anymore. And she was, they were confused. So I mean, obviously it's anecdotal, but the point is it can help people with these conditions. And Parkinson's is similar to Alzheimer's and that it's going to be, you know, intranasal and multiple treatments. But I think

that's, you know, one of the options for people who have these conditions. And we also know that mucells can differentiate into dopamine-producing neurons, for example, which is what becomes deficient in Parkinson. So there's research published on that. And the other thing I think, I guess, to also just to point out for people is with these conditions, you still want to take a system's biology approach. So meaning you want to look at the body as a whole system. You don't want to just say, okay, we're only going to treat the brain. Because we know with all these neurodegenerative conditions. They're linked to pesticides. They're linked to microplastics. Toxic loads and stuff. Exactly. And gut dyspiosis and gut issues. And so you still have to take assistance by all the

approach to really get the best results, which is what we do for these people. So it's not just come in and do this one thing. Yes, maybe this is a part of a treatment plan, but let's zoom the lens out, take a holistic look. Look at your lifestyle, your toxic loads, your nutrition, like all these your stress levels, all these different things and create more of a. So this is like one big tool, but in broader look at what's really going on. Yeah, exactly. This is a tool in the toolbox, but you need for chronic diseases, you need a lot of tools. It's not as simple as just throw stem cells at it, because that's not going to work. Right. I mean, in the next five years or so, if you focus on stem cells, what do you see that's like coming down the pike that's, you know, it's not quite

here yet. It's probably a couple years off that you're really excited about. I mean, the partial epigenetic reprogramming, epigenetic drift, basically to explain what that means, is, you know, it's one of the kind of hallmarks of aging, which is over time, then instructions that tell your genes what to do become blurred and damage. If you can unblur these instructions, then you can make the cells work better. That's basically epigenetic reprogramming, which is making an old cell young again. The Yamanaka stem cell we were talking about was an example of that. That's full epigenetic reprogramming, but as we talked about, the problem with that, is to take it back all the way and then it has some risks with it. So it's great for studying, and

research models, but it's not great for clinical application. So what I see is where eventually we'll be able to have technology in the next five years, where you can partially reprogram a cell and make it younger, but maybe not all the way back into embryonic, but into like something, like maybe 10, 20, 30 years younger or something like that, you know? So I think that's going to be a really fascinating area. And there's so much investment going into that space. I always bring up retro sciences by Sam Altman and Altos Lab by Jeff Bezos. So there's huge amounts of money going into reprogramming. So, I mean, it's only a matter of time, I think, where they have a breakthrough. It's like you'll have more granular control over like how far back.

Yes, exactly. As opposed to right now where it's just like an on and off switch. Right, which is like very science fiction. It's like a time machine, basically. Yeah, I know. It's that interesting world we're heading into. Yeah, I mean, really is wild. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I want to switch gears a little bit. This other thing that I keep hearing more and more about in the world of regenerative medicine are peptides. Now, peptides again, like the old is new again. But when we talk about peptides in the domain

of regenerative medicine, give me an overview. Like, what are we really talking about? And why is this becoming a topic of conversation? Peptides, just to give people, again, a history lesson, because it's important, is insulin was the first peptide synthesized over 100 years ago. And insulin is just basically, it's a chain of amino acids, which means it's just like a baby, protein and it sends a signal to your body to achieve a very specific task. So insulin sends a signal lowers blood sugar. Ozampic, which a lot of people have heard of, sends a signal to keep you fuller so you don't eat as much and you can lose weight. But now we have designer peptides for gut health, for brain health, for mitochondria. And the interesting thing about peptides,

which I find really fascinating just as a doctor, is that there isn't much clinical trials or clinical evidence like there's very little but it's being used by almost everyone now and it's just like the real world evidence is so robust and strong because it works for so many people that so many people are just willing to try it and i think that just shows you that the model of evidence-based medicine of just having you know these control trials isn't the only way for to figure out if something works or not so that's why people are i think becoming highly interested in this because they've probably know someone who's been on peptides because it's just becoming so commonplace now. And obviously the prescription drugs, like Ozambic and Manjaro, have clinical trials and have

more research behind them, but there's so many, there's thousands of peptides. And so there's peptides that don't have that much research behind them, but many people are still using and finding great results with. So one of my favorite peptides, just to give people a real example, is a mitochondrial peptide called SS31, which helps to stabilize cardiolipin, which is kind of an enzyme that's involved in the electron transport chain. So essentially your body when you eat, you have to convert food into energy. And that transport chain that does that is a quantum thing, actually. It's electrons moving and eventually making ATP, which is energy.

