Gene Therapy with Liz Parrish

Today I'm speaking with Liz Parrish, the founder and CEO of BioViva, on the Longevity Optimization Podcast. In this episode, we explore groundbreaking advancements in gene therapy and its potential to cure age-related diseases. Liz shares her personal journey that led to the creation of BioViva, providing insights into the mechanisms of gene therapy and the current landscape of approved therapies. Our conversation delves into the hallmarks of aging, the role of specific genes like follistatin and telomerase, and the future of gene therapy as a preventative measure for health optimization.

Liz Parrish is a pioneering figure in the field of gene therapy, dedicated to advancing the science of longevity and health optimization. Throughout our discussion, she addresses the ethical considerations surrounding gene editing and the implications for future generations. We also discuss the significance of gene therapy in combating aging, the role of telomeres in longevity, and the misconceptions about telomerase and cancer. Additionally, Liz explores the potential benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and shares her personal experiences with gene therapy. The conversation touches on skincare, the philosophy of longevity, and the empowerment of women through advancements in gene therapy, highlighting the transformative potential of these innovations for future health.

Let’s be friends!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaylabarnes/?hl=en

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@femalelongevity

X: https://x.com/femalelongevity

Website: https://kaylabarnes.com

Join Female Longevity Community: https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/checkout/become-a-member 

Follow Liz Parrish

Follow Her on IG: https://www.instagram.com/lizlparrish/

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Gene Therapy and Longevity

03:10 The Birth of BioViva and Personal Motivation

06:05 Advancements in Gene Therapy and Regenerative Medicine

08:49 Understanding Gene Therapy: Mechanisms and Applications

11:56 Current Approved Gene Therapies and Their Impact

15:08 Exploring the Hallmarks of Aging

17:54 The Role of Folistatin and Telomerase in Aging

21:04 Preventative Medicine and Gene Therapy

24:02 Future of Gene Therapy and Embryo Editing

27:08 The Ethics of Gene Editing and Parental Choices

29:54 Preparing for a Multi-Planetary Future

39:40 Exploring the Future of Space Travel

40:08 The Importance of Safe Space Habitation

41:06 Gene Therapy and Aging: A Deeper Dive

42:52 Telomeres and Their Role in Longevity

46:00 Cancer and Telomerase: Debunking Myths

47:55 Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Potential Benefits

51:11 Balancing Regeneration and Cellular Division

53:26 Pioneering Gene Therapy: A Personal Journey

58:27 Measuring the Impact of Gene Therapy

01:03:11 Skincare and Longevity: A Personal Approach

01:10:24 Philosophy of Longevity: Balancing Life and Health

01:14:05 Empowerment Through Gene Therapy for Women

Transcript

[00:00:00.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Welcome to the Longevity Optimization podcast, where we discuss longevity, optimal health, nutrition, peak performance, cognitive excellence, and so much more. Today, I'm speaking with Liz Parrish. She is a pioneering entrepreneur, innovator, and thought leader in the field of gene therapy. As the founder and CEO of BioViva, Liz has dedicated her career to advancing genetic research with the goal of addressing age-related diseases and improving human longevity. Therapy. Often referred to as the woman who wants to cure aging, don't do tell me about that in a sec, Liz became one of the first people in the world to undergo experimental gene therapy, making her a living advocate for its potential. Her groundbreaking work has sparked global conversations about the future of health, biotechnology, and gene therapies. Thank you so much for being here, Liz.

[00:00:53.630] - LIZ PARRISH

Thanks for having me.

[00:00:55.530] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. I've been so excited to talk to you. We have a bunch of mutual friends, and you're doing just super cool work. Before we dive into all of the different therapies that you've done, can you tell me a little bit about your company and what sparked the idea for it?

[00:01:15.330] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, actually, I would love to. In 2011, I got recruited to work on a platform for the education of the use of stem cells, and I learned a lot about regenerative medicine at the time. I fell in love with the genetics behind stem cells. Why does every cell in your body have the same genes and chromosomes, except some cells have some super power? Cellors. That's all in the realm of epigenetics and also genetics. Some of the super powers behind stem cells, what make them able to heal tissues or differentiate into different cells are based on their genes. This obsession started me looking into what was happening in the gene therapy space. My life came to a breaching halt in 2013 when my son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I've got to say it's a huge shock to go to children's hospital and see all of these kids that have a myriad of diseases that still plague our under-12s. Yet the world seems vastly unaware. It's like a completely different world. Then to also have studied regenerative medicine for a couple of years and see that those technologies, especially at that time, that was 2013, were not translating to these little people that needed them so badly.

[00:02:50.520] - LIZ PARRISH

I went looking for cures for kids, specifically in the genetic space, but anything in the regenerative medicine space. I ran into a conference that was about aging. I asked about certain therapies around the aging space and how they could help kids, and it turns out there are a whole bunch of them that can. My idea was that I would start a company based on the idea and the premise that there was meta-analysis around several genes that were ready for prime time in humans, that consenting adults could use these technologies and them forward much more quickly for our under-12 population who, in some cases, are still dying from what could very likely be treatable diseases.

[00:03:39.880] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

That's incredible. It sounds like you really had a great motivation. What have you learned? It would have been some of the biggest findings, maybe even applicable to your own son, since this was really the impetus for starting the company since you started this journey so many years ago?

[00:03:55.330] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, back then, when I started the company, we understood that there There were a lot of genes that worked in parallel in treating the hallmarks of aging and also would treat a childhood disease, things that a lot of people know about now, like fullostatin. It had been through safety and efficacy for Becker and Dushin's muscular dystrophy, but also could benefit an aging population. It was one of the first gene therapies I took in 2015. Other gene therapies like telomerase reverse transcriptase that lengthen the caps at the ends of your chromosomes. This is bound to 24 species, scientifically, probably many more, to our lifespan. It is basically a limit in cellular division, and it limits the lifespan of humans. If you want to live healthier and longer, this is a key aspect. But there was a disease called progyria in children that is essentially... It's a Lamna A gene defect, but what happens is the progyrin in the body it picks up. That's why it's called progyria, and the telomere shorten extremely fast. These kids, no wonder, with shortened telomeres, die of all the things that we do in our '80s and '90s, but in their teen years.

[00:05:15.930] - LIZ PARRISH

That was another gene therapy that I did in 2015, hoping to speed up research in the space and launch our company into the consensual use of these type of technologies. Then, excuse Let's cut that, my choking because I got so excited. In the actual space of autoimmune diseases, in 2013, we did believe that there was not much that we could do. The only hypothesis, really, then that seemed relevant was to eradicate the immune system and let it restart, which would be very dangerous for a person. It makes them almost like an infant again, but without the antibodies that the mother had. Now we find that that is not something that we'll need to do. Several patients now have been treated with their own cells, allogenic cells, that have been reprogrammed to create insulin and reinjected into the body. We already have candidate funders for companies to do that. Now, I oversee a multitude of companies, and this is something also that we want to do. Now, we actually have the premise between CAR T therapies in which we genetically designed the T cells to go after certain cells instead of allowing them to go after our own human body, we also have the prospect of reprogramming cells and curing diseases.

