Episode #590: Inside NOVOS-How Chris Mirabile and Top Scientists Approach the Longevity Movement

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This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of

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introducing to our Halo community Chris Atnovos.

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He is the founder, and we are going to talk about longevity.

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We're going to talk about the efficacy of supplements,

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ingredients, putting together an advisory board, biological

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age, Taylor Swift, and the

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Halo movement. Chris, welcome to your first Halo Talks.

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Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah. So, so give us some

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background here. You know, maybe tell us about what happened to you personally

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and how this kind of turned into a lifelong journey of preventative

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health, which we've been talking about now for a short 26 years on our end,

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and maybe actually finally seeing some of the tea leaves of that being,

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being adopted across the world. Yeah. Well, it's funny you say

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26 years because that's approximately how long I've been

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interested in longevity for ever since the health events. So

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I'll be 42 in May. And when I was 16

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years old, I was suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor.

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It came after having a seizure out of the blue.

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I was on a school trip in New York City and I suddenly got dizzy

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and nauseous. And next thing I knew, I woke up having

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passed out and blood all over my shirt from severing my tongue from the seizure.

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And They rushed me to the hospital to give me a CAT scan and

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to find that I had a larger than golf ball tumor above my

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left ear in my left temporal lobe. It was bumping

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up against my memory center, against my

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senses, and even my speech center. And so

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very high risk and sensitivity area. Fortunately,

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they did the surgery and Everything has worked out

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for the long term, but that completely changed my perspective

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on health. I was already a healthy person. I was exercising,

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weightlifting since I was 12 years old, but then going through an

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experience like that, it kind of evolved my

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thinking about health from being more

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superficial focused, like, hey, I want to like build muscle and be in good shape

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and so on, to realizing that biology is

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about avoidance of disease and optimizing our biology so

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that we can perform our best cognitively, physically, emotionally,

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uh, here and now. And so I started to look at health

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through that lens of long-term health starting when I was 16

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years old, which is 26 years ago now. So, um, so when

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you went to college, did you kind of know what you were, you

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know, going to pursue? At that point where the average college kid is

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still, you know, trying to figure out how they want to spend their career or

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even if they'll have one? Yeah, well, so for me, it was a little

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bit of a different journey than most. So when I was 15 years old, I

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started programming for a company in New York City. It was

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a tech startup company during like the tech boom of

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the late '90s. And working

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in a startup environment, I was inspired by it. But then having the brain tumor,

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it really solidified this idea in my mind that I wanted to

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make an impact on the world through entrepreneurship. Like, you know,

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everyone has their way to do it. And for me, it felt like the best

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way to do it would be by

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essentially creating technology,

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creating good in society. So I ended up

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studying by the advice of the CEO of that company. He said,

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if you're going to want to run a business, the fundamental is

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finance. You need to understand finances. So I went to NYU

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Stern and studied finance, economics, and international business.

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And my first year out of college, I sold my soul

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to private equity, and I did that for the first

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year. And I was at

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a company called— or a fund called Putnam Lovell,

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which is now part of Jefferies. And

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so I started there, and after a year,

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I had entered the NYU Stern Business Plan Competition

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and ended up winning it with a social network idea that I

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had back then and spent 6, 7 years working on that. But

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all the while, my passion has always been health. So in my

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personal life, you know, every day going to the gym, reading about

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health and nutrition and self-experimenting

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with different diets and supplements and so on. So that was always a

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part of my life starting in my teens into my 20s. And then it really

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took on a whole new level about a dozen years ago in my late

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20s when I came across a few scientific papers that really

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inspired me. And then I started to meet with the top

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scientists and geneticists and

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biogerontologists in the field of, of aging.

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And that's where things really transformed for me. And

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I was inspired to start, eventually start my company, No post. Great.

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Just a couple of questions related to use of

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words, because we— I used to call myself

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an active lifestyle and wellness banker. And then

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I realized after several years that I never came to a private equity fund

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with an awesome wellness idea. It kind of just like didn't sound

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right to me coming out of my mouth. And I found out that the word

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wellness was created by a guy at the Mayo Clinic back in the '50s.

