The Future of Regenerative Medicine with Dr. Drew Taylor and Sachin Patel

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today we have a very unique guest, somebody who literally has plucked hair out of my beard at my kitchen table. And you'll learn exactly why in just a moment. In fact, what you're going to learn today could literally change and transform the rest of your life and how you live the rest of your life. And that's why I'm excited to have this conversation. The information that does Dr. Drew Taylor will be sharing with us is going to enhance your perspective on what's possible. It will highlight the capabilities that modern medicine has achieved and what you can do to extend your lifespan. Drew is a serial entrepreneur. He is a professional athlete, and now is somebody who is helping extend people's lifespans using something as unique and as ubiquitous that we all have, which is our hair. And using that hair, he's able to create some amazing, amazing opportunities for us in the future. In fact, both myself and my wife had hairs plucked. About 50 hairs plucked. And now they are cryogenically frozen in a laboratory in Toronto in the event that we ever need those stem cells. And so, without further ado, welcome, Drew. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you so much. Very excited to be here.

Well, I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time because what you're doing is so intriguing, and I want as many people to know about it as possible. So I'd love to first start with your journey. What got you into the biomedical space and specifically, what got you interested into the space of longevity.

Yeah, it goes back pretty far. I have to say that my first interest in the idea of stem cells and tissue engineering goes all the way back to about grade seven. I was part of a school, school science fair, school wide science fair. And we had to pick something mechanical to break down, and I ended up choosing the Total Knee Arthroplasty. It was a very popular choice. I'm pretty sure I was the only one that went down that avenue. A lot of guitars, a lot of other things, but only one that chose that, but led to this amazing opportunity for me to actually go into an OR and witness a knee replacement and total knee arthroplasty. So fake knee getting put in, it was an incredible experience. Got to shadow the surgeons, go through all of the motions, scrub up, clean under my fingernails, you know, let the water drip off of my elbows, like, the entire experience. And I was pretty young, so I absorbed everything going into the or, the double doors, smelling the iodine and things. It was pretty wild. The biggest thing for me was watching how many people were in the or. I wasn't actually expecting to see so many different people laser focused on their priority or their responsibility and working in this amazing unison way and then delivering this surgery that was going to essentially restore the ability to walk for this woman. And I was surprised when she got brought in. She was a little younger than I was expecting as well. I think I had pictured in my young mind that it would be this very elderly person that would need this, but it was a pretty young woman and, you know, she came in in a wheelchair and, you know, to fast forward, went through the surgery, went through that experience. But the most emotionally charged part of it was the next day following the surgeon on the rounds to go and visit that patient and watching her stand up out of her bed and embrace the physician, embrace that surgeon and say thank you, because she's in less pain a day after surgery than she was the day before. And so that was really remarkable for me that she was, you know, the quality of life that was delivered there. When we were walking out, I was talking to the surgeon and expressing this, you know, emotional experience I had just gone through of witnessing this benefit that was delivered to this young woman. And the surgeon kind of brought it back down to earth a little bit for me. And they said, yes, this was a success, right? She's going to be able to walk now, hopefully pain free, and that will last a while. But unfortunately, we're putting in metals and plastics, and so those don't mesh with our body perfectly, and they will break down over time where the bone around the metals will start to wear away because they're not the same density. And so ultimately she will be back and, and she will require a revision surgery and eventually we won't be able to do much and she'll be back in that same situation. But what they said next was what stuck with me, and that was in the future and what you'll see and hopefully what you may work on actually, is that we're going to be using a patient's own cells to replace that cartilage, to replace that bone, and restoring a patient's own tissues from their own living cells. And that is the future that I see for this very same surgery, except it will be all natural, all of their own materials. And so that blew my mind, right, at that age, because it sounded like science fiction, right? I'm probably dating myself going back a few years, and evidently I ended up working at that same hospital where I witnessed that surgery, working on the biomedical skeletal tissues engineering team with the division of orthopedics, in trying to do that very thing, engineer joints for patients on demand. So we, you know, it was. It was a, you know, kind of full circle of years later and, you know, degrees later and all of those things. Being back in that very same hospital working on that problem.

