Dr. Kay Durairaj 0:00
Kay, well, hello, hello, guys. You're listening to beauty bites with Dr Kay, secrets of a plastic surgeon. In today's podcast is a fascinating one. We're going to dive deep into cellular longevity, how to increase the health span and lifespan of your cells, your fibroblasts that grow your collagen. We're interviewing Dr Rahul Neta. He is a doctorate in pharmacologic science from West Virginia University and a Bachelor's of pharmacy. He has over 35 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development, including six years of academic research. He is currently the CEO and founder, co founder of rapidologics health, and this is a biopharma company that's applied to all of the learnings of longevity science and is coming into the esthetic space and esthetic medicine. They're bringing longevity science to dermatology and esthetics. Prior to being at replogics, he was at Skin Medica, the R and D team since 2005 and he's really been in his career focusing on using health care, kind of very important, holistic, evidence based science to change how we do skin care. And his passion now is just to go beyond that current approach of everything we do in the skin care world and actually bring some longevity science to it. So we're going to learn all about his new, biggest, I think, the the newest, biggest thing that's happening in skin care, probably in the last decade. And this is a whole paradigm shift on how we how we treat ourselves, how we make our fibroblasts work harder and better at cellular longevity. Welcome to the podcast. Dr Mehta, how are you

Speaker 1 1:56
very much? Dr Kay, thank you very much. Dr Kay, I'm honored to be here on the beauty bites podcast, and as you mentioned, my passion is applying the longevity learnings that we have from the healthcare into into the beauty and skin and dermatology. How can we make our skin last as long as we want to live and be healthy?

Dr. Kay Durairaj 2:18
You've said that your goal, one of your goals is to go beyond just treating the outer signs of aging skin like lines, wrinkles, brown spots, because that's what skin care is today, but you actually want to drive the biology behind those changes. So what do you think is the cellular mechanisms that we're going to start teaching people all about? Right?

Speaker 1 2:40
So when you think of visible signs of aging, that the fine lines and wrinkles and everything, that's what we've been treating for for many, many years, in the last five to 10 years, there's more focus on the causes of aging, or causes of those visible signs, and emphasis on the hallmarks of aging when you talk about cellular senescence or mitochondrial health. I look at those. Yes, they are causes of what you see on the surface, but there are also symptoms of really what happens at the cellular level. And if you can have, if you can understand what's happening in the cellular levels and take care of lot of those hallmarks simultaneously, the true root cause you should be able to achieve cellular longevity. And really, what it boils down to is this preventing exhaustion of fibroblasts. As you know, fibroblasts are the key cells in the skin that keeps skin healthy, but they get exhausted as we get older and as we as we force them to make collagen, elastin and everything. Our approach is to really look at, how can you stop that exhaustion from happening delay the inevitable, which is loss of fibroblast, either through apoptosis or senescence. The longer we can keep the cells healthy, the stronger the skin will respond to all the treatments that you're doing, and that's the goal at rapidologics, is to increase that longevity of the cells.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 4:05
I think in dermatology, we've been very focused on doing things to the skin like lasering and peeling and blasting the skin and causing damage that that makes the fibroblasts have to work very hard. Do you think that how we approach skin is going to change with this concept of cellular longevity, the idea that we want to give fibroblasts, not only stimulation, but also time to rest, rejuvenate, rebuild.

Speaker 1 4:33
Yes, that's exactly the paradigm shift. We still need to stimulate the fibroblasts, because we would need everything that we are doing right now, but when you apply it to an exhausted fibroblast, your efficiency of regeneration is much lower. Your exhausted fibroblast don't produce as much collagen and elastin and extracellular matrix, but if you can make the fibroblast healthy again using some of the approaches that we are using at rapid logics, i. Whatever you're doing right now will be lot more efficient and lot more effective.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 5:05
I agree you and I have spoken so much about mTOR and regulation of mTOR and modulating mTOR, this is a really key longevity pathway that not everybody knows about. Can you explain mTOR and this delicate balance between, you know, longevity, growth and repair and rest and recycle that we go through every day and every cell of our body.