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And he was a biostatistician, Dr. Halbert Dunn. And he

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was basically trying to come up with the antonym of illness. So wellness is

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basically you're not sick. And that term, it's like the wellness movement. And I

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feel like with all the science and the clinical trials

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and what you put in your body, what you don't put in your

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body, all these things are known. So it's not

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trying to make sure people don't get sick. It's actually to try and

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optimize them and, you know, younger for longer, as I see on your

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tagline, you know, for NOVOS. But when did you start using

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words like longevity, anti-aging? Which

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words do you like? Which words don't you like? Yeah, don't like the word

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anti-aging. Longevity,

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when I was 16 years old and I had this experience,

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I didn't know of the term longevity. I wasn't

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thinking in those terms, but it was essentially longevity in the sense that

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I was looking at everything through the lens of long-term health, where I think

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most people, when they're thinking of health, they're thinking of some sort of short-term

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outcome, like they want to build more muscle mass, or they want to focus

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more, or more energy, or better libido, or better skin health, whatever it might

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be. It's always like here and now, this is what I want.

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But the, uh, unique perspective I had as a

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gift of having had this disease was I

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looked at everything through the lens of not only short-term goals, but then long-term

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outcomes. Are the things I'm doing going to lead to a

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better, worse, or neutral outcome in 10, 20, 50

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years from now? And so that, I think, would be at the

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core, the essence of longevity. I only started to use that

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term longevity probably about a dozen years ago

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when I came across on PubMed the study that's now considered the

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seminal piece in the field of biogerontology, which is the Hallmarks of

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Aging. And realizing that there are

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fundamental contributors at a microscopic

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biological level that lead to

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us aging, that was like an

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empowering moment for me to understand that we can target those

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specific hallmarks. And animal studies have shown that when you do target

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them, you extend lifespan. And

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when you, when you encourage them, they shorten

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lifespan. So that was really, that was

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like an epiphany moment for me to

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come to this understanding that there are these component pieces to aging. Because

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most people, I think we just assume aging is part of life. It's

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like maybe it's written in our DNA. Or I see people on Facebook

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commenting on our posts all the time saying God determines when I die. And it's

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like, all right, maybe, maybe there's some truth to that. But ultimately,

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If you're smoking a pack a day, you're going to die. You know, God's going

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to say you're dying earlier than if you're eating healthier and you're not smoking

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a pack a day, right? Or at least statistically speaking, it's going to happen earlier.

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So we've spent some time on the advisory and on

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the banking side in, you know, quote unquote, like the med spa space at

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large, if you will. And one of the things that I try to— I'm

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trying to calibrate for myself is if you took

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100 people that went into a med spot today. I want to get your

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perspective on this. And you say, how many of those people want

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to look and feel better like tonight? How many of those

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people want to look and feel better over the next 30 days or maybe get

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like a testosterone shot or an NAD shot or something? And how many of those

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people out of 100 are saying like, I want to live till I'm 100?

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How do you kind of break down? Maybe there's some people that overlap, but I

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feel like there's still a fair amount of people who'd be like, hey, I don't

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fucking care what happens in a month or 2 months or a year from now.

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I'm just trying to go out tonight and I want to look good, or this

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month I want to feel a certain level of energy. So how do you respond

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to that question? Yeah, well, it's

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definitely true. Like human psychology, we have this cognitive

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bias to really only care about what's happening here and now and immediately in

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front of us. And we have a really hard time grasping the significance and

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the value of looking far out into the future. I mean, that's the

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struggle that every insurance— life insurance agent has to deal with.

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Like people don't want to— sacrifice their money today for the sake of something

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that's decades out into the future. But obviously,

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life insurance still exists as an industry. So there is a way to convince people

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emotionally and psychologically to still invest into their future.

