Telocyte

Current approaches to medicine uniformly target incremental improvements in human health. We focus on ameliorating risk factors and tinkering with symptoms, biomarkers, and hallmarks of aging and age-related disease. Taking a broader, historical view, our modern approaches to age-related disease echo our approaches to infectious disease of two centuries ago, when bloodletting, miasma theory, and […]

Linear versus Systems: AGI and Aging Artificial General Intelligences (AGIs) are AI systems that could match human abilities across all cognitive domains, not just in managing narrow, specialized tasks. The emergence of AGI coincides precisely with Telocyte’s ongoing transition from theory to clinical reality. This timing reveals a deeper parallel: both AGI and our approach […]

Thirty years ago, I published Reversing Human Aging (1996) and stood before the National Institutes of Health to speak on the same topic—an idea that, at the time, teetered on the edge of the unimaginable. Soon after, I authored the first medical articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA; 1997, 1998), exploring […]

In early 2024, I was editor and senior author of an Elsevier Press book on aging and on the prospects for reversing aging at the most fundamental cellular levels in order to cure and prevent age-related disease. A similar, updated book is planned for publication in conjunction with our planned phase 1 FDA trials. While […]

Too often, we mistake chaff for wheat, fame for substance, or knowledge for understanding. In an age dominated by influencers, do we follow their fleeting trends, or do we choose what we genuinely like, want, or need? Many organizations, even those with ostensibly humanitarian missions, often take the easier path. They lose sight of their […]

The painting above depicts a family of three unicorns, a detail easily overlooked if one fixates on the intricate brushstrokes rather than stepping back to appreciate the entire picture. Discovering three unicorns in a painting, or achieving breakthroughs in age-related disease treatments, hinges on identifying the right targets amidst a sea of complexities. A narrow […]

How can you ensure success for a biotechnology startup? Five weeks ago, I gave an invited lecture to a Harvard Business School class (Harvard BIOT E-100, “The Business and Science of Biotechnology”) and that question – how to ensure success – was an obvious topic for my lecture. After discussing the science and introducing them […]

In the traditional story, the blindmen each thought they knew what an elephant was, yet each of them knew only pieces of the elephant: the trunk, the ear, the tusks, the legs, the flank, the tail. Elephants aren’t pieces, they are whole creatures. It’s a lesson we seldom ever learn completely. To the contrary, we […]

You can either do the work or get the credit.You can never do both.Attributed to a CIA undercover agent I knew. In science and medicine, as in so many things, those who glory in the limelight are seldom those who did the work. Whether the limelight consists of global prizes, financial rewards, university tenure, or […]

If you hunt only rabbits,Tigers and dragons go uncaught.Li Bai (李白) As I sit at my desk, watching spring’s first daffodils arrive, I’m reminded of the hope that the spring season brings us all of us – at least those of us in the Northern hemisphere. On a broader cultural plane, it’s a time for […]

The last few months at Telocyte have been remarkable. As a result of our 2020 article on age-related neurological disease and our December 2022 article on age-related cardiovascular disease, a lot has happened. We have been actively recruited to chair or to give opening plenary keynote addresses at dozens of global conferences, including the event […]

Biogen’s recent news story regarding lecanemab is an example of how the field hasn’t changed. Although the data has yet to be made public, the claims parallel those of other drugs that have claimed efficacy in Alzheimer’s, such as solanezumab, aducanumab, etc. In each case, we see tantalizing statements, but the actual data suggests a […]

Last week, I flew into San Francisco (and took the image above) to chair the Hanson Wade global conference on longevity therapeutics. As I pointed out in my introductory remarks, those attending – both the academic researchers and those from biotechnology companies – are a remarkable group of people, working in a remarkable field, and […]

Doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results has – with Einstein often incorrectly given as the attribution – been said to define insanity. Whoever said it and whether it defines insanity or not, persistence in the face of failure is remarkably human. When it is successful and insightful, we call it […]

These are heady times for gene therapy, yet we have a long way to go before it achieves its promise. It is, to use an historical analogy, much like where aviation was in the first decade or two of the 20th century. Aviation has a fascinating and ironic history. It was in 1895, only 8 […]