 Welcome to Vale, Colorado. I'm Greg Lewis, the only one with Natalie Biancivenga. This is day two of the Vale Scientific Summit, brought to you by the Steppen Philippan Research Institute. The topic is regenerative medicine, and this year's conference, the third year, is much bigger than year two. It absolutely is, and there's been an incredible amount of presenters, all with their own special take on what's going on in the world of regenerative medicine. But let's look at a little recap from yesterday and learn more about the fun activities that have been going on. So on top of the amazing presentations that we've been able to see and hear all about what's going on in the world of regenerative medicine, there's also been an incredible poster presentation. And these posters are based in the research that's been happening all over the country, and a lot of them have presented at the AOSSM seminar that happened in Toronto recently in July. And some of our fellows and other international scholars here in Vale have won. So there's a lot to be seen and to see at this event. The gentleman in the middle of the frame of that last shot that you saw is Dr. Johnny Hewer. He's the chief scientific officer of the Stem and Philippan Research Institute, and the man behind this Vale scientific summit. We had a chance to catch up with him earlier. Yeah, I think the Vale scientific summit was an idea that came up maybe two years when I came here, and Mark Philippon and Dan D'Rava and Mike Shannon told me to organize a meeting. And the idea behind this was really to start the momentum that they call momentum and regenerative medicine, the medicine of the future in a way. And we had a meeting with 25 people, an invited speaker, and we have probably 50 people all in attendance and so forth. But what's happened is my goal has always been, I want this meeting to become a meeting where if you don't get invited, you know that you didn't do so well that year, because we want to invite the people who are doing cutting edge. We want to invite the people that really want to team up with us. In 2016, it has grown over 45, distinguished, invited speaker, and now this year we're over 65. So it's exactly what I want. I want this momentum to keep growing. The goal here is to make sure that, turn that in a way. The Kerstedman has been known for 25, 30 years. His name, his legacy is right there. But for the research that we're doing, we don't have a huge legacy here. So this is a new type of science. And for that, I think the first three summits has been very important to establish and name for ourselves. I used to compare this to the iPhone 9 of medicine. And what do I mean when I say iPhone 9 of medicine? It's because the iPhone 7 right now is perfectly fine. I mean, you have everything on your iPhone 7. The iPhone 8 will be a little bit better. The iPhone 9 will be a little bit better. More half and that type of stuff. What the orthopedic surgeon do here is perfect already. I mean, you know, if they do an ACL reconstruction here, 95% success rate. I mean, you know, I mean, it's pretty good. It's very difficult to improve upon that. But what I want and what we do is we do the medicine to give them a hedge to be different from the rest of the world. So the idea will be that, you know, okay, the ACL reconstruction success rate is 95% but they take you here to come back to the game. So us, we want to come in and say, well, maybe we don't want to improve on the 95% success rate, but maybe what we want to do is to cut down the time to come back to the game. And if we're able to do this, the impact will be major. So what we do here is from the gene therapy to the cell therapy to the developmental biology to the nanotechnology. We have everything here, but the goal here, what I'm asking the people when they come to this meeting is to make sure that they make their talk in a way that can be understood by the layperson. And I want the surgeon to be in the audience and this is why last night we had a session, you know, just on the surgeon because we want them to tell us, okay, we're doing well here, but here this is an area that we can improve upon. Can you help us? And that's really, you know, what we're trying to do. So what is happening? Where are the challenges and where's the most likely improvement? Yeah, the challenges is always we're developing new technology. Let's say, you know, we discover some drug now that can delay the aging process. I mean, those drugs are being used. It's a drug is being used already for some therapies already out there, but we want to use it for a second or different applications. But the problem with this is sometimes you have side effect associated with that drug. So is there any way that we can reduce a side effect or identify new drugs? So this is really where we had now. We are in a position that, you know, I want to make sure that what we're doing has a clinical application to it. Again, here we have a pipeline. We have science here at this meeting that's gonna be seeing the light of day probably in 15 years from now. You have science being presented here that's gonna be applied 10 years from now. But you have science being presented today that is applying, you know, you can apply it right today if you wanted to. It's just a drug being used and we're using that drug for a different application. But again, and other thing that you have to understand is we have to deal with the food and drug administration called the FDA. And the FDA is there to protect you guys, to protect the patient. So not only we want to do science, but we want to make sure that we are within the FDA guidelines. So this is why in the future summit now, I want to invite people from the FDA because the best way to translate your research to clinic is to involve the FDA in the first place. To tell them at the start of your project, hey, I want to do this and this is where I want to be. Can you give me some advice now? So like this, you know, in five years from now, you know, I don't have to reinvent the wheel and wait five to seven years to translate this research to clinic. What happens here in this environment of collaboration which you have fostered? Yeah, this is so interesting because I organized meeting before, okay? And when Mike, Dan, and you know, and Mike Shannon, you know, asked me to organize this meeting. Usually I organize a meeting and this is just to organize a meeting. But this time around, this summit has become the centerpiece of multiple collaboration. Just to give you an example, nowadays you don't have to be sitting in your