Transcription
This cow is not AI. It has a mutation in a gene that gives it incredible musculature and low body fat. And get this, researchers are working on a compound to mimic this effect in humans, and it's concluded phase two trials. We are literally creating the world's first super soldier serum.
But that's just the beginning. As an MD PhD scientist, when I dove deep into the cutting edge on human bio-optimization, I couldn't avoid seeing the parallels between our world and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cutting edge science has a way of turning fiction into fact, sometimes faster than our imaginations can keep up. And just like in superhero movies, a lot of this goes on in secret, behind closed doors, in the domain of the elite first and publicized second. But all this, it's really happening right now. And that begs the question, how long until we're all superhuman?
I mean, we already have third generation of Ozempic. This is going to be a trillion-dollar drug. In fact, we have similar drugs that also promote muscle growth, even if you haven't heard about them yet. So, what's next? A world free of Alzheimer's disease, free of cardiovascular disease? The future is closer than we think. In fact, we might already be there. What if we could rewrite biology itself? This is where the comic book world and the real world just begin to collide. If your DNA carried a mutation that caused disease, you lived with it or died from it. The technology is here, and over time, it will inevitably become more affordable.
Now, here's where things honestly get deeply personal for me. His biology resets itself over and over and over again, maintaining youth and function indefinitely. There's another concept that sounds even more absurd until you see the data.
Now, before we begin, a quick note. If you want extra nuances, early access to the sort of content on the bleeding edge of science and biological optimism that you're going to get in this video, and deeper dives into topics like this, you should check out the best-selling in science Stay Curious Metabolism newsletter. Community members call it the best investment they've ever made in their health, and there's a reason for the fastest-growing premium letter on the platform. So, check it out, but plug over, let's dive in.
In this video, we're going to start with where we are right now with human bio-optimization, and then leap forward, tying new innovations into their most appropriate superhero. We're going to start by discussing where the science is at, where it's going, solvable limitations, and by the end, my task is to make you believe that, yes, we could be approaching a superhuman species sooner than you think.
So, let's start with where we are right now, and don't be put off by the apparent mundaneness of our first example. The so-called miracle weight loss drugs of our time, the GLP-1 receptor agonists, medications like Ozempic and Wegovy that you probably heard of. Now, irrespective of if you're a fan or a foe, these drugs are metabolically impressive, but they are far from medical miracles. And one of the most important drawbacks of these drugs is they cause not only weight loss as fat loss, but as muscle loss, too. A meaningful proportion, about 25 to 39% of weight loss based on human randomized controlled trials, comes from lean muscle mass, and that's obviously not ideal.
So, the next obvious step in human bioengineering, particularly for body composition, will be to develop a therapy that does something better, that selectively reduces body fat while preserving or even increasing muscle mass. Now, I know that sounds a little far-fetched, maybe even like science fiction, except the data suggest it's already here. A paper recently published in Nature Medicine this year, 2026, suggests we may truly be on the cusp of developing a prototype for super soldier serum.
The inspiration for this treatment comes not from Marvel, but directly from nature, specifically from a rare mutation in the myostatin gene, also called the Hercules gene, found in double-muscled cattle, bully whippets, and a handful of humans who, through genetics, develop extraordinary musculature and remarkably low body fat. Now, I say this lovingly, these people and animals are genetic freaks, and honestly, I'm kind of jealous. Aren't you? Interestingly, the early literature suggests that these mutations may even create advantages for health span and potentially longevity. Maybe that's not entirely surprising when you consider that muscle itself secretes signaling molecules, myokines, that can protect other organs, including the brain. So, what we might be looking at here, maybe, is a genuine metabolic goldmine, or vibranium mine, if you will.
Now, the new trial that I mentioned, the phase two trial, tested a fully human monoclonal antibody called bimagrumab. I know it sounds like a supervillain. And actually, as a quick sidebar, I went down the rabbit hole as to why bimagrumab sounds like a supervillain, because I couldn't get it out of my head, and there's actually a teaching point here. The name has a particular structure. The suffix mab refers to a monoclonal antibody, which is a type of Y-shaped drug or protein produced by the immune system or synthesized that identifies and locks onto a substance in the body. The gru part in bimagrumab actually indicates that it targets growth factor or muscle-related pathways. Gru equals muscle growth. And the suffix bima is somewhat arbitrary and just meant to be unique. But the combination of strong consonants, the M and the B from the mab and the G and the R from the gru, makes it sound heavy and powerful. So, yeah, completely accidentally and to my amusement, the mix of scientific rules and harsh phonetics uniquely lands this drug name, bimagrumab, kind of in supervillain alias territory. And now that I've given our hero enough time to escape as I explain my evil plan unnecessarily, let's get back to the data.
