This week I am talking to Sajad Zalzala, MD, the co-founder of Qalytude a new company featured in a story on CNBC by Chrissy Farr. They are focusing on the longevity and some of the medications that are currently being studied with some intriguing data points to suggest they may be useful in extending lives.
Catching up with Ray Kurzweil
He started out focused on technology and moved to study medicine where he almost quit but was turned around thanks to hearing an interview with Ray Kurzweil talking about his book The Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever that talks about extending life just long enough to the point where our minds can be uploaded into an artificial brain. Dr. Z is now on his own Fantastic Voyage and trying to bring the rest of us along.
He is offering an online telemedicine service that provides access to Metformin (a drug used extensively in the treatment of type 2 diabetes), and in the future, Rapamycin (used to prevent rejection of transplants amongst other things) and Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) patches (a naturally occurring body chemical that is involved in our energy systems including the “Krebs Cycle“; aka Citric Acid Cycle or tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA)
As Nir Barzilai, MD highlights in his TED Talk, there are multiple intriguing data points (here, here and here) that suggest that Metformin could be a something of a wonder drug. But is it? Well Nir Barzilai, MD has set out to study it and see with his Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME) trial.
But in the meantime while we await the results of this trial he like others (David Sinclair, Ph.D., Ray Kurzweil, and Ford Brewer, MD) in the field sees Metformin as an easy choice, thanks in part to the long experience we have of using this drug that derives from French Lilac (also know as Goats Rue), its safety record and that its method of action that mimics intermittent fasting (you can read more about that here)
Listen in to hear his journey in setting up the company which was the response to the demand for these services, some of the new services they are bringing online that will offer Continuous Glucose monitoring (CGM) and NAD+ therapy that is possible thanks to Iontophoresis (a technology developed and used in Dexamethasone patches that can be used other areas).
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