 Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We're still on site at IndieBio's demo day number eight. We are now going to be talking to Helen Chen. Hello. Hi. Thank you for having me on your show. Thank you so much for coming on. We're really excited to talk to you. See you have guided clarity. Yes. Okay. And you just did a talk on the main stage. What was it about? Well, it's about developing this new medical food for functional aging. And the idea came from studying the mitochondria. We all have tons of those in our body. But as we get older, some of these mitochondria can get dysfunctional and start spraying out toxic material causing aging and health decline. Okay. So mitochondria is in all of our cells? Of course. And we don't just have one or two of those. We have hundreds of thousands of them per cell. Hundreds of thousands per cell? Yes. For example, your heart cell needs about 5,000 mitochondria in each cell to help you pump your blood 24-7. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thousands per cell. Thousands per cell. Oh, thousands per cell. Not hundreds of thousands per cell. Hundreds up to thousands. Hundreds up to thousands per cell. Yes. Okay. That's a lot of mitochondria per cell. Okay. And some of them are really functioning well and some become dysfunctional over time. Yeah. I mean, just like batteries. I mean, after a while, someone gets leaky and there's a recycling program within our cell. Okay. Yeah. Which is great. But when we get older, it doesn't do its job as well. So what we have done is we did some screening. We found this molecule from Mother's Milk that can help with this decluttering process of dysfunctional mitochondria. Okay. All right. So, okay. So mitochondria is giving our cells energy. Exactly. So that's why it keeps up with your metabolism and it keeps us standing up straight. Yeah. So is mitochondria taking glucose as its power? All right. So it does take glucose and then it transfers eventually. It's like a production line and it will give you ATP, which is the cellular energy. Okay. And then the ATP powers like protein creation. Yeah. Your protein creation. Pretty much all your bodily function. And they say the single biggest determinant of how long you will live, you know, after you're 60 or 70, is your gait speed. Whether, how fast you can walk from one room to the next, you know. Gait speed. Yeah. Gait speed. Okay. Yeah. Is that called G-A-I-T? Yeah. G-A-I-T. Gait speed. Yeah, because you need so much energy just to be able to walk across. You know how like older people, they start to shuffle. And it's also about that coordination. So your brain takes the most energy. 20% of all your energy goes into your brain. And so if the energy is kind of, then you start not being able to coordinate. You lose balance and when you get older and you fall, you break your hip and that starts kind of like the downfall. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. So are we potentially able to say that things like when we slow down with our gait speed walking across a room, that that is potentially one of the things involved is this dysfunctional mitochondria? Yes. That's one of the factors. And this is one of the important factors that you think that you can potentially tackle to help us increase our longevity. Well, health span is kind of, yeah, that is the key because I think longevity is one thing, right? You live until 100, but you want to be functional. Okay. Yeah. And so by having these better batteries, better batteries cycling program, then we can have more energy. The first area that we're targeting is as simple as joint pain, which affects one-third of adults. And after a while, it's really preventing active lifestyle. Okay. Joint pain affects one-third of active adults. Yes. Oh, wow. So then it turns out to be osteoarthritis. You first start with joint pain and a lot of athletes actually have a lot of joint pain because they're always pounding, right? Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. And then so as we get older, it turns into osteoarthritis. You're cutting to get it kind of stiff. Now you're thinking about it. We're all getting some from all of this and this. There's something big happening. Something, yeah, yeah. And then we don't recover as fast from injuries and we have more aches and pain. That's all about inflammation. And a lot of it comes from dysfunctional mitochondria. So you have to spill out these factors, which is not good for your health. Okay. And now let's talk about this breast milk. Yes. So the mother's breast milk is where you found... Yes, so this is a molecule that's most abundant protein in mother's milk, but very low amount in cow's milk. And so what happens when a baby... Do we know what's a protein? Yes. Yes, what is it? It's alpha-lactobiumen. Alpha-lactobiumen. Yeah, so it's so long that that's why I just say it's the most abundant. So it's called ALA. Alpha-lactobiumen. Alpha-lactobiumen. I hope we call it ALA. But it's okay. ALA? Why is it ALA? It's alpha-lactobiumen. Yes. Oh, okay. Because it's ALA. So it's a little bit faster. And so the full protein, if it is combined with a fatty acid has anti-cancer