[00:06:43.380] - LIZ PARRISH

The space itself has come a long ways, and that's all on the back of amazing scientists who started this and moved it to the positions that it is in now.

[00:06:54.840] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. So your company is doing some gene therapies, and then it sounds like some therapies with these CAR T cells and then even stem cells? Is that also playing a role or not so much?

[00:07:06.010] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah. We focus it in bioViva on gene therapy specifically, and then we license out the technologies. Sometimes I get lucky enough to get some ownership in some of these companies. We have a company that is already reprogramming stem cells, and then they will be doing gene therapy to the stem cells and then be injecting them into humans. We can talk about some of the benefits there for building muscle for people over the age of 65 or neurocognitive benefits and basically being able to treat patients with gene therapy who may otherwise be disqualified due to a heartmatic injury or something like that. For lay people, liver injury. That would be one of the criteria to knock you out of a trial with gene therapy. But when we do it with stem cells, we can do that. Then we have companies that are looking to reprogram cells and then turn them into cells that a host may be missing, for instance, the cells that create insulin. There are a bunch of subgroups groups, some that need our gene therapy, and we license out to, and some that we're building on different premises of curative medicine.

[00:08:22.040] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Incredibly interesting. Let's go one quick step back for anyone that's... Gene therapy is relatively new still. I think to the broad population. Can you define what is a gene therapy and why you're so interested in it, and then what may be the gene reprogramming, just so our listeners have a little bit of a foundation?

[00:08:44.410] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, Absolutely. I think that for a lot of the world, gene therapy... When I did gene therapy in 2015, a lot of people thought that she couldn't have done that because it doesn't exist. But not only does it exist, it's one of the the fastest regulated technologies in the world. Even the US FDA, now, if you can get into a phase 1 clinical study, the time to approval, meaning all the way through phase 3, is under six years. It's a very exact science is what that tells you. That tells you that unlike old medicine, that we would take maybe a small molecule or some type of antibody or something like that, and it might have a cascade of different effects in the body, gene therapy is very precise, and I'm going to explain why. With gene therapy, we use what are called vectors. There are different modalities of delivering gene therapy, but the only approved gene therapies are vector-based technology. It's because vectors are really good at getting genes into the nucleus of the cell, and that means they're going to have long-term expression. They could have anywhere from 5 to 10 to 15 years.

[00:09:59.070] - LIZ PARRISH

What that means to view is you wouldn't have to take a pill or anything like that. You would literally take an injection and be done. But how gene therapy works is we target a gene that is associated with health. Right now, there are 12 approved gene therapies through the US FDA that are not based in the cancer work. In CAR T, there's about, I think, maybe 25 approved gene therapies for cancer. But I'm going to go into our space. Our space is somatic cell delivery. Those 12 gene therapies, how they got approved is the companies chose a disease that was based in a single gene mutation. In your chromosomes, you have a lot of genes. We have agreed on you have between 20 and 25,000 coding genes. We know it's different than that now, but let's just say you have 20 to 25,000 genes that make you, to make it simple. In some people, we know that something is wrong because in childhood or very early on in life, they come down with conditions that will kill them. In genetics, they started to look at what was the issue with these type of people, what was wrong in their genome, and they found single-gene mutations.

[00:11:20.850] - LIZ PARRISH

When there is a single-gene mutation, gene therapy is quite beautiful and succinct. That means we just need to find the healthy copy copy of that gene, which is generally known because it's in the rest of the population who don't die from that disease. Then we deliver that gene, and that gene making the healthy copy of a protein overcomes the disease, and then Those people either need less of supportive medicine or they no longer need supportive medicine. They actually function like the rest of the population. That gave gene therapy its biggest catalyst forward. Like I said, there's now 12 approved gene therapies. There's many people these days, even though these are rare diseases walking amongst you who have taken gene therapies. In our case, we're looking at cellular aging as a problem, and we are looking to reverse biological aging so that not only can young people get curative medicine, they can then go on to live a multitude of decades and get back those years that they lost. In that case, we look at things like the hallmarks of aging. Some of the gene therapies we look at don't target hallmarks specifically, but they're geroprotectors and associated with longer lifespan.

[00:12:41.080] - LIZ PARRISH

Then we take that gene, we take what's called a promoter R, which tells that gene how many times to make itself when the genes are red in your system, your genes are red. When they're red, they create proteins and enzymes, and those keep you healthy in most cases, unless you have a bad gene. These ones are all associated with longer, healthier lifespans. We tell it to code this many times, then we put it in the vector delivery and we administer it through IV, intramuscular, or we can do organ-specific image-guided delivery as well.

[00:13:18.130] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Wow. To go back to the 12 approved, just so people have a little bit more context, what are those 12 approved gene therapies for more of the rare disease disease?

[00:13:30.960] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, sure. They are diseases you may or may not have heard of. One is called severe combined immune deficiency. You might know it as boy in the bubble. If you're over a certain age, I'll be 54 this month, and so That was really not only a well-understood disease when I was younger, there was even a movie about it. That is essentially when the immune system cannot actually protect against infections. These kids, it was called Boy in the Bubble because they had to live beyond a plastic shield and purified air until gene therapy came along. The first patient that was dosed with gene therapy still speaks publicly. She's in her 40s, I believe now, and she still speaks publicly about how it changed her life and allowed her to live a normal life. Then lipoprotein lipase deficiency was the second gene therapy that was approved in the Western world. That's a deficiency in patients in which affects the blood. That became a popular gene therapy. Unfortunately, it was too expensive for most people. Then we've gone to sickle cell anemia is the latest and greatest, and they actually used CRISPR to do that. This was the first introduction of CRISPR.

[00:14:52.120] - LIZ PARRISH

Crispr is also delivered with AAB, the way that we deliver somatic cell gene therapy delivery, but it has the ability to edit the genome. It was done ex vivo, although I suppose that in the future they will do in vivo gene therapy with CRISPR. I think people are already working on that. Now we have people who were affected by this sickling. This is when the red blood cells actually change their shape into a sickle and impede the ability for the red blood cells to deliver oxygen. This is now considered cured through CRISPR technology. In one fell swoop, they also took care of beta-talisemia, which is a disease you may or may not have heard of. Hemophilia A and hemophilia B now have a curative gene therapy for them. That's a gene called factor VIII and factor IX. It was delivered in order to create the benefits to blood clotting in their system. The list goes on. They're generally orphan diseases, meaning they don't affect a ton of people, but the effect of gene therapy now has been proven, and that gives us the ability to work towards complex disorders that are not single gene-based.

[00:16:13.070] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

So exciting. I love just setting the stage because I think for anyone that is listening that thinks that gene therapy might be exciting for the longevity industry, I mean, completely it is. But we also, it's very clear that it's very proven and it's working, and this changes people's lives, saved lives. I'm so excited about all the possibilities in the future. I'm also so grateful that we already have these proven resolves, essentially, for these people. It's so exciting.