The goal of bimagrumab, which is not a supervillain, is to partially mimic the biological pathways seen in these genetically gifted Hercules individuals by targeting the signaling systems that normally limit muscle growth, basically taking the brake off muscle growth and suppressing fat generation. And the results of the trial were striking. Participants with obesity didn't just lose weight. Every single gram of weight loss came from fat. In other words, 100% weight loss as fat loss. Even more remarkable, participants simultaneously gained some muscle mass and experienced improvements in strength, grip strength, all without increases in physical activity. Think about that. It's like getting ripped while laying on the couch, and maybe watching a superhero movie as well. This is an innovation that moves the human body towards a more superhero aesthetic, leaner, stronger, and more metabolically resilient. This is where the comic book world and the real world just begin to collide. And this isn't science fiction. This innovation has already completed phase two trials. It's here.
Now, to be fair, and tone down my excitement just a little bit, the treatment isn't completely without drawbacks. Some participants reported mild side effects like gastrointestinal upset and headaches. But the larger point remains, we're beginning to glimpse a future where the human body can directly be engineered towards greater strength, lower fat mass, and improved metabolic health. But this is barely the beginning. What if we could rewrite biology itself? This is where things get truly extraordinary and truly superhero adjacent, because the next generation of bioengineering tools doesn't just nudge hormones, it reprograms your cells entirely.
Now, let's chat about gene editing. Every cell in your body contains DNA, roughly 3 billion base pairs of genetic instructions. Now, for most of human history, those instructions were fixed at conception. You got what you got. If your DNA carried a mutation that caused disease, you lived with it or died from it. But that era is ending. CRISPR-Cas9 technology is a gene editing tool that won the Nobel Prize in 2020, and it gave scientists the ability to cut DNA at precise locations. Think of it as molecular scissors. You cut right through a strand of DNA at a specific location, very precise. The cell then repairs the cut, and during that repair process, scientists can disable a gene or insert new DNA.
This honestly makes me think of Spider-Man, the best superhero analogy, whose powers come from being bitten by a genetically engineered spider, using something like CRISPR technology that merged the arachnid DNA with Peter Parker's own, making him your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And as a quick aside, I did once have the pleasure of meeting one of the Nobel laureates who really invented this technology, Jennifer Doudna, and I'm bringing this up because I'm just happy to report she was as humble as she was brilliant. Often, when you meet scientists of that stature, they have a lot of ego, but she didn't, and I just wanted to call that out. But sadly, she refused to turn me into Spider-Man. Bummer.
Anyway, now let me show you why this matters with real-world examples. In December of 2023, the FDA approved the first CRISPR-based gene therapy for sickle cell disease. If you don't know what it is, sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation in the genome in hemoglobin. One wrong nucleotide, and that tiny error causes red blood cells to deform into rigid, crescent shapes that clog blood vessels. This causes excruciating pain crises and dramatically shortens lifespan. For decades, the only cure was a bone marrow transplant, a brutal procedure requiring a matched donor, which most patients never find, and even if they do, there are issues with immune rejection.
But now, today, doctors can extract a patient's own stem cells, edit them using CRISPR technology, change their own DNA, and then re-infuse the corrected cells. The patient's body then produces normal hemoglobin. Early results have been impressive. In clinical trials, 97% of sickle cell patients treated with this CRISPR technology were free of severe pain crises for at least 12 months post-treatment. Let me repeat that and really emphasize, a genetic disease that has tortured, literally tortured, millions of people for centuries if not millennia, corrected with a single genetic snip. What's next? Cystic fibrosis? Huntington's disease? Muscular dystrophy?
Now, admittedly, you may be wondering why not every sickle cell patient has been treated already. Well, there is one little problem of price tag. The therapy currently costs about $2.2 million. But, consider this. The cost of sequencing the human genome has dropped from nearly $3 billion since the Human Genome Project in 2003 to between $200 and $600 by 2024. That is a greater than 99.99% cost reduction. So, the technology is here, and over time, it will inevitably become more affordable. The trick now, at least as sickle cell therapy goes, isn't medical or biological, simply economic. Maybe we just need a couple of Bruce Waynes or Tony Starks to make some donations.