And over time, that process doesn't work as well. And this can just help to stabilize and make that process work a bit better, which ultimately can help slow down aging and also help with energy. And it's something you can cycle on and off. And it's a very simple thing. It's an injection, just like insulin is or ismpic. But it's something that more and more people are getting into and becoming comfortable, I guess, doing injections. The other two that I've heard repeated a number of times.

I'm curious what your take is on this. One, it's called BPC 157, and then TN500, and I guess they're different versions of that. Because these tend to be sort of like the big things that I see over and over and over. Yeah, the vulvarine peptide and the, you know, the stack has become really popular. Tell me a little bit more about why we're seeing those in particular. Yeah, BPC 157 is a body protection complex. So basically it's a peptide your body naturally makes, and it can help with healing and regeneration. It signals.

It's not like a stem cell, right? It's not the raw building blocks to build new tissue, but it's the signal to your body to say, hey, there's a problem here. Let's start fixing it. So it's triggering your own endogenous repair mechanisms to start healing. And it can help with gut health as well. That's been one of the things that's been shown in animal models to help with gut lining and gut inflammation and restoring the kind of leaky gut, let's say, epithelial lining.

And then TB-500 or Dimison Beta-4 is the other word for TB-4, TB-500, that's another anti-inflammatory regenerative peptide. It doesn't work on the gut as much, but it works more on soft tissue healing and regeneration. So if you have surgery or if you get a sprain or if you have just a wound around and you want to heal faster, you just take these two peptides and time and time again, people heal faster. But again, there isn't controlled clinical data out there, but there's just so much anecdotal evidence that becomes hard to argue with it. And you don't see many sideware.

It's very rare to see any adverse effects. They're very safe. And again, they're bio-adentical to what your body makes. So it's not synthetic. And I think there's a lot of reason to see these peptides as a future of kind of everyone's first aid kit, you know, and having them as like a source of just where everyone has access to them. Because now the peptides are also becoming more convenient. And for example, there's a company I work with called Peptual, which has peptide patches. So we have like a BPC 157 patch.

So you don't have to inject yourself. You just wear the patch. And we have, you know, there's research obviously showing that the efficacy of the patch is very similar to the efficacy of injections. Oh, wow. So, yeah, because I think the injection is a really big barrier for a lot of people. But if it exists as a patch where it's just, you know, however long the duration is, then you swap on a different one. Exactly. Why?

You said there's a very little. clinical data or human trials. This is so interesting if so many practitioners are using it. And because a lot of these are publicly available, even though there are all sorts of warnings when you see them, this is not for personal use for experimental application. Why isn't there more research on this? Because you can't patent and make it into a pharmaceutical drug. So there's not that billions of dollars that you need to get through the regulatory pathway, which typically costs in America now, it's like $100 million to get through face-free trials and post-market and all that stuff. So the incentive isn't there for someone to spend that type of money because they can't

make the money back. An incentive structure isn't a line for these therapies to become mainstream even though there's so much promising anecdotal evidence. What about, as you mentioned, Ozambic or the GOP ones, a lot of people who don't probably realize this is a version of a peptide. Why is it that you can patent something like that? Because they basically add like a vitamin, let's just say they take semaglutide, which is the peptide of Zempic. They take that and then they basically just, they can create synthetic forms too. There are synthetic peptides. So I believe semaglutide is a synthetic one.

