Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, says everyone, And welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, take a
Speaker 1: little walk to the edge of town and go across
Speaker 1: the tracks. I'm John in Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. So Hey, guys, Hey, how you doing today?
Speaker 1: I'm well, pretty okay. How would you be doing if
Speaker 1: there was no blood in your body? Less? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty poorly overall. And blood is pretty awesome for keeping
Speaker 1: us alive. Uh, it's kind of an integral for that
Speaker 1: whole oxygen carbon dioxide exchange thing that we would depend
Speaker 1: upon so much for life. Also kind of squishy, I mean,
Speaker 1: without blood, we would be significantly less squishy, less voluminous. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd probably be a little more like a you know,
Speaker 1: raisins and be kind of beird across the line as well.
Speaker 1: Today we wanted to talk about blood and the future
Speaker 1: of blood and why blood is awesome and very interesting,
Speaker 1: perhaps even more interesting than you might realize, even if
Speaker 1: you are a vampire. Yes, Aura, as you have mentioned
Speaker 1: in the notes, a certain Elizabeth Bathory, although that a
Speaker 1: lot of the the legends attributed to her are possibly apocryphal. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we I don't think we actually have historical proof
Speaker 1: that she bathed in blood. But she was a countess
Speaker 1: who did many, many horrible things. And why are we
Speaker 1: talking about her on this podcast. Maybe we shouldn't because
Speaker 1: because it leads into another cool cross promotional opportunity. Joe, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory is not the only one who might have
Speaker 1: bathed in blood. Our our own Lauren Vogel Bomb has
Speaker 1: bathed in blood. It wasn't a bath. It was more
Speaker 1: like a shower, and it wasn't wasn't voluntary, right, You
Speaker 1: were being splashed by it, and it wasn't real blood.
Speaker 1: It was fake stage blood, right. But it was all
Speaker 1: because you did a show on on brain Stuff, an
Speaker 1: episode of brain Stuff where you participated in an episode.
Speaker 1: It was all about blood and why it's red, right, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was about the color of blood and
Speaker 1: the different chemicals in different creatures that create colors of blood.
Speaker 1: And in order to do all of this, we really
Speaker 1: wanted Dr Anton Jessip, who is a host over on
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind are resident monster expert. Indeed,
Speaker 1: he is from the university basement. Um and uh he
Speaker 1: he had an experiment to run. Um. I was there
Speaker 1: in a prom dress. You know. I was trying to
Speaker 1: encourage your telekinetic powers. Opportunity knocked and Dr Jessip answered yes,
Speaker 1: and thus we have the video. If you'll haven't checked
Speaker 1: out the YouTube channels for brain stuff and for stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you definitely should. They got great
Speaker 1: stuff going on there. And Lauren, one more question before
Speaker 1: we get into the future of blood. Yes, surely. In
Speaker 1: your brainstuff video you concluded that the reason blood appears
Speaker 1: blue through your skin is because when blood is deoxygenated,
Speaker 1: it turns blue. Right. That is so completely incorrect. No, No,
Speaker 1: blood is always red, even when it is inside your body,
Speaker 1: Isn't It is an optical illusion that it looks blue
Speaker 1: in your veins. It's it's how light scatters through your skin.
Speaker 1: And uh and it is a darker, deeper red when
Speaker 1: it's in your veins. However, it's still red. So so
Speaker 1: you're telling me that all those British blue bloods are
Speaker 1: are actually red bloods. They're totally red blood unless they're
Speaker 1: actually telekinetic crab monsters, in which case their blood is
Speaker 1: probably blue because a lot of other creatures like for example,
Speaker 1: cephalopods and crustaceans do have blue blood. Well, we'll focus
Speaker 1: on human blood. Yeah, tomorrow is when we record the
Speaker 1: podcast about the crab Monsters. Today we need to talk
Speaker 1: about blood technology. So there's actually a really fascinating future
Speaker 1: around blood and one of the first things we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about was the idea of artificial blood. So
Speaker 1: before we get into the actual science, I have to
Speaker 1: I know that we've just been doing tangents all the
Speaker 1: way leading up into this podcast, but this this is
Speaker 1: one of those things where the first time I really
Speaker 1: uh started thinking about artificial blood was when I watched
Speaker 1: a super cheesy horror movie. Have you guys ever seen
Speaker 1: Sundown The Vampire in Retreat? I have not. It's the
Speaker 1: Vampire in Retreat. Yes, not the vampire retreat, like it's
Speaker 1: a resort that they go to. Well, it's almost like that,
Speaker 1: because the idea is of the vampire that there's a
Speaker 1: colony of vampires who have settled a town in in
Speaker 1: in the West, and it's kind of a vampire Western
Speaker 1: mash up movie. And Bruce Campbell plays the descendant of
Speaker 1: Van Helsing in this um and uh, I believe David
Speaker 1: Carradine is the leader of the vampires. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: high class. This phenomenal movie. I saw it when it
Speaker 1: was on cable back in the you know, nineties or something.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the plot of the movie partially revolves around
Speaker 1: the fact that that the vampire colony is made up
Speaker 1: of two different camps, and one camp is trying to
Speaker 1: get away from the typical vampireism thing by creating artificial
Speaker 1: blood as a blood substitute that they will drink, therefore
Speaker 1: they will no longer have to prey upon the living.
