Beyond Longevity

Everyone talks about living longer. Far fewer people ask what happens if we reach those extra decades without purpose, identity, relevance or a clear idea of what we actually want to do with them.

In this episode of Beyond Longevity, I speak with Paul Long, a third-generation storyteller, former major-market television reporter, anchor and special projects producer, and Emmy-winning content creator. He went on to run his own production company before making a major pivot in his own life.

Paul now runs New Way Forward, a platform helping people rethink the second half of life, not just financially, but around purpose, health, relevance, contribution and continued income. His starting point is simple: the traditional path of work, retirement and gradual withdrawal no longer makes much sense if people may have decades of active life ahead of them.

We discuss why retirement can leave people struggling once the initial honeymoon period wears off, why losing identity and relevance may matter as much as losing income, and why financial planning alone does not prepare people for what comes next. We also look at who tends to reach this point, whether reinvention is realistic when someone is already in survival mode, and what society needs to change as people live longer.

Paul shares practical tools he uses himself, including an adapted Wheel of Life exercise and writing a letter from your 95-year-old self. And rather than advocating one dramatic leap, he explains why small, repeated actions may be a much more realistic way to build a different life.

About the guest

Paul Long began his career in television news, working as a major-market reporter, anchor and special projects producer. He later became an Emmy-winning content creator, receiving an Emmy for Best Documentary for A Passing of the Torch, and founded his own production company, producing work for major companies.

Around 2006, Paul began seriously questioning what he wanted the next stage of his own life to look like. That process eventually led to New Way Forward, where he now shares the ideas, tools and lessons he has gathered on purpose, health, income and reinvention in the second half of life. New Way Forward is still in launch mode, with content across YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack and its own website.

Site: www.NewWayFWD.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@newwayfwd/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-long-nwf/

Substack: https://newwayfwd.substack.com/

Chapters

00:00 Who Is Paul Long?

01:42 What Is New Way Forward?

03:11 Why Does Awareness Come Before Answers?

07:15 Who Starts Looking for a New Direction?

11:42 What Can the Wheel of Life Tell You?

15:02 How Do You Find the Common Thread in Your Life?

17:47 What Forces Us to Reinvent Our Lives?

22:11 The Different Versions of Paul Long

24:09 Why Can Retirement Leave People Unhappy?

29:08 Why Does Relevance Matter as We Age?

30:29 Why Does Pleasure Fade So Quickly?

30:40 What Creates Lasting Satisfaction?

32:23 Who Is New Way Forward Designed For?

36:39 Which Tools Help People Reinvent Their Lives?

38:48 Can Small Steps Really Change Your Life?

40:56 What If You Are Just Trying to Survive?

44:29 Can Society Adapt to Longer Lives?

47:52 How Do Identity, Meaning and Regret Change With Age?

52:33 How Can People Use New Way Forward?

54:44 How Do You Move Past Fear and Start?

57:10 Rapid-Fire Longevity Questions

01:01:09 What Makes a Good Second Half of Life?

Why do we lose muscle as we age, and how much can we rebuild, even in our seventies? For Dr Oskar Wenbar, the interest began after a stroke left his father bedridden. Watching his father’s physical condition deteriorate and his confidence disappear drew him into research on ageing muscle.

In this episode, we look at what changes inside our muscles as we age, why it matters far beyond strength, and how much can be regained.

We then move into more contested territory: testosterone replacement therapy and hormone optimisation, the muscle people may lose on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, peptides, NMN, and whether biological-age tests tell us anything useful. Where is there good evidence to act, and where are we getting ahead of it?

About the guest

Dr Oskar Wenbar is a UK-based pharmacist and researcher whose PhD work at the University of East Anglia focused on skeletal muscle ageing. Born in Poland and raised in Chicago, he studied pharmacy in England and worked as a hospital pharmacist before moving into research. He is a co-founder of Evaro, a digital healthcare company that has served more than two million patients across the UK through online consultations and prescription treatments.