So then they can patent that. But then there's other peptides like BPC 157, which is not synthetic, so you can't patent it. But what they can do, and which is what they're trying to do, is they will add an inert complex to the BPC 157, something like vitamin C or something. just say as an example, and now you have a patented drug that now you can run through the clinical trials and then get FDA approval and then get it covered by insurance, and then they can make a whole bunch of money because now they have a patented BPC 157, which is basically the same as a generic BPC 157, but it just goes through that regulatory process because of the extra molecule. Do you think then more by doing that by either adding something or slightly modifying something

or the delivery mechanism, that would potentially be the financial motivation? I do see pharmaceutical companies they're getting into it. I mean, that's also why they're cracking down on all these peptide companies who are saying research use only. Like, you know, just to give people with our, like, PEPTU, we do it through physician prescription and it has to be, you can't order, we don't do direct-to-consumer because that's technically not allowed. But all these people are getting away with it because right now the FDA just hasn't cracked

down. But as Vic Pharma gets their hands into the peptide world, you bet they're going to start cracking down on these manufacturers and all these people making peptides. It's probably not a bad thing because I would imagine also if you're just going and buying it on the internet, who knows what you're actually getting? Exactly. Quality control is such a problem. Right. One of my acquaintances started a website called finric.com and it is a third-party website which rates every peptide company out there and just does independent validation. So if you go on there, it's super interesting. There's literally companies that make peptides and have zero peptides in there. Whoa. Like zero. If you go on Finrich and you check it out, you'll actually see certain, like for

example, retitututri with peptide sciences. There was a batch where it had no retitutriotide in there. So that just shows you the lack of quality control in this space. Yeah. So you got to be careful. And probably if you're thinking about this also, it's a good idea to a practitioner and not just go and experiment on your own, especially given the fact that there is, you know, like there's so much, like what you were talking about with stem cells, like you've got to really understand your larger biology and where you are and all the different things that are happening in you.

Gene editing. Actually, before we've been talking about that, when I hear the conversation around stem cells and you can circle back for a hot second, I also hear this word exosome come up. What are we talking about there? And why do I hear it in context of all this? The exosomes are, so basically when stem cells replicate,

You grow them in something called a culture, like in a culture, like imagine you have a little petri dish, and they're growing in the lab, and there's something called a condition media. Condition media is basically the food that you're feeding the stem cells. And then as you feed them, and as they replicate, they kind of sluff off, and they create this slush around them, which is called exosomes. There's the whole condition media, and a fraction of that is called the exosomes. So you can isolate the exosomes, which are basically, the best analogy I can give people is if you have a chicken broth. in the chicken, the meat is the stem cells, and the broth, the soup is the exosomes. So the broth doesn't have any of the actual cells, but it has all the signaling molecules, the growth factor, the anti-inflammatory signals, that these cells can release.

And that can still be an effective treatment means that's much cheaper than stem cells. So that's one of the reasons people use them. And then number two, there's no DNA in there, so there's DNA free. So there are some people who are hesitant to want to put donor DNA in, then that also circumvents that problem. But as we said, the muce cells have a safety level where we're comfortable, obviously, using allergenic cells in that case. But I think, you know, for people who want something that's DNA-free and has no cells in there,

then the exosomes is an option. Now, the exosomes obviously are not as strong as the stem cells, but they can still be, so you have to sometimes dose them more frequently or you may have to do repeat treatments, but they can still be effective for many things. Is there a world in which you would consider treatment that actually blends stem cells? exosomes, and peptides to sort of like cross-support each other? Is that just completely overloading the system? That's exactly what we do on a daily basis. Oh, okay. That's pretty much what our clinic does, those three things. Yeah. God, because it just,

it sounds like the way you're describing all, it just kind of makes sense. So like they would all support each other. Exactly, exactly. They're synergistic. Very cool. Gene editing. I think, you know, like a while back we, we hear about Jennifer Doudna and this thing, CRISPR coming out, and all of a sudden we have the ability to sort of like splice genes. in China, very grossly cut out the bad ones and put in, like, like fix, basically fix things. What's happening in the context of gene editing and regenerative medicine today? What's real and what's not real? What's real right now is what's called additive gene therapy.

