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Lessons - The Hidden Science Behind Perfect Skin That Doctors Don't Tell You | Kyle Landry - President at Delavie Sciences
00:14:37
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- [00:00]
Host
In this lessons episode, explore how a journey from food science to longevity research reveals unexpected connections between what we eat and how we age. Learn how scientific tools used in food labs can apply to genetics and space research. Discover the truth behind food myths and the role moderation plays in health. And understand how bacteria, biofilms and even bean sprouts are influencing the future of DNA protection and human longevity. You have a very interesting life. I'm just going to say that because we're going to go through it and your life is actually very interesting, all the different things that you've done. But at this point, what, what is your, what is your, what is your passion? What kind of science do you care about? After a four year undergrad in food science, you do your masters in food. Food science. So now you love PhD in food science. It makes a lot of sense that you're probably going to figure out how to have a career in food science when you go through everything, you have your PhD and then you're going to your postdoc and also food science.
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Kyle
No, longevity. Longevity, Department of Genetics.
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Host
What does that mean? Like, what kind of job is food science? What are you, what are you solving for humanity with food science?
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Kyle
So every single thing people drink from that water or any food they touch, a food scientist has worked on it. And food science, in my opinion, is one of the most applied sciences you can go for because your, your goal is, is to make something that everyone will eat or touch. So you could be in food, micro food safety, product design, so developing, you know, cookies or chips or the next snack bar or healthy foods, or you can be food engineering. So actually working on the machines that make the food processing in the food processing plants, it's phenomenal. I think, you know, based on my experience of what I know being on the board of a department, a few other things. It's one of the most underappreciated jobs with one of the highest job placement rates in general, because everyone needs to eat. We have finite land, the population keeps growing, so somehow we have to provide food for all the people while we're losing resources. And food science is an interesting thing. So originally I was going to be a professor. So I started teaching at Boston University when I was 23.
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Host
That's young, no?
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Kyle
Yeah, it's pretty young. So I was teaching classes in the graduate and undergraduate for, in the Department of Health Sciences at Boston University. My goal was after I graduate my PhD, go there full time and teach there, but the opportunity at Harvard came up.
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Host
And what made you switch from Food sciences to longevity.
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Kyle
That was an opportunity. So I was doing my PhD and I remember I got a phone call. Boston area codes I thought was BU Pick it up. And it's this guy, David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School. He's a big deal. I had no idea who he was, was. And he's like, hey, Kyle, I read some of your papers. You're the only person in the world doing this type of work. How about you come to my lab and work on this when you're done with your PhD? And what he was asking me to do was in the wheelhouse of what I did. So let me step back. You know how math is like a universal language? Science is the same thing. Like, even though I'm in food science, all the techniques that I learned and used can be applied to all other sciences, whether it's running protein gels or sequence sensing or doing enzyme assays. Yeah, I applied it for, like in my case, bean sprouts. But all those techniques I could use in the area of genetics and longevity. So even though it seems like a big stretch scientifically, my. The toolbox I had fit like a glove. So I decided to go there.
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Host
Was there ever a point in your career when you went back and used some of the food science?
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Kyle
Oh, all the time. All the time. So believe it or not, cosmetics are very similar to food. A lot of the ingredients in cosmetics are food ingredients. So you're making them all propulsions or delivery systems or stability. Even the cadence of creating things and the business sense for margins and production scale timelines kind of mirror that of the food industry. So I use it all the time. Believe it or not, what we're spending.
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Host
So much time studying food and food science. What are some, I would say, scary, unnerving things about the food that we eat that people don't quite know?
- [04:22]
Kyle
There's a few things I'm in. The mindset of moderation is key. So yeah, there's some negative attributes to foods, maybe some of the preservatives or the colorants, but everything in moderation, you know, should balance out fine. It's even like if you eat McDonald's, like fast food, like eating it now and then isn't going to destroy you, but having a moderation mindset is good. My biggest thing, pet peeve is like kind of the marketing side, where people market things as like the. The cure for something or help alleviate something. And the science is there, but it's not science that's actually been proven out as rigorously as some people think.
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Host
Well, I See, so where I'm going with this is people speak a lot about seed oils.
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Kyle
Oh yeah, that's.
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Host
People speak a lot about. They feel every time they go to Europe they lose weight and they feel healthier versus when they're in the U.S. obviously, pesticides. And plus, like every second fitness guru on Instagram has their own view about food and what you should eat in this diet and that diet. But not many people are scientific. And I'm curious what actually holds weight or what actually is true outside of just some, you know, Instagram influencer spouting off the latest trend.
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Kyle
So, like seed oils and other things that are pro. Inflammatory things that drive inflammation. You know, inflammation is bad. Inflammation causes a lot of problems. But there are a lot of other things that are inflammatory as well. Like, my favorite is like, you know, I don't want to eat, you know, seed oil or something, but I'll go drink alcohol every night. You know what I mean? It's like you have to. In the. It has to be a whole lifestyle change, right? And even some diets, like Paleo diets or, or some of these other things, they're not necessarily sustainable for a long period of time. They're good to cut weight or they're good to like, you know, get you feel good for a little bit, but you can't live on those your whole life. It's difficult. So like I always say, like, moderation. And try to stick within the 2000-calorie, 2500 cal, because that alone, that, that with sleep and good hydration will make you feel amazing because a lot of people don't realize how many calories are actually taking in. And if you try to stick with the 2000 calorie or 2500 calorie, whatever you want to do, you'll be like, wow, I actually like, can't eat the snacks or the chips or the things I go to all the time. But there is one, you know, things to say to whole, whole foods or minimally processed foods. We get a lot of fiber, a lot of nutrients, right? Nothing will replace those. It's just our biology and how fast things absorb how you feel after glycemic index. Things like that, that impact your feelings.