Speaker 1 5:28
So mTOR is evolutionarily conserved, which means it's the same protein in every species, right from single cell organism to humans. It's a master regulator of cellular metabolism. So mTOR controls how cells grow and do their job versus how they preserve themselves and repair themselves. So when mTOR is very high, cells grow into growth mode and they do all the functions they're supposed to do. In case of fibroblasts, they would repair, they would make collagen, elastin, everything they're supposed to do and communication. When mTOR goes down, the cells goes goes into this repair pathway where it fixes itself and what happens as we get older. Those repair pathways, mTOR, that are driven by mTOR inhibition, don't work very well, because mTOR levels are very, very high in older cells. Also, as we do all the anti aging interventions, whether it's topicals or device energy based approaches, we are stimulating the fibroblast to get constantly overworked. They're always stimulated to make things. It doesn't give them a time to repair themselves. And so this balance between mTOR activity, high mTOR and low mTOR activities, is what we are really looking at at managing mTOR. Again, mTOR works in two different pathways. So this torque one pathway, which is all linked to suppression of torque. One is linked to longevity, and there is torque two is multi protein complex. Torque two suppression is linked to a lot of the side effects of mTOR pathway. And rapamycin, for example, is the primary drug that works through mTOR pathway suppresses both of these, torque one and torque two, especially in skin. Suppression of torque two leads to some of the loss of structure and the and the resilience of the skin, and so we want to avoid suppressing torque two in the skin. The approach we are taking that balances is to find a pharmacological solution that suppresses torque one while increasing torque too, and this balance is what's what's important in keeping the skin healthy at the same time making the cells live longer by fixing themselves.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 7:52
It's a very delicate balance, but there's always the need for growth, and when there's lots of nutrients around, the cells are signaling more growth and more development and then, but they also need to curtail that. When there's so much growth that there's over expansion and pollution congestion, like a big city, for example, you need to, like, slow down the growth and then clean up all the waste products, and then cells go through this process of autophagy as well, where they're kind of recycling their components. So, so this is, I think it's nice to for people to think about mTOR, not like an OFF, ON switch, but more like a dial. It is a dial, dialing up and dialing down and kind of regulating. So if we start to change the mTOR cycle of our cell in these positive ways, what, how would that manifest in the skin, or what, what exciting. I know you guys, rappalogix has amazing product that's launched it. It's launched, and it's called recu And can you tell us something about this? This has been your baby and your passion for the last couple of years, couple

Speaker 1 8:56
of years now, yes, yes, a couple of years. So reky over our brand of rapid logics, is based on this molecule we call RLX, 201, it's a torque one inhibitor. So it inhibits torque one pathway, but it actually accelerates or stimulates torque two pathway. And so what happens when you when you apply these in cells, in vitro, for example, it induces all the repair pathways, autophagy goes up, cellular senescence markers go down. And lot of the if you look, think of hallmarks of aging. All the hallmarks of aging move in the positive directions in the cells. And so what's happening? It's making the cells that are exhausted from aging and from all the intervention, it makes them work lot more, faster, in a healthier fashion. So it makes the cells healthier. And when the cells are healthy, whatever else that you're you're putting on top is going to make it work much, much better. Outcome of your procedures would be much better. When you treat the fibroblast or skin with this, with this molecule and this technology that's in recue health pro longevity serum,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 10:08
that's amazing. I'm so excited to be working with you and involved at the on the Scientific Advisory Board for this company. So like, the pictures and the changes that we've seen in the fibroblasts are fascinating, like literally describe some of the histology changes that people that you've seen on the slides of tissue that's treated. How does it look?

Speaker 1 10:30
So when we took fibroblasts, this was done in fibroblast cells itself. We took fibroblast cells from a 23 year old donor and the 56 year old donor. When we took the cells from the 56 year old donor, treated them with this molecule, RLX, 201, morphologically, the cells looked much younger than the cells from the 23 year old donor. When we looked at the biomarkers, when we looked at markers of senescence, they went down so the cells are not getting senescent anytime soon. Auto fegi markers went up. So the cells are recycling all the all the debris that's inside much more efficiently. Cells are also getting lot more the DNA damage goes down also the epigenetic markers, the DNA methylation profile, also goes down. So the cells themselves might be getting more younger, which allows them then to function lot more efficiently. As I said, you still need to stimulate them, so just because you change the fibroblast to a more efficient cell. It doesn't automatically function unless you stimulate them. So you need the other things that we do right now for anti aging, but those procedures and products would have much more positive outcome when you treat the cells with RLX 201, or torque one, inhibition that forces them to repair themselves.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 12:00
Yes, and the pictures that we're seeing, and also the clinical results so far are incredibly fast. So you're seeing skin changes as early as two to four weeks.

Speaker 1 12:12
We are seeing changes in function of skin as early as two as two to four weeks in clinical studies, the histology that we performed on the cells is actually published already, and so there's publication out there. In term surgery, we'll be publishing the clinical data soon as well.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 12:30
That's so exciting. That's amazing. How do you foresee practices bringing this product into their current armamentarium? Like in terms of there's other skincare out there with vitamin C, Retin A, how are we going to teach patients, kind of the importance of an M, this product that can help dial down and regulate their cell cycle? Right?