So not gene editing your body because that still has too many risks with it. And there's still a lot of research that has to be done. And it's super expensive anyway. Some of the gene editing therapies are like literally millions of dollars. And so it's not. not affordable yet, but there's something called additive gene therapy where you're adding a gene to your body. It just isn't editing your genome so much, and that is adding a specific gene that you want more of. Why would you want more of something? So let's just take a peptide gene, for example,

called pholostatin. It's a biodemical peptide hormone that your body makes, and as you get older, the levels decrease, and pholostatin can slow down age-related muscle loss, and it can also help with strength and also has longevity benefits. So there's just like you want to optimize your hormones, whether you know, whether you're a man or a woman, you can optimize certain peptides in your body too by using a gene therapy platform because the gene therapy basically turns your cell into a factory to produce more of that peptide. So if you add that phallostatin gene therapy, for example, you'll now produce more phallostatin. And there's different companies working on this. So the company that I think is the most promising right now is called triple helix.

And it uses something called a viral vector. So it's a virus. Because gene therapy means, the reason you use gene therapy is because you're introducing a foreign DNA into your body, basically, right? So there's like, there's bacterial vectors, which is called mini circles or plasmids, which are derived from bacteria, or there's viral vectors. And each one has pros and cons, but the point is that the viral gene therapy can last for 10 years.

The mini circle one can last for one year. At the end of the mini circle and the viral are both very safe, but the efficacy is very different, too. the viral one is more like 95% effective, whereas the mini circle is hit or miss, you know, which for some people doesn't work for others. So there's things to consider there, but that's something that's available as of today. Like if you wanted to go to Mexico and come do it, that's something that you can do with us or with other clinics that offer that too. And many people love it.

Many people put on, you know, three, four, five kgs of muscle. They get more strength, and they just feel vitality and they feel so much better. So it definitely is something that we're seeing a lot of positive results for. I think there obviously needs to be much more research done because it's still relatively new. It doesn't have the same, you know, decades of research that the, you know, the stem cells and the mu cells do. But I think it's a very promising therapy. And then on the gene editing stuff, that's being worked on. I think the one that's very promising for that is something called prime gene editing.

That's basically, like think of it a better version of CRISPR. And it's essentially just more accurate, less mistakes and less off-site target effects. It sounds like for the gene, like the additive side, we're literally adding a gene. that you hope will become positive in the body. It sounds like the more effective version, at least for now, is you're literally using a virus to infect your body. Sounds scary, but the virus, I mean, if you look at, they're called AAV, adeno-associative virus.

They've been studied for decades, like 20, 30 years. So it's not like they're new and you. And the reason gene therapy stopped was because in the mid-90s, there was an unfortunate event where, you know, a young boy died because of a viral gene therapy. And, you know, the long and short is, don't know if it's necessarily related to that or if it's because you got something else. But when something like that happens with something new, then they just put a pause on it. So then it just,

the research in an AAV vector is basically paused for like 20 years. And then no one was, and everyone was just too scared to do it, even though there's all this problem. But then now there's, there's a group, obviously, the triple helix group that's doing it and there's so many other groups that are doing it too. And when we talk about the additive gene therapy, which is available now, again, not in the US, but I guess it's being done outside of the US. What are sort of like the main, the main, conditions that people are using this to help treat? I mean, muscular dystrophy is one of them that people, like Falstatin, for example, that's being used for. And then there's one called Clotho that, you know, Triple Helix also has,

which is being used for Alzheimer's dementia, because Clotho is basically a peptide that can protect against neurodegeneration. And people who have naturally high levels of Clotho are protected against Alzheimer's, even if they have the APOE4 gene. So it's really interesting peptide. And they can help with just cognitive health and brain function. So there's lots of different, I guess, gene, I think Triple Helix has eight different gene therapies. Most of them are for longevity, metabolic health, anti-aging, and that type of stuff. But then there are gene therapy.

I mean, he even makes, his name's Dr. Patrick Sewell, and he's a very interesting guy because he even makes customized gene therapies for cancer. So he'll, for example, take a whole genome sequencing of the tumor, and then he will make a gene therapy specifically for that tumor based off which genes need to be turned on and which ones need to be turned off. and then he'll inject it directly into the tumor. So that's called interventional oncology. I mean, it really is.