[00:16:43.460] - LIZ PARRISH

It's absolutely life-changing I mean, you take somebody who has a debilitating disease that feels like they're an outcast, and you turn them into a normal functioning person. But then when you look at gene therapy, you We realize that actually we're all pretty sick. We're all dying. Then we look at illness and health very differently in our space. Solving those bigger problems becomes a mandate.

[00:17:17.390] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. Some of the gene therapies that you're working on now, like pholostatin and telomerees, when we think about the hallmarks of aging, do you look at them as 14 or How many are you guys targeting or looking at, at least?

[00:17:33.580] - LIZ PARRISH

We look at them as a growing laundry list, a growing list of things that we want to treat. Even though there are 12 approved now, there are several more coming, by the way, but actually, some of the original ones will target some of the newer ones. When you look at gene therapy and the hallmarks of aging, the growing list isn't necessarily daunting It's good science coming out about processes that are driving cellular aging. But things like inflammaging, that is aging itself happening in immune system defects, TGF beta and IL markers increasing with time, but based on damage to the cells. One of the things that we find that reduces C-reactive protein, is a good marker of inflammation in the body is just using fullostatin or telomerase reverse transcriptase. When you start to, especially with telomerase, shore up some of the issues with the genome and the packing of the genome, the packing of the chromosomes, they're not just at the ends of the chromosomes, then you start to deal with some of the issues that arise with aging. Telomerase reverse transcriptase, although it won't cure all of aging, is probably the biggest bang of the buck for a single gene.

[00:19:04.040] - LIZ PARRISH

Fullestatin seems to be a great geroprotector. It blocks some of the inflammatory factors and increases mitochondrial function, as does telomerase. And helps with metabolic health. The literature shows that it may protect against several types of cancer, including breast cancer for women and prostate cancer for men. That's a really fascinating area. There's a lot of work now around the immune system that blocking inflammatory markers, things that we used to think really beefed up the immune system and made the immune system more viable, actually represses the immune system. When you take some of those repressors off, the immune system actually does a better job. Then we also, I've taken clotho, which is associated with neurocognitive benefit and cardiovascular protection and chronic kidney disease protection, I guess, disease against chronic kidney disease or renal protection, and a PG-C1 alpha. Then my list is actually growing. It seems to be growing every day. We're designing new gene therapies and I'm pretty excited about taking them.

[00:20:17.730] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I'm so excited for you taking them. I definitely want to. What age do you think would be appropriate to start some of these therapies?

[00:20:28.290] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, I'm not a medical doctor, so Number one, you should understand and work with a medical doctor if you're going to do any therapy. I mean, arguably, you would say any lifestyle or any food because all of that is affecting your longevity, but we don't tend to take those as seriously. I would say that I work in regulations, and the safest place to use any technology is obviously in terminal patients. And so why fight for the right for people who our terminal to get access to these technologies affordably. But when we actually look at the therapies more closely, why did I take them? I started taking them at 44. I would take them because I think that their best use is preventative medicine. I think for most technology, getting you healthy once you're very, very sick is difficult. I think that if any technology can do that, it's gene therapy. But the The best use of the technology that we work with is preventative medicine. I would say then if we could be so audacious to draw that back, I would reverse it. I would turn around in the car and do a 180, and I would say, drive that line back to right after your childbearing years.

[00:21:50.880] - LIZ PARRISH

Let us get a lot of data on these therapies then. Then as soon as we are very, very situated in in feeling that we're in a safe projection, I would say then people will probably take them as immunizations early on, probably around 2025.

[00:22:12.260] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Interesting. Well, I'm glad to hear. Your thoughts are lined up with mine. I was considering. I mean, I've done a lot of what people might think to be extreme things, but I was considering doing gene therapy, but I decided it might be the best option just for to wait until after babies. Absolutely.

[00:22:34.700] - LIZ PARRISH

Even though somatic cell delivery would not affect your eggs, as far as we know, I still think that it's a better idea to wait until after your childbearing years. I mean, why not? Let's keep things as safe as possible and then dive you directly into it.

[00:22:57.690] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love it. Well, I'm so glad I have you now so that when I get to that spot, then I will do it. Absolutely.

[00:23:02.740] - LIZ PARRISH

I'll be with you.

[00:23:04.750] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Maybe we'll do some gene therapies together.

[00:23:07.400] - LIZ PARRISH

Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:23:09.250] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Let's. Love that idea. Okay, so to go back to the main ones, because I'm not sure that everyone is familiar with all of the hallmarks of aging. Just a recap, phallostatin would be targeting what hallmarks of aging, primarily. We're going to guess that it might have a touch point on most of them, but which one specific Basically, just as a recap, would that one be?

[00:23:32.490] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, actually, full of statin itself probably wouldn't have a super direct effect on all of the hallmarks of aging. But mitochondrial dysfunction, it would because in our animal studies, we see better mitochondria, more youthful mitochondria, and we see better metabolic health in human patients and in the mice. Then probably dysregulated nutrient sensing as well. It may actually help... Fullastatin is associated with opening up the WNT pathways that would help stem cells signal as well. I believe that that is part of its superpower of regeneration. Maybe three hallmarks of aging, and maybe that will grow over time, but that's pretty significant for a gene therapy that also visually increases your muscle mass. When we increase muscle mass, we know that we're fighting against things like type 2 diabetes, and that would be really great for an aging population. Probably, I would say a much healthier solution than taking a shot that just makes you not want to eat. If you increase your muscle mass, you decrease your white fat, and you actually have a healthier body. I don't want to get into an opinion, so you can cut that out. But a lot of people, if they're starving themselves, they're going to have less muscle mass, and they're going to have more sarcopenia as they age, which leads to more injuries.

[00:25:18.100] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I'm a huge advocate for adding on muscle, so I would totally agree with you. Question for you. I don't know if this is true or false, but does fallostatin significantly increase decrease while you're pregnant?

[00:25:31.200] - LIZ PARRISH

Oh, my gosh. I wish I knew that. I wish to do that, and especially being such a mom. I'll look that up for you.

[00:25:39.600] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. I've heard that it almost doubles. It's interesting. I'm going to I love this whole thing, and I'm going to be excited to share it with you. When I do get pregnant, because I have this clinic and we have all these labs, I'm going to do what I believe to be the most advanced labs on a pregnant woman ever. We can measure a lot of these different levels, everything from bioage and gut health, and probably we can see if all statin levels increase and all these different things. But I feel like we don't know that much about what's happening within a woman's body throughout pregnancy or creating another life. So I'm so excited to just do a ton of tests and see what's going on there.

[00:26:16.760] - LIZ PARRISH

That is so beautiful. And share that with me. I can't wait to hear about that. It would make sense because you're putting on weight, you're having to carry this child. And when the child is born, you're going to be carrying however many pound football, and then you're going to be dragging them on your hip and everywhere else. I mean, I had my kids on my body all the time. That would make sense that nature would not only create something that's a geroprotector in your system, making your mitochondria more robustly, but that it would prepare you for strengthening up.

[00:26:56.740] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love it. Okay, so that's fall as to happen.

[00:27:00.110] - LIZ PARRISH

There are different isoforms of folostatin, though. There's one that is associated more with reproduction, and it's associated directly with follicle-stimulating hormone. Remember, there's different isoforms of the gene. Even if you see it go up, you need to know the isoform because they're very different. For instance, the other isoform would be more associated with reproduction than muscle gain.