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Host
Is part of the work that food scientists do. And I guess this.
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Kyle
It'S not like.
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Host
A conspiracy, but it sounds like something that is a little bit nefarious, like including ingredients and foods that make them addictive.
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Kyle
Is that so I guess I'm going to say no, like it's not intentional, but food Is designed for what to sell. Yeah, right. Like if you're a food company and your goal is to sell, you want to make foods that people want and people want certain foods. Because we're biologically designed to want high calorie foods. Because back when we were in the caves, we didn't know when we would eat. So we have that craving for high calorie foods, like high fats, stuff like that, because we want to pack on as much as we can. But now with our sedentary lifestyle, you know, all these different things is kind of counteracting our.
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Host
So now we're still craving the same.
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Kyle
Foods, but we don't move and everything's accessible. Right. I can go down to the store and buy a bag of chips for 99 cents. Oh, that's amazing. That's great. You know, so it's a different. You have to look at all facets.
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Host
You were working with bean sprouts.
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Kyle
Yeah, yeah.
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Host
So bean sprouts, I think they've sort of carried through all of your work, because what I'm looking at here, they impacted your work with David Sinclair. They also impact some of the things that you did in space with NASA. A whole bunch of stuff. So talk to me about bean sprouts. And this is work that you were doing when you were still in school.
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Kyle
Yeah. So my PhD was all about bean sprouts, of all things. But bean sprouts are incredibly dirty. And I say dirty as they have a lot of bacteria. A lot of bacteria. And bean sprouts in their minimally processed. Which means, you know, if you have some foodborne pathogens on there and you eat them raw, you get sick. So one of the things around bean sprouts is bacterial biofilms. And these are basically structures that bacteria builds, like on your teeth. You know, like, you don't brush your teeth and you scrape it. Like the stuff that's a bacterial biofilm. Biofilm. It's the same thing happens on produce, on bean sprouts. Same thing happened in the. Happens on the International Space Station, the water systems. Same thing happens with some of the stuff we're working with, with David with. And I was trying to figure out how to stop them. And so I developed a novel disinfectant. It's. This is patented where I would make spontaneous nano emulsions of carvacrol oil. It's like essential oil, and would basically disinfect bean sprouts and seeds and make them safer. We actually went and pitched this to commercialize it, but the manufacturing process and the Overall, like, cost per unit was just a little too high for farmers to really adopt because the margins on bean sprouts are like razor thin. Like you're not making a lot. So adding, you know, an extra 10 cents per production kills the profitability. Yeah. So, but the technology was sounding great. It just was an example of something that wasn't commercially viable because the economics didn't plan out.
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Host
So how do you take that into longevity research?
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Kyle
So one of the. So there's another technology I was working on which a bunch of these enzymes. And these enzymes break, broke down components of bacterial biofilms. And there's one specific part that broke down DNA. And believe it or not, bacterial biofilms are held together by extraneous DNA. So DNA that bacteria release and acts like a glue. So longevity wise, the organisms that this came from are called extremophiles. So these are organisms that live in extreme environments. And this one organism was able to grow at 55 degrees centigrade. That's like 135, 137 degrees Fahrenheit. And why David was interested was how can this organism survive for a long time without taking on a bunch of mutations and mutating and dying? Right. So we're looking at like DNA repair mechanisms and the enzymes associated with it. Because with longevity, damage to your DNA accelerates the aging process. And this is something called epigenetic drift, where over time all the environmental stuff we get exposed to, whether it's food pollution, sunlight, makes these damages over time, where eventually we were not what we used to be in this leads to cancer. So we were trying to figure out how we can hijack these extremophiles and use them to protect ourselves and understand aging. And that led to another patent that ended up bringing us into the biodefense space, which is a whole other area of things.
- [12:07]
Host
Was there, was there anything that you discovered that is currently used commercially?
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Kyle
Yeah, yeah. So the enzymes are used in some of our commercial products, like face cleansers, toners, stuff like that.
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Host
Now the commercial. Okay, okay.
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Kyle
And then the stuff from space is using sunscreen, stuff like that. But the delivery system, that hasn't been licensed or incorporated. But the technology, the fundamentals around the technology are being incorporated in other areas.
- [12:37]
Host
Well, I meant like in terms of DNA protection.
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Kyle
Yeah. So. So not commercially used, but in a lot of research for whether it's astronauts health on the way to Mars.
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Host
And that's how that.
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Kyle
That's one of the things. Okay, one of the things. Yeah. So I wouldn't Say it's not on the market, but it's the foundation for a lot of research now that's moving forward in the space.
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Host
When you, when you, when you patent these like very novel technologies, or is that the right word, technology, technologies, the. What's the path from when you start working on it until somebody can go buy it and then use it for themselves for whatever longevity practice.
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Kyle
So it depends on the type of product, right? So for example, with the space ingredient, which we will cover, we proved it in lab, we did all the clinical testing, we submitted it for a patent, but then we have to go from a test to, to scale, right? Like, doing something in the lab is great, but if you can't scale it to the masses, it's useless. So then you have to scale that. And then once that's scaled, then you got to put it in products and then you got to scale the products you got to test think goes to market. So for like the ingredients for a lot of the products, we have maybe three, four years, maybe five years, depending on how complex it is. The, the space ingredient, that was.
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Host
When you say space ingredient, just to clarify, that's also the DNA protecting ingredient.
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Kyle
That one. That's sun protection and sun protection and DNA protection. DNA activation. That's one of them, yeah. That's one of them, yeah. It's like five years, give or take.
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Outro
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