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But I would say that in that med spa

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scenario, to your exact question, I think the vast majority are going to

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care about how they feel today, or they'll take the

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sacrifice to do something today for the sake of how they're going to look in

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a week or in a month or 2 months from now. You see this in,

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in like the cosmetic spas, right, where so like

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a woman might get a, um, like a ablative

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laser treatment and they, they are all red and inflamed for like 2 weeks

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and their skin is peeling and they're all doing this so that like a month

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later they're gonna look like their skin's gonna be fresh like a baby's. So

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people will make investments months into the future. I think that

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for us at Novos, what we've thought of from day one before we

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even launched our first product was how can we create a product

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that's going to be good for healthspan and lifespan

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and have a very strong scientific-driven hypothesis for design

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of that formulation? And then of course, we can get into the scientific studies we've

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done since then, but start there and then

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include ingredients that are going to have short-term pronounced effects,

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benefits, because it's all about, as we kept saying when we were formulating

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it, it's about compliance. You need to make sure that

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somebody is going to continue to take the product

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so that it helps them in the long term. So you need to show them

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short-term benefits to keep them on

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the product for long enough for it to actually then make a difference for

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healthspan and lifespan.

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This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's

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this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards

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from retailers that allow you to incentivize your

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members without having to do zero down and one month free

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or giving away shakes or giving away t-shirts. What you wanna

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do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people

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value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services.

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So here's the deal. There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards

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Vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile.

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They are going to answer questions. You are going to get those answers. You're going

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to be able to target those members and you're going to reward them inside your

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club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside

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of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay

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their monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for

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the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be.

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Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me. This is real.

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So talk about NOVOS. And the one thing that was interesting to

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me when I went onto your website and was

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researching for this podcast, that you've got a lot of

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serious, serious doctors and scientists involved

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in this from Harvard Medical School. I went to Harvard Business School,

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MIT. Talk about to you know, maybe

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an entrepreneur that's listening to this and being like, hey, maybe I'm the next

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Novos in some other category or maybe a competitor even,

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right? Or part of the ecosystem. You know, how long does it take

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to, to develop those relationships, get those

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people to kind of say like, hey, I'm going to get involved and I'm on

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board with you. You can use my name and my clinical trials

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and then potentially, you know, picking you

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as like their horse, if you will. In this space where,

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you know, they're taking reputation benefit and risk at the same time?

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I think, I think what you just said at the end is the most critical

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factor, which is reputation is the most valuable asset

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that any of us have. But then when you look at a scientist, it's an

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even bigger value to them because their

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reputation is everything. And so

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what I say is that It's important

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for the scientist or whoever it might be that you want to have

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involved in your organization, and especially if they're going to be a public face,

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for them to trust in you and what you are going to— how you're

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going to treat them and your organization because they're

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associated with your organization. They need to trust that you are the type of

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person morally, ethically to

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maintain a high standard that's aligned with their own standards.

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And it's, it's easy to say that. It's not so easy

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necessarily to convince them of that. I

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think that the, the best things are, number one, having

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a reputation that precedes you. So having

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work experience and then being able to see

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what you've created before and how you behaved professionally.

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I think references, of course,

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or referrals into the people. So for example,

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I didn't one day just show up on Dr. George Church's

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lab and knock on the door and say, hey, take a meeting with me.

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Now, Dr. George Church, for those who don't know, he is a

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legendary geneticist. He's a

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professor both at Harvard Medical School and at MIT. He's a

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technologist as much as he is a geneticist. He brought down the

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price of genetic sequencing with his inventions. By about

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200,000 times. So it used to cost about $2 billion, now it

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costs $100 because of his inventions. Uh,

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he's been considered the top 50 most influential people

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in the world by Time magazine. I mean, he's, he's a living

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legend, and most people expect he'll get the Nobel Prize for his work.

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So, uh, how did I, how did I build a relationship

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with him? Well, I first built a relationship with a nonprofit

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that he is involved with in the field of longevity.

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And I, I proved myself to that nonprofit, and I got that

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nonprofit to want to work with me. And after they

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came, uh, I built trust with them. They then

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were willing to lend their name to George Church to say, hey, we think

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you should meet this guy Chris. He's got a great idea.