office to write a grant or to do science. You can be sitting at a Starbucks, being on Skype and having a great meeting with your people and they do, you know, your work. And you can really collaborate. I can have collaboration with Chicago, New York, all the big hub in research. We are a small place here. So I want the veil to become, and that's my hope here, to become the hub for translational medicine in sports medicine. I would like that. Every time someone discovers something in this country that can improve, you know, a sports medicine athlete somewhere, I want that the first thing that comes to his mind, I want to come to this veil scientific summit because there we are set up to take something from the lab and bring this to the clinic right away. I mean, in major university out there, major big center, Stanford, Harvard, Hopkins, you know, they are great to do research, but they are not so great to translate that research to clinic. And here what we have is we have kind of, you know, how can I say that? You have the science on one side and you have the surgeon next door. So the translation is so easy. We don't have any red tape. Everything, you know, goes smoothly. Of course we have to follow the guideline. So I think the people recognize this in this country now that if you want to translate this research to clinic, they want two things. One, they want the best surgeon in the world to translate this research to clinic. And two, they want the best patient in the world. I mean, if you improve muscle healing or bone healing to someone who's running, you know, three or four days a week, you know, and you know, nobody knows, it's okay. But if you develop your technologies and you apply this to the best of the world, the Sydney Crosby of the world or the Tom Brady of the world, now people's gonna recognize your technology right away. So this is what we want to do here. What we can offer is not only the science that we're doing, but this, you know, you know, I say that, you know, the best, one of the best orthopedic surgeon in the world to work in sports medicine and also the best patients. So this is a perfect setup. What can I hope for and what can I expect as a patient as someone who's gonna be on the receiving end of all this? I think the most important thing for us, of course, the athletes sports medicine is really the goal here. But I'm thinking bigger. I'm thinking about aging. I'm thinking about aging-related disorders. Everybody age. Nobody wants to age, but everybody age. So we're developing technology now, today's, that can impact significantly the aging process. And again, people say, well, Johnny, do you want us to live for 125 years of age? The goal is not that. The goal is really to take you and allow you to age healthier and better from now on. And again, there is, we just won here in Vail. Everybody's walking, running, skiing, skating. So, and this is a very active community here. So what we want is we want to take those people, give them a little hedge to live out here. For example, for me, I'm a runner. I run all the time. I know that I'm gonna develop osteoarthritis because we're not made to run as individuals. If you pound your knee and your ankle and your hip, you're gonna develop cartilage damage. So what we want to do is we want to take something like biologics. I mean, when I talk about biologics, I'll talk about stem cells. When I talk about biologics, I talk about drugs that we're developing that, you know, right now can significantly slow down the aging process. And when I say the aging process, it's not only the aging process. We're talking about aging related disorders. Think about dementia, Alzheimer. People now at 50 years old get diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer. So that's a big deal. So us, we think that with our technology, we're not gonna protect you from Alzheimer, but we're gonna push this probably 10 years away. So if you see someone that, you know, as you know, I don't know, you're about to develop osteoarthritis because you're born with gene that predisposes you to osteoarthritis. If you develop it at 50 years of age, then you need a knee or hip replacement. And the problem with that is, you know, at 65, you're gonna need another one. So right now, us, you know, the big deal is not to totally prevent osteoarthritis, is to delay the onset of it. So if I take someone at 50 with osteoarthritis, and with the biologics that we're developing here, you know, I push this that, you know, you will need your hip or your knee replacement at 70 instead of 50. That's a huge deal. I mean, but I'm talking about osteoarthritis, I bought osteoporosis for women. You know, I bought, you know, dementia, Alzheimer, cardiovascular disease. So that's the goal here. So I'm thinking, you know, the technology that we're developing for athletes here, that's the main goal, can be applied for bigger scope as well. I mean, because you have to understand that sport athletes are only a small portion of this community, you know, are really, you know, you know, super athletes, that type of thing. But all of us, you know, and some people also tell me, I'm too old to have my stem cells harvested, or you know what, I should have done this 20 years ago. We're never too old for that. Because I tell people, you know, you're five, 10, 20 years younger today than five, 10, 20 years from now. So that's the time to do it. So now we have a momentum building here that people are banking their stem cells. That's the best gift that you can give to yourself right now. And people ask me, are we sure that we're gonna be able to delay aging with that? We don't know. But I can tell you that's a very good bet that's gonna help you. And again, you go and ski, you go in the run, you injured yourself, then you can have a bank of stem cell that we can go back to, you know, to really try to boost the healing process. As a scientist, you personally, and I presume that all scientists of your caliber are the same, are you ever satisfied? Are you ever saying, aha, I've done it? Or is there always something more? You know, I mean, science is, a meeting like this make you realize that what you're doing, there's always something to improve upon. You know, we start a project, you know, with a group of people from WashU, you know, last year. And yesterday, you know, Forge Girl Act, who is the person who developed this technology, went a step above. And I realized that, you know, we have to push my team to do something new as well. So having this meeting, not only foster collaboration, but always push you to be better.