My body's just filled with goosebumps right now hearing this story, because it's amazing how we must have been, what, 13 at the time?

Yeah. Probably something. Yeah.

So even to have that opportunity is quite amazing and remarkable. But then to have, you know, that experience really stick with you and shape your future and have that full circle moment is quite powerful. You know, my son is 11 and he's in grade six right now, and that would be like such an awesome experience. I don't even know if they do stuff like that anymore.

Probably not.

Right. Like, I think they had some sort of hookup.

Well, my father was a physician, and, you know, he did. He was a sports medicine physician, not an orthopedic surgeon. But obviously they work together very closely. So, you know, I also think times have changed a little bit. You know, we're a little bit more registered over guests and observers and ors and things, especially with the conditions of going on in the world today. But in. In any case, I did get that experience, and I'm really grateful for it because it was. It was momentous in my life.

Yeah. Maybe we need more of that, though. Right?

Right.

I think it would be really cool, like, even if children could be part of the operating theater and be removed from, you know, the proximity part of it, but just, just having that interaction with the, with the physician telling you that someday you might be working on this and just kind of planting that seed, which you then took and, and literally are doing the exact same thing. Right. So it's pretty cool to. To see that. That full circle moment. I know you've had quite the journey. So you've. You've been a pitcher in the major leagues. Tell me about that. Like, you know, one thing you said about having a team, right? Like a team of people working on an end result, and that's, you know, sports is basically a culmination of that. So tell us about that experience.

I will. So just to be be specific, I ended up getting to go to spring training, but I never played a regular season major league game. I ended up having an injury before I made that last leap, and who knows whether I would have made it or not. But I had an incredible experience playing for both the Blue Jays and the Phillies. On their, you know, minor league squads. And it was incredible and definitely life shaping. And it actually, baseball, if for nothing else, ended up facilitating, pushing me into the research side and the development side of these therapies. Because my plan was to go to medical school. I had finished up at the University of Michigan and studied molecular cell developmental biology there while playing baseball and was set to head off to medical school. But I ended up getting picked up or offered a professional contract with the Blue Jays. And so that was a pretty exciting moment. Right. I didn't want to pass that up. I had a great example in my father who had actually played professional baseball and then become a physician. So I thought I could go back to medical school after I'm done. But let's give baseball a shot because this one my one moment to see that through. So I signed with the Blue Jays and not always being focused on academics, I didn't want to lose any momentum. So I actually very quickly applied to PhD programs. They wouldn't let me do an ND and play professionally at the same time. There's a little more flexibility with the Ph.D. and so I was extremely grateful to be able to become a full time PhD student really in the off seasons when I was in between baseball seasons. So I actually did the PhD while I was playing did at University of Toronto in biomedical engineering. And that's where I found myself back working with that group that was trying to solve some of those very problems that I was introduced to back in the day. And had I not done baseball, I probably would have been in med school focusing on learning everything as opposed to trying to work on a team for that very same problem, which I've now ran with. Right. And has been the, the focus of my career.

Amazing. So, you know, going back to, you know, our conversation regarding regenerative medicine, you know, we're hearing a lot about stem cells and it's kind of all the rage, all the buzz. And you know, it's such a powerful tool for our own healing. I know there's controversy around it. Like you can't even talk about it on Google, it seems. Right. There's a lot of censorship around it. Some people have to fly to different countries to have stem cell therapies done. I know Tony Robbins has been a huge fan of stem cells in his latest book, Life Force. So where are we in the current state of stem cells and regenerative medicine?