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And by the way, he's also going to be partnering with the

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nonprofit and donating equity to the nonprofit. So

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that's something I did when I started Novos. I donated actual sizable amounts

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of equity to the nonprofit. And so I built this incentive

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structure where it's a win-win for all of us. And

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it's in all of our best interests to behave

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morally, ethically, and

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rise to the standards that everyone would expect. So as you

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take a look at the people that you have on your advisory board, board, and

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then you see some of the things that are going on, whether it's on

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e-commerce, social media, different

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agencies coming down on certain groups saying like, "Hey, you're promoting this,

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but you're compounding this. These ingredients say X, but

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they're actually Y," when somebody does an actual test on

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what it is. "You claim that these things are good for you. They're actually all

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bad for you." How do you play in this space

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where you've got a very empirical and highly

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ethical business model and go-to-market strategy

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and kind of deal with the bullshit as also like saying like, I'm

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playing the long game and I think the long game is truth.

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Yeah, so you keep nailing it towards the end of your

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question because the long game is essentially

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how I look at it. I tell my team that, this

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is the classic fable of the tortoise and the hare.

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And we see the hare bouncing around all the time. A new

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company in the longevity space pops up. It's got a very famous

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celebrity athlete as their spokesperson. They pretend that

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they're a very scientific organization. They're paying every

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doctor spokesperson you can find to speak positively of them.

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They've got an enormous budget, and I see them as being like the hare.

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And they're even making the claim that they're the first company to target the 12

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hallmarks of aging. We were. We had a press release dated almost

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2 years before they even existed. And so

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we're the tourists. We're the ones who are doing the hard work. We're doing the

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research. These things don't happen overnight. We've got more than

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7 years of R&D behind our product. We've got

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a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study that is coming out in the

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next week, most likely, with amazing results. I would argue

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in some capacities it's never been seen before by a supplement.

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And these things don't come quickly, and they, they

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aren't things that just, you know, you can buy your way to.

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You need to earn your way to them. But I do believe that

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over the long term, we will, we will win. Now,

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that doesn't mean that these other companies won't do well. If they do, good for

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them. But in terms of consumers who are looking for the highest

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grade of efficacy and scientific legitimacy and to find

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companies that are truly innovating the field and making new scientific

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discoveries based on the research that they're doing,

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we want to proudly be part of that set. And I want

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to look back on my life in, in 10 years, 20 years from now and

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say, I know that I have genuinely improved people's

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health, and that I have furthered the field

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of longevity rather than just taking a trendy

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ingredient, throwing a marketing pitch behind

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it, and getting an influencer or celebrity behind it, and

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then trying to sell the business in 3 or 4 years. Like, I'm in this

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for the long game, and I want to genuinely

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innovate and improve people's health. Now, you were back on the show— you

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were originally on the show in October 2023. So we're

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about 2.5 years later. Just from an entrepreneurial

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and CEO and company building standpoint, maybe

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give the audience here a little bit of

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maybe psychologically what's happened over the last couple of years from a

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maturity level, from an aha moment, from a

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conviction, from maybe a frustration, maybe doubting yourself at

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some point. When some of these other companies come out, you'd be like, ah, dude,

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I got another hair jumping around. What is this shit

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gonna— moments over the last 2, 2 and a half years that you can think

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of off the cuff? Yeah, there are

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all different ones. So I would say on the

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positive side, it really comes down to the

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scientific research and the credibility that we're earning for ourselves. I would

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say some of the more recent ones is as of

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January of this year, we're proudly now being sold by

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the Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic store. There are very, very few companies

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that, especially in the supplement space, I believe there's only maybe 2 or

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3 that the Mayo Clinic store actually retails. And that,

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that was after a year and a half of discussions with them, and only after

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they saw not only our historical research but this most

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recent placebo-controlled clinical trial that they said, okay,

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we want to— some of the practitioners, including the head of longevity

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medicine at Mayo Clinic Arizona said, I want to recommend this to my

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patients. I want it readily available at the Mayo Clinic store.