Speaker 1: The other camp is more like, Ah, we're superior predators
Speaker 1: and we should be you know, preying upon people. That's
Speaker 1: what we should be doing. Uh. And it wasn't at
Speaker 1: the time. I was thinking, h artificial blood, that actually
Speaker 1: would be incredibly useful, right, I Mean, there's there's an
Speaker 1: actual need your blood in so many different medical procedures
Speaker 1: just for vampires. So you're not just talking about artificial blood.
Speaker 1: Is in movie blood something that looks like blood. We're
Speaker 1: talking about something that performs the anatomical function of blood.
Speaker 1: Right at the very least and and for the most
Speaker 1: part throughout history, the thing that people have been trying
Speaker 1: to develop is an artificial blood that can, in fact,
Speaker 1: uh handle that oxygen carbon dioxide exchange that we need
Speaker 1: in order to survive. Now, blood does other stuff too.
Speaker 1: It's not just a vehicle for carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of it. But because all of
Speaker 1: your all of your organs need oxygen in order to function,
Speaker 1: and they get oxygen because red blood cells contain the
Speaker 1: stuff called hemoglobin that binds to the oxygen in your
Speaker 1: lungs and then proceeds to carry it throughout your bodily systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so exactly, And and that's the main thing that the
Speaker 1: artificial blood types have been you know, people have been
Speaker 1: trying to find something that could do that as well
Speaker 1: as blood can. And it's interesting that the history of
Speaker 1: looking into artificial blood stretches back quite a long ways
Speaker 1: to the point where we're going. Before um, we had
Speaker 1: a lot of scientific knowledge about blood and what it
Speaker 1: does and what it's capable of doing. The sleep people
Speaker 1: just saying hey, I wonder what would happen if we
Speaker 1: put this in us instead? Well, blood is one of
Speaker 1: the four humors, right, I mean, that's still solid science
Speaker 1: right then it's well, it's not solid science science, but yes,
Speaker 1: it was one of the humors. Um. So if you
Speaker 1: look back to the seventeenth century, William Harvey was the
Speaker 1: first to examine the circulatory system and describe exactly how
Speaker 1: blood moves through the body. Uh, And the physicians of
Speaker 1: that day decided to experiment with various substances as blood
Speaker 1: substitutes for people who would need blood for any particular reason. Um.
Speaker 1: And that would include stuff like milk, beer, urine, and
Speaker 1: sheep blood. I think beer was the really popular one. Well,
Speaker 1: beer was popular for a lot of reasons and that
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century. But it's good to drink, it's
Speaker 1: good in your veins, right, yeah, it was very much
Speaker 1: in that sane Wait wait wait, wait wait wait urine though,
Speaker 1: urine it's not good to drink. And is sheep's blood
Speaker 1: good to drink? It's good in sausages. Um. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not going to argue either of those things.
Speaker 1: But what I am going to say is this is
Speaker 1: very closely related to that idea of blood letting being
Speaker 1: part of the medical procedures of the day. You know,
Speaker 1: the the idea of draining away things that were negative
Speaker 1: or or harmful to a person. Let yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh and so this was kind of a very primitive
Speaker 1: approach obviously, and a lot of people who probably were
Speaker 1: not doing too well to begin with lost their lives
Speaker 1: as a part of the process of trying these things.
Speaker 1: In sixteen sixty seven, it was actually the first successful
Speaker 1: blood transfusion to human to human. Now, patients who would
Speaker 1: require multiple transfusions died usually during the process, and so
Speaker 1: while the first one first one's early ones were successful,
Speaker 1: it was a ttimately abandoned as a practice because it
Speaker 1: turned out that giving people multiple transfusions would end up
Speaker 1: killing them, so that they decided that it actually did
Speaker 1: not work. Uh yeah. I don't think that research really
Speaker 1: picked back up again until about the eighteen hundreds. During
Speaker 1: the age of cholera. Yes, uh, physicians would treat people
Speaker 1: who were afflicted with asiatic cholera by injecting milk into them.