Links and resources

• Evaro
• Evaro bios
• Dr Oskar Wenbar on LinkedIn
• Tasso

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

01:45 Oscar’s Journey to Longevity

05:42 Inside Ageing Muscle

08:49 Satellite Cells Explained

11:39 Why Muscle Loss Matters

15:33 Can You Rebuild Muscle

16:30 Training and Protein Uptake

19:47 Fast Twitch Fibres and Falls

20:54 DHT Testosterone and Muscle

23:08 From Mice to Human Evidence

24:43 Testosterone Decline Basics

27:06 Deficiency vs Optimization Debate

29:41 Stigma and Safety Evidence

31:02 UK vs US Testosterone Culture

33:54 Muscle Response and GLP-1 Risks

36:05 Peptides Hype Explained

38:12 NMN and NAD Boosters

39:36 Biological Age and Blood Testing

40:48 Needle-Free Blood Draw Devices

43:34 Longevity Basics and Essential Labs

45:51 Rapid Fire and Final Takeaways

65 billion dollars. That is roughly what Nebius was worth on the stock market when we recorded this episode. Yet most people have never heard of it. So what does the company actually do, and why are scientists using its computing power to search for new treatments?

Dr Ilya Burkov, Global Head of Scientific AI and Healthcare at Nebius, joins Beyond Longevity to explain how AI is being used in research and what happens behind the scenes when a biotech company needs far more computing power than it has in its own lab. Ilya has a PhD in medicine and worked in medical research before moving into technology at Amazon Web Services. He joined Nebius in 2024.

We talk about the difference between asking ChatGPT a question and using AI to investigate a potential drug. Ilya explains why access to computing power matters, what Nebius provides to research teams and large companies, and why a calculation that takes two days on a lab’s own equipment could take just 23 minutes with more powerful computing.

We also discuss AlphaFold, the protection of research data and intellectual property, and the limits of AI in drug discovery. If AI points scientists towards a promising molecule but cannot explain why it chose it, has it made a discovery? And could the same tools help us understand something as complicated as ageing?

Nebius Cloud for Scientific AI and Healthcare:

https://nebius.com/solutions/life-sciences-and-healthcare

Dr Ilya Burkov on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyaburkov/

00:00 Can AI Discover Without Understanding?

00:55 Meet Dr Ilya Burkov

02:08 Can AI Speed Up Scientific Research?

03:47 Why Did Dr Ilya Move from the Lab into Technology?

06:06 How Is Scientific AI Different from ChatGPT?

08:55 What Does AI Drug Discovery Actually Mean?

11:36 Why Do Biotech Investors Ask About Computing Power?

13:04 What Does Nebius Actually Do?

16:36 Does Nebius Provide the Kitchen or Help with the Cooking?

18:02 Why Does Biotech Need a Specialist AI Cloud?

20:48 How Are Researchers Using Nebius in Practice?

32:25 How Are Data and IP Protected in the Cloud?

33:47 What Did AlphaFold Change About Protein Folding?

37:43 Does AI Understand What It Discovers?

39:30 Is Ageing Perfect for AI or a Complete Nightmare?

44:35 How Do Europe, the US and Asia Regulate AI?

47:57 Why Are Companies Reserving Computing Power Early?

49:59 Rapid-Fire Questions

52:52 Closing Takeaways

Longevity medicine has created a strange new kind of patient: the healthy person convinced something must be wrong.

A wearable flags poor recovery. One test says your body is ageing faster than it should. Another gives you a completely different answer. And suddenly, someone who felt perfectly well starts wondering what needs fixing.

In this episode, host Daphna Stern sits down with Dr Chris Bachtsetzis, a physician practising general, preventive and longevity medicine in Switzerland.

Dr Chris sees patients across the full spectrum. Some have virtually unlimited budgets and are prepared to spend heavily on their health, travelling between clinics and trying the latest tests and treatments. Others simply want to stay healthy for as long as possible. And when it comes to those with money to spend, Dr Chris is often the person telling them to do less.

The conversation gets into where more testing becomes more noise, why Dr Chris questions the precision of biological age testing, and why he believes the enthusiasm around NAD+ has moved faster than the evidence. Daphna also challenges him on a more fundamental question: what does a longevity doctor actually offer that a very good GP should not already be doing?

They also explore what happens when the pursuit of better health goes too far. Can constantly tracking biomarkers and wearable scores turn a healthy person into an anxious patient? And if money really is no object, should you actually be doing more?

This is a conversation about how far to go in the pursuit of better health, and why knowing when to stop can matter as much as knowing what to do.