Speaker 1 12:51
So everything we do right now, the products people are using, whether it's retinoids or or growth factors or peptides or exosomes, they all stimulate fibroblast, but right now they're stimulating exhausted fibroblast, and what what we want to do is, when you add req on top of that, it helps fibroblast become lot more efficient. So in the process, immediately, what's going to happen is that your outcome would be better and most likely faster. We are waiting for some of those data. Long term, though, we see less and less need for some of the stimulating outcomes. For example, if you're using retinol, you you can go down in concentration, you will still have the same effects because you are acting on much more active fibroblast. And so initially it would be something that is added, and that's how we are. We are doing the studies right now, added to the existing regimen. And eventually, as the cells become more efficient, you should be able to reduce all the other products and procedures.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 13:57
And what are some of the biomarkers that you are going to recommend people track or that will help be a little bit more predictive of how their skin is aging. Are there things that will replace or augment the idea of chronologic age and clinical trials?

Speaker 1 14:15
Yes, I think when we look at longevity product, first of all, it's not looking at before and after image. Before and after images is more like what happens anti aging, when, when you when you see something right away, right if you want to look at what happens for skin longevity, we should be looking at functional markers. Is the skin functioning better? Some of the things that we would measure is is, let's say, the strength of the barrier or the or the elasticity. Elasticity measures how strong the skin is and how well it functions. So to move away from mirror into into microscope, that's a clinical in the clinical setting, we are developing new methods or new tools that will. Help us look at skin's biological age. As you may be aware of biological age clocks for for the body, there are many DNA methylation clocks that give you your biological age, which could be younger or older than your chronological age. We are developing the same thing for skin, but we are doing that with without taking biopsies or invasive procedures. So we're looking at non invasive ways of measuring skin age, and that tool will help patients determine how well their skin is doing on the treatment.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 15:36
That's going to be really important, I think, to reset the physician mindset and the provider mindset, so that they start to not look at fine lines and wrinkles like we are going to we are going to age. We will have some degree of lines wrinkles, but we want skin resilience, and we want skin that has fatality and ability to, you know, kind of withstand the forces of nature that hit us every day, so that that testing is, I think, going to become part of our every day, that we look at people's biomarkers, hopefully, and that we change our testing of skin resilience, I hope, yeah, do you think that'll be everyday thing when you go to your

Speaker 1 16:17
dermatologist, probably a couple of times a year, if you Look, if you look at skin age, it is still a complicated procedure. Because you are you're measuring methylation on the DNA we need. We are going to figure out over the next six months exactly which markers to look for. And when you do DNA methylation study, there are literally 1000s of things that change, and we are figuring out right now which ones of those are critical, and that's what will bring to the to the patients, that if these things are changing, that means your skin is getting younger. If these other markers are changing, that means your skin is getting older. And so you're going to make sure that whatever interventions you're doing, skin is getting younger, regardless of what it looks like. You could have skin that looks better, but biologically could be getting older, because the cells are getting older, so you want to make sure that you move not just the visual appearance of the skin, but also the biological age to a younger age.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 17:12
That's so interesting, because this concept of telomere exhaustion can happen when cells are stimulated and overstimulated, and so, like, you can't do a laser every two weeks on your skin, because you are going to end up shortening the telomere length and also making, like a chronically exhausted fibroblasts. But right now, right now the consumer mentality, and even, I think, in our in esthetics, the mentality is, do more. Do more. Do More exactly, yeah, like, work out harder, do more interventions,

Speaker 1 17:43
yes, and fortunately or unfortunately, fibroblast is a very resilient cell. Fibroblast is more like, I think this was an analogy one of the physicians use it. It's like a mother of a young, young child who's working all day long, is exhausted and has some time for herself at the end of the day. But if the child wants something in the middle of the night, she's going to get up and do it. Yeah, now that comes out of her own time of rest and relaxation and recovery. That's what happens to fibroblast. Fibroblasts are working to keep your skin healthy. They get exhausted in the process. And then when you start stimulating them with with everything that we throw on top of that to maintain the skin, they will still go ahead and do that. So so in our study, when we when we treated fibroblasts with one of the anti aging product, the collagen level went up. This was exhausted fibroblasts, they still make more collagen. However, when we looked at their biomarkers, senescent markers went up, autophagy markers went down. Lot of their methylation markers went up. So the cells actually became older, because you took away from them the time they had to repair themselves. And so that's what we are trying to change, when, when, when there is no time to to fix yourself. You pharmacologically intervene and force that mTOR torque one to go down, that will stimulate the cells to repair themselves.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 19:13
That's right, we put the fibroblast on retreat mode. There. They have to do

Speaker 1 19:19
a rest, break, self repair is what we want to stimulate. And then by doing that, you're actually delay the need for Regenerative interventions so the cells live longer. You don't have to replace them as fast, and that will help you later in life, when your stem cell depose, especially for keratinocytes, run out later in life, if you're keeping the healthy cells, if you're keeping them longer, if you don't have to replace them or remove them, then you're going to have much healthier skin later in life. So it's not just prevention, but preservation of what you have so you don't have to replace or regenerate. That's.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 20:00
So interesting. There was a study published recently that looked at marathon runners and people who have an extreme athletes. And you would think they would be the most healthy people, because they're all exercising, and actually they had this type of exhaustion and early advanced stages of aging, and they were not really as healthy, because it's chronic stress environment too, right?