Speaker 1: The thought at the time was that the milk would
Speaker 1: help them regrow their white blood cells, which is not correct. However,
Speaker 1: it did, but milk is white, but milk thanks To
Speaker 1: be fair, some of the literature does suggest that perhaps
Speaker 1: it was actually helping some of the patients, but there
Speaker 1: was not any real scientific inquiry as to what the
Speaker 1: mechanism was and it didn't get a wide enough acceptance,
Speaker 1: so it was pretty much abandoned as well. So whether
Speaker 1: or not it was actually effective in treating cholera is
Speaker 1: kind of up to debate. It was, Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of the things where without that scientific rigor, you can't
Speaker 1: say right. But other experiments using things like a saltwater
Speaker 1: saline as blood replacement seemed to be promising. There were
Speaker 1: some experiments with frogs that showed that if you were
Speaker 1: to replace a frog's blood with saline, it would continue living,
Speaker 1: which seemed really exciting until they saw that if you
Speaker 1: just remove a frog's blood entirely, it could continue living
Speaker 1: for a short while, which suggests that you could replace
Speaker 1: it with pretty much anything that's not going to be
Speaker 1: toxic and the frog would not happily, but but would
Speaker 1: continue to live for a little while. So then that
Speaker 1: that excitement about saline kind of died down. So um,
Speaker 1: moving on, they started to look at using animal blood
Speaker 1: as replacement for for humans, but animal blood and have
Speaker 1: substances in it that are toxic to us, and at
Speaker 1: the time the physicians really didn't have the ability or
Speaker 1: the equipment to figure out which elements were going to
Speaker 1: be toxic how to remove them from the blood, so
Speaker 1: that it couldn't really make this an effective means of
Speaker 1: treating people without making them far more sick using something
Speaker 1: that would end up being toxic. Um and other experiments
Speaker 1: ended up leading to things called blood volume izers, which
Speaker 1: are not the same as a blood substitute. A volume
Speaker 1: isser is something that can mix with blood safely and
Speaker 1: not be toxic and can help if you have a
Speaker 1: condition that also has like low blood pressure. Let's say
Speaker 1: that you're being treated for something and you your blood
Speaker 1: pressure starts to drop. This would be able to bring
Speaker 1: your blood pressure back up, But the volume isser lacks
Speaker 1: any capability of handling any of the other functions of blood.
Speaker 1: So if you were you know, you could essentially asphyxiate
Speaker 1: to death. I mean, you would die from lack of
Speaker 1: oxygen you had too much of this in your system
Speaker 1: because it's not carrying it's not carrying the oxygen. But
Speaker 1: if it's just if it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: the blood pressure is a serious problem, and otherwise you
Speaker 1: would be you know, more or less Okay, through whatever procedure,
Speaker 1: it was a viable approach in small enough amounts, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing can be used until the patient's blood
Speaker 1: count gets back up. Yes, But uh, then some some
Speaker 1: important research happened in the late eighteen hundreds and early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. That's when Leaphold land Steiner discovered blood types
Speaker 1: which made human transfusions of blood a lot more safe,
Speaker 1: or or I mean they would make human transfusions of
Speaker 1: blood a lot more safe once we did a little
Speaker 1: bit more research into the chemistry of blood and the
Speaker 1: exact role of blood in doing all of this oxygen
Speaker 1: circulation we've been talking about this. Obviously, no one knew
Speaker 1: that much about it until the early DS and and
Speaker 1: the World Wars really helped this research along because perhaps
Speaker 1: obviously people were very interested in how to helps save lives.
Speaker 1: Was absolutely a requirement at the time. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: like necessity to really push forward innovation, right, We've we've
Speaker 1: heard similar things over and over again, especially in this story. Um. Then,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, the first blood substitute was developed.
Speaker 1: It was called or it is called still today, per
Speaker 1: fluoro carbons or PFCs, and these are synthetic compounds that
Speaker 1: have this huge propensity for carrying gases that have been
Speaker 1: dissolved in a liquid and hence are useful for keeping
Speaker 1: oxygen flowing through a patient's body and also helping to
Speaker 1: keep their blood pressure study. As we mentioned, a moment
Speaker 1: ago um, you know, usually until they can receive a
Speaker 1: transfusion or again grow back their own red blood cells.
Speaker 1: It's it's not a permanent blood substitute, right. I've heard
Speaker 1: that while it's capable of holding quite a bit of oxygen,
Speaker 1: it's not as efficient at transferring it as hemoglobin is.