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So that, that is something that is symbolic. It's not a huge revenue

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driver, right? We're not going to— it's not going to compare to the revenue we

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make direct to consumer. But the symbolic value of the

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Mayo Clinic, of all hospitals, it's arguably the number one in the

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world to be offering our product. And you know how doctors are with supplements. They're

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very skeptical. Cycle. So for them to have our product, I think it

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says a lot about us. The clinical trial, which we'll

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be releasing very soon, we looked at functional markers

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of cardiovascular health. So we looked at flow-mediated dilation— this

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is endothelial function and the ability for blood to flow or

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circulation— we looked at arterial flexibility, and we looked

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at systolic blood pressure. And we

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outperformed across these, these, these different

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functional markers. Things including resistance

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training, high-intensity interval training, loss of 22 pounds

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of body weight, omega-3 fatty acids,

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dietary nitrates and, uh,

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beetroot powder, um, quercetin, resveratrol, uh, you know, I'm kind of

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grouping it together across all of these markers. We'll have more to

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share obviously once we publish it. But the point is

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we are top, like, best in class as a

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nutritional formula comparable to these lifestyle dramatic lifestyle changes

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like high-intensity interval training. So, so that's a big one. In

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terms of frustrations, you want the negatives too.

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I'd say, you know, when, when you have influencers that hit

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the market and, and they claim to be experts and they say

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things that are completely counter to the

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scientific evidence, but they're doing it purely for commercial intentions,

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you know, that's one thing. But then when they go as far as like

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claiming that they are doing it for public interest and it's

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not for the money and so on, when it clearly is, at least

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for somebody who knows the industry and what they're

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doing, that's a little bit frustrating and that happens. But But ultimately, at the end

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of the day, you can't let that— you can't focus on that. You got to

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kind of just brush it off and move on and say, I'm on my own

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path. I'm going to focus on my own path and succeed here while other things

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are

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just noise. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of

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00:23:32,780 --> 00:23:34,940
the podcast. We are partnered up with a company

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00:23:35,900 --> 00:23:39,290
called HigherDOSE, higherdose.com. They are the

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00:23:39,530 --> 00:23:42,490
leader in workout recovery products,

382
00:23:43,130 --> 00:23:46,650
infrared technology, LED light masks, neck

383
00:23:46,890 --> 00:23:50,610
enhancers, and other products such as PEMF mats

384
00:23:50,610 --> 00:23:53,850
and sauna blankets. If you have not gotten on

385
00:23:53,850 --> 00:23:57,290
the workout recovery train yet, your time and

386
00:23:57,370 --> 00:24:00,970
your stop is now. You gotta get these products in there before

387
00:24:00,970 --> 00:24:04,170
these workout recovery and spas end up saturating

388
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:08,360
your market. Having your members walk outta the club and going into one of their

389
00:24:08,360 --> 00:24:12,000
locations for $200 per month where they're paying $39

390
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:16,040
to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we

391
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:19,800
are already an authority in workouts. HigherDOSE,

392
00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:23,360
check it out. There's a wholesale code and we

393
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:27,320
look forward to helping you augment your products and services to

394
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:31,040
meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get

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00:24:31,370 --> 00:24:35,090
people happy. Healthy and sweating, and the recovery should be just as good

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00:24:35,090 --> 00:24:35,610
as

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the workout. And then I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the biological

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age. And as I referenced earlier, I got my Spotify age last

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year, did my Swiftie, Taylor Swift

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listening activities down to 24. So about 30

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00:24:55,050 --> 00:24:58,750
years below my actual age. What's the, What do you do with

402
00:24:59,030 --> 00:25:02,110
NOVOS and your real age biological

403
00:25:02,750 --> 00:25:06,190
test? And what can somebody expect if they're on your product,

404
00:25:06,350 --> 00:25:10,190
maybe just holistically about reducing it?

