Beyond Longevity

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 BioDr 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 BachtsetzisWebsite: drchrismd.com00:00 Welcome and Premise02:04 Meet Dr Chris05:29 Longevity in Switzerland09:34 Longevity vs GP Care14:31 Insurance and Costs16:03 Who Seeks Longevity18:51 Is Longevity for Rich22:03 Hype and NAD Plus26:48 Biological Age Reality32:43 Wearables and Anxiety39:42 Choosing Tests and Tools47:56 What to Do at 5054:16 Rapid Fire and Wrap58:28 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 informationChris Mirabile — Founder and CEO, NOVOSChris 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/slowmyageChapters00:00 Podcast introduction and guest02:11 The experiences that changed how Chris thinks about health02:52 A brain tumour at 1606:50 From finance to startup founder09:51 What does longevity actually mean?12:40 Going upstream — the 12 hallmarks of ageing17:34 Self-experimentation, data and discovering PubMed21:18 Why Chris believed NOVOS needed to exist23:17 Bringing leading scientists on board29:09 Why target all 12 hallmarks at once?33:35 Choosing the ingredients for NOVOS Core36:47 Why the complete formula needs to be tested40:25 NOVOS Core and lifespan in aged mice41:04 Moving into human trials42:00 What the cardiovascular study measured43:47 Why start with heart and blood vessel health?45:21 What happened after a single dose?46:25 The results after six months49:19 Can you make an already healthy person healthier?51:58 FaceAge — science, marketing and biological age56:28 NOVOS Life, wearables and AI58:07 What longevity advice are people getting wrong?01:03:04 Sleep, cholesterol and Chris’s CAC scan01:08:48 Rapid fire01:12:30 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 Biohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-ciechonska/Salient BioIlay Marom - Co-Founder & COO at Nanose Medicalhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ilay-marom-846793218/ Nanose Medical - Nanose -Disease diagnosis - Official WebsiteAdriaan Rudolf (Aad) Liefveld - https://www.linkedin.com/in/liefveld/https://www.paceclinical.com/Ruth Prieto - Communications Manager and External Communications PR lead at Nebiushttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-prieto/ The Ultimate AI CloudFind out about HLTH Europe https://hlth.com/events/europe/ See you there next yearRunning order00:00 Back at HLTH Europe01:49 Microbiome Diagnostics05:24 From Testing to Prevention08:28 Breath Biomarkers for Earlier Detection11:18 How Breath Sensing Works15:50 Accuracy, Cost and Accessibility18:05 Scaling Preventive Diagnostics23:30 Why Patients Struggle With Adherence28:50 The Behaviour Behind Non-Adherence30:14 B-COMPASS and Proactive Support31:08 The Clinical Trial Dropout Problem32:03 How Protocol Deviations Distort Data34:16 Rethinking Clinical Trials and R&D37:56 Who Should Pay for Better Adherence?40:46 Making Health Technology Accessible as We Age42:37 The Infrastructure Behind Medical AI46:37 How AI Is Changing Drug Discovery47:41 Privacy, Security and Real-World AI49:58 Breakthrough Projects and Recognition55:33 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 & RecoverySamir 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 AiRoy 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.Timestamps00:00 Welcome to HLTH Europe in Amsterdam01:04 What We’re Exploring02:00 Timothée Manschot and NOWATCH04:08 Understanding Your Stress Baseline05:25 What Is Compassionate Technology?08:13 A Privacy-First Approach to Health Data15:22 Wearables, Health and Longevity17:29 Samir Mitra and REYA.AI21:32 How AI Can Help Clinicians23:17 Why Human Judgement Still Matters29:01 Where Could Healthcare AI Be in 10 Years?33:16 Roy Shteren and WizeCare36:51 From Rehabilitation to Prevention38:59 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?GuestDavid Scieszka, PhD, MBABiomedical scientist, computational biologist, and Founder and CEOVertical Longevity Pharmaceuticals (Velo Pharma)Vertical Longevity PharmaceuticalsLinkedIn - Vertical Longevity PharmaceuticalsReach out to David on LinkedIn to find out about the upcoming “Ask VeLo Pharma Anything”00:00 Welcome and Big Question00:25 Meet David Cheska02:53 Army Roots of Longevity04:38 Choosing Biotech Path05:49 Wet Lab Meets Computation08:48 AI Promise and Limits13:19 Longevity for All Mission16:54 Vascular Ageing Explained19:29 Senescent Cells 10122:31 Lytic Vaccine Overview24:11 Dosing and Study Strategy26:12 How VLP Vaccines Work29:02 Safety and Public Trust29:58 Vaccine Safety Basics31:14 Senescent Cells Strategy32:42 Evidence So Far35:35 Primate Trial Goals36:40 Why Translation Fails39:55 Personalised Longevity Care42:41 PhD MBA Path44:51 Fundraising Lessons49:35 Mission-Driven Team51:32 Longevity Next Decade53:16 Rapid Fire Wrap55:17 Final Takeaways