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things that can be
Speaker 1: used to supplement, but not replace, uh someone's blood. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think. I think blood supplement is what I intended
Speaker 1: to say instead of blood substitute. But uh and and
Speaker 1: and this research at the time I don't think was
Speaker 1: quite in humans. Yet they were doing a bunch of
Speaker 1: research in mice and h Unfortunately for for the research
Speaker 1: at the time, the blood bank system that had been
Speaker 1: established thanks to the World Wars was working really well,
Speaker 1: and the risks in human trials were so steep that
Speaker 1: it was basically abandoned until the late nineteen seventies and
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties when a Vietnam happened. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: the country is always happening, I suppose, but when when
Speaker 1: when the when the Vietnam War happened? Yes, Um. Whereupon
Speaker 1: a bunch of the blood bank system proved to be
Speaker 1: unstable for large scale disaster. And also it was discovered
Speaker 1: that viruses like hepatitis and the human immunoe deficiency virus
Speaker 1: or HIV could be spread by blood transfusions. So that
Speaker 1: was a terrifying time for everyone. And PFCs were developed
Speaker 1: for human use and went onto the market. They've never
Speaker 1: actually been very popular or commercially viable, which in medical
Speaker 1: research is very important because, as we said in a
Speaker 1: recent episode, it's very expensive to bring stuff like this
Speaker 1: to the market, mostly because a whole lot of pfc
Speaker 1: s are acquired in order to really do any good
Speaker 1: in your system, like like you were saying, Jonathan, they don't.
Speaker 1: They're not extremely efficient at delivering oxygen um, and they
Speaker 1: can cause a lot of adverse side effects after use,
Speaker 1: especially in the vascular systems of the lungs and the brain,
Speaker 1: which people tend to want to keep using. Yeah. So Um.
Speaker 1: Then in in the nineteen nineties, as it was kind
Speaker 1: of being discovered that p f c s might not
Speaker 1: be the best stuff, a another class of substitute was developed,
Speaker 1: and that was hemoglobin based oxygen carriers or hbo c s.
Speaker 1: And these guys are are interesting because they're made from real,
Speaker 1: actual sterilized hemoglobin, being of course, the compound that carries
Speaker 1: the oxygen around in your blood. Um. And we get
Speaker 1: this hemoglobin from either human blood or cow blood, or
Speaker 1: from bacteria that we have genetically modified in order to
Speaker 1: produce it, which I find fascinating. Um. But the thing
Speaker 1: is that you can't just stick hemoglobin in your blood
Speaker 1: stream and expect it to function. When it's in a
Speaker 1: red blood cell, it does its job really well, but
Speaker 1: when it's just kind of floating around, it breaks down
Speaker 1: very quickly into really quite toxic compounds. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 1: HBOCs have to contain the hemoglobin some way, and it's
Speaker 1: so much of a problem that none have ever been
Speaker 1: approved by the f d A. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: the only places that they've been licensed for for medical
Speaker 1: use are in South African hospitals which had a pretty
Speaker 1: huge AIDS crisis that put the blood supply at risk
Speaker 1: and also in Russia. However, there there's some recent research
Speaker 1: that is making it seem more and more viable as
Speaker 1: a solution. There's some people at the University of Essex
Speaker 1: are engineering hemoglobin molecules combined with the amino acid tyro scene,
Speaker 1: which they say can enable a patient's body to break
Speaker 1: the stuff down more safely. Uh. And they just received
Speaker 1: some like one point five million pounds in funding that
Speaker 1: heavy to pursue it. So I see what you did there.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Pounds the currency, the pounds of currency, pounds
Speaker 1: of hema globin. Man, you are so good at saying hemoglobin.
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to say hemo goblin, which is one
Speaker 1: of the most terrifying creatures in the Dungeons and Dragons University.
Speaker 1: And when you actually managed to hit that critical blow,
Speaker 1: they just explode in blood. That's gross. Uh Okay, So
Speaker 1: backing away from exploding blood monsters, what's really cool about
Speaker 1: all of all of these these potential blood substitutes is
Speaker 1: that their shelf stable for like up to two years,
Speaker 1: which is a big improvement over carrying around jars of
Speaker 1: human blood, which you you have, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: probably not in jars, but but you have to keep
Speaker 1: refrigerated otherwise it will go very bad, very quickly um
Speaker 1: and be useless. And furthermore, they are not dependent on
Speaker 1: blood type, so you can just keep them out in
Speaker 1: the field where where we need them in case of emergency.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that, you know, unlike this Bruce
Speaker 1: Campbell movie we're talking about, or like true blood, it's
Speaker 1: not really blood. But that's okay, because, I mean, because
Speaker 1: the entire idea of anyone drinking blood is completely crazy,
Speaker 1: right I would imagine, So, I mean, I can't there's
Speaker 1: no scientific basis for consuming blood or anything like that,
Speaker 1: right WHOA, Joe, I knew there was a reason we
Speaker 1: brought you along, maybe not drinking blood. Well that that's
Speaker 1: somewhat of a relief. But there have been some really
Speaker 1: interesting scientific findings, especially in the past few years, that
Speaker 1: proved that young blood is delicious and will make you immortal. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that companies are always looking for young blood
Speaker 1: to keep things going, but I think that's kind of metaphoric. No,
Speaker 1: the liquid the healthy individual tell me more. Joe. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I was overstating. It won't actually make you immortal
Speaker 1: as far as we know, And I totally take back
Speaker 1: the delicious part. I'm sure that it's disgusting. I bet
Speaker 1: I don't know. Joe has never drank human blood. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Anyway, let's let's move on. Um No, seriously,
Speaker 1: here are the facts. So, multiple experiments have shown that
Speaker 1: in mice, young blood has measurable rejuvenating effects. So wait,
Speaker 1: you mean like you get like a mouse that's you know,
Speaker 1: a geriatric mouse, and you give it a transfusion of
Speaker 1: young mouse blood and things change for the old mouse.