Speaker 1 20:22
It's always the balance, right? You have to have balance of activity and self care, and when that balance goes off with all the interventions or with aging, you have to bring it back into balance, right?

Dr. Kay Durairaj 20:34
So let's say now that you've rested, you've used recu And your fibroblasts have rested, and they're ready to power up. Do you recommend supplements or certain peptides diet, or what are the things that now you can give to to fibroblasts to make, you know, improved collagenization and better nutrients, like, what nutrients do we feed them once they've rested? Right?

Speaker 1 20:58
So all the interventions that we're doing right now, whether it's peptides that are that are stimulating fibroblasts to make more collagen, or it's the systemic nutrition, right, you still need proteins and fat and carbohydrates for the cells to take in and create what they're creating, which is, again, more proteins and lipids, collagen, elastin and everything. So having that healthy diet, healthy exercise, healthy sleep routine is very critical, keeping that along with preserving the health of fibroblasts. This is this combination of what you do, systemically, to yourself, topically, stimulating the fibroblast, and topically, preserving the activity of fibroblast, or bringing the exhausted fibroblast back to a healthy state. When you combine all these three that that's where you you see the see the best effect, because now all your interventions are working on a much healthier cells that that have enough nutrition so they can do their function, which is making collagen, elastin, communicating with other fibroblasts, interacting with other cells.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 22:07
This has been it's such an interesting journey that you've been on from your time at Skin Medica, where you dive deep into skin science and research and now looking at the molecular mechanisms of how the skin ages. So what have been some of your aha moments this past year, as you've developed, helped to develop req, I think

Speaker 1 22:28
one of the things I learned early on at Skin Medica, because prior to Skin Medica, most of what I was doing in pharmaceuticals, for traditional pharmaceuticals, by biotech molecules, and we have a set way of developing pharmaceutical products, which is making sure the molecules stay active, and you can prove that. Well, that's not the norm in skin care. We create formulation based on the knowledge that the molecule may be working. We don't always test the final formula. What I changed at Skin Medica was to implement this approach of biomarker fingerprinting, where you take a molecule and see what it's doing to biomarkers, and then you follow those biomarkers throughout the development of the product. So when you put it in a formulation, you want to make sure that the formulation has the same biomarker changes, and then when you put it on stability. Two years after you make the product, you still want to see the biomarkers change in your skin. And then you want to show that in a clinical study, that when you take biopsy, you want to show the same biomarker, so that biomarker fingerprint needs to continue. And that's what we implemented as we develop the EQ has pro longevity serum, starting with primary cells, fibroblasts, making sure that there is mTOR inhibition in that torque, one inhibition, there is activation of all the other things that we want to activate. And then we follow that as we created the product. We put excipients and everything to make this amazing product that we have right now. And then we are waiting for clinical data now to show that those same biomarkers are going to continue showing the effects. And so that process of maintaining activity is critical, which is not very common in skin care products. In fact, many times you can take the same active ingredient, put it in two different formulas, and we actually publish this data. One formula may be really active, and second formula with the same level of ingredient may have no activity. But we don't test our final products right now, you say you have 1% retinol, but unless the product is tested in clinic to show that it has retinol, retinol activity, you may not have it so does. There's a reason that this whole approach of pharmaceutical evidence and quality bring that into cosmetic is what I learned at skin medical, and we applied that to development of this product.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 24:54
Well, that's fascinating for our injector esthetic medicine audience that's listening, what does risk? Storing like cellular balance look like in terms of skin quality changes, like texture, tone, elasticity, how? How quickly will the patient notice these things and what will they see using this product?

Speaker 1 25:13
So what we are seeing from clinical studies, again, it's not finished yet. We are, we are eight weeks into a 12 week study. What we started seeing as early as two weeks is actually changes in the in the elasticity of skin, which I've never seen before in my 20 years in in in esthetics, that a topical product changing elasticity so quickly, we have continued the seeing the change at four weeks, and even more significant at eight weeks. And this change was actually both in the instrumental measures that we measure the skin elasticity with, as well as a very experienced physician investigator looking at the face and assessing it and saying that elasticity has improved. And so that's what we call about changes in the functional markers of skin and and as the functional markers change, the side effects of that is improvement of all the skin quality parameters as the functional markers change, which means skin probably has more collagen and elastin. Now that's that elasticity is improved, that would eventually lead to reduction in fine lines and wrinkles. And so the skin quality parameters that we typically think of as what you what you want to treat are really secondary thought. When we look at longevity, if you improve skin's health, if you improve the cells health, the skin quality parameters will improve on their own. And we are waiting for the 12 week data from clinical assessment as well as biopsy and the data from our assessment of the skin age, epigenetic age, we'll have all of that in the next couple of months.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 26:46
It literally feels like it's going to be like game changing, because you are turning an older, non functional fibroblast into its youthful self, where it's back to form and function, and then you're seeing these changes manifest in terms of like them. It's making better proteins. It's really restructuring the foundation of the skin, so that, because Aging has so many contributors, there's sun damage, glycolation, inflammation, hormones. How do you see this kind of torque, one inhibition, interacting with all the other modalities that we do, like lasers and injectables,