So stem cells is a big word. Right. And what I mean by that is it covers a lot of ground and when people use the Word stem cells, it doesn't always mean the same thing. A stem cell is essentially a cell that can divide, maintain one of those. The stem cell properties in one of those entities, and then actually give rise to a cell that can differentiate and become a specific cell in our bodies that serves us benefit, but it maintains that ability to keep doing that and keep dividing and replenishing your cells. So it's very powerful tool. And we have different types of stem cells throughout our bodies. And I really kind of try to make people understand that cells in general are more like a mountain rather than just a straight line of different hierarchy. You've got the embryonic stem cell at the top, which is that magic moment, sperm meets egg, and it can become any cell and does become any cell in the body. Then you have other cell types that we refer to as stem cells, but are more like halfway down that mountain instead of fully rolled down all the way to a cell like skin or kidney. At the base of that mountain, they're sitting up halfway, and they can become a number of different types of tissues down one face of that mountain. We call those stem cells multipotent. They can become multiple things. But the top stem cell is pluripotent. It can become anything. And so there's a lot of power to that, but a lot of risk, because you don't want the wrong cells to end up in the wrong place. And so, for instance, when we start talking about these very powerful stem cells at the top, there's a lot of risk to introducing those stem cells back to our bodies, because the last thing you would want is to have kidney cells growing in your liver if you're trying to treat the liver. And so you want to make sure that there's safety and efficacy. And we have to have patience for that because we need to go through the proper trials and make sure that these cells are being used safely and effectively. Stem cells has been around for a number of decades as a buzzword and a word that we understand and know. And so I think people are. They want access to these next generation therapies now. And technology always takes a bit of time from when you realize what something is before, when it actually delivers benefit to people. And even discovery of flight is an example I'll use. The Wright brothers were able to discover flight in early 1900s, right? So 1906 or something like that, and their first flight was about 100ft wasn't really delivering a lot of value to us. But this incredible discovery and invention of being able to create a plane that Would lift people off the ground and carry them. Took another 45, 50 years before the first passenger cross the Atlantic on a flight. And we had to develop multiple technologies to support that, to create that next generation of a plane. And I think we're at that moment in stem cells where we've known about them for decades and we've started to be able to harness them with new tools like crispr and the invention of being able to reprogram cells and create IPSC cells, two Nobel prize winning discoveries. But then also think about flight. After that first passenger crossed the Atlantic. It was only 10 years, less than 10 years, before all of a sudden we accomplished supersonic flight. The acceleration and advancement in technology then starts to happen very fast. That's where I think we're at, where this next decade that we're looking at in the world of stem cells is going to go supersonic. There are people that are accessing these things right at the beginning of that, and they're sometimes having to do that outside of Health Canada or the FDA to get access to those things. The problem is it's very difficult to understand which groups are doing it. For the average person looking things up online, it's very difficult to understand which groups are doing that effectively and safely, and which groups are taking advantage of a buzzword. There have been clinics that have shown that they're not injecting stem cells back into people in some of these clinics, and there are others that are working very focused on doing that. So it creates this gray area in this world, which unfortunately is something that is a bit of a roadblock, especially for people operating within those regulatory boundaries. So it's a very complicated space and I think that we just have to be very careful and sometimes as patients and individuals exhibit a little bit of patience to make sure that these things are being delivered carefully. But you're right, people are accessing them and there's a number of individuals with means and resources that are able to fly overseas and visit some clinics or go to areas where there's, there's, you know, outside of FDA and Health Canada and receive benefit. But I think it's coming for everybody and I think it's coming quickly.

I love that. So, so there's different donors, right? So we can get donor stem cells and we can have our own stem cells. Maybe you could describe the differences and advantages of one versus the other.

