Preface

What is ageing? We can define ageing as a process of accumulation of the damage which is just a side-effect of normal metabolism. While researchers still poorly understand how metabolic processes cause damage accumulation, and how accumulated damage cause pathology, the damage itself — the structural difference between old tissue and young tissue — is categorized and understood pretty well. By repairing damage and restoring previous undamaged — young — state of an organism we can really rejuvenate it! Sounds very promising, and so it is. And for some types of damage (for example, for senescent cells) it is already proved to work!

Today in our virtual studio somewhere between Saint-Petersburg and Seattle we meet a famous person! Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of BioViva, is a humanitarian, entrepreneur, innovator, and a leading voice for genetic cures. As a strong proponent of progress and education for the advancement of regenerative medicine modalities, she serves as a motivational speaker to the public at large for the life sciences. She is actively involved in international educational media outreach and is a founding member of the International Longevity Alliance (ILA). She is an affiliated member of the Complex Biological Systems Alliance (CBSA), which is a unique platform for Mensa based, highly gifted persons who advance scientific discourse and discovery.

The mission of the CBSA is to further scientific understanding of biological complexity and the nature and origins of human disease. She is the founder of BioTrove Investments LLC and the BioTrove Podcasts which is committed to offering a meaningful way for people to learn about and fund research in regenerative medicine.

Interview

Ariel Feinerman: Hello, Ms Liz Parrish!

Liz Parrish: Hello, Ariel Feinerman!

Ariel Feinerman: Honestly, I have planned to offer you the idea of building the whole infrastructure for delivering therapies from manufacturers via clinics to the patients. Because we really need such an infrastructure! By the way, when I looked at BioViva web page, I could see that you already do that! Very nice surprise for all. Can you say, when and why you realised that making therapy is not enough and to build a viable alternative to usual regulatory path we need such a platform and a whole parallel infrastructure?

Liz Parrish: I realized that quite early in my journey, but it took us a while to organize the right team, and our collaborations.

Ariel Feinerman: How do you optimistic that other companies will follow your way?

Liz Parrish: Very. We think that the anti-ageing and regenerative market with growing at a CAGR of over 8.4% over the next 5 years, and the total market valuation will reach approximately $500 billion by 2022. We have no doubt that this will encourage many companies all over the world to find innovative ways to capture market share by providing unprecedented value to customers. We hope those companies will use our platform and we can use our years of experience to assist them.

Ariel Feinerman: We already have many amazing results in the lab which can save human lives just now, but lack of funding and up-regulated medical system don’t give them any chance to be in clinics in coming years. With current pace of progress they will already be outdated even before clinical trials. Do you think that translational research becomes the bottleneck?

Liz Parrish: Yes and no. Part of the the bench to bedside translational process needs to be expedited, whilst other parts need better oversight, and due-diligence, and yet other parts of the process need to be built from the ground up. BioViva is collaborating with biotech companies, researchers, clinicians, and regulator to put together all these pieces of the translational puzzle in the right place at the right time for the right set of patients to benefits.

Ariel Feinerman: What therapies do you offer now?

Liz Parrish: BioViva doesn’t offer any therapies. We partner with clinics, and other companies, including Integrated Health Systems (IHS) that offer patients treatments in various places in the world. Please contact IHS to receive their treatment details for patients.

Ariel Feinerman: As far as I remember BioViva worked on telomerase earlier. Does your company work on any therapy now?

Liz Parrish: Our company partnered with Integrated Health Systems (IHS) earlier this year. Our partner company offers treatments in various parts of the world, while BioViva collects and analyses patient data.

Ariel Feinerman: What are your requirements for bioengineering company who wish to use your program? How do you ensure that their therapy is safe and effective?

Liz Parrish: We are not a body hacking or bioengineering company. We collect data from treatments offered at clinics selected by our partner company mentioned above. IHS demands that the clinics conform to their countries regulations and medical personnel involved have adequate training, as well as high standards of hygiene and equipment. IHS only works with clinics that have an excellent reputation. US trained doctors also regularly inspect clinics working for IHS to ensure that standards are maintained.

Ariel Feinerman: I mean can you say how your platform works?

Liz Parrish: Our company business is done by contract. Unfortunately I cannot elaborate on this point because it is not public information. Our goal, when setting up our platform, is to speed up regulation by getting as much early human data as possible that will hopefully make cutting edge technology available to those who need them as soon as possible. Ageing kills 100,000 people a day so we cannot humanely afford to drag our feet, we must get treatments out as soon as they are available.

Ariel Feinerman: Investors usually fear uncertainty which follows companies who choose any alternative to the mainstream regulatory way. Is this improving? How do you solve this problem? Do you help bioengineering companies to look for loyal investors?

Liz Parrish: Any investment in new methods is risky. No risk, no gain. Medicine cannot progress if no one is prepared to take a risk. This applies as much to investors as to patients. Recently however we notice a trend in favour of investments that would have been considered high risk five years ago but that today are regarded rather as medium risk. The reason is the increase in computer capacity which in turn allows for more data and therefore for more data analysis. When it comes to data, more is synonymous with better. Lots of data allow investors to better predict the returns on their investment, so more money is invested in endeavours involving lots of data.

Ariel Feinerman: Dr Aubrey de Grey has said: “I think the key thing we should be doing more of is making better use of those who choose to go abroad to get treated: we should make it as easy as possible for them to report on what treatment they received and how well it worked, any side-effects, etc, for a long time after the treatment, so that such information can be analysed and used to guide future research. The people who provide experimental therapies don’t have any incentive to gather such data themselves, so it usually never gets gathered.”

Do you or your partner clinics gather such info or follow your patients?

Liz Parrish: As I said above, BioViva’s task is the collection and treatment of data. This is what we do. We collect data before and at the time of the treatment. Then at various times after the therapy. We hope to gather much data from each patient we treat, and to gather much data from many, many patients. This is the only way to assess if a treatment works, whom it works for, after how long, how many times etc.

Ariel Feinerman: Some people make concern that many therapies via medical tourism will be available only for small group of people. Because of lack of info, need to go abroad, lack of established clinic network and so on. What can you argue? How can you plan to make them more available?

Liz Parrish: All novel therapies are expensive because the R&D enabling them is still ongoing. The small group of people who can afford them are benefiting from what at the time of their treatment is cutting edge medicine, but they are simultaneously funding the R&D that will assess these therapies, and later make them affordable to a larger number of people. This is just as true of organ transplants or surgical bypass, now routine but once unaffordable to most, as it is of gene therapy.

The fact that a treatment takes place abroad does not necessarily imply lack of information. All clinics proposed by IHS have websites with detailed information about their facilities. IHS is the clinical network, that hitherto has been lacking, which will connect patients needing treatment to clinics all over the world, one or two of which may have just the treatment a certain patient requires.

For sure, there is less information about the clinical results of some of the treatments they propose, and how could it be otherwise? Those treatments are pioneering, and therefore off the beaten track in novel territory. This novel territory requires patients to explore it, provide data for BioViva to analyse and in this way make the new treatments available to more people.

Ariel Feinerman: Thank you very much for your answers, hope to see you again!

Liz Parrish: Thanks you, it was my pleasure.