Speaker 1 27:25
based on the mechanism that we are improving the health of fibroblasts, everything else that you're doing to stimulate fibroblast, all the other modalities, you should get much better outcome,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 27:36
even better results, right? This is going to get faster

Speaker 1 27:40
and better results with that. And then we have studies going on. I know we are planning a study with you. You have a couple of other studies going on that will help us identify how much is the improvement in these processes when we simultaneously use mTOR inhibition with req, and how fast that happens? Can we increase the speed at which some of these biolatory fillers and some of the other procedures work. Can a healthy fibroblast improve the outcome and make it faster? We'll find out that in the in the next six months to a year.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 28:14
And are you envisioning that people will stay on the product just long term, in terms like, will we prime the skin and then do a treatment? Will we continue to stay on it after the treatment improve healing and outcomes long term?

Speaker 1 28:29
All the studies we are looking at right now are long term studies, because this, we still need to maintain balance in the cells, and so by using the product after the procedures, not immediately, but once the skin re epithelializes, continue to use it will keep the skin and the skin cells in this balance of growth versus repair, and that balance is important for cells own survival and longevity and preservation. So we expect this product to be used continuously, along with whatever else you're doing to simulate it also has the same effect in a younger population versus older population. It's going to improve the the balance in the cells at all different age groups that we have seen in the from the in vitro studies so far.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 29:16
When do people start seeing senescence like should our 20 year olds be already starting. I think senescence begins with puberty, like after puberty, like, your body is starting to have all these changes that are,

Speaker 1 29:29
I mean, in general, I've, I've heard many doctors say that aging begins at birth. As soon as you're born, you start to age, but cells know to fix themselves, right? So, so you don't see the changes of all the changes happening in the skin clinically, because cells are very efficient at fixing themselves, you start seeing seeing senescence early in life. Senescence, again, as you know, is an important part of keeping healthy skin. Senescence is very important to. Make sure cells don't become cancerous. And so senescence is not something we want to eliminate. You don't want to remove all of senescence, but you do want to make sure that the cells, if you can extend their lifespan, make them not become senescent. Cells become senescent because there's too much damage accumulating in them. So if you're fixing the damage by suppressing torque one, you should expect cells to not be senescent for longer time. And we just got some in vitro data that shows that simultaneously, using arlex 201, with a senescence inducing molecule, in one study, we saw 40% less fibroblast becoming senescent when, when they're treated with RLX, 201, in addition to senescence inducing molecule. So that proves our hypothesis that the cells are living healthier, longer, and so is the is the delaying that that inevitable removal of cells, if you can keep them alive longer and healthier, it will increase outcome of everything else that you're doing.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 31:04
I really feel like the modern person's skin needs this intervention, because we are blasted every day with more ionizing radiation, more microplastics, more toxins. You know, even in all of the food that we eat and like you, have to have something to fortify the cell so that it can handle all this, the things that will drive it to senescence. So I think this is like an ideal pairing. Do you have? Have you guys looked at inflammatory diseases such as rosacea, eczema, acne? I'm curious as to like if, if this has a role in those settings.

Speaker 1 31:42
So mTOR activity is it is known that most of the inflammatory skin conditions have very high mTOR levels. For example, rosacea has very high mTOR levels. And there is a clinical study using rapamycin that suppresses both torque one and torque two, that there is significant improvement in rosacea. And so that is definitely something we are looking at right now, more from the drug side, because we're also developing drugs in addition to the cosmetic products. But we'll be looking at essentially all inflammatory skin conditions using molecules like arlex 201, and the series that we have to go after an inflammatory skin conditions.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 32:24
This is going to be very interesting. I think it's important, though, that people understand that this, I hear people compounding rapamycin creams and doing crazy stuff, then I really want the audience to understand that rapamycin in that form can be actually very damaging. And you know, don't really have control over what pathways that it's affecting versus RX to one is like, very specific. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 32:52
Yes. So rapper masala is a very, very potent molecule. It's a drug. It cannot be used as a topical skincare product because it has a side effect profile that it does. We just heard, I think, recently, on 60 Minutes, Peter stopped taking rapamycin because he had side effects from it, and that that's that's very common

