Dispatch from Silicon Valley
AI x BIO, Fertility Salon, and more
I recently spent a week in San Francisco that made me very optimistic about the interest in biotech to tackle female health in the Valley.
There is a world of difference from two years ago, when AthenaDAO ran a women’s health ADLabs Pop-up, and even one year ago, when I curated a Reproductive Longevity track at the first Vitalist Bay conference. Even our name has changed, as we are now AthenaBIO.
Back then, even in San Francisco, the city where our technological future is being built, “women’s health” was mostly what it is everywhere else: digital, care-delivery, and med-tech. These are all necessary, but as I always say, imagine we were trying to cure cancer with apps.
That was then. This past trip had conversations on ovarian cryopreservation - is it friend or foe? - an amazing salon on fertility, a Women’s Longevity cocktail with our friends at LongGame VC, and most importantly, an array of new startups and founders working on biotech solutions.
It felt good that the seeds that were laid last year at Vitalist Bay had grown. For context: Dr. Kutluk Oktay was a speaker this year, which was a result of AthenaBIO inviting Dr. Joshua Johnson to present at the inaugural edition, as many discovered Dr. Oktay through the paper the two researchers had co-written on menopause and ovarian cryopreservation. Dr. Amy Killen, whom we had invited last year, was a guest again because she is such an amazing speaker. I am sure that anyone who has been working in field building feels great when they know their actions have led to incremental progress.
Even seeing the second edition of this longevity conference my friends threw felt like a full-circle moment. I have known Adam and Nathan - the founders of Vitalist - for years now. They said Longevity, I said Women’s Longevity, and having them always entertain my suggestions has always been a blessing. Nathan and I hosted some pretty epic panels on Clubhouse, in our “The Future of Longevity” series, and Adam has always been someone to have incredibly insightful conversations with. I have been doing this with him since MYKIGAI, which was what I think was the first “consumer biotech” longevity platform. It was such a pleasure to give him my More Life designs for this year’s Vitalist Bay T-shirts.
Progress compounds. This was the first time I really felt that our work at AthenaBIO, focusing on research and science, is the best moat we could have chosen to focus on.
All we can say is: WE ARE READY
Laura Minquini
AI x BIO
Speaking of compounding. Now that we have entered the era of AI x BIO, everyone should read one of my favorite books on the history of living longer: Steven Johnson’s Extra Life.
But don’t take it from me:
“Offers a useful reminder of the role of modern science in fundamentally transforming all of our lives.” —President Barack Obama
It is a perfect reminder that the reason we live longer is not because of one magic pill or the single action of one person or company. It was “cooperative innovation, of brilliant thinkers bolstered by strong systems of public support and collaborative networks, and of dedicated activists fighting for meaningful reform.” Today, many are proclaiming that AI will be the magic bullet that solves biology. But when you look at the past, it was a series of compounding discoveries, like vaccines, antibiotics, and pasteurization, slowly building over decades. Met alongside crazy moves like the one from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who decided to be an N-of-1 and inoculated herself and her children against smallpox (talk about real biohacking). All combined, it is what led to the doubling of life expectancy.
Biology humbles you. It will be the last frontier of progress and quite frankly, the most challenging. Every day, I read a proclamation on what AI will do, and though not a scientist, I know enough now to understand that for AI to succeed, it will need to sort out thousands of years of evolution, it will need a lot of data we do not yet have, and the compounding work of many.
Fertility Salon - Against Maximum Stimulation
When I was living in Europe and wanted to learn about the Valley and tech, one of the first people I discovered was Riva Tez. Not only did she seem to set the trends, she seemed to have a heart of gold. The documentary “Riva & Albert” about her friendship with an elderly man is one of the coolest and sweetest things you will see online. At the time, exploring age-tech to improve how we age, I quickly became a fan. We became X reply friends, and since then I have been following her expansive thought process and forward thinking.
Just recently, Riva wrote an incredibly well-researched essay making a case Against Maximum Stimulation- Egg freezing, IVF, and the case for gentler fertility medicine. It is a MUST READ. 👇
I was lucky to read it before she published it, and having read her previous work, I knew it was going to be good. It was music to my ears that in her last chapter, she advocates for ovarian health.
“The future of women’s health is in extending the working life of the ovary itself. Everything else, eventually, becomes unnecessary.”
Moreover, when we have headlines out there that say “Science has largely solved the problem of reproductive ageing for women,” we need more women like Riva on our side.
As a bonus, I got to attend her Fertility Salon, meet some other incredible women, meet Riva in person (she has such Lady Mary Wortley Montagu vibes) and find out that Joe Betts-LaCroix of Retro Bio is interested in reproductive longevity now.
Only in the Valley!