Guest Bio

Dr Chris Bachtsetzis is a physician based in Switzerland specialising in general, preventive and longevity medicine. He has a background in biomedical sciences alongside his medical degree, with additional academic training in economics, business management and political science, as well as experience as a healthcare adviser with the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care.

Before medicine, Dr Chris was an athlete and personal trainer, an experience that continues to shape his emphasis on fitness and human performance. His career has since spanned clinical medicine, research, healthcare management and public health, and he has practised preventive and longevity medicine across several countries.

In Switzerland, Dr Chris has worked with the Chenot Group, The Kusnacht Practice and Longevity Centre Switzerland. He now practises general, preventive and longevity medicine in the Canton of Zurich, working with patients ranging from high-performing executives and professional athletes to everyday people looking for a more proactive approach to healthy ageing.

His guiding philosophy is “Prevention and Longevity for All”: maximise healthspan through prevention and lifestyle first, use proven medical interventions when indicated, approach emerging tests, treatments and technologies critically, and make effective longevity care accessible to all.

Where to Find Dr Chris Bachtsetzis

Website: drchrismd.com

00:00 Welcome and Premise

02:04 Meet Dr Chris

05:29 Longevity in Switzerland

09:34 Longevity vs GP Care

14:31 Insurance and Costs

16:03 Who Seeks Longevity

18:51 Is Longevity for Rich

22:03 Hype and NAD Plus

26:48 Biological Age Reality

32:43 Wearables and Anxiety

39:42 Choosing Tests and Tools

47:56 What to Do at 50

54:16 Rapid Fire and Wrap

58:28 Key Takeaways Outro

At 16, Chris Mirabile was lying in a hospital bed the night before brain surgery, wondering whether he would wake up the next morning. Years later, as he was building NOVOS, he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. Those two experiences reshaped the way he thought about health and ageing, and eventually led him to found a longevity company built around a simple but demanding question: can we actually prove that what we are doing to slow ageing works?

In this conversation, Chris Mirabile, Founder and CEO of NOVOS, takes us through the science of the 12 hallmarks of ageing and explains why NOVOS is trying to tackle all 12 at once rather than focusing on a single pathway. We also get into a less obvious problem: ingredients that look promising individually do not necessarily behave the same way when combined. It is one of the reasons Chris believes longevity products should be tested as complete formulations, rather than relying only on evidence for their individual components.

We then look at the animal and human research behind NOVOS Core, including its cardiovascular study in healthy adults. We also discuss the science — and marketing — behind Face Age, and Chris’s take on some of the biggest claims, controversies and myths currently circulating in the longevity space.

Guest information

Chris Mirabile — Founder and CEO, NOVOS

Chris survived a brain tumour diagnosis and surgery at 16, went on to study finance, accounting and international business at NYU Stern, and won NYU Stern’s Business Plan Competition before co-founding Hotlist, an early social planning network that reached more than 220 million social plans.

He later founded NOVOS, a longevity company structured as a Public Benefit Corporation, donating a portion of its profits and equity to nonprofit organisations supporting ageing research. NOVOS assembled a scientific advisory board that includes Harvard Medical School professor George Church. Its Head of R&D, Dr Diogo Barardo, created DrugAge, one of the world’s largest databases of compounds studied for their effects on lifespan in model organisms.

Links & References

* NOVOS: https://novoslabs.com/

* The Science Behind NOVOS Core: https://learn.novoslabs.com/

* NOVOS Core Cardiovascular Research: https://learn.novoslabs.com/cardiovascular

* University of Surrey NOVOS Core Study — SSRN Preprint: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6241278

* NOVOS Core: https://novoslabs.com/product/novos-core/

* Chris Mirabile on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slowmyage

Chapters

00:00 Podcast introduction and guest

02:11 The experiences that changed how Chris thinks about health

02:52 A brain tumour at 16

06:50 From finance to startup founder

09:51 What does longevity actually mean?

12:40 Going upstream — the 12 hallmarks of ageing

17:34 Self-experimentation, data and discovering PubMed

21:18 Why Chris believed NOVOS needed to exist

23:17 Bringing leading scientists on board

29:09 Why target all 12 hallmarks at once?

33:35 Choosing the ingredients for NOVOS Core

36:47 Why the complete formula needs to be tested

40:25 NOVOS Core and lifespan in aged mice

41:04 Moving into human trials

42:00 What the cardiovascular study measured

43:47 Why start with heart and blood vessel health?