[00:27:29.070] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Okay, yeah, That's really important. For anyone that wants to look up a quick image, the cows and the mice. Can you just explain a little bit what's going on with the phallostat in there? If you want to Google this picture, you're going to be blown away.

[00:27:46.180] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah. When we look at the... You're probably talking about the pictures of the blue bulls. They are a very, very muscular cow. Now, they are complete myostatin knockouts. They're a little bit different. It The reason that often you'll find it under fullostatin is because it's associated with fullostatin. Fullostatin does many things, but one of the things that it does is it binds to something called myostatin. So stick with me. They sound like terrible words, but Myostatin limits muscle growth. It's an evolutionary product of... Well, it's very important, right? If we're young and we build a lot of muscle when nutrients are short at hand, we may have more nutritional deficiencies and have a less success of survival. As we age, we also go into a compression best event where the body is holding itself together on senescent cells, essentially. Cells that are holding the place for where there is no more tissue regeneration. When we look at something like the Blue Bull, that's a myostat knockout. There are a few people in the world that are born in myostat knockout, and those are those super muscular babies that you'll see. You'll see a baby doing pull-ups and their muscles are big.

[00:29:12.470] - LIZ PARRISH

It's an anomaly and might be something that you choose for if you were in the meat industry. I'm a vegetarian, but yes, they breed these cows so that they can create lots of steak. But essentially, long story short, they're myostat knockouts. They're the extreme end of what full of statin takes you on the route to do. When you block myostatin, you have the ability to build muscle again. Muscle atrophy starts... For some people, it starts as early as their 20s. It depends on their genetic For some people, it starts later in life, but it's a real issue, and it's called sarcopenia when it becomes medically coded. That loss of muscle mass is associated with falls and frailty an eventual death. Having lots of muscle mass, especially later in age, is associated with longer lifespan. It's no surprise because it has a lot of metabolic function. More muscle is more insulin sensitivity and therefore less metabolic frailty.

[00:30:18.290] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love it. I mean, in the future, do you envision it as everybody will just be getting these treatments from their doctor, then a tune up? I'm not sure what age, but maybe at the start of muscle decline or maybe even before that, we would be receiving these therapies.

[00:30:34.960] - LIZ PARRISH

I think that people will be getting all sorts of gene therapies earlier on in life, and probably as embryo editing becomes more common place, certain of these genes will either have multiple copies or will have the repressors taken off, like telomerase reverse transcriptase, a gene that would keep the ends of the chromosomes long, that by the time you're even born, you're already facing a detriment in those telomere length. I believe that in the long run, we'll be taking these much earlier in life. Of course, as the planet is changing and we're going to different places, we'll be going to outer space, we might be going to the bottom of the ocean or who knows where. There'll be different modifications for different lifestyles on different places of the planet or elsewhere. It's really exciting when get together as a company and start proposing some of those benefits and changes that we'll need to make for different areas. Something like full of statin, you have to have a good deal of nutrients to maintain muscle mass. If we were in a nutrient poor condition, which we're not right now at this time in humans, which is why we have obesity, which is an interesting and beautiful problem to have, even though we don't like it, It's perplexing.

[00:32:01.730] - LIZ PARRISH

We've never lived in a time like that before. But if you were in a nutrient poor situation, you wouldn't want to choose for certain outcomes.

[00:32:12.820] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. Hi. We're taking a short break from the podcast to discuss a new community that I have launched. I want to preface this by saying that I will continue to post content on my social platforms and conduct interviews on this podcast that are both free and applicable to both sexes. But as a woman, I have unique insights and perspectives on female health. I recently launched my first ever paid offering, and this is a female-only health optimization and longevity community. If you are a male, you can skip this portion of the podcast or you can forward this information to a female that you think would be interested. I set out to create the most valuable longevity optimization community for women. I have spent over the last decade dedicating my life to human optimization and have dived deep into the female specific optimization and protocols. This is a place I want you to learn everything you need to know about optimizing your health, longevity, and mindset. I made this a community only for women because I wanted us to be able to be open, which I didn't feel could be done in the comment section of my Instagram.

[00:33:16.840] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I also love the idea of women sharing protocols of what's working best, and everybody within the community can offer valuable insights to each other and support. Members get weekly and bi weekly Ask Me Any Things, exclusive content and protocols like articles, videos, and a whole host of courses, and you'll receive up to date, Female Longevity is Science. You'll also get community in connection with like-minded women, access to virtual and in-person events with me, and your membership will help support female human studies in the very near future. You can learn more about this membership on my website, KaylaBarns. Com. Just personal curiosity, where do you think we're at with embryo gene editing?

[00:34:05.000] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, there's a huge moratorium on it. I just saw a post the other day that said, Oh, don't have kids because this is coming in the near future, but everything we think is going to be in the near future. I'll tell you, because of regulations, nothing comes fast enough for people who actually need it. I personally, I would love to have 10 kids. I wouldn't wait. If I had the opportunity, I would realize that we have amazing tools with gene editing already. I wouldn't wait for that to happen, but I believe that it already has happened in places of the world. Some people got in trouble for it, and it will continue to happen. I think that eventually, there have been polls done where they've asked people, Would you like to have a kid that's smarter than you? Or would you like to have a child that is stronger or faster or whatever. It was surprising how many people didn't want that, especially choosing for intelligence. I want my children to be better in every way than me. I don't want them to have any of my limitations. That's a realm that I don't understand.

[00:35:27.710] - LIZ PARRISH

We just pushed towards consensual use of therapies and then hope that eventually people won't want to have sick children. Having a child with type 1 diabetes, it just bleeds my heart every single day, and he's doing great. The kid is practically straight A student in UCSD. He's like an overachiever. He's amazing. He hasn't been limited in any way by the disease. But that doesn't mean it's not on my mind. I will eradicate it, and I will make sure that he lives longer and healthier. I mean, that's my job as a mother, and I would want that for anyone. If we could create a world in which with safe and healthy genes, we could guarantee that children had everything that they should have that we should want for them. It blows my mind why anyone would vote against them.

[00:36:20.850] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, that's a question I'm jotting down. I'm going to have to think about that more because I'm shocked by that answer. Yeah, that's really I'm really relaxing. My husband and I just went through, literally this week, we are freezing some embryos for a few reasons. But my fertility markers all look good on paper, but of course, you don't really know until you try. We have not yet tried, but we actually would love to have a large family, four to six kids. I mean, lots of... As many kids as we can, really. We thought it would be a good idea to use technology that is available to us. Before we start trying naturally, bank embryos, and we have them. Should something like this happen, hopefully within our lifetime, we would love to have kids that are smarter than us, that are faster than us, that have less limitations. We'll have those embryos, so maybe something like that will happen. It's very exciting. We definitely would love to have them be better than us in all ways.