effect. And what we have found is one is being digested in the gut into small peptides, little bits and then I can wrap around a milk mineral and then it can activate this kind of decluttering process. A lot of times we don't know mother's milk is more than just nutrients. It's actually helping you have better immune function and I cancer and also to help you reduce inflammation. So these are the goodness of mother's milk. So we should potentially be supplementing ourselves with mother's milk throughout our whole lives. No, not really. What is obvious is it's not really possible. There's a small amount in cow's milk. That's what we're trying to do. Oh there's a small amount in cow's milk. Yes, so that's why. Yeah. Why can't we synthesize the same that's in mother's milk? We can synthesize it or but it's easier to take from cow's milk. Yeah, but it just takes longer time to just isolate that and get enough amount because you know when a baby drinks mother's milk, you know the baby doesn't have anything else in the stomach. It's just milk, right? It chops the right way and so because your enzyme might not work the same as when you're a baby, right? So you need to chop it up into the right length and you to get to with the right mineral which if you're eating a whole bunch of other stuff that's not gonna be helpful. So that's why we're creating this medical food. Okay and then so then you're taking ALA from cow's milk. Yes, and then we chop it up. Chop it up meaning you separate the ALA from cow's milk? No, so we use enzyme. Use an enzyme to chop it up. Yeah, to chop it up and then to make it easier. Oh yeah, so it's predigested. It's predigested for you. Adding the right minerals that you will see. So these are the things that we are kind of recreating what's happening in the baby's gut. So you don't need to do any work. Okay, you know how when we get older our digestion is not good, right? And so we are trying to do this everything pretty predigested for people when we need it. And then I am supplementing myself with you, is this like within a pill? You can be in a pill form or in canine powder and dissolve in water. Yeah, because a lot of the older population they can't take pills that well and so they can you can dissolve in water but for the people who are younger who want to take it then of course a pill on a go. It's faster. And like one a day? Two a day. Two a day. Yeah. Okay and then is this recommended for people with joint pain or is this recommended for even preventative? It can be for preventative but of course I think the first thing for us as scientists really is to look for a target population who have like joint pain or people who have COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Their lung inflammation that's kind of like a real big problem and their mitochondria is really dysfunctional. They are not breathing the right way and so we are engaging Texas A&M instead of aging to look into how our product can help with these people with COPD which is the fourth leading cause of death in the US. COPD, yeah. Is the fourth leading cause of death? Yes, yes. And one more time the acronym stands for? Yeah, it's chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Whoa and the COPD does what in the body again? So COPD is like you usually is people who have smoke or have been exposed to a lot of environmental pollution and then so they cannot, usually they can't breathe too much and then you start seeing them with oxygen tanks and what I'm really most worried is our troops that have gone overseas to the Middle East and they get exposed to let's say gun powder, you know there's lace with toxins I mean explosives and also this fine dust in these deserts and on these bases I mean they did burn their own trash. I mean none of these trash has been hauled away miraculously so when you burn trash on the base you smell a lot of these inhale so much toxin and we're also concerned about people who are doing like e-cigarettes nowadays or marijuana just because I mean you're smoking with a no filter so these kind of things our lungs are very sensitive and once it starts to be chronically inflamed and the mitochondria especially in the lung lining is not working well it's not reversible and so these also just become like kind of chronic fatigue these people cannot go out so that's more on the serious side right and then what joint pain is more just like okay I can't be as active as I used to be but then we have people who are really active and they are killing it we're going for a marathon or do their heart training and they want to use it just for a faster recovery because when you go out and do really hard training your mitochondria needs a little boost too so it's just a faster recycling program and then how does the what we find in the mother's breast milk how do we then how does that then interact with the dysfunctional mitochondria yeah so basically it goes into the mitochondria so if your mitochondria is pretty healthy it's kind of like a fitness test nothing happens it's like yeah you know just a little thing here here just bless it off but if the mitochondria is not very functional it sends a signal to the