45:21 What happened after a single dose?

46:25 The results after six months

49:19 Can you make an already healthy person healthier?

51:58 FaceAge — science, marketing and biological age

56:28 NOVOS Life, wearables and AI

58:07 What longevity advice are people getting wrong?

01:03:04 Sleep, cholesterol and Chris’s CAC scan

01:08:48 Rapid fire

01:12:30 The longevity myth Chris does not believe

Recorded at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam, Part Two of our special series looks at four very different ways technology could help healthcare move earlier, become more personalised and make better use of the growing amount of health data we are collecting.

Dr Marta Ciechonska, Co-Founder and CEO of Salient Bio, explores what the microbes living in our gut, mouth and vaginal microbiome can tell us about health. She explains how metagenomic testing and machine learning are being used to move microbiome science towards clinical diagnostics, including work in inflammatory bowel disease, as well as the links between oral health, systemic inflammation and changes associated with menopause.

Ilay Marom, Co-Founder and COO of NaNose Medical, introduces a very different approach to early detection: analysing biomarkers in our breath. He explains how nanosensors and AI can identify patterns associated with diseases including lung cancer and advanced liver fibrosis, what the technology is actually measuring, how accurate it could become and whether breath testing could eventually make large-scale screening more accessible and affordable.

Aad R. Liefveld, Chief Growth Officer at PACE Clinical, tackles a problem that has little to do with discovering new treatments and everything to do with whether patients actually follow them. We discuss why people struggle with adherence, how behavioural modelling can identify patients at risk of dropping out or deviating from treatment protocols, and why poor adherence can distort the results of clinical trials themselves.

Finally, Ruth Prieto of Nebius takes us behind the scenes of medical AI. We discuss the computing infrastructure required to power increasingly complex healthcare applications, from drug discovery to diagnostics, alongside the questions around privacy, security, regulation and what meaningful AI adoption in healthcare actually looks like.

Together, the conversations raise a broader question running through much of HLTH Europe: can we use technology not simply to collect more health data, but to detect problems earlier, intervene more intelligently and ultimately keep people healthier for longer?

Marta Ciechonska - Salient Bio

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-ciechonska/

Salient Bio

Ilay Marom - Co-Founder & COO at Nanose Medical

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilay-marom-846793218/

Nanose Medical - Nanose -Disease diagnosis - Official Website

Adriaan Rudolf (Aad) Liefveld -

https://www.linkedin.com/in/liefveld/

https://www.paceclinical.com/

Ruth Prieto - Communications Manager and External Communications PR lead at Nebius

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-prieto/

The Ultimate AI Cloud

Find out about HLTH Europe https://hlth.com/events/europe/ See you there next year

Running order

00:00 Back at HLTH Europe

01:49 Microbiome Diagnostics

05:24 From Testing to Prevention

08:28 Breath Biomarkers for Earlier Detection

11:18 How Breath Sensing Works

15:50 Accuracy, Cost and Accessibility

18:05 Scaling Preventive Diagnostics

23:30 Why Patients Struggle With Adherence

28:50 The Behaviour Behind Non-Adherence

30:14 B-COMPASS and Proactive Support

31:08 The Clinical Trial Dropout Problem

32:03 How Protocol Deviations Distort Data

34:16 Rethinking Clinical Trials and R&D

37:56 Who Should Pay for Better Adherence?

40:46 Making Health Technology Accessible as We Age

42:37 The Infrastructure Behind Medical AI

46:37 How AI Is Changing Drug Discovery

47:41 Privacy, Security and Real-World AI

49:58 Breakthrough Projects and Recognition

55:33 Closing Reflections

What happens when technology stops simply tracking our health and starts helping us understand what to do about it?

Recorded at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam, this episode of Beyond Longevity features three conversations with founders working across very different areas of health technology. From understanding our individual stress response and making sense of an overwhelming amount of health data, to bringing rehabilitation into the home, these conversations explore what preventive health could actually look like in practice.