[00:37:19.690] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, I mean, why not? We're fighting for our biological relevance at this point in time, and I'm here to hold the line for that. There's so much coming with AI. I don't fear it. I feel that as long as it understands our relevance to the system, that's not a problem. But we should be relevant, and we should be constantly improving ourselves. Right now, with the changes in global environment and everything like that, we need to fight for our survival. I think that a lot of people look at genetics and they think, Oh, people want to live longer, a few years. They want to not have a disease. Makes sense. They want to not have Alzheimer's and dementia and cancer. But actually, we're going to be coming up against major shifts in which we are going to need to be prepared for. Like I said, in any location of the environment, that might require a different shift, and we should be taking this very seriously.

[00:38:30.500] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. My husband asked me, Hey, if we get an opportunity to go to Mars, will you go with me? I said, No, only because of the fact that we know that people that go to outer space age significantly faster. I would have to imagine we would have to figure that out if we wanted to be multi-planetary, how we don't have this huge negative impact on our. Oh, yeah.

[00:38:56.810] - LIZ PARRISH

We're already doing that. We've been working on some some of those aspects over here for almost since the company started because there's been a lot of interest in that space. There are things that you can do for radiation resistance. There are genes from other species like tardy grades and different species that actually can see a wider spectrum of light that might be beneficial. But we also need to be able to build better space accommodations, and that will help us a lot as well. It's both hardware and human software that will make that a reality. I feel you. I feel like I'm going to be the welcominger on Earth until it's uninhabitable, and then we'll push on. But I think that those are really cool things to get excited about and really would create an interesting vacation experiences. Maybe as you and I are entrepreneurial experiences, businesses on other planets. We should definitely be thinking about that.

[00:40:06.690] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. No, I mean, I'm so excited, and I would totally go just as long as it's not going to make a massive negative impact on my biology.

[00:40:14.240] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, you don't want to die there. I think somebody who's famous said something like, Oh, they'll go there and die there. It's like, that has no meaning for me, honestly. The entire universe is our home. It's not that we're not home when we die, but I'm not for any meaningless deaths. Getting there safely and being able to habitate it is important.

[00:40:42.570] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. To go a little a deeper on the telomerase, would we assume that that gene therapy would target maybe more of the hallmarks than maybe the fallostatin?

[00:40:55.450] - LIZ PARRISH

Oh, yeah. Really, it targets the hallmarks of aging, and probably several of them that we don't give it credit for. Not all of them, but it is super beneficial. Well, here's one thing that one of the new companies that we licensed to that I'm so excited about. They've worked in stem cells for a long time. They have tons of patenting around reprogramming stem cells. Stem cells are vital. They're a huge hallmark of aging. When you do a gene therapy with telomereus reverse transcriptase, if you could only target one group of cells, you would want to target your stem cells because they regenerate your entire body. When you're born, let's just pretend you're born with 100% of your stem cells when you're born, you're probably got more like 98% or something. But by the time you're 65, you're down to probably single digits, maybe low double digits percentage of your stem cells left. The reason is stem cells have some amount of telomerase turned on, but not enough to replace them indefinitely. So unlike other cells of your body that have no telomerase, reverse transcriptase turned on, the ones that don't, they have a limited cellular division 50 or 60 times, and that's what's associated with our lifespan.

[00:42:18.140] - LIZ PARRISH

Stem cells have more, but there are a depleting pool of those stem cells. If we could lengthen the telomeres in the stem cells, that would be super beneficial, and that's one area. But if you could do it in your entire body as well, you would have a multitude of benefits. Stem cell exhaustion is one of the things that would target alone, although it's not as great as just getting a whole flush billions of your own young stem cells put in with long telomeres. It also benefits mitochondrial dysfunction, stem cell exhaustion, mitochondrial dysfunction. Cellular and chronic inflammation certainly is going to be targeted. Genomic instability, that would be a huge one of telomerase reverse transcriptase because that's what causes cancer. I think a lot of people hear telomerase associated with cancers growing, and in about 85% of cancers, that's true. When cancer happens, it's genomic instability. A lot of genes turn on. One of the beneficial genes that on is telomereis, and it immortalizes the cancer. But we know what causes cancer is short telomeres outside of radiation that just does some terrible double-strand, horid break to your genome, which should actually throw it into senescence.

[00:43:47.520] - LIZ PARRISH

But if it doesn't, radiation can cause cancer as well. Short telomeres are one of the number one reasons why you would get a cancer. If you could keep those telomeres long long that keeps genomic stability in place, you would be much less likely to get cancer. It is amazingly consequential to cancer. Then we think that it has a great benefit to epigenetic drift. Then, of course, telomere attrition is a hallmark of aging, and one of the biggest baddest ones as far as lifespan. When we look at all genes, all the genes that we look at, there's about 15 of them now, 15 to 25. Some of them are put in a Venn diagram. It's a little bit farther off of the other ones, let's say, it crosses over, but it's in more experimental space. All of the genes in animal models that we work with increase lifespan and health span of mice, but vice or not humans. If you wanted to live a very long time and see that trip to Mars, you need to lengthen your telomeres. Even if you epigenetically reprogram cells, which we do, too, it's the OSK factors, you can do that, but organisms don't tend to live a lot longer because the OSKs don't lengthen the telomere.

[00:45:25.170] - LIZ PARRISH

So telomere is... A lot of people are like, Isn't that old aging work? Actually, there is no old aging work. Aging is science is new, and you need all of the technologies you're hearing about. There's not one that's going to solve it. But those telomeres are consequentials to that lifespan, like ultimate lifespan, like being able to continue to live and break the 50 to 60 cell divisions.

[00:45:50.740] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

That's great. I think that you answered this question, but one of my questions was, so to be clear, there's no link between doing a telomereis and cancer.

[00:46:00.310] - LIZ PARRISH

No, we have not seen that. In animal models, we see a reduced incidence of cancer or no gain. We have to say no gain in incidence, even though none of the animals got cancer that had the gene therapy. They lived longer, they lived healthier, and it did not increase the risk of cancer. That's what we have to say. They did not get cancer. We would expect to see that in all cases. Now, if somebody comes for a gene therapy, if they have an active cancer, they are disqualified from getting a gene therapy because it would confound the information. We don't know if lengthening telomeres would stop the cancer once you already have a solid tumor that has all of the immune system blockage. But lengthening the telomeres in your immune system is probably why there is a benefit to lomerus reverse transcriptase. Not only are all the genomes packed better, that the gene therapy All the cells that it transfects. But what causes cancer is a failing immune system. That's why people over 65, their trajectory of cancer goes up pretty exponentially after that is because the immune system is failing, No. Covid. There's at least one peer-reviewed paper, I think two peer-reviewed paper that shows that the people who died of COVID was because of cellular senescence in the immune system system, which is called immune senescence, meaning that the telomeres are too short, the immune system cannot divide to attack and eradicate the virus.

[00:47:40.330] - LIZ PARRISH

Immune senescence is a huge deal for any aging population, even some young people who have had health issues.

[00:47:49.720] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, absolutely. I know that this is not your necessarily area of focus, but I'm just curious your thoughts, if you don't mind to answer. What do you think about hyperbaric oxygen, or have you experimented with any hyperbaric oxygen for increasing the length of telomeres?