Speaker 1: That is exactly what I'm seeing. You can take young
Speaker 1: blood from a young mouse, give it to an older mouse,
Speaker 1: and you see broad, widespread and significant health benefits. On
Speaker 1: one hand, this sounds totally crazy and Frankensteiny right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the premise of a poorly research sci fi
Speaker 1: movie is just part of what's creepy about it is
Speaker 1: how simple it is, Right, you just take the young blood,
Speaker 1: put it in the old animal health benefits sounds fake,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true and it kind of makes sense. So
Speaker 1: when we age, part of what's happening to us is
Speaker 1: that there's a marked decline in our body tissues ability
Speaker 1: to regenerate itself. Right, it becomes harder for us to
Speaker 1: make the new cells we need to stay young. So
Speaker 1: if you just think about this in trivial terms, it's
Speaker 1: totally normal when a young child gets an injury, you know,
Speaker 1: it has a skateboarding accident, gets all scuffed up and
Speaker 1: stuff that heals pretty quick. If you think about an
Speaker 1: adult getting a comparable injury, suddenly that thing that's no
Speaker 1: big deal on a kid is a big deal on
Speaker 1: an adult. It takes a lot longer to heal. It's
Speaker 1: just generally more debilitating. Oh man, this is a problem,
Speaker 1: and so that we suspect that over time, aging does
Speaker 1: something to the functioning of stem cells in our body
Speaker 1: that are responsible for growing new tissue. But the question
Speaker 1: is exactly what's happening and is there any way to
Speaker 1: reverse it? Uh So, there was actually a really great
Speaker 1: article about this that came out in New Scientists just
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago on August twenty and a
Speaker 1: lot of what I'm siting here I learned about through that.
Speaker 1: So there's this process called hetero chronic parabiosis. I recognize
Speaker 1: some of those syllables, but what is that exactly? Para?
Speaker 1: I hope I'm pronouncing this right, it's either parabiosis or parabiosis.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's one of those tough words we
Speaker 1: forgive you, sorry. Parabioses p A r A b io
Speaker 1: s I S. Parabiosis in this case refers to removing
Speaker 1: skin patches from two mice and sowing the mice together,
Speaker 1: so you end up with a mega mouse like vultron
Speaker 1: of mice. You you end up connecting their circulatory system.
Speaker 1: So in this way the two mice share a bloodstream.
Speaker 1: Their blood becomes one common pool. Not not literally it's
Speaker 1: actually still inside the mice, right, but it connects and
Speaker 1: and these are these will be referred to as parabiotic mice. So.
Speaker 1: The process was first described by a French physiologist named
Speaker 1: Paul Bert b E. R. T. I guess it's not
Speaker 1: just Burt Paul Bart in the eighteen sixties, and then
Speaker 1: later in the nineteen thirties the process was improved upon
Speaker 1: by Bunster and Meer, and basically as it is today.
Speaker 1: It entails attaching the two mice at parallel elbows and knees,
Speaker 1: side by side, and then sewing together an exposed patch
Speaker 1: along their sides, and after some length of time, the
Speaker 1: pair can safely be separated again if necessary for the experiment.
Speaker 1: I want to put it in that this is fascinating
Speaker 1: but terrifying. Yeah, yeah, it's as I said, it's starting
Speaker 1: to sound like something from Animal Moderately Frankensteiny. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as you might guess from the name, So that's parabiasis.
Speaker 1: As you might guess from the name, hetero chronic parabiasis
Speaker 1: would mean mixed time scales, hetero chronic mixed time. So
Speaker 1: you're creating a union of parabiotic mice where one mouse
Speaker 1: is old and the other mouse is young. So what's
Speaker 1: really striking about hetero chronic parabiasies in mice is that
Speaker 1: the old mouse seems to benefit greatly from the blood
Speaker 1: of the young. Unfortunately, the young mice ended up getting
Speaker 1: no benefit at all. And we're obsessed with murders. She
Speaker 1: wrote you a just hey, I'm sorry. I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: I guess you are the oldest person here. You can
Speaker 1: make those jokes. It's okay for him. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: researcher at Cornell named Clive McKay performed experiments with parabiasis
Speaker 1: and a quest to learn about prolonging the lifespan of mammals.