Timothée Manschot, Founder and CEO of NOWATCH, is rethinking what a health wearable should do. NOWATCH continuously measures signals including electrodermal activity to understand how an individual’s body responds to stress and builds a personalised baseline over time. We discuss what Timothée calls “compassionate technology”, why more health data isn’t necessarily better, and NOWATCH’s unusual approach to privacy, where users remain in control of their own data.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmanschot/

Nowatch - Polsen Health | Screenless Health Tracker for Stress, Sleep, Activity & Recovery

Samir Mitra, Founder and CEO of REYA.AI, has spent decades at the forefront of technology. He was part of the original Java team at Sun Microsystems and later became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Sequoia Capital. Today, he’s applying that experience to longevity medicine. REYA.AI helps clinicians bring together medical records, blood tests, genetics, wearables and other health data, using AI to identify what actually matters. We discuss where AI can outperform humans, where it can’t, and why Samir believes clinical judgement and context still need to remain at the centre of healthcare.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-mitra-1623164/

Reya Ai

Roy Shteren, CEO and Co-Founder of WizeCare Technologies, is tackling another major challenge: how to make rehabilitation available to more people without requiring every session to happen face-to-face. WizeCare uses AI and movement tracking to support remote physiotherapy without additional hardware. We explore how the same technology could go beyond recovery and help identify changes in movement, mobility and fall risk before they become a bigger problem.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roy-shteren/

https://www.wizecare.com/

Find out more about HLTH Europe:

https://hlth.com/events/europe/

See you there next year.

Next week:

Part Two from HLTH Europe, where we explore the microbiome, breath-based disease detection, patient adherence and the AI infrastructure behind medical research.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to HLTH Europe in Amsterdam

01:04 What We’re Exploring

02:00 Timothée Manschot and NOWATCH

04:08 Understanding Your Stress Baseline

05:25 What Is Compassionate Technology?

08:13 A Privacy-First Approach to Health Data

15:22 Wearables, Health and Longevity

17:29 Samir Mitra and REYA.AI

21:32 How AI Can Help Clinicians

23:17 Why Human Judgement Still Matters

29:01 Where Could Healthcare AI Be in 10 Years?

33:16 Roy Shteren and WizeCare

36:51 From Rehabilitation to Prevention

38:59 Can Remote Rehabilitation Scale?

41:17 Final Thoughts and Part Two

What if a vaccine could help the immune system clear senescent “zombie” cells — damaged cells linked to ageing, chronic inflammation and age-related disease?

In this episode of Beyond Longevity, Daphna Stern sits down with David Scieszka, PhD, MBA, a biomedical scientist, computational biologist, and Founder and CEO of Vertical Longevity Pharmaceuticals (VeLo Pharma). His route into longevity has been anything but conventional, spanning service in the US Army, wet-lab science, computational biology and, eventually, biotech entrepreneurship.

VeLo Pharma is developing a senolytic vaccine designed to help the immune system recognise and remove senescent cells. Often described as “zombie cells”, these are damaged cells that have stopped dividing but remain active. As they accumulate with age, they can contribute to chronic inflammation, tissue dysfunction and age-related disease.

The company’s first focus is atherosclerosis, where plaque builds up inside the arteries. The aim is to target senescent cells within the vasculature — the network of blood vessels that carries blood around the body — as a potential new way of tackling vascular ageing and cardiovascular disease.

But this conversation goes far beyond one experimental vaccine.

David and Daphna explore one of the biggest problems in longevity science: why so many promising discoveries look exciting in the lab, yet so few make the difficult journey into treatments that patients can actually use.

They discuss where artificial intelligence can genuinely help drug development — and where the hype may run ahead of the science — what animal and primate studies can and cannot tell us, and what evidence would be needed before an approach like this could move towards human trials.

David also talks candidly about the business of building a biotech company: learning how to approach investors, getting the fundraising ask wrong, understanding what investors actually need to see, and building a company around a mission that goes beyond simply creating another expensive longevity treatment.

Running through the conversation is an even bigger question: if we do find effective ways to slow parts of the ageing process, who gets access to them first? Will longevity medicine remain something available primarily to those who can afford it — or can longevity eventually become something for everyone?