Dr. Kay Durairaj 33:14
for skin, the guy who's do not die guy, he also,

Speaker 1 33:17
exactly, he also stopped taking it is something that you have to use very carefully for skin. When you use it topically in in a form that that only suppresses torque one and not torque two. You You maintain the beneficial effects of rapamycin, the longevity promoting effect, while avoiding the side effects. What we have shown in vitro studies that the molecule we have does not penetrate into the system circulation, and so we don't expect any systemic side effects. However, the compounded rapamycin formulations, there is really no data as to how much of it is actually going to the skin, if it is going in the skin. And if it is going through the skin at very high concentration, lot of, lot of the compounded products are at much higher concentrations than they need to be. You need very, very low levels of rapamycin, like molecules for mTOR inhibition, and using 10 to 100 times more concentration could be dangerous. And so that's the whole reason we develop this new molecule, and we are very strictly controlling how much goes into the skin and to what depth to to make sure we have the activity that we need from it, but minimize the chances of side effects Exactly.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 34:39
It's cosmeceutical, but I think that the power of this product is that it does, you know, give so much more benefit than just a moisturizer or a topical skincare. It's actually really going to be the master it's turning we are able to then modulate the master regulator of the cell and turn the dial in the direction that's going to you. Reverse the aging changes and the damage changes. I think as more biohacking is going on out there, it's ever so important to find like real science. So what rapidologics is doing that has really excellent scientific evidence and parameters is really important. Longevity is having a moment right now. What do you think about the whole longevity trend that everybody's so excited about? It is

Speaker 1 35:25
becoming more mainstream. It used to be few people did on the side. Now it's a major focus of most anti aging medicine conferences. It has become a central point zero science, zero therapeutics that used to be a small part is now a major, a major research area. People want to live longer, but not just longer. Longevity is not about living longer. It's living the healthier life you want to be running around till the day before you die. You want to minimize that. I think, what, what the last decade. You want to make that as short as possible, so that you are not disability. And the same thing applies to skin. You want to make sure your skin doesn't stop working before your rest of the body does. And that's where skin longevity is so important. Longevity will be the focus this is, this is not, not, not, not a short term trendy thing to do this. This is going to be the next revolution in skin care and skin health more so than skin care

Dr. Kay Durairaj 36:31
skin span, I think skin span, yes, health span and skin span. And I love this idea that you can diagnose senescence in the organism by looking at these exterior changes of the skin, like when someone starts to look more weathered, their system is actually breaking down, having DNA damage and needs it needs our help as external warning signs. So, I mean, I love that. We used to blast all that with lasers and and we're still going to be doing that, but, yeah, we will actually have an intervention to, like, pick up on that senescence and change it, right?

Speaker 1 37:07
I mean, skin, being the largest organ, is very critical in overall health as well. Right? Skin is not just, yes, it does show what's happening systemically. So when you are not well, it will show in your skin at the same time, being the largest organ skin can contribute a lot to systemic diseases, the senescent fibroblast, or senescent cells in the skin, when they secrete all the inflammatory cytokines, they don't stay in the skin, they go all over the body and affect the inflammation in rest of the body. So taking care of skin does take care of lot of the systemic aging and inflammation related related issues. It's really the only organ that you can see changes in. You can't see if your liver is improving or if your spleen is improving, without extensive biomarkers skin, you can easily see what changes are happening. So in fact, lot of longevity interventions that were looking more systemically are now targeting skin, because they can see the changes much more, much, much quickly in skin, rather than internal organs.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 38:17
It's true. And when you when you eat poorly or you have poor gut health, you can see these inflammatory things pop out like, like your teenage days, you're eating all kinds of junk food and chocolate and chips, and your skin breaks out like, that is inflammatory mediated

Speaker 1 38:31
situation, right? And then that's where rapid logics are. Our goal is to make sure that we maintain the skin the right way, by making sure the skin is healthy, that the cells are not going to go into senescence as as quickly as they would normally do and and make them healthy so that they can function much, much better. Long term,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 38:53
I think that concept of physiologic balance versus aggressive over correction, that's going to become like a tenant of our philosophy as we go into more skin longevity science. You know,

Speaker 1 39:06
yes, we already see that trend away from just just just physical appearance change to more of, how is the function changing? And if you can change the function rather than the appearance of what's happening on the surface, that's what's going to have. The have the have the long term benefit, so you're not taking neuromodulator injections every three months. Maybe, maybe, maybe, if your skin can, if you can maintain the skin structure for longer time that then maybe you can start that later in life, or maybe don't need as many interventions.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 39:41
Yeah, that's going to be really important. I think this this past year, and in offices and social media and everywhere, everyone has wanted a very natural esthetic, and a lot of that boils down to, like, correcting the foundation of the health of your skin. But let's say, looking ahead 10 years, what do you think will disappear? From the skincare industry, and what will emerge because of longevity science, if you had to predict,