Speaker 1: McKay and his associates found that old mice who underwent
Speaker 1: the procedure showed rejuvenated cartilage. Yeah, so the cartilaginous tissue
Speaker 1: in their body actually appeared younger after they had been
Speaker 1: joined to a younger mouse. And more recently, a team
Speaker 1: led by the Stanford researcher Thomas A. Rando has continued
Speaker 1: research in this area. They published a study in Nature
Speaker 1: in two thousand five and they showed that after five
Speaker 1: weeks of hetero chronic parabiasis, older mice showed improved rates
Speaker 1: of muscle healing and liver cell regeneration. Wow, was there
Speaker 1: any other sort of improvements in in this kind of
Speaker 1: Oh yeah really Yeah. Basically almost everything we've looked at
Speaker 1: gets better with young blood. So there's the brain. Multiple
Speaker 1: research projects have showed positive cognitive and neurological effects of
Speaker 1: young blood and older mice. Just one example was published
Speaker 1: this May May of fourteen in Nature Medicine, and it
Speaker 1: was a t sam including Solvolita and Tony whis Corey
Speaker 1: and they made the bold claim and this is actually
Speaker 1: a quote from the abstract of their paper that quote,
Speaker 1: exposure of an aged animal to young blood can counteract
Speaker 1: and reverse pre existing effects of brain aging at the molecular, structural, functional,
Speaker 1: and cognitive level. So the that's the end of the quote,
Speaker 1: but that's the entire gam it. So they found really
Speaker 1: measurable physical improvements in the brain. The brain structure has
Speaker 1: got stronger, including synaptic plasticity, which is a big deal.
Speaker 1: And then like the zoomed out level, they saw improvements
Speaker 1: in the cognitive function that you can measure with behavioral tests.
Speaker 1: So the older mice with cognitive impairments saw improvement in
Speaker 1: things like memory and spatial learning, all from young mouse blood.
Speaker 1: Then there was the heart research led by the Harvard
Speaker 1: scientist Amy Wagers, who by the way, has also done
Speaker 1: important work on the brain effects I just mentioned and
Speaker 1: on ident finding the cause of these effects in general,
Speaker 1: which I'm about to talk about in a minute. But
Speaker 1: research out of her lab found that when you introduce
Speaker 1: young mouse blood into older mice, it can reduce the
Speaker 1: cumulative prevalence of cardiac hypertrophy. So as we get older,
Speaker 1: our hearts get bigger, they grow larger and thicker, and
Speaker 1: that's not good. It leads to heart failure. All right,
Speaker 1: you want it to be Do you want the muscle
Speaker 1: to be to be spry right then? Yeah? Sure? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so when you perform the heterochronic parabiasis between an
Speaker 1: older mouse with cardiac hypertrophy with a young healthy mouse,
Speaker 1: Wagers found that the older mouse's heart shrinks to nearly
Speaker 1: the size of the younger mause's heart. So just having
Speaker 1: the younger mouse's blood going through that circulatory system fixes
Speaker 1: the heart. The heart shrinks back to pretty much the
Speaker 1: size of a typical, younger, healthy mouse. This this is
Speaker 1: not sounding any less like crazy science fiction? Do did
Speaker 1: do these researchers have any idea of what's causing all
Speaker 1: of this? Yeah, they have a pretty good idea. So
Speaker 1: I mentioned the second ago. In mice, some research has
Speaker 1: pointed to the role of protein found in mouse blood
Speaker 1: called growth differentiation factor eleven or g DF eleven. Uh.
Speaker 1: One reason for thinking it's involved is that g DF
Speaker 1: eleven seems to be present in much greater volume in
Speaker 1: the blood of younger mice than it is in the
Speaker 1: blood of older mice. Experiments have shown in isolation that
Speaker 1: g DF eleven alone has some powerful rejuvenating effects. So
Speaker 1: separated from the blood, just this protein can accomplish something.
Speaker 1: Though I believe in at least some cases, the effect
Speaker 1: of g DF eleven alone is not quite as great
Speaker 1: as the effects of the direct blood plasma exchange. So
Speaker 1: though g DF eleven seems to be a major factor
Speaker 1: or even the main factor in these effects, there's probably
Speaker 1: more to this effect than just one chemical we can isolate.
Speaker 1: In a quote given to a New Scientists, Solveolta said,
Speaker 1: counteracting aging may prove to be a combination of inhibiting
Speaker 1: aging factors and increasing youthful factors. But all in mice.
Speaker 1: So far, right, is I mean? I mean, good for
Speaker 1: the mice, sure, yeah, But can I do that? That's
Speaker 1: what I was wondering too. You were wondering if Lauren
Speaker 1: could do that. I'm wondering if all of us can
Speaker 1: do it. I mean, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: live forever. Come on, I've by the way, I've I've
Speaker 1: reversed my position on this. Yeah. A while back, y'all
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, we want to live forever, and I
Speaker 1: was like, nah, I thought about it. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: might as well take it. Let's let's just let's just
Speaker 1: go with that. See how it goes. Not forever for
Speaker 1: a millenniar two exactly. Yeah, we'd roll with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's the future of of this as far as
Speaker 1: it relates to humans. Yes, good questions. So we are
Speaker 1: probably going to find out if the same thing can
Speaker 1: work on humans within the next few years together, are
Speaker 1: we No? No, no, fortunately we did not. I saw that, Lauren.