Guest

David Scieszka, PhD, MBA

Biomedical scientist, computational biologist, and Founder and CEO

Vertical Longevity Pharmaceuticals (Velo Pharma)

Vertical Longevity Pharmaceuticals

LinkedIn - Vertical Longevity Pharmaceuticals

Reach out to David on LinkedIn to find out about the upcoming “Ask VeLo Pharma Anything”

00:00 Welcome and Big Question

00:25 Meet David Cheska

02:53 Army Roots of Longevity

04:38 Choosing Biotech Path

05:49 Wet Lab Meets Computation

08:48 AI Promise and Limits

13:19 Longevity for All Mission

16:54 Vascular Ageing Explained

19:29 Senescent Cells 101

22:31 Lytic Vaccine Overview

24:11 Dosing and Study Strategy

26:12 How VLP Vaccines Work

29:02 Safety and Public Trust

29:58 Vaccine Safety Basics

31:14 Senescent Cells Strategy

32:42 Evidence So Far

35:35 Primate Trial Goals

36:40 Why Translation Fails

39:55 Personalised Longevity Care

42:41 PhD MBA Path

44:51 Fundraising Lessons

49:35 Mission-Driven Team

51:32 Longevity Next Decade

53:16 Rapid Fire Wrap

55:17 Final Takeaways

What if heart disease, kidney disease and dementia share a common mechanism linked to ageing? And what if blocking a destructive form of cell death called necrosis could help protect several organs at once?

In this episode, host Daphna Stern speaks with LinkGevity founders Dr Carina Kern and Serena Kern-Libera about their attempt to develop a new longevity drug targeting necrosis, ageing and age-related disease.

Their work challenges the conventional model of drug discovery. Medicine generally treats kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and dementia as separate conditions. LinkGevity is asking whether targeting biology shared across these diseases could protect several organs and systems at once.

At the centre of that approach is necrosis: a destructive form of cell death that can spread damage through surrounding tissue. LinkGevity’s lead candidate, Anti-Necrotic™️, is designed to protect cells from the calcium overload that drives this process. The company is preparing for clinical trials in kidney disease, while investigating whether the same mechanism could eventually have wider applications across ageing, organ preservation and tissue engineering.

The work has received support from Innovate UK, Horizon Europe, the Francis Crick Institute and the UK Space Agency. LinkGevity was also selected as one of 12 companies for the SPACE-H accelerator, run in collaboration with NASA’s Human Research Program, TRISH and Microsoft Federal.

The conversation explores the Blueprint Theory of Ageing, the limitations of treating age-related diseases one at a time, and why the kidney may provide a practical first route into human trials. It also examines what the existing laboratory evidence can—and cannot yet—tell us, what would disprove the company’s theory, and how LinkGevity is trying to separate scientific ambition from longevity hype.

Dr Carina Kern is the founder and CEO of LinkGevity, an AI-enabled biotech company developing treatments for ageing and the loss of biological resilience. A geneticist and ageing researcher, she is the architect of the Blueprint Theory of Ageing, an integrative framework connecting evolutionary principles, genetic pathways, molecular mechanisms and clinical medicine. The theory underpins LinkGevity’s AI-driven drug-discovery platform.

Serena Kern-Libera is co-founder, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of LinkGevity. Before founding the company with her sister, she worked at Magic Circle law firm Slaughter and May, the Bank of England and HM Treasury, and served as Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Together, they lead a multidisciplinary team based at the Babraham Research Campus in Cambridge. Their lead programme is initially targeting kidney disease, but its larger ambition is to test whether blocking necrosis could help protect the body against several forms of age-related degeneration.

You can find out more here:

LinkGevity: www.linkgevity.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/linkgevity/

X: @CarinaCarlaKern

Research papers:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388…

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202310.1387

Timestamps

* 00:00 — Introducing Dr Carina Kern, Serena Kern-Libera and LinkGevity

* 02:30 — The family story behind the company

* 05:40 — Lifespan, healthspan and the fear of prolonged ill health

* 07:30 — Early C. elegans research and publishing findings that challenged convention

* 11:00 — From academic research to building a company at Babraham

* 13:15 — The Blueprint Theory of Ageing and the case for systems-level medicine

* 17:00 — Can ageing be defined and measured well enough to regulate?

* 21:30 — What GLP-1 drugs reveal about system-level treatments

* 25:00 — Should kidney disease, heart disease and dementia be treated separately?

* 27:45 — What the hallmarks of ageing explain—and what they may miss

* 31:00 — What would disprove the Blueprint Theory?