Absolutely. So what we focus on at ACORN is making sure that you have access to your own cells. And that's very important because taking donor cells from an individual is always a risk, right? You may reject those cells so that they just don't actually confer any benefit. In fact, they just create an inflammatory response that can actually do harm to your body. And if those cells then, you know, are stem cells and truly also not recognized by your immune system as clearly, they can wreak havoc, right? And they can be actually, you know, they can cause tumors, it can cause all sorts of things, which is why there are some, some risk to it. But also when we do deliver those things in ways like organ donation and other things where you're receiving another patient's cells, we suppress the immune system in the recipient. Now you have a lower immune system, which also allows you to not negatively respond to those cells and attack them. But it also leaves you susceptible to infections. We can't kick the common cold. It develops to pneumonia and can wreak havoc on you that way. Realistically, we only accept foreign cells from us when it is a very specific life saving therapy that we need to survive. And it's okay and appropriate to take on those risks at the attempt of receiving the benefit that potentially without it, we may perish. For some of the things that are not life threatening. And especially obviously, if you can have access to your own cells to deliver that benefit, that is always the best choice. And so for us, we very much focus on making sure that you have access to your best cells. And the reason why we focus on making sure that people can cryogenically bank their cells is because unfortunately, we get older. And every day that goes by, doesn't matter how many push ups we did that morning or what supplements we take, or how much calm we've introduced to our life to try to slow down the aging process. We're a day older, time is marching on, and we can do a lot of things to slow that down and to mitigate against those changes, which are very powerful. But no one has stopped aging, and our cells are unfortunately becoming a poorer and poorer resource as we age. So the best option that we have is to try to lock in a time point for ourselves as early as possible so that we can actually freeze our best moment in time so that we can leverage that throughout the rest of our lives. And when we think about delivering these therapies down the road, having access to cells that are potentially a decade or two younger is extremely powerful. And I saw this firsthand when I was working with that group at Mount Sinai Hospital here and through U of T. We were trying to take samples of patient cells and bring them back to the lab and culture them out to see if in practice we could create the functional tissues that were required to deliver benefit to that patient. A lot of the focus was on cartilage and bone, but this is really true across any cell type in our body. We've done some very successful animal models before, and my role was actually translating it to human models, and it wasn't easy. And the biggest thing that we learned in all of this experimental trial and error, to save you a lot of really boring reading, was that it was age. All of the young animal studies that were successful were done in adolescent animals. So basically teenagers. And now we're actually turning to patients at a time of need. They're coming in for a total knee or a total hip replacement. And we're taking cells at that time when their cells have degraded. Right, due to age, due to the onset of disease. They're experiencing osteoarthritis, most likely. And then we're asking those cells to perform at our best again and regrow cartilage. For us, it makes sense that it was difficult. So when we accessed younger human models and older animal models, the inverse happened. So age was such a strong, powerful force on our ability to be able to conceive, delivering a benefit to the patient through their own cells. And that really was a sad moment because when do we see patients, when do we actually have to intervene? It's usually when they're elderly and they're coming to us at a point of need because of a lifetime of wear and tear or at the onset of disease. And, and at that moment, we're going to have to turn them away because they're not going to have a viable resource for us to leverage. So that, that is really what has motivated acorn and acorn's creation and the access of being able to offer patients to bank their own younger cells so they will have an opportunity to not get turned away in the future. And that the generations alive today are going to actually be able to access these next generation therapies.

Yeah, I mean, you had me convinced, right? And one of, one of our philosophies at living proof is that nothing can fix your body better than it can fix itself. So very much what you're doing is in alignment with our core values. And, you know, like you said, the younger the better. But that kind of begs the next question, which is, is there an age that's too young? So, for example, my 11 year old, is he too young for this process? Is it better to do it now or is it better to wait for a certain level of maturity in his aging process. What are your thoughts?

Yeah. So there's a few things for every child. They develop at a different pace. Right. And ultimately, what we really want to see is a hair follicle that delivers cells. Because what we do is we pluck hair follicles. And that bulb, the tip of that cell, has thousands of cells that we can access with a bunch of really big benefits. They've got multi germ layer cells. They have stem cells in them, skin stem cells, hair follicle stem cells. And they can be a resource for us. They can expand readily. Right. We can multiply them. We can pick the specific cel. We want that resource to be as big as possible. And in the very early years of development, our hair follicles are very small. And then they develop over time and become much larger. We always love the fine hair of children. Right. It's nice and soft and beautiful. But it also means their follicles pretty tiny. So we want to wait for a point in time where their follicles are more robust. And certainly when the kids are in middle school and high school, we see that. That being said, there's also not as big of a sense of urgency. So we also want to make sure that a child is comfortable having their hair plucked. It is not painful. We've all plucked a random eyebrow or something. Right. That is going the wrong direction. So it's more annoying than it is anything else. But it's very simple procedure and a lot better than drilling into your iliac crest and harvesting bone marrow, for instance. This is quite accessible. But we also don't want to put any child into a. A state of fear or discomfort. So when they're ready at that age, no sense of urgency. When you would like to do it, let's do it. But we do start to see some metrics as early as in our 20s that start to decline. So it does happen fast, this aging process. We peak in our 20s as far as the percentage of adult stem cells that we have. And it's a steady decline pretty much until our 60s. And then at some point in our 60s, it picks up pace, that declines. And so really, the younger the better. But again, we don't want to push it too far. If you can do this for a child before they maybe head off to university or something, that's perfect.