[00:48:05.510] - LIZ PARRISH

We have some scientific advisors, and they are super fantastic. One of them is really... He thinks that it's like space travel, right? You see a lengthening of telomeres, and then the telomeres shorten again, unfortunately. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, I love it. I've tried it a couple of times, just in those at-home units, and I tried it once at A4M. It's fantastic. It forces oxygen into tissues. It helps with repair. But my advisors think that the reason that you see a change in the telomeres is because the bone marrow gets pressure on it, and then it releases some new stem cells into the system, which pad the immune system, the T-lymphocytes, and you see transient longer telomeres. I think that that needs to be scientifically. A lot of people say, No, no, no, but they haven't done the research, and these guys have. They say that if you track people, then the telomeres go back to average length. I have a doctor in Mexico. He has one of those hyperbaric oxygen chambers that I think 15 people fit in at one time. He does hormone replacement when he does the hyperbaric. They do see lengthening of telomeres and regeneration for the time that you're under the therapist therapy, but then that all falls away after you don't do it anymore.

[00:49:35.740] - LIZ PARRISH

I don't know. I would say personally, I have advisors. They tell me one thing. I think more science needs to be done around it. We saw that in the space travel as well. We saw lengthening of telomeres, but then the telomeres jumped back, and not only did they jump back, they got shorter. Again, when you put the system under stress, you get some new mobilization of the stem cells that are the precursors, and probably you see jumps because of that, but I don't know. Hopefully, it does. I know it's very relaxing, it's very therapeutic. It can help people who have peripheral neuropathy and sores and scarring and other issues, especially associated to metabolic disorders. I say keep doing it and let's find out.

[00:50:27.690] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I'm excited for more to come out. We have a hyperbaric chamber at the clinic, which is like a multi-person chamber that we see patients reporting significantly improved outcomes. Then I have a hardshell chamber here at the house that I'm doing a protocol on. We'll keep you updated as I continue to get some of those labs. But I'm excited about the potential promise for longevity with hyperbaric oxygen.

[00:50:54.080] - LIZ PARRISH

I am excited, too. What I'd say is we need to do the research. One thing that you don't want to do is oversimulate your bone marrow and then have your bone marrow giving up a lot of stem cells that they don't need to use up at the time. I think that what we'll find is there's going to be this really interesting intersection of crossover in regenerative medicine where a lot of people are really, because they love it, because everybody loves the feel of it, they push mitochondrial energy. And mitochondrial energy does clear up cellular debris and problems. But whenever we push grow and go, we do that a bit with fullostatin as well, we're pushing regeneration, and then we're also then pushing cellular division limits. If you couldn't afford to take a telomere's reverse transcriptase gene therapy or some of the others that protect you for longevity, what would you want to do to be a really long-lived species is you would want to create just enough stress that your body regenerates, but you would want to keep things not in a grow and go mode. You would want to keep them below that. That's what things like metformin does.

[00:52:11.850] - LIZ PARRISH

It's an MTOR pathway inhibitor. It's basically saying, let's not grow a lot, let's maintain, and let's go into lower cellular division space. That would be one way to live a long time. Then the other way is what we're working on is put you in high regeneration, but then create the telomere length benefit for replication that supports that. Then maybe VEH bot sits right in there perfectly. I think that there's research to be done on that and some other therapies as well. Knowing what we know, I mean, most people don't want to be low metabolic state. They want to be in a high metabolic state, achieving a lot, doing a lot, regenerating a lot. We've chose one area of that, and that would be where our expertise is, is faster cognitive thinking, faster repair in the system and then replacing those telomeres so that we can actually physiologically support that regeneration.

[00:53:23.820] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, absolutely. When you did gene therapy, so you did gene therapy in 2015, and you were 44. What number do you have any idea of? Were you one of the first people, of course, but do you know where you fell in that? I mean, definitely probably the first woman, right?

[00:53:42.920] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah. Well, I was the first person in the world to take telomere's reverse transcriptase. That was a gene therapy that even though it had been through a multitude of animal studies, no one wanted to move that forward because they were afraid of the chance that it might cause cancer because it was associated with helping cancers grow. I was the first one there. For full of statin as a longevity gene therapy, I was the second. My co founder of BioViva had already done it. Well, he had actually done it to increase muscle mass in college because he was getting his MD, and he played college football, so he wanted to increase muscle mass. I I did it for longevity purposes because when we came together to create the company, to join forces, we thought that full of time was super beneficial for metabolic health It had already been used in children with Dushin's and Becker's Muscular Dystrophy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. It had benefits for a myriad of childhood diseases outside of that as well, whether they're metabolic or muscle-related. I really wanted to move that forward and get more data on it and get aging people excited about that.

[00:55:06.180] - LIZ PARRISH

He had used it as an enhancement. When he had looked at the information behind it, he saw that it appeared to stimulate the WNT pathways, which would stimulate stem cells. I already wanted to do telomerase reverse transcriptase, and we thought, Well, that would be the perfect combination because you don't want to stimulate stem cells without lengthening their telomeres and benefiting cellular development, or else you might burn faster. We don't know because what happens in a mouse study doesn't necessarily happen in a human. We decided to start with the two gene therapies. Our company has never specialized in a single gene therapy even since then. I was the first person to take telomerase reverse transcriptase and then to take probably any gene therapy to treat aging, and especially to take two gene therapies at the time. That wasn't something that people did.

[00:56:08.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I mean, so excited that you did that. Were you scared at all?

[00:56:11.880] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah. A lot of people were, Oh, my God, you guys made Well, I mean, we assumed that we were doing something. We did have video person there. It was one of the people who had made the gene therapy. His brother was a videographer, and I said, Well, would he come and film this? Because I didn't know if I was going to live. I thought, Well, at least I could get out why we were doing this and why I thought it was important at the time and get out to the scientific community, what we had done and how it was done. If it went badly, there was some documentation. But for us, it was like, God. I mean, everyone's like, Oh, it was big money and this and that. Actually, it was like a lot of work in your sweats and wondering. Then when it finally came time to do the gene therapy, which the gene therapy was, I think, two months late, we were ready and ready to travel and everything. They said, We're going to need another two months, which was haggering. But I think the stress really didn't come until probably within the 48 hours of doing it and realizing, wow, I might not see my kids.

[00:57:25.010] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, thank goodness that it did not go that way.

[00:57:28.960] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, we did a lot of research We did a lot of research, and we thought we were 98% on top of it, or else we wouldn't have done it. We did two years worth of research before I did the gene therapy. Nobody out there should think that we didn't, we were just like, Oh, these might work. We didn't do it in a basement. We did it in a clinic. We did it with medical doctors. We did it with a complete medical staff. It wasn't slim-flammy. Of course, yeah.

[00:57:54.370] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

But what did happen then? You were measuring biological age before and then after, and what were some of the benefits that you experienced?

