A Profile of Michael Greve and the Segment of the Longevity Industry that He Supports
Would that the popular media produced more popular science articles about the longevity industry like this one. It is not just a profile of someone trying to make a difference in the world by advancing the state of medicine, but also a look at some of the companies and ventures involved in that process. And all that while being a sober consideration of the potential to bring aging under medical control, and thereby end some of the largest causes of suffering and death in late life.
Michael Greve thought to himself: It would be stupid to kick the bucket now. He started to look into nutrition, gave up coke, pizza, and red wine, lost 20 kilos, gave up smoking, gained the 20 kilos back, and lost them again. After a total of three years, his body was ready for a life that wouldn't have to be boring for decades. Greve thought to himself: to kick the bucket now would be even stupider. Then he made the decision that changed his life, and may soon change yours: To not end up as the richest man in the graveyard. Michael Greve decided to take such a serious approach to health that he began to study the field of longevity, the science of extending the healthy human lifespan. He plowed through studies and began to get involved, as actively as only a person with a nine or ten-figure bank account can.
Five years ago, he donated the first ten million to the SENS Research Foundation, an authority on longevity research. In the same year, 2016, Greve founded the Forever Healthy Foundation. Forever Healthy has long been globally active, the language of the foundation is English, and the most recently hired employees are based in Istanbul and New York. From Karlsruhe, Greve and a small team currently manage 14 startups that have emerged from particularly promising research projects. In collaboration with the SENS Research Foundation, he organizes an annual conference, Undoing Aging, at which the industry's renowned scientists and opinion leaders meet.
With his own team, he produces scientific papers that can be thought of as a screenshot of current world knowledge on a topic - each paper based on about 2000 abstracts and 150 studies. He publishes them in a database on his website, freely accessible to anyone at any time, comprehensibly transformed into practical advice, for example things like fisetin and EDTA. He has turned himself into the leading global figure of a new approach to longevity: he talks about rejuvenation, the preservation and restoration of youth. He talks about viewing the process of aging as a treatable disease, not an inescapable fate. All this not with the goal of eternal life, but of prolonging the healthy life span as much as possible. To give you an idea of the avalanche Greve has unleashed in the past five years: One of his 14 startups has reached the point where it can dissolve tumors by injection. Another one can repair broken arteries.
Worldwide around 150,000 people die every day: 50,000 from accidents, violence, wars, things like that. 100,000 from diseases like diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart attacks. You could simplify it and say: 100,000 people die every day from the worst disease in the world, namely aging. We humans have lived with this for a few million years, we humans have died with this for a few million years. We have become accustomed to that. But does it have to stay that way? "What we're doing now is getting to the bottom of the whole thing. Where does cancer start, where does Alzheimer's start? Where is the root? And more importantly, what can we do about it? I'm only interested in research that results in action. So in working with our startups and at our conference, we don't talk about model organisms and regulatory stuff. We're not talking about someday. We're talking about human treatments, we're talking about therapy, and we're talking about now."
Link: https://www.redbull.com/int-en/theredbulletin/michael-greve-biohacking-longevity
Nice article, also good to see that Michael Greve has taken up some of the talking points of AdG now that he has been subsituted from the game.
It's good stuff he is doing, but Greve seems to be going down a similar model to other groups like Life Biosciences and Cambria, taking a very broad portfolio approach
And IMO it seems way too broad...
VCs use this model as they know only a few will hit and become unicorns, while the rest of the portfolio will become cannibalized or fail
This is good for VCs making their LPs wealthy, but it is not a sustainable model for the longevity industry as a whole
There was actually just a video about Life Bioscience's Chairman Mehmood Khan talking about how he had to strip down David Sinclair's 9 portfolio programs, to just 3, so I think some people are getting the message....
In the article he says:
"That we get there, as quickly as possible, is something I would like to contribute to. Of course, we must immediately start to keep our home clean, that is clear, whether there is rejuvenation or not. We need sustainable, clean agriculture, exclusively renewable energy, rigorous environmental protection, ideally all of this right now. We will have to rethink the issue of income. But we're going to have to do that anyway, even without rejuvenation."
I agree and often I reflect about the life in 80s and 90s when not only our bedrooms but homes and cares were filled with litter. Everything took up more space, VHS, cassettes, books. Now everything ins digitised. I like the nostalgia and progress. Its not difficult to understand how some families were filled with conflicts, my mother were screaming in the car, etc. tech wasn't in place to solve problems. You had to make a phone cal for small things or drive to speak with a person. Now its the internet. Things have become easier.