Now, if you'll indulge me in a little morality sidebar, I realize some people consider this playing God and to be immoral. Personally, I think that not acting to save people of torture when we have these technologies at our fingertips, I think that's the immoral path. We are no longer in the era of just managing genetic disease. We are entering the era of curing them.
But now, we get to some more hiccups because CRISPR-Cas9 technology does have limitations. In part, because it relies on the cells' own repair processes, which can be imprecise. But what does this really matter? Well, basically, CRISPR can cause some off-target editing, like inserting or deleting pieces of DNA it didn't mean to. But, there's more good news, more advancements. Enter something called prime editing. I am Optimus Prime. A newer, more refined technology, sometimes called the search and replace of gene editing. Basically, instead of cutting both strands of DNA, like with CRISPR, and hoping the cell repairs itself correctly, prime editing does something different. It directly rewrites the target sequence letter by letter without even making a full DNA break. So, if CRISPR is like scissors, prime editing is like a word processor. Find, delete, replace, save. And the precision is remarkable. In laboratory settings, prime editing can correct single-letter mutations, the kind responsible for thousands of genetic diseases, with minimal unintended edits elsewhere in the genome. This can be particularly useful when we're thinking about bioengineering more sensitive organs, like the adult human brain.
Now, here's where things honestly get deeply personal for me. As many of you may know, I carry two copies of the APOE4 risk gene for Alzheimer's disease. This is the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, and my lifetime risk of Alzheimer's is 10 to 15-fold that of the general population, which honestly freaks me out. But here's the tantalizing question. What if we could change that burdensome APOE gene variant, that risk variant, into a neuroprotective, brain-protective APOE2 variant? It would be the ultimate genetic story of the villain becoming the hero in the cells that matter most, in your brain. In short, this could get rid of Alzheimer's forever, true Alzheimer's extinction, and it's not idle speculation. Research groups today are actively exploring this exact possibility using prime editing in the human brain. The real challenge is just delivery, getting the editing machinery into the right cells in the brain. So, we're not there in humans yet. The delivery problem is formidable, but we're making advances to solve this problem actively in real time. Technologies with viral vectors, nanoparticles, and other technologies that will one day turn this corner of science fiction into science fact and make Alzheimer's go extinct. The trajectory is clear, and for someone in my position, and maybe yours, too, a healthy person carrying a genetic ticking clock, the prospect of one day being able to walk into a clinic and having my APOE genetic status rewritten, it's truly hard to fully express what that would mean to me emotionally. It would be like my personal superhero origin story, as exciting to adult me as the idea of getting bitten by a radioactive spider and generating superstrength and wall-crawling abilities was when I was 12. Okay, I still fantasize about that a little bit, don't judge. But sincerely, it's a truly remarkable thought.
Now, let's talk about something even more ambitious than editing genes. What if, instead of fixing individual mutations, we could reset the entire cell back to a younger, healthier state? This is the domain of cellular reprogramming. And the superhero analogy here is obvious. Wolverine. He has the superpower of regeneration. He heals from wounds that would kill anyone else. His biology resets itself over and over and over again, maintaining youth and function indefinitely. We can't do that yet, but the biological foundation for something kind of like Wolverine regeneration powers was actually laid in 2006 when a Japanese scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, made a discovery so profound it earned him the Nobel Prize just 6 years later. Yamanaka showed that by introducing just a few specific proteins, now named after him, called Yamanaka factors, into adult cells, you could reprogram the cells back to stem cells capable of becoming almost anything. Think about what that means. Every cell in your body carries the complete instruction manual for building a brand new you.
But pause and think through something with me, and get ready for some arts and crafts. Here's a fact. Most of the cells in your body have all the DNA to make all of you. So, what makes a liver cell a liver cell, a heart cell a heart cell, and an eye cell an eye cell? It has to do with what happens as each of these cells is developing. Basically, your entire genetic code is like a book. And as these cells are developing, certain pages get glued shut, like this Greek spanakopita. I think that's how you pronounce that. Anyway, and then other pages get earmarked, like this shrimp scampi. And then, certain cells can just access certain genes better. But what Yamanaka factors do is they can peel back the glued pages, so you can access the full potential of your genome, potentially turning a liver cell into whatever cell you want.