Speaker 1 40:06
that's a tough one, the Spirit is moving so fast. Last five years have made so much change in the biological just the biomarker, biomarker area, I think we'll move more into these, what we call multi Hallmark intervention. Rather than going after senescence or mitochondria or energy pathways one at a time, we want to make sure we can improve the cells own ability to repair itself and and I think we'll see lot more of interventions like that. MTOR is just one of the pathways. There are other pathways that can be explored as well, and we'll start looking at that once we get our handle on mTOR. The idea is that we need to work with these master regulators that do more than one thing. It's, as I said, multi Hallmark approach that is essential to achieve longevity. And I see people moving in that direction. We started that several years ago with the skin medical product, where we added six different ingredients to take care of six hallmarks of aging. Now we can do that with one ingredient, where we have a good amp to inhibitor, like RX, 201, we expect that it will suppress and activate all the right hallmarks. We expect to change all 12 hallmarks of aging with a single molecule. And I see us moving in that type of direction that you want cells and the skin to repair themselves, other than you trying shotgun approaches?

Dr. Kay Durairaj 41:45
Yeah, I think that that's absolutely right. I think we're not far from what do you think having personalized skin longevity protocols that are based on your genetics or your epigenetic testing and data like at some at some point in the future, do you think we're going to test your skin epigenetics, and therefore put you on a specific skin longevity protocol?

Speaker 1 42:07
That's what the epigenetic epigenetic testing, where we are looking at right now will lead to in a few years. If you know exactly what type of epigenetic changes that happen over and how is it changing year to year, you can tailor the regimen to make sure that those epigenetic changes are reversed or prevented. And so personalized skin care it is, scientifically, it's easier to do than actually putting it in a commercial practice. But scientifically, we would have everything we need for customized skincare based on longevity in the next couple of years.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 42:46
Gonna be fascinating. If you had to pick a key change that you'd recommend for esthetic providers to incorporate in their practice, to align kind of with this concept of skin health and longevity, what would that be? I think

Speaker 1 42:59
one thing is stop looking at before and after images to guess how good the treatments are.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 43:04
Yeah, literally, really the functional

Speaker 1 43:07
Yeah, it's really the functional markers you need to look at how it's not what the skin looks like, how does the skin feel like and how does the skin behave? So moving away from looks to feel and behave?

Dr. Kay Durairaj 43:20
Yeah, that's so funny, because we're in an industry that's all about looks, but we've needed a makeover because, like, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you think we'll have more of that understanding, yes,

Speaker 1 43:36
we'll definitely have more of that understanding of how how how a person feels about the skin and how well skin functions.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 43:45
Yeah, so maybe looking at their skin barrier, having a in the office and having Yes, an analysis that really looks at like the health of the skin, the resilience, yes.

Speaker 1 43:58
And one of the ways you can look at elasticity, also at extreme is reversal of sagging is that's not elastin used. You see sagging in the jaws and and in the data that will come out, we are seeing significant improvement in that. So those are the functional endpoints that that clinic should be looking at as they put people on these different procedures and products

Dr. Kay Durairaj 44:22
and for patients too, if they're coming into an office, patients who are listening, how do you recommend that they ask their provider for a next level treatment that's not just about like removing brown spots, for example?

Speaker 1 44:35
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is, is finding that balance between having to look good tomorrow versus I want to make sure my skin survives for long term. So it's really changing the patient mindset, going from the anti aging mindset to a pro longevity mindset, is that, yes, it may take me a little bit longer to get the skin that I want. Of the skin that I have is going to last longer. And so asking for, really the pro longevity products, products that are specifically targeted for increasing longevity of the skin, like the EQ pro longevity serum, is going to be critical. And I'm sure there, there are others, other people working on it, with different approaches to achieve the same thing. I know we are the first one, but, and I know we will not be the last one, because this is not a trend. This is here to stay.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 45:27
That's so true. But I think there is going to be a mindset change where, even now I'm taking supplements, where I don't externally see them working. I'm taking my NAD my senolytics, my, you know, all the things that I know are going to shift my cellular metabolism, but, like, there's no external marker, but this is kind of how we have to retrain our patients, also to understand that we're going to do interventions that reset the biology right. And therefore you will see long term benefits for

Speaker 1 45:55
that, we'll see benefit long term that that may not be as visible in a month or two months, similar to what happens when you take vitamins or vitamin D or vitamin E, whatever you're taking, you don't you don't see the changes that that are happening, but you do feel better. You have more energy, and that's what we expect. The mindset shift for patients is to, yes, my skin is improving, and I will know that in six months when we when we do the DNA methylation test, or when we do some other functional marker test that are that they're still being developed, a lot of them in the next few years, we should be able to get to that,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 46:37
yeah, and we should have definitely even track these patients Long term, and because I'm sure, like, one of the delayed outcomes is going to be less, cancers, better, immune surveillance, like the immune cells also will be able to, hopefully screen and just keep the skin healthier longer. But what are some of the things that you're doing for yourself in the longevity space? Are you on some supplements? Do you do exercise or like

Speaker 1 47:03
so I'm on standard nutritional supplements, the multivitamins that you have for men. So I'm not taking any of the, any of the I tried NAD for, for for a couple of months, I didn't feel much change with that. I routinely, but the typical exercise routine three times, three times a week more for for for strength training, because that's what I need. I want to make sure I don't fall down in 10 years and break something right. So essentially, that and my skincare routine now has changed to using our product for the last little over a year now, since we first developed it, and then standard,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 47:45
actually, your skin looks really good for the audience.