Speaker 1: This podcast room is a safe place where we don't
Speaker 1: talk about that movie. No, none of it. None of
Speaker 1: it fair enough? Sorry, please continue. Okay, So we don't
Speaker 1: have to undergo parabias is to see if the same
Speaker 1: benefits occur in humans. To test this, we can just
Speaker 1: try professionally administered blood or plasma transfusions. Um. Now, don't
Speaker 1: try this at home, please, please, seriously, you can mess
Speaker 1: up a blood transfusion you try to do it yourself.
Speaker 1: It's not a good idea. It would be, it would be.
Speaker 1: This should be performed by professionals under laboratory conditions where
Speaker 1: they're controlling all of the factors. People know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: so don't get carried away. These effects are really exciting,
Speaker 1: but please don't do anything stupid. What what about the
Speaker 1: straight up vampire method? Oh you mean drinking blood? Uh no, Well,
Speaker 1: here's another quote that was actually given to the new
Speaker 1: scientist by by Whis Corey, one of the scientists I
Speaker 1: mentioned from the earlier study. He said, quote, certainly you
Speaker 1: can't drink the blood, although obviously we haven't tried that experiment. Now, well,
Speaker 1: that's amusing. I will point out. I will point out
Speaker 1: something else. It just seems like that must have been
Speaker 1: the question on everybody's mind. Here's something that's just just
Speaker 1: to kind of give a little more detail there. So
Speaker 1: human blood would be toxic for us to consume in
Speaker 1: large amounts the reason. The reason being is that blood
Speaker 1: has a lot of iron in it. Our bodies are
Speaker 1: not very good at getting rid of excess iron. We
Speaker 1: need some iron, but to have too much is going
Speaker 1: to lead to something called hemochromatosis, and that is not good.
Speaker 1: So it actually is toxic. So while we're joking about this,
Speaker 1: clearly that would never be Even even if we were
Speaker 1: to make completely synthetic human blood that is otherwise indistinguishable
Speaker 1: from the naturally made blood, we would never consume it
Speaker 1: because it would be toxic to us. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: talking out giving people plasma transfusions generally or also another
Speaker 1: option to test would be this g DF eleven protein
Speaker 1: in isolation, because as we've discussed in mice, it might
Speaker 1: not have the full range of effects or the intensity
Speaker 1: we see in the total blood the direct blood sharing,
Speaker 1: but that it might have some really important and majorly
Speaker 1: significant effects on its own. But this research truly is
Speaker 1: coming right up. Whis core A himself is apparently looking
Speaker 1: into soon initiate a human trial to see if injecting
Speaker 1: young blood plasma to people with Alzheimer's can relieve symptoms
Speaker 1: of the disease or even reverse its process. And they're
Speaker 1: starting this experiment this October, so next month. So what
Speaker 1: are what are we going to find out? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I think this is really exciting. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: we want to urge caution, don't try anything at home,
Speaker 1: and don't get carried away, because there's a lot left
Speaker 1: we need to learn about this before. I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying yes, we discovered the fountain of youth. Well, especially
Speaker 1: since you know, time and time again we've discovered that
Speaker 1: something that is applicable to a different organism is not
Speaker 1: applicable to humans. So it may very well turn out
Speaker 1: that something that does work within mice will not translate
Speaker 1: into into humans. It doesn't mean that we won't find
Speaker 1: some alternative to that down the road, but we can
Speaker 1: never we can never just assume that because we see
Speaker 1: something work in one organism is universal, especially with anything
Speaker 1: is complicated as blood, which really does have a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of protein and cellular function and intercellular
Speaker 1: function going on. So there's a lot more again than
Speaker 1: just just any one or two things. Well, and apart
Speaker 1: from artificial blood, and apart from this idea of using
Speaker 1: blood transfusions in novel ways in the medical world, there's
Speaker 1: also within the future of blood the potential for lab
Speaker 1: grown blood creating blood in the laboratory um And in fact,
Speaker 1: we are seeing an experiment kind of ramping up right
Speaker 1: now and which volunteers will ought to receive blood cultured
Speaker 1: from stem cells in two thousand and sixteen. So it's
Speaker 1: a couple of years away for this to actually happen,
Speaker 1: but the groundwork is being laid right now for this
Speaker 1: to become a reality. So the basic idea is to
Speaker 1: use stem cells and UH and then to induce them
Speaker 1: to develop into red blood cells, or to induce them
Speaker 1: to grow into the mesodermic layers from which red blood
Speaker 1: cells derive, right, right, that would be that would be
Speaker 1: more accurate. Yes, uh so, thank you, but yes, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they're talking about. Now, this this is not
Speaker 1: a trivial thing. That's it takes quite a bit of
Speaker 1: delicacy to make sure that you develop your stem cells