But there's a little bit of a catch. Full reprogramming, so turning an adult cell all the way back to a stem cell, isn't always what we want for anti-aging. If you did that inside a living adult body, you'd essentially be creating embryonic-like cells where they don't belong. That's a recipe for tumors, not longevity, and that would suck. So, we have a problem. But here's where things get extra clever. Researchers actually discovered that you can apply Yamanaka factors for a limited time, effectively a partial reprogramming. And what this does is it resets some of the epigenetic marks of aging without erasing the cells' identity. So, in other words, you can make an old liver cell act like a young liver cell, or an old heart cell act like a young heart cell, while tipping their overall identities.
But let me not just wave my hands and speculate. Okay, I'm Italian, I'm going to wave my hands a lot. But let me not just speculate. Let me give you some real-world examples. In a groundbreaking series of preclinical studies, this partial reprogramming with Yamanaka factors has been shown to reverse age-related epigenetic changes, improve tissue function and metabolic resilience, and in animal models of a debilitating human disease, progeria, a disease that accelerates aging, it was shown to extend lifespan. And multiple biotech companies are now racing to translate this into true human therapies. We're not talking about decades, we're talking about clinical trials within the next 5 to 10 years. The Wolverine analogy isn't perfect, of course. We're not getting vibranium claws or growing back full arms, but the principle of resetting biological age at the cellular level is conceptually the same and right around the corner.
Okay, next chapter. So, gene editing rewrites the code. Yamanaka factors reset the cell to a youthful state. But there's a third category of bioengineering that simply delivers a message. It seems simple, but don't underestimate it. Let's start by talking about microRNAs, tiny molecules that regulate gene expression. These microRNAs don't change the DNA sequence. Instead, they act like dimmer switches, turning gene expression up or down, which at scale has a massive impact. And your body already uses microRNAs constantly in cells and between cells to send messages to different organs. For example, your fat cells release messages to your brain to modulate sensitivity to other hormones that make you gain or lose weight. Your liver even sends microRNAs to your brain that can tune your mood, promote depression, or improve your mood. MicroRNAs are part of how our organs communicate and adapt. But what's exciting is that we're learning to intercept, engineer, and deliver specific microRNAs as medical therapies. This is already being explored in multiple therapeutic contexts, like cardiac repair, delivering microRNA loaded vesicles to damaged heart tissue after a heart attack to promote heart regeneration rather than scarring. Neurodegeneration, using engineered vesicles to cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver neuroprotective microRNA signals. And total metabolic reprogramming, targeting specific microRNAs to regulate insulin sensitivity, fat metabolism, or mitochondrial function.
That's pretty cool, but it gets even cooler. There's another concept that sounds even more absurd until you see the data. Mitochondrial transfusions. Yes, mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. But what if you could give old cells fresh mitochondria, like giving a car a brand new engine? Get this. Mitochondrial exchange is already happening in your body right now, naturally. To me, this is truly crazy. It's like cars trading engines while flying down the highway at 70 mph, but it happens. Supportive cells in your brain called glia generate literal nanotubes, tunnels. They reach out and grab neurons and feed them fresh mitochondria. Your fat cells shed off mitochondria and send them to your heart to protect you from a heart attack. This is already built into our human biological program. But there's an issue. These renewal and repair processes also decline with age and aren't quite powerful enough naturally for us to achieve aging escape velocity. The renewal and repair rate at which you, in theory, renew and repair your body's organ cells and tissues faster than the gravity of natural aging pulls you back. But there's nothing stopping us from just synthesizing our own mitochondria in external bio-reactors and transfusing them into humans. Repairing and improving body parts like Tony Stark's Iron Man. In fact, there are already early trials underway exploring this possibility, generating external mitochondria in a bioreactor and transfusing them into humans. How cool is that? Actually, one more quick thing for you before we get to the end. Even if you can't get mitochondrial transfusion today, people are already injecting themselves with mitochondrial. If you want more on that, it's a whole different kettle of fish. Check the link below, and I'll report back.
But now I want to zoom out, wrap up, and get really real with you. The superhero analogy I ran throughout this video wasn't meant to be cute. It was meant to be honest. Because the gap between what comic book writers imagine and what we are capable of engineering as true human beings, that gap is closing fast. Not through radioactive spiders or super-soldier serum, but through real medical innovations that rewrite and rewire the biology that makes us human. The real question is no longer whether we'll gain these abilities. It's how wisely we'll choose to use them. Because with great power comes Well, you know the rest.