Methuselah Foundation CEO David Gobel on why wild cards and binary answers make for interesting longevity bets.
Founders Longevity Forum is set to make waves in Singapore, bringing together a distinguished lineup of global leaders in clinical innovation, academic research and investment. With a focus on advancing knowledge about the rapidly growing longevity sector, especially across the Asia-Pacific region, the event promises to foster dynamic discussions and collaboration. As interest in this field continues to surge globally, the forum will serve as a vital platform for exploring cutting-edge developments and strategies aimed at enhancing healthspan and lifespan.
Among the impressive roster of speakers is David Gobel, cofounder and CEO of the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to extending the healthy human lifespan. Known for its ambitious goal of making “90 the new 50 by 2030,” the foundation has been a trailblazer in driving transformative research and initiatives in longevity science. Gobel’s leadership has steered the organization’s investments in innovative R&D projects, groundbreaking partnerships and incentive prizes that challenge conventional thinking about aging and human health.
Longevity.Technology: As we gear up for Singapore, we’ll be whetting your interest by bringing you a series of interviews with some of our speakers. We’re kicking off with David Gobel, who shares shares insights on his work with the Methuselah Foundation, discusses longevity protocols and speaks candidly about his own experience of GLP1s.
David Gobel on…
Focusing on biomarkers
We have been very involved in developing the substrate for proof of the efficacy of interventions at a clinical level. We are the fiscal sponsor of the Biomarkers of Aging Consortium, which is all about getting better and better biomarkers which will indicate, before you have to die to find out how long you live, how well you’re doing and what your treatments are actually achieving. We’re focusing on making those biomarkers actionable, even going down to organ system level aging, so you could differentiate, for instance, the age of your pancreas versus your liver, lungs , &c.
A matter of protocol
At the Everest Clinic, we developed our own protocol – the Methuselah protocol – sort of as a self-defense against dying prematurely. That protocol is being delivered by that clinic, so we have stem-to-stern attention on the matter so that it is actually achieving real benefits to help those of us who are older to bridge to the next technologies. We’re working on those technologies at companies like Leucadia, Oisín, Turn Bio, X-Therma, and so forth – you could think of us as an industrial policy group!
There are some people who are extraordinarily highly disciplined. I am not one of those people. I need something that will help me be consistent. And so we’ve been developing an application that helps incentivise one to keep going and to do even better. After nine months of being on the protocol, according to the best biomarkers available, I had regressed or improved in my age about 12 years. But my weight has begun to creep back up, so I’m using this application to help me stay on track and even go better.
We eat our own dog food here to make sure that we’re not chasing rainbows. And I guess that what we’re seeing really is a reinforcement of the fact that we all need clinicians to be able to guide us through these protocols.
Playing the wild card
I like wild cards, and in Leucadia’s case, if everybody else is doing something after more than a quarter century and, maybe a quarter of trillion dollars’ worth of investment on α beta and plaque approach, well, do something else because those investments failed.
Leucadia is taking a completely different approach which I think of as a plumbing approach. Doug Ethell of Leucadia in 2013, I think, came out with the theory that the problem with Alzheimer’s was the brain isn’t draining the garbage properly when you age – the pathways to clearing the metabolites get clogged. And so, we invested early on because it was a wild card and it had the smell of plausibility, at least to me. So we’re now very close; by 2025, we’ll know if we were right or wrong – I like binary answers.
Looking ahead to Singapore
At Founders Longevity Forum Singapore, I’ll be focusing on actionable biomarkers, connecting patients with clinics and sorting out true versus fake longevity. Plus I’ll be examining how clinics get on board with the new political paradigm in the US. There is a massive change coming to FDA and NIH and I’ll look at what might those changes might look like in nine to 12 months from now.