I think a good litmus test for boys is when they can grow a beard.

Yeah, that's probably a really good one. Yeah.

So my next question for you would be Is helping people understand that process. Because when we had our hair plucked, you came to our house, which is which you did us a huge favor. So that's not the typical process, but came to our house, we had a nice, beautiful conversation, and then we pulled some hairs out, about 50 hair follicles. And then you put it into a special solution that preserves the stem cells or the quality of the follicles that are extracted. And then the next day I got a picture, and you're able to tell me how many stem cells and cells were viable. And that was a pretty cool process. So tell us, tell us a little bit more about what people can expect who want to go through a process like this.

Yeah, we're really proud of the process that we've created and also the inventions that we've created to actually make this all possible. So we engineered a very specific media or liquid that those hair follicles are submerged in that vial, what was in that vial. And it allows us to actually get the cells from point A to point B happy, alive, and viable. As soon as we have cells that leave our human body, they're not happy anymore. They do expire, and they go down that path. We want to make sure that they maintain that health and vitality and viability. Our media accomplishes that. We've actually shipped samples from Vancouver to Toronto across the country, Allowing us to make sure that these cells remain that quality. That was really exciting. We've also developed a package around that that maintains an internal temperature that is ideal for those cells. And so these two things combined allow us to really transport the cells. So what you would experience doing this, We've got a number of groups that we work with to provide access, Physicians and other healthcare providers where you can actually go have the cells collected by an individual at their practice. And those cells then will go straight into that vial. It comes as a nice little kit that you'll see there. It's very quick. 15 minutes and you' 50 follicles are plucked and put into that vial. And they don't come one at a time. You can go through it pretty quick. Then those cells go to us. After they go back to our facility, we process them in a clean room environment, ISO grade clean room. Those cells are then washed. They're counted, they're analyzed under a microscope. We stain the cells for a number of different indications of viability and the success of their collection. As we do that, we also take pictures of those cells experienced. You can see visually your live cells under the microscope, which is pretty exciting. We've actually had one individual blow it up into a picture and put it up in their office because it is a pretty cool piece of art almost. Then those cells go into cryogenics. So once we validate all of those things, we freeze the cells down in a very specific way in a controlled rate down to all the way to negative 100 and less than 100, negative 190 degrees Celsius. So at that temperature they are literally frozen in time. They don't age, they don't accumulate mutations, they don't have any cell metabolism. They are waiting for you for when you're going to need them in the future.

Wow. So describe that process. So let's hypothetically say somebody needs access to those cells. Is there a buildup time that they need? What is that process though? How do we unfreeze these and start?

You know, it'll depend on the therapy that you're trying to receive for, right? So obviously anytime you've got an access to a cells and we call those the starting material to create a therapy for you. Traditionally we've been creating therapies from drugs, right? So it's the chemical compound and we, we make sure it's pure and those, that's the starting material to create like a drug. Now the drug is your own cells, the therapy is your own cells. And so those cells now is the starting material. And how we use those cells to create that therapy for you can vary in time. We are very adamant that your cells are your cells. We are just the caretakers of them, right? The curators of your cellular content. And so we want to make sure that you have access to them in the way that you have want to have access to them at any time. So if you want to withdraw those cells, you let us know and we will send them where they want to go and we'll keep them frozen in that vial and deliver that then wants to collect those frozen cells and use them for a purpose. We do have the ability to do some really cool things in our lab ourselves and we've developed some amazing methodologies to be able to specifically grow keratinocytes, the surface of your skin, fibroblast, the deeper layer of your skin, actually focus on the mesenchymal and hair follicle stem cells that are located in that follicle and even reprogram those cells. Those are those long term therapies we talked about where one day we'll be 3D printing us a new organ. And we need kidney cells so we can reprogram cells to become pluripotent stem cells for you and then push them down whichever pathway of need that is. Those things do take time to culture out, reprogram and develop. Some of the very near term applications that we're seeing in clinical trials around the world, and that we're also participating and develop strategies is to actually harness those cells to create elements that our body needs for rejuvenation and specifically in the skin to start. Right. Because these are skin cells. So that's the nearest term thing that we see that are actually being benefit from. And so you can actually have these cells cultured to produce collagens pro collagens, hyaluronic acid, elastin link protein, the growth factors that your skin specifically needs, exosomes, which are these packages basically that stem cells produce that have proteins and RNA and DNA in them that actually can be delivered to cells to confer benefit. So it really is this resource that you can actually create not even more cells, but the products of cells that can deliver us immediate benefit. And the near term applications is very similar to prp, where we take blood and we inject like, you know, a concentrated amount of blood and platelets into a site of injury. We can be delivering things on top of that, even, even more so than PRP is able to, to deliver. And it's not the live cells themselves. It's all of the great things that they produce that we need for that rejuvenation process.