Speaker 1: so that they properly go move into whatever form you
Speaker 1: ultimately want them to take. Absolutely, and you also have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to scale that so you can
Speaker 1: get a useful amount of blood, because it's one thing
Speaker 1: to develop it and get a tiny sample, right, and
Speaker 1: you're not really developing whole whole blood. You're developing red
Speaker 1: blood cells from this procedure. And uh and red blood
Speaker 1: cells are very small, as it turns out, like I think,
Speaker 1: I think about half a billion can be in a
Speaker 1: single drop. Well I know that if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a bag of blood, which is a pint more or less, essentially,
Speaker 1: approximately two trillions trillion red blood cells are in one
Speaker 1: bag and the United States we go through about thirty
Speaker 1: two thousand pints of blood every day in the medical world,
Speaker 1: So two trillion times thirty two tho per day, that's
Speaker 1: how many cells you would have to be manufacturing within
Speaker 1: the lab just to end up meeting that demand, which
Speaker 1: would if you were able to do that. Frankly, you
Speaker 1: would have to go above of that because if you're
Speaker 1: thinking three two on average, obviously you would want to
Speaker 1: have more than that to be able to take care
Speaker 1: of any emergency issues. But if you were able to
Speaker 1: do that, then theoretically you could eventually eliminate the need
Speaker 1: for things like blood banks or or blood donation because
Speaker 1: you could actually manufacture it yourself. Yeah. And for furthermore,
Speaker 1: you would be manufacturing stuff that would eliminate the risk
Speaker 1: of disease and immune reactions transferring along with someone else's
Speaker 1: blood and um Also, you would be eliminating the fuss
Speaker 1: that comes with having to sort out all of those
Speaker 1: blood types because you could just create all of it
Speaker 1: and oh negative, which is the universal donor, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the issues of shortages of specific types of blood
Speaker 1: would no longer be a problem if you were able
Speaker 1: to to to create that in the lab. Also, and
Speaker 1: this may or may not tie into Joe's point, I
Speaker 1: have no idea you can. You'd be providing young, strong
Speaker 1: cells that would have the potential to survive longer. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if these are super fresh, then yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if this could be used in that kind of research.
Speaker 1: If it does turn out that, you know, the key
Speaker 1: to the fountain of youth is injecting young blood into
Speaker 1: old people, we wouldn't be talking about young people coming
Speaker 1: out to donate blood. We'd be talking about growing this
Speaker 1: blood in the lave possibility. I mean, this is of
Speaker 1: course making a lot of assumptions, the assumption that the
Speaker 1: one that that the effect we were talking about in
Speaker 1: mice does in fact occur also with humans. Furthermore, that
Speaker 1: this ever becomes in any way financially viable, this process
Speaker 1: of growing. Yeah, if this is in fact something that
Speaker 1: can ultimately be scalable where we could create blood in
Speaker 1: the massive volumes that we would need, then it could
Speaker 1: be an amazing development for medicine. Oh sure. If any
Speaker 1: of these blood substitutes are perhaps a combination of these
Speaker 1: technologies pans out at all, it could mean global access
Speaker 1: to to clean, life saving transfusion material. And some ninety
Speaker 1: million transfusions is the number that I've read occur worldwide
Speaker 1: every year. So so it could be a amazing for
Speaker 1: a lot of people and and be it could be
Speaker 1: a pretty huge business. I mean, not to not to
Speaker 1: be crass about it, but there have been estimates that
Speaker 1: indicate that it could drive annual sales of over seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in the United States alone every year. So
Speaker 1: that means for the money people out there, there's an
Speaker 1: economic incentive to invest in this research. Blood is big business.
Speaker 1: So now, seriously, though, this is this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that clearly I'm very excited to see where
Speaker 1: the research leads us to and the potential benefits are.
Speaker 1: It's it's difficult to exaggerate how world changing this could
Speaker 1: potentially be. So we hope that that the promising research
Speaker 1: bears fruit. We will keep an eye on that. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: to our listeners out there, if you have any suggestions,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some topic that you've always wanted to know
Speaker 1: more about as far as the future goes, you should
Speaker 1: let us know. Maybe you want Jonathan to get covered
Speaker 1: in blood in a video of his own. You would
Speaker 1: not be the first person to have suggested such a thing,
Speaker 1: so feel free you can drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: or Google Plus. Our handle at all three is f
Speaker 1: W Thinking And we'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this topic. In the future of technology,
Speaker 1: visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota
Speaker 1: Let's Go Places