[00:58:03.590] - LIZ PARRISH

We released a peer-reviewed paper on it, and for a long time, we had all of the data released to the public on the website. We tested telomeres before. We did an MRI of my muscles. We collated all of my blood work from between pregnancies and all the way through to the gene therapy. At that time, that was a lot. That met all of the criteria of a clinical trial. There were none of these. We had talked to Steve Horvath about looking at epigenetic aging, but it had to be done through the university, and it was really expensive We had to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build the first gene therapy for me to take. We didn't have those finances, but we met the criteria criteria of doing a trial in this space, and we did do a lot of the footwork to get it done. Then, of course, then after that, we did all of the follow-up, and then we've done not only a year's worth of data, a decade A wide worth of data now, and we continue to carry on. Then, of course, I've had many gene therapies since then.

[00:59:22.580] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

What were some of the main shifts that happened either in blood biomarkers or just for clarity, you guys did do bioage or didn't do it at the time?

[00:59:34.610] - LIZ PARRISH

We didn't do the biological age at the time because the only thing that was available in that time was, I think, the 2013 clock. Again, it had to be done through the university. The way to get blood to them was very daunting for us at the time. Actually, so you know, I'm not a big proponent of the biological age clocks. We had a kit called the Timekeeper, and we still look at the data. We still look at the pace of aging. We look at all the clocks. We have, I think, eight of them running on the back end of our system. But I don't know if you want to put that. For me, I think there's something either wrong with the Illumina machine because we were doing the Epic, and that was 850,000 data points. A lot of times it would run and not get all of those data points. It'd be construed. The data wasn't standardized. I've got to say, until there's a validated test in that that works predictively, I'm not a huge fan of it. We dropped the kit about nine months after launching it and spent a lot of money to do that because I thought that it might be misleading.

[01:00:50.060] - LIZ PARRISH

I do wish that we would have had that, but I do believe I still actually have blood samples that are frozen from that time. I don't I don't know if they would hold their epigenetics, but when those tests are validated, we could look at them back and forth. But telomere length, we definitely saw a difference. Telomere length changed extraordinarily from the first date and continues to do all the way through to now. When I started my telomeres over the average length of a 65-year-old, which if you look at biological aging and lifespan of families, was not surprising. Many people in my family have died in their 50s. Some of them have lived as long as 80 if they take care of themselves really well. After the gene therapy, they reversed to about my age. They went about to 44, and then they continued to lengthen. We released a paper again about two years ago, and it showed that for every year that I've lived, my telomere length, and this is only in my T-lymph has lengthened by about five years for every year that I live. That's beneficial for things like cellular senescence in the immune system, and then whatever other cells we were able to target.

[01:02:17.840] - LIZ PARRISH

On the MRIs, we showed more muscle mass and less white fat. In the blood work, we showed a massive reduction in C-reactive proteins. I'm always under one. Sometimes it's so low that my doctor literally throws my report at me. She's like, We're not going over this anymore. That's consistent. It's consistently low. My triglyceride levels, my HDL ratio, not HDL, but my cholesterol ratio is really good. I'm in a better state of health, so I'm stronger. At 54 this year, this month, will be my birthday, I'm able to do more than I could when I was 43, for sure.

[01:03:01.810] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Wow. Well, you look amazing. I think so. So what are your... Outside of gene therapies, you got to tell us, do you have any special skincare protocols that you're doing right now?

[01:03:13.630] - LIZ PARRISH

No, but I may have something to talk about. I'm really terrible with skincare, but I have started working with a friend of mine's company who has a molecule called AC11. David Sinclair just listed that on Twitter as one of the top 10 epigenetic reversing beneficial molecules that they've worked with in the lab. They're putting it in a skincare, and I think that's fantastic. I also occasionally, probably one month out of the year total because I'm so bad with skincare. I really like that brand by the women out of San Francisco. One Skin. One Skin. I really like their stuff. It feels really good on my skin. I think it's fantastic. I love what trying to do there. But I think that my skincare program probably would make a lot of people barf, but I actually think the less you do with your skin, the better it is. Again, because I'm really tuned in on cellular senescence and telomere length. For people who are not doing telomerase reverse transcriptase gene therapies, I don't suggest they go scrubbing on their skin or use... What's the stuff, it burns the top layer of your skin off.

[01:04:33.100] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Like ?

[01:04:35.380] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, tretinoquipium. Okay, your skin is going to look shiny. It's going to look better for the short term. You are burning through your telomere length. Don't do it. You're going to age your skin faster. My advisors tell me the same thing. So don't take it from me, take it from them. Be easy on your skin. Don't go in and hyperdo anything. If you can find a really good moisturizer, like I said, I think Winskin is a great brand. It feels good, it smells clean. This other brand that maybe we'll be talking about in the future with the AC11, also very, very clean. It's helping give you a moisture barrier. That's what you're looking for. Protect your skin. Don't scrub it off, okay?

[01:05:22.770] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

That's not the moon one, is it? I think David was involved with something with space, like something from the No, this one, I don't think that he's promoted.

[01:05:33.530] - LIZ PARRISH

He has promoted AC11 as being an epigenetic. It's almost like a little chemical reprogrammer, but this one is a natural form of it, and it hit the top 10 against even some cancer drugs. This one is all-natural, and then it's just basically emulsified. I can't think of the name of the brand now, but I'm very interested in it, and it's felt great on my skin, and they've sent me the papers, and they look really fantastic. I would just say I would promote something that creates a barrier, does not eat through your skin, does not try to make it look good today for it looking terrible in 10 years.

[01:06:14.860] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. I'm just getting... Because the interesting thing about this industry is if you're in longevity, and I don't know if it's not specific to women because I think Brian Johnson has the same thing. It's like the expectation is that you have really good skin for a very long time if you're working on internal stuff. So I'm just diving into skincare options, very familiar with One Skin, and I use that, but I have not really done much of anything so far. And I enjoy the sun, so I don't know what your opinion is on that.

[01:06:47.420] - LIZ PARRISH

Oh, my God. You got to get out in live, girl.

[01:06:49.760] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love the sun. You need to get out.

[01:06:52.400] - LIZ PARRISH

You need to do all of it. And what we need to be able to do is to reverse that damage. And you have light-colored skin. I do as well. I had one of those visias done on my skin. It was well over 10 years younger than its age, but still there is damage because the sun is directly bombarding those cells. But the gene therapies, I think, are going to create an amazing benefit. There's a couple of gene therapy companies coming. There's one in plasmas, and there's another one in the long-lasting vector-based technology that will be regenerating collagen. They can already do it. The second one, the vector-based technology, is going to go after elastin, which is even huger, I think, in my opinion. I like the idea of taking an injection and just regenerating from the inside out. The studies that Calharly did years ago on the back of mice showed that telomere's reverse transcriptase alone could make skin look young. Now, I don't know how do we do in a human with a systemic dose because gene therapy only can target a certain percentage of the cells in one go. I think over time we're going to get it, and that's what our company is working on is new delivery methods for gene therapy and how to get multiple genes in at one time.