Wow. So, I mean, it's pretty amazing.

Pretty remarkable stuff coming very quickly. Yeah.

What would you say, like, what's, what's a kind of a, a use case that you'd like to highlight? I know in one of our conversations you said we'd be 3D printing pancreas and stuff like that. So. Is there one particular use case that really excites you?

Yeah. So I think one of the things that we are working on right now, and again, this is in research and development. Right. So we're not working, we're working with human cells, but we're not putting anything into a human. This is all in practice. We are able to reprogram the hair follicle cells to become those induced pluripotent stem cells and then actually purify that line of IPSCs, analyze it to make sure that it is the coding and all of those, the DNA replication has all been done accurately so it is you. And then push those cells down different pathways, specifically into the pancreas and create cells that are your pancreas cells. Then we can further differentiate them into islet beta cells. So that's a project that we're working on right now with the idea of one day being able to deliver you the cells that diabetic type 1 diabetics have lost their island beta cells that produce insulin and potentially give them the ability to produce insulin back again. So those are really, you know, ambitious projects. They will take time. We're talking years, right? This is not coming in a matter of months. But some of the things that we see happening very quickly are using the cells to produce products for ourselves, like collagens and things that our skin needs and delivering those to us. So it's a lot of aesthetic reasons. Skin rejuvenation, hair regrowth, then also that can be transferred into disease states for skin or wound healing in skin, diabetic foot ulcers, and some of these things to enhance the closure of those wounds. Then the next wave, I think, that we're going to start to see is in sports medicine, soft tissue sports injuries. We really want to enhance the form formation and the right orientation and healing of collagens. And so that's something that I think that by adding to the collagen population in that area of injury, we could be able to enhance. And so I think those things are also happening very quickly in the same way that we're using PRP to help enhance those things. Except PRP has some specific elements that are in your blood, and we're actually harnessing specific elements that are in skin, the thing that we want to heal, specifically.

Amazing. So somebody who, let's say hypothetically, has type 1 diabetes, going back to the top of our conversation, probably a good idea for them to lock in their stem cells, right, to have the hair follicles pulled and stored so that in the future, when this does become available to us, they're kind of first in line, if you will, to take advantage of that. Would that be an accurate statement?

I think so. My brother is a type 1 diabetic, and I made sure that he was banked as quickly as possible to make sure that he had his youngest cells cryogenically preserved and available. So I believe in his lifetime we'll see these things come to fruition, and I want to make sure that he has access to it. So I definitely agree with that statement.