Speaker 1 47:51
I do use skin medical products on top of that, because we need those as well, but a good sunscreen so, so I know right away if I if I forgot to apply sunscreen, and I feel that, so I do carry one in my backpack all the time and good hydration at night. But, yeah,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 48:11
that's amazing. Well, I'm so excited for everyone out there to try recue and to bring this kind of cellular longevity into their practices. This is literally going to be the next paradigm, big shift of what we do in esthetics and in dermatology. So I'm really excited to work with you guys on future projects that we're coming up with to look at using these in terms of like surgeons approach, and also for collagen stimulators, for all the things that we do in esthetics, where do you see that you're Where are you going to be lecturing and teaching people this next coming year,

Speaker 1 48:47
quite a few lectures coming up. I'm going to longevity conference, in fact, flying right after we finish taping this in Dubai, and then we'll be at ASDs talking about longevity and the science that we are generating. We'll have on our website we are working on, on finalizing the layout, where we'll have all of our events on the website at rappalogics, Health rapidologics.com or Ricky health.com so so we'll have all the information on what's coming up, wherever, where are we publishing, what the state of clinical studies. Everything will be on the website, which is launching, in fact, today, should have a lot of those things live today

Dr. Kay Durairaj 49:28
by the time you listen to this little artist, yes, yes, I'm getting my first shipment in the office. I too have been using req for a little time and almost three months now, and it's, I think, starting to really, I feel a nice improvement in the skin quality, and this product is going to be only available in dermatology and physician offices and provider offices. Is that right? I go direct to consumer

Speaker 1 49:56
right now we are launching in a very limited number of offices. We. Want to make sure we have the positioning right, and that that we learn from, from all of you as well, in terms of how the product works, what, what are the types of regimen we need to we need to establish. It will be available through essentially dermatologist, plastic surgeon offices that are really into longevity and and ahead of rest rest of the industry. It will be available direct to consumer, but through physician websites or through physician connections, because, you know, people want to buy online. So we'll make it available, but not without, not by excluding physicians. It'll still be part of, part of the ecosystem where they will be connected to physicians. It will be more of a service, so it will be available probably early next year, and by mid next year, we expect to have a full launch to a large number of physician offices in dermatology, plastic surgeon, esthetic medicine and also longevity medicine clinics.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 50:59
Well, I'm so excited to get our first shipment, and then I will keep everybody posted as well, and we'll be teaching much more on social media. And there's all these concepts of fibroblast exhaustion very important to understand, and very important to change our thinking about how we're going to nurture the fibroblast and provide rest and healing and recovery time and then have, like, really beautiful results. I think it's going to be amazing. Congratulations on all your scientific acumen and years of all the research and then conceiving of these ideas to bring this company together.

Speaker 1 51:33
No, it was, it was a great experience. Have a great team now. Had a great team before as well. So, so that's what makes this possible is the teamwork thing. We developed and launched this product in record time, 16 months from from concept to commercialization, which was my dream, which you can't do in large companies. But doing that, along with with all the data that goes with this was very exciting,

Dr. Kay Durairaj 51:59
super exciting. I can't wait for you guys to see these pictures that blew me out of the water. When I saw the 56 year old fibroblast revert to a 20, a 20 year old appearance, I was like, this is incredible. I had, I only needed to see that one picture. But where can people find you? Rahul, Dr Mehta, if they want to connect, what's the best way to reach out.

Speaker 1 52:21
So I'm on LinkedIn, Rahul Mehta PhD, and also Instagram. Handle is Rahul Mehta PhD. Can also linked with me at the rappalogics website, rappalogics.com and soon to be launched, VQ health.com it is linked to to connect with the company, as well as with me. Perfect.

Dr. Kay Durairaj 52:39
Well, you guys don't forget to find me on my instagram at Beauty by Dr Kay, doing amazing things with cellular science and using these type of cutting edge products. I can't wait to show you our office's experience with rap logics, the RLX 201, amazing molecule, and some future studies coming up. You can find me on my instagram at Beauty by Dr Kay, and soon we will have free Q on our website as well. That's it for now, guys, stay beautiful. You. Hi.