nucleus and say hey you know excuse me we're not functional so you kind of trigger a signal to have this decluttering process so the ALA triggers the nucleus to just tell to do what with the dysfunctional mitochondria so basically so hauling away so the haul it away you haul it away yeah so you break it down hey you break it down so these are you haul away you break it down and recycle I mean it's amazing it's interesting so it's like a city they do a whole bunch of stuff and then so basically you want to have all these signals working properly but it just how as we get older it gets everything gets a little bit sluggish metabolism is a little sluggish signaling is a little sluggish so this is just a like a little little boost and goes to the mitochondria and mitochondria up you know yeah you know we haven't you know haven't been functional since it's signal to the nucleus hey haul us away and it gets all away and broken down so you can have new mitochondria and then so am I then able to visit the website and already purchase not yet so we will be launch ready in 18 months we're doing clinical studies right now we'll go studies yeah we need to do the clinical study first and we need to you're saying they're already exploring I don't know I don't limited release we have a small tiny we call it a mini factory that we're producing yeah putting a small scale and people are able to kind of like report how they feel to you subjectively and that's right yeah so that's so we have the informal studies but most important these are for the clinical trial that's yeah that's coming up you okay you're you have a lined up clinical trial yes so we have two clinical studies that's lined up we want to do that and we also need to be able to produce a large scale yes and so in about six months we'll transition to a pilot plant and then to the full plant okay wow so we're where else can we find within the evolution with these really interesting little like nuggets that can increase our vitality well I personally think I mean I study cancer biology for the longest time and I was always fascinated the beginning of life like during embryo genesis what's happening as ourselves transform I mean we all came from single cells and and eventually we divide and grow and we we have so there are so many molecules within us that has a potential to heal and that's why people using stem cells you know doing embryo genesis a lot of stem cells that has a transformative properties and there are also signals within embryos that are meant to help us to shape us the right way so these are just long-term goals and we'll continue to looking at that how we can see things from the beginning of life that can help us when we're getting older so we can repair ourselves better be more healthy yeah yeah it's cool the same way that we went from a single cell to these massive creatures with so many cells is kind of similar to how the evolution on the planet started with just single-cell organisms and now there's exactly a species yeah and I think the power using some of these natural molecules is that you're less likely to have a toxic side effects because especially it's from the million if you use something from them I don't want like mushroom or something like somewhere like an organism at deep sea our body can create an immune response because never seen it before but our body has been genetically evolutionarily designed to have certain molecules now we're just bringing these molecules back yeah help us to clean ourselves a little bit helm this is just a conversation I'm really excited to hear you building this this is thank you thank you for teaching us about it yeah let's see where this can go with healing yeah I'm excited and I think medical food is a new discipline because we have therapeutics which have been in this in that field for 15 years and therapeutics takes 10 15 years and and it's really about diseases and medical food is kind of in between is more about something about preventive I mean you mentioned about can we take that before it gets too late right and we also want something that's just more complimentary and you don't have to think so much about side effects because it's just taken from milk so I think there's a tremendous growth in as you can see from Indie bio our cohort very creative very innovative way to look at how we can innovate from food for something natural and bring better health for the planet and for human yes yes Helen this has been such a pleasure thank you for joining us on the show well thank you so much really appreciate it thanks everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below let us know what you're thinking about that episode also share more content like this your friends your families co-workers people online on social media get talking more about things like this and also check out the links in the bio below to guided clarity also to Indie bio check out those links below and also check out links below the simulation as well support the artist entrepreneurs the organizations around the world do you believe in build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we'll see you soon thanks for tuning in peace