Okay. Now, I know that sometimes these conditions are autoimmune in nature, so how do we address that component of it so that we don't just don't put these beta cells back into people and their immune system kind of degrades them again. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, so it's a great question. And I think we're in tandem with developing the abilities to actually create these tissues on demand. We're learning more about the things that are being attacked in them and the ways that we can mitigate the next population of cells that potentially gets implanted to avoid that attack. A lot of that autoimmune response is just your body misrecognizing your own cells because of a protein that is on the surface of those cells. And your immune system doesn't. It makes a mistake. It says, oh, this is not us, this is foreign. And it unfortunately removes those cells, attacks those cells. So if we can actually, you know, when we're thinking about engineering ourselves in a way, if we can actually correct that mistake by eliminating that proteins production that is causing us to focus on that cell being formed, we can also avoid that problem as well. There's definitely multiple layers of this, which is why I want people to be patient with the development of these things because they're all multi layered. Right. And they are complex. But there's been some amazing leaps forward that we've seen recently. We have the ability to go in and edit DNA, so when we identify that protein, we can correct its production with things like crispr. We can create a multitude of the cells that we need as many to create an entire organ with technologies like IPSC of whatever cell type we need. On top of that, groups of leverage technologies like this and new tissue engineering technologies to 3D print human bladders. Already, organs have been implanted into patients that have been 3D printed in a lab. Now, the bladder is not a life saving organ, but it absolutely restored that patient's ability to control urination and live a much higher quality of life. But it also was a great stepping stone for us to be able to think about, okay, you can do it in the bladder. How can we start to focus on more complex tissues, more complex organs? Groups in Tel Aviv have successfully 3D printed miniature human hearts with the ability of those cells to contract and beat. It's about the size of a rabbit's heart. But one day that'll be a human 3D printed heart. And I think that in our lifetimes we're going to see the first heart transplant that was grown from a patient's own biopsy of cells.

I mean, this all sounds amazing, but I'm sure that there's ethical considerations. What are, what are some of those ethical considerations that you've come across?

Yeah, so I think the biggest ethical Considerations have. Have been mitigated for a great deal. Some of the initial stem cell work was done in actually looking at harnessing these very powerful cells that we know go on to produce every cell in our body at that moment of an embryo. And we don't do that anymore in these new technologies because we have the ability to reprogram our own cells. Now, the importance says, okay, that we're not engaging in ethical considerations. And whether you are pro or for or against or whatever of that process, we've been able to remove that discussion, right. And really level the playing field for people on a moral level. Because we're using your own cells and we're reprogramming them and we're dialing them to your need. And so instead of taking from another entity to give to yourself, we're using you. And that is very powerful, right? Because ultimately, now I think that there, it removes the considerations of one accepting foreign material from somebody which is another. You know, there are people that do not agree with that. And then also, we're not harvesting stem cells from another individual that has the potential to terminate a life. And whether you believe that is a life yet or not, it's removed that debate because ultimately we're able to take that cell from you and create a cell that can perform at that level. The importance now lies in actually being able to intercept you at your best. Right. We're not intercepting that moment of sperm meets egg. We're now saying for you, let's get access to your cells when they're their best, which is honestly the youngest we possibly can.

Right. Is it ever too late? So I'm thinking, I'm thinking about my parents who are in their 60s and 70s. Is it ever too late for them to preserve their stem cells? What are your thoughts?

It's very difficult to predict one for any one individual and their own personal health because, you know, I have met people that are 85 that are much healthier than 55 year olds I've met, right? So, like, you have this very wide gap in human aging because of behavior and environmental factors and all of the genetics and all of these different things. So we don't put a cutoff on people and deny them access to save their cells. We have patients that are in their 80s that have banked their cells for the future. And their mindset is, my cells at 80 are going to be much more powerful than in my 90s, and these things are coming fast and I want to be ready. And I love that. Right. Because it's Just such a zest for life in it and a desire to live their best life as long as they can. I think that, you know, we want to get it as early as possible. And it's difficult to predict when therapies are going to come to fruition and when you are going to, you know, in based on your given age and how much time you have left. But ultimately, there are benefits from these cells that are coming very near term. They might not be 3D printing a human heart, but they might be treating your skin, treating burns, treating some serious conditions to your skin that you would want to have those options available to you. We don't have a cutoff. We do see a bit of a couple moments of sense of urgency. We see a lot of people that are even taking this action and doing it for their children when they're in their teens and twenties. So there's a big spike there because you're getting into that moment before you start that decline. And then before that pace pickens up. We have a lot of people between 40 and 65 that kind of rush for access of this because they're starting to feel those aches and pains. The aging process is a little bit more obvious to them. Right. In our 20s, we're a little invincible. So it's never too late to do this, and we'll never turn anybody away.

