WATCH: International Expert Discusses Stem Cell Breakthroughs with Bob Reby

Featuring Bob Reby, CFP^®; and Sam Gandy, MD, PhD; November 14, 2019

To watch the full video of How Do We Make 100 Years Old Our New 60?, go to: http://www.rebyadvisors.com/live-events-videos​​

Recently awarded a license to form a Fairfield-Westchester Chapter of Singularity University, Reby Advisors held the first Singularity U event on November 14, 2019, a fireside chat between Bob Reby, CFP^®, and Sam Gandy, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Gandy shared his vast knowledge on stem cell research, CRYSPR genome technology and breakthroughs in understanding Alzheimer's disease.

The video above is a short clip of Dr. Gandy explaining how human stem cells are currently being used to cure blindness and deafness, for example, and may be used in the future to restore function of nearly any organ in the body.

Transcript

Bob Reby:

Let's transition to stem cell research, and its role in extending not just life, but qualify of life. Is it happening now? I know things have to get passed through the FDA and all different types of organizations, but just explain the research. Is it happening now, and how does it work as far as extending life and qualify of life?

Dr. Sam Gandy:

I would say that the examples where stem cells are today, extending life and extending quality of life, are in the senses in vision and hearing. I mean it's possible now to restore sight in certain conditions, and restore hearing in conditions. This was not possible before. These are people who were deaf and blind, doomed to being deaf and blind lifelong.

Where things are, the big picture, stem cells are the primordial type of cell that can ultimately be differentiated or specialized to form any type of cell in the body. If you have a stem cell from someone, or you can make a stem cell from someone, you can then recreate their brain in a dish by directing those stem cells into making all the cell types that form a brain, and you can then grow that together in a dish, and have a model of how that person's brain would operate within health and in illness. We can really develop ... talk about personalized medicine, we can take a skin biopsy from someone, and basically turn that into a dish full of their brain cells, specialize in screening medications and optimize medications specifically for that particular person.

Bob Reby:

Okay. That was a little over my head.

Dr. Sam Gandy:

The beauty of stem cells is that you can turn them into any cell of the body.

Bob Reby:

Right.

Dr. Sam Gandy:

A lot of the problems, a lot of issues in medicine and science are the inter-individual differences [between] me and everyone else. So, that's limited screening drugs, because drugs tend to be screened against large numbers rather than against individuals, so with stem cells, you can create in a dish or any culture situation the exact same heart cells or lung cells or brain cells that a particular person has. It can really be person based medicine.

Bob Reby:

When I read about rejuvenation of your organs kind of thing?

Dr. Sam Gandy:

Yeah.

Bob Reby:

Meaning you're walking around ... 100 is the new 60. You're 80 years old, and through stem cell rejuvenation, you have a 40 year old kidney or something like that.

Dr. Sam Gandy:

Right, so because of stem cell technology, what's typically been done now is that skin cells are used as biopsy material. They're then dedifferentiated backward into stem cells, and then those stem cells can be turned into anything. One of the problems with transplantation is rejection. If you can take someone's stem cells, and create a new liver, or a new kidney from their cells, that would not be rejected. That would be self, and you're going to implant that and restore organ function. That's certainly is already possible for liver and for skin. Skin a big problem. You see burn units where skin has been lost, it's possible to regrow skin and to reattach that to burn patients, and help them recover from severe burns.

Bob Reby:

What are the limitations now relative to the stem cell and rejuvenation because you said that there is optical, and hearing [where it's already working well].

Dr. Sam Gandy:

Well, I wanted to come to a place where to start with where we finally succeeded with using stem cells to do something good, and it works. I mean it's been promising for decades, but now it's actually making people better. For something like Alzheimer's Disease, the challenge is we can't rebuild a person's entire brain. We don't understand the brain well enough to do that, but we might be able to use stem cells to implant simply in areas that are the most damage, and help them recover.

For example, in Alzheimer's Disease, the region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory is one of the early areas that's damaged. It's possible that we might be able to take a particular individual's stem cells ... we already have a recipe for making them into the exact type of nerve cells that die first, and we could implant them into the hippocampus and potentially extend people's memory spans, so they would be independent longer, and be able to function at their maximum level longer.

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To watch the full video, go to: http://www.rebyadvisors.com/live-events-videos