[01:08:18.690] - LIZ PARRISH

For the same cost as a single gene therapy, you're getting four or five different genes. I think that will break us into the zone of more affordable gene therapies that people want to take because you won't have to choose. If a gene therapy costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars or your insurance company is only going to cover one, are you going to go for muscle mass? Are you going to go for cellular senescence? Are you going to Are you going to go for mitochondrial function directly, which is PG-1 alpha, which is just specifically that? Are you going to go for cognitive with clotho to protect you against dementia? I don't think we want to choose. We went back to research with at Rutgers University, and we started working on cytomegalovirus as a delivery method because it can already deliver a multitude. It has a big guttet size. We started attenuating the virus, and that means making it so it can't get you sick. In gene therapy, none of the vector deliveries can get you sick. We just use nature's docking mechanism that it's been using for millions, if not billions of years. We put healthy genes and make it deliver healthy genes.

[01:09:30.470] - LIZ PARRISH

In this way, you wouldn't have to choose anymore. You could just get one gene therapy that covered five of your interests.

[01:09:38.270] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. Well, I hope that's ready after my childbearing years. Not waiting to do it.

[01:09:43.350] - LIZ PARRISH

That'll be my clock. That'll It will be my clock. We always have to measure things in time. Sometimes it's from when we got a kitten to when that kitten passed. Hopefully, we'll get our pets living longer, too. But I would love to work within the realm of your each nine months.

[01:10:04.970] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. I turned 34 on November second, so that's where I'm at. I can't wait to do all this exciting stuff. Couple of other fast questions, just because I'm interested. What else are you doing for your longevity? I know you have a philosophy that we chatted about before. Of course, not necessarily striving for perfection because you have a much bigger life mission and things that you're moving forward. But you are a vegetarian. Is that for health reasons? Is it for personal reasons? What are some of the other main things that you're doing? And specifically as a woman, because me too. I think women are always just curious, what are other women doing for longevity?

[01:10:48.700] - LIZ PARRISH

Well, thank you. I would say that really I'm hanging my hat on gene therapy just because I'm not good at taking pills. I'm not good at sleeping at a regular time because I help run companies, I work on regulations, and I travel globally. I would say if gene therapy has helped me at all, that goes to show its benefit. I would love to optimally take care of myself. I do exercise. I am a vegetarian. I'm an ethical vegetarian. I'm just in love with everything, and I When I was in my 20s, somebody challenged me to not eat meat, and I was very active. I worked out. I was a weightlifter. I jogged, and I saw no difference. After that, I just couldn't understand why something would have to die for me to eat. My philosophy started there. I know that some people say it's healthier or it depends on how you eat. I eat to get by when I'm home. I definitely eat a lot healthier, but I do it for not to optimize my life, but to optimize somebody else's. I think that you should treat yourself well. I think you shouldn't stress. I would say one of my big philosophies with longevity is to not get stressed out when a new paper comes out of how you're supposed to optimize your life.

[01:12:28.630] - LIZ PARRISH

If I could tell anyone On anything, it would be that. If a paper comes out and it's like, You have to sleep this many hours, or you're not optimizing your life, and if that stresses you out, I wouldn't read it. Because actually, since that All those studies came out, a whole bunch of studies are coming out now that there are actually people who are genetically set up to only sleep 3-5 hours a night. I know a lot of them. For their age, some of them are in their 60s and 70s, they look so young, you wouldn't believe it. Their biomarkers are excellent. They're typically surgeons, medical doctors or whatever, and they appear to be optimized at a lesser level. I realized there's always an outlier. I I would say stress will kill you the fastest. But if you're a person who can read the literature and actually tune your life to it, you will get benefits from that. A hundred %, you should eat healthy, you should exercise regularly. We love to see that when people do go through and do the gene therapies that I've done. I'm not the only person anymore. There's hundreds of people now.

[01:13:40.970] - LIZ PARRISH

We love to see the ones that are the optimizers. That's the best. But some of them are like me, but I do a lot, okay? Whether that's high performing or not, but I do a lot. They view a lot, and they can't optimize everything. It's going to help you on the back end when you can.

[01:14:00.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, absolutely. Are there any gene therapies that you think will be specific to women, or do you think most gene therapies will be pretty universal for both sexes?

[01:14:12.790] - LIZ PARRISH

I think that everything that we look at, well, me being a woman, are going to be beneficial to women. Even with full of statin, maybe some people, I would not want to have a super muscular look. I have to be careful when I work out. My muscles can get really large. Maybe sometimes I don't want to look like a linebacker or whatever. But I think that femininity is many things, and I For me, femininity isn't weak. It is strong. It is powerful. It is being able to have children and win nations and learn to barter and trade and in all of the things. Women can do everything. Having increased muscle mass, to me, fits in well with that. Having increased intelligence through the gene therapies that help with that, have everything to do with that. Regenerating, being strong, those hit all of my values. We haven't thus far worked with any gene therapy that I think is targeted just towards men.

[01:15:30.550] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. I love your philosophy, I think, just so far, getting to know you. I think a lot of times we feel the need to put women into one of two buckets. Either you can be successful and you can run businesses or you can be a stay at home mom. It's not often where there's a consensus that you're doing both. You can be strong and run a company, but you can also want to be a great wife and a great mother. These are two things that I certainly want to do, and I love that you're already doing those things. I have some of the business stuff going on, but I'm excited to be a mom and be soft with my husband, but be a really strong leader in the house. And I love that side of you as well.

[01:16:15.150] - LIZ PARRISH

Oh my gosh, that's our superpower. I mean, I, number one, associate with being mom. If I'm somewhere and someone imbibes too much or they do this or do that, I'm the first person to try to help someone feel better or take care of them or clean their wound or whatever. That does not make me weak. I feel deeply. I have a deep sense of empathy. I'll often talk about childhood disease or whatever, and I'll start crying. That's my superpower. We don't need any more sociopaths in the world. My superpower is that I am a woman, and I'm 100% woman, and I don't have to not be a mother to prove that I'm strong. I mean, that is my proof of strength right there. Taking care of two kids and raising them, that's my prerequisite to doing anything in the world that I want to do, because if I can do that, and my kids actually love me, then I can do anything. We need to be flexible people. We need to be able to accomplish anything. And men can, too. They can be amazing caregivers as well. But let's talk about women. Girl, you're just You trial through fire one walk at a time, and you're unstable.

[01:17:50.330] - LIZ PARRISH

Just be it, be anything you want to be.

[01:17:53.030] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love it. Yeah, we're definitely able to create our own paths. I have enjoyed this conversation so much.

[01:18:00.730] - LIZ PARRISH

Me too.

[01:18:01.940] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Well, thank you for being here. We'll include some information in the show notes. Thank you again.

[01:18:09.890] - LIZ PARRISH

Yeah, it's been just so relaxing, and I love sitting with you. I'm looking forward to sitting with you in person because I just feel like we can go on and on.

[01:18:19.580] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

A hundred %. I know.

[01:18:20.910] - LIZ PARRISH

I don't feel like I was doing a podcast, so I probably said a lot of very casual things. Sorry if I've offended anyone, but I'm enjoying myself and you're having a fireside chat with me, and it's just very real.

[01:18:36.700] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I agree. I love it. I think everything you said was great. Thank you for being here. This podcast is for informational purposes only and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Kyla Barnes, does not accept responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. Opinions of their guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical issue, consult a licensed physician.