Amazing. One thing that comes up for me as somebody who does try to influence epigenetics through lifestyle change, diet, nutrition, mindset, all that good stuff. Is there anything somebody can do to prepare? Or is it, you know, the sooner the better? I know we've had this discussion, but I'd love for you to kind of, you know, unpack that a little bit, because, you know, some people might be, you know, wanting to make lifestyle changes and then do the test, or not the test, but then extract the follicles. Or is it better for them to do both? Like, hey, let's get the follicles, because these are the youngest follicles that you could possibly give us. And then let's also make the changes on the back end as well. Or do you recommend doing this is.

A great question afterwards. It's a fantastic question. Right? And I think that there is some law of diminishing returns that exists in that equation. Right. Because no matter what lifestyle changes we are doing, we may enhance our current health, but we are getting older right during that process. So if it's going to be taking you years to get to a point where you've stabilized, I guess a level of health that you're trying to achieve. You're still years older from when you would have potentially banked those cells. But there is absolutely true to that. We can make some radical changes to our bodies and our health and our current state that are extremely beneficial. I think that it is absolutely reasonable for individuals to say, you know, I would like to go on a week long, weeks long program to try to get to a state of health and make some fundamental changes to my body. Because we can see health differences happen very quickly in individuals that commit to it and then bank those cells. But you don't, you don't want to have that go on too long because if you can do it at a younger age, that's extremely powerful as well. So, you know, depending on how long your plan for a program is, like if it's a 10 year plan, I just bank yourselves.

Yeah, and that's a great response. Our programs are 10 to 12 weeks and we see radical changes and we see reversal of many, many markers associated with aging. So I love that you can have both. Right. You can take the effort that you're putting in in a short period of time and literally bank that effort. Hopefully people don't go on a bender after that and just go back to the way they were.

Well, that's just it. Right? Like that's, that's, let's not do that. But I think it's, I think what a powerful, amazing opportunity to go through that program. Right. To spend that time with you, to really enhance the way that you view your own health even. Right. Because I know how, like, obviously we've had conversations about the amazing results that you get with your patients so fast. Right. It's incredible. And I've got some tips from you that have been really integrated into my life that have been really momentous for me. So I know the power of that and I think that 10 week program that you're talking about, what a powerful thing to be able to go through that accomplish some major goals for your healthcare and then crystallize it or celebrate it almost by banking yourselves at the end of it and locking that health in. I think that's a very powerful thing.

Yeah, it's a great one, two combination. So definitely super excited for what the future holds. I know both of us are thrilled with making this opportunity available to people across North America. So tell us more about the plans that ACORN has and how people can get ahold of you and your team.

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously I think we've got a great, great plan for Individuals that going through your program at the end of it, you know, being able to lock that in. Learning more about acorn, you can go to Acorn Me, our website, and, and learn a number of things about one, where you can get access to acorn, but also how you can sign up for more information or sign up for request access. And ultimately, there's a lot of resources there that I think people can spend some time going through, which is really exciting. And ultimately, you know, they can always reach down in the comments and ask and one of us will jump on it and make sure people get directed into the right spot. But, you know, I think that we've got a pretty awesome opportunity for people going through your program at the end of it doing it. I like that idea.

Lovely. Thank you, my friend. I know how busy you are, so I'm glad we were able to both align our schedules and have this dialogue and conversation. And for those of you that are listening, this is a fantastic opportunity. Whether you're a patient of ours or anyone's, really, this is not just for our clients, but this is available to everybody. And if you're a practitioner, then this is definitely something that you probably want to consider for yourself personally and of course, your clients as well. So go check out ACORN me, learn more about this, get it done. The sooner the better, as Drew had indicated today. And yeah, the future looks so bright. And thank you for your experience at the age of 13 that has really shaped this new future for all of us. So, so grateful for you and what the team is doing and grateful to be, you know, walking this path alongside with you, helping more people find out about this.

No, thank you so much. It's been, you know, it's always amazing spending time with you sessions. So thank you so much for that opportunity, Al, and obviously to share this message. I'm very excited about some big, amazing, momentous things in healthcare that are coming from the power within our own cells. I love it.

Amazing. Well, thanks for the reminder that nothing can fix us better than us.

There you go.

You know, it's amazing to see that the intersection between that kind of philosophy and science coming and crossing paths, and you're right there at the intersection of it. So keep up the great work.

Thank you, Sachin. Appreciate it.