So much of this just sounds like we're on the cutting edge of so much. It's so much of it's here right now. But it also sounds like a lot of what we're talking about here. There's still a need for a lot of research. Oh, yeah. No, that's going to, I think for the mainstream medicine community to adopt a lot of this, it's probably going to take two decades. I do see the mucells becoming widespread and hopefully approved by FDA in the next,

you know, within this decade because they've already been phase two clinical trials in Japan and just doing a phase, now it's just a matter of doing a phase three and getting that approval. Let's zoom the lens out a little bit and talk about access and affordability because it sounds like a lot of what we're talking about here is very cutting edge, but also in my experience is not very accessible to most people. What do you envision as the future of accessibility with these types of approaches? I think anytime there's a new technology, I always say that it's always the wealthy and the celebrities who tend to adopt it first and then over time, as there's economies of skill and there's more people demanding it and more people who want it done,

then the price will come down. And then also on the other side of it is the manufacturing. The manufacturing of a lot of these technologies is super inefficient. And that's the reason why the gene therapies are so expensive right now. But even Dr. Sewell, who's like the expert on the gene therapy platform, he expects the cost to come down by an order of magnitude like 10x in the next 10 years because the manufacturing process will improve. And I see the same thing happening with the stem cells. The muse cells will eventually be manufactured by robotics and AI, and it'll be streamlined. Right now, it's very inefficient with humans and lots of costs involved. So that process has to be optimized. And as there's innovation in manufacturing, then the cost to, of course, the clinics

come down, and then the cost to the consumer comes down. Yeah. And then I guess as, you know, there's a regulatory issue here also, whereas, like, as these things become approved on a regulatory level, and they become, you know, basically you get the check that says, yes, you can basically get this all over the place, then you have the opportunity for scale. And then, like, companies on the manufacturing side, they'll start to invest a lot more in because, you know, at the end of the day, it's going to come down to dollars and cents, you know, on the manufacturing side, you know, like if all of a sudden there's a massive market, then they're going to start to manufacture at scale, which will have the effect of bringing down the cost on a much broader

level. Exactly. That's what I see happening over the next few years. Yeah, you brought up AI also. Is there a meaningful role for AI in regenerative medicine? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you saw the recent, I guess it went a bit viral too, was on cellular, on how AI came up with a way to cellular reprogram. I just saw that. It was like last week or something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was like 50 times or something more effective than the Yamanaka's reprogramming technology. And that was discovered by AI. That obviously needs to be researched and tested and validated, but the point is the basic concept, It was actually AI generated, so that's only going to happen more and more in regenerative medicine and all medicine. Yeah, it's so incredible.

If you could paint a vision of where you would love to see regenerative medicine a decade from now, what are the big things? For me, the biggest thing would just be to be accessible to the average person, meaning you go to your family doctor, and instead of your family doctor saying, you have to go get surgery or you have to take this drug, hey, why don't you go do this for gerent medicine therapy? because it's covered by insurance or maybe it's a reasonable cost now and it's something that could help you. So right now it's still very much patients have to seek it out themselves and find out

these things and educate themselves. But that's what I like to see in 10 years. Or even maybe in 10 years where these infusions for longevity are covered by insurance because they reduce the risk of chronic diseases, which ultimately helps the society at large. Pharmaceutical companies might not be interested in that, but insurance companies sure would. And that would be something that maybe you could even get done at your GP's office where you come in once a year for these infusions because they slow down aging. I'm excited to see how it all unfolds. Always love learning from you and hearing what you're up to and what you're thinking about. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me. Hey, before you leave, a quick reminder that this conversation is part of our special Future of Medicine

series. Every Monday through December, we're exploring breakthrough treatments, diagnostics, and technologies transforming health care, from cancer and heart disease to aging, pain management, and more. If you found today's conversation valuable, you won't want to miss a single episode in this series. Next week's conversation is with Dr. AmiBot, where we'll explore the intersection of cardiovascular medicine and AI, and also even telemedicine, or what she calls AI-inabled practitioners. Dr. Bot shares fascinating insights on how artificial intelligence is transforming everything from early disease detection to personalized treatment plans and discusses how emerging technologies

could help solve the healthcare access crisis in underserved communities. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you listen to podcasts to catch every conversation. Thanks for listening. See you next time. This episode of Good Life Project

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