baudot

The first guy was pretty funny and inspiring. The conclusion of his story was that, after bootstrapping his lab for a few years, he met the right investor and promptly was given 2 million dollars to ramp up their research for real. A few years later, the money ran out and they couldn't get investors for the long slog that comes between "We've proven this works in the lab!" to "We have a marketable product!". Turns out the average time it takes a medical breakthrough to go from "It works!" to "It's certified for sale by the FDA!" is 18 years. Patents only last 20 years. This is one of the many variables in why your prescriptions are so expensive. It's not only that the research to invent them are incredibly expensive and prone to failure. It's that the companies only have 2 years to make their investment back, on average, once all the work is done.

The second speaker's conclusions: Yes, FOXO gene variations also effect the population of stem cells in the brain, but it's not quite as simple as FOXO varient = more stem cells. Folks with the FOXO longevity mutation have the same number of stem cells in their brains as folks without. However, in the course of aging, these stem cells lose their ability to make all the kinds of brain cells they used to. The older we get, the more our neural stem cells lose the ability to make all three kinds of brain cells, and become only able to make a single kind: astrocytes. You need the other two, also. Test subjects with the FOXO longevity varient kept the ability to make all three kinds of brain cells for longer, in more of their neural stem cell population.