* 33:20 — Necrosis and apoptosis: two very different forms of cell death

* 37:00 — How necrosis can spread tissue damage

* 41:00 — Calcium overload and how Anti-Necrotic™️ is designed to work

* 45:00 — The laboratory evidence so far

* 48:30 — Why necrosis remains a barrier to growing organs in the lab

* 52:00 — The route to human trials, beginning with kidney disease

* 55:00 — NASA, the UK Space Agency and “cosmic kidneys”

* 59:00 — Working with the NHS and the case for a gateway trial

* 1:02:30 — Longevity hype, scientific rigour and the risks of the label

* 1:06:00 — Is society prepared for a genuine breakthrough in healthspan?

* 1:09:00 — What each sister is most afraid of getting wrong

* 1:11:00 — Rapid-fire five questions

* 1:14:00 — Closing reflections and host takeaway

At 39, Leslie Kenny was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and says she was told she had around five years to live. More than two decades later, she is in long-term remission and has turned that experience into a mission: helping patients become better informed, more involved and more confident in decisions about their own health.

In this episode, Leslie Kenny, founder of Oxford Healthspan and co-founder of the Oxford Longevity Project, joins Daphna Stern to tell the story of how she challenged her original prognosis, found intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) through her own research, changed her diet and ultimately reached remission.

But her story also raises a much bigger question: where should patient empowerment end and medical expertise begin?

The conversation then turns to spermidine, a naturally occurring compound found in the body and in foods that has attracted growing interest for its relationship with autophagy — the cellular recycling process that helps remove and reuse damaged cellular material. Leslie explains why she became convinced of its potential and why she believes natural compounds such as spermidine struggle to attract the research funding available to patentable drugs.

Daphna also pushes on the evidence. How much do we actually know about spermidine in humans? What can observational studies tell us — and what can they not? How does the evidence compare with interventions such as rapamycin? And when does an intriguing longevity molecule become something we can genuinely recommend?

The conversation expands beyond supplements into a broader discussion about personal responsibility for health, the exposome, the future of preventative medicine and what healthcare could look like if it focused not simply on extending life, but on helping people live well for longer — right through to the end.

Guest Bio

Leslie Kenny is the founder of Oxford Healthspan and co-founder of the Oxford Longevity Project. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus at 39 and given a five-year prognosis, Kenny used patient research, dietary overhaul, and an experimental immunoglobulin therapy to reverse her condition into long-term remission. She trained at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and now serves as Global Executive Ambassador for the Japan Autophagy Consortium. Through Oxford Healthspan, she develops food-derived spermidine and nettle-based nutraceuticals, and through the Oxford Longevity Project, she works alongside scientists including Sir Muir Gray, Sir Christopher Ball, Dr Paul Chen, and Emeritus Professor Dennis Noble to advance patient-centred ageing research.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-kenny-oxford/

Timestamps

* 00:00 — Introduction to Leslie Kenny and her story

* 02:10 — IVF, autoimmune disease and the diagnosis that changed everything

* 04:30 — Questioning the original diagnosis and discovering a thyroid problem

* 08:15 — How patient research led Leslie to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG)

* 13:00 — Diet, elimination protocols and visualisation

* 17:40 — Reaching remission and turning personal experience into advocacy

* 21:50 — How to challenge your doctor without rejecting conventional medicine

* 25:30 — What spermidine is and why Leslie became interested in it

* 29:15 — Spermidine, the hallmarks of ageing and the comparison with rapamycin

* 34:00 — Why natural compounds can struggle for funding, patents and attention

* 38:20 — What the human evidence for spermidine actually tells us

* 43:10 — The funding problem in independent longevity research

* 45:30 — Oxford Healthspan and the Oxford Longevity Project

* 48:00 — How much control do we really have over our health and ageing?

* 52:00 — Rethinking hospitals, later life and what a good death looks like

* 56:30 — Rapid-fire questions

* 59:00 — Closing reflections

References & Further Reading

• Kenny, L. — founder, Oxford Healthspan
• Oxford Longevity Project (co-founded with Sir Muir Gray, Sir Christopher Ball, Dr. Paul Chen, Prof. Dennis Noble)
• Sears, B. — The Anti-Aging Zone
• Franceschi, C. — originator of the "inflammaging" concept
• Partridge, L., Madeo, F., Kennedy, B. — research on spermidine and the hallmarks of ageing
• Eisenberg, T., et al. — Grazer study on spermidine and human cell telomeres (2021)