405
00:25:10,270 --> 00:25:14,030
Sure. So biological age is a very complicated topic, something that we

406
00:25:14,030 --> 00:25:17,310
could spend hours talking about. But to make it

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very simple, biological age in the

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00:25:21,710 --> 00:25:25,320
most ideal manifestation of it would be a tool that's able

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to tell you essentially how old you are

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biologically, meaning your, your risk of disease, your risk of mortality,

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and your functional decline or your functional

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abilities. And there's different ways to measure this. There are phenotypic tests. These

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00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:44,000
are things that are looking at, uh, like sit-stand test

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00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,640
and grip strength and forced expiratory volume, how much you can

415
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,280
blow out from your mouth in in a

416
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second, multiple different things. Then

417
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there's epigenetic tests. And so if you go down that whole field of omics, you

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have epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, it's all complex. The

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00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:06,200
point is that everyone out there is claiming to tell you their

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00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:10,200
biological age and caveat emptor because a lot of it

421
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,960
is not solid science. The results are not accurate

422
00:26:14,370 --> 00:26:17,930
or precise. And so you have to be careful with who you believe when someone

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says that they're biologically a certain age. Like you were joking about Taylor

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Swift age. Like, you know, there are companies out there or people out there

425
00:26:25,570 --> 00:26:29,290
who might actually try to present something like that. That's an exaggeration, but

426
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something like that essentially being like, oh, I'm 24 biologically. It's like, come

427
00:26:32,930 --> 00:26:36,490
on, you're basing it on what you listen to on Spotify. That doesn't count. So

428
00:26:36,490 --> 00:26:39,810
we want to find things that are very accurate. And so

429
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,960
epigenetic tests are the most accurate that we can find right now. They're not perfect,

430
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,600
but they're the, the, the state of the art in the industry right now. We

431
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:52,400
offer at Novose a test called Novose Age, which is using

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00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:56,240
an algorithm. It's not our own. It's called the DunedinPACE algorithm created by

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00:26:56,240 --> 00:26:59,800
researchers at Columbia and Duke Universities. And it's a

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00:26:59,880 --> 00:27:03,320
simple blood finger prick, and then we can tell you how fast or slow

435
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:06,880
you're aging. And then we've also got organ ages. These

436
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,720
are all approximations. It's not perfect, but what

437
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:14,400
we found in a preliminary study that we administered to

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about a dozen people aged

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late 30s to, I believe, 77 years old— it may have been 75,

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00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,200
something in that range— males and females, half

441
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,720
and half, that 73% of the people that were

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00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:33,530
taking the NOVOSCORE product in the before-after test

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00:27:33,530 --> 00:27:37,250
after 6 months, they reduced their biological age,

444
00:27:37,250 --> 00:27:40,890
and it was the equivalent of about 1 month

445
00:27:40,970 --> 00:27:44,410
per year in terms of a reduction in PACE.

446
00:27:44,730 --> 00:27:48,570
And then those who didn't slow it down, so the remaining 27%,

447
00:27:48,570 --> 00:27:52,410
they didn't accelerate their aging either, which is

448
00:27:52,410 --> 00:27:55,850
critical. It implies at least the possibility that maybe

449
00:27:55,850 --> 00:27:59,430
we were protecting these people that would have accelerated their aging. Now

450
00:27:59,430 --> 00:28:03,150
this was a preliminary study, it wasn't placebo-controlled and so on, but it

451
00:28:03,150 --> 00:28:06,590
was a really nice peek into the potential

452
00:28:06,590 --> 00:28:09,510
behind this formula and it warrants

453
00:28:09,910 --> 00:28:13,710
further research. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming back on. Let's

454
00:28:13,710 --> 00:28:17,510
do a check-in and then we'll put this podcast out so you can launch

455
00:28:17,510 --> 00:28:21,230
everything related to the clinical trial. So

456
00:28:21,350 --> 00:28:25,040
it's gonna be posted up here in show notes when this thing's

457
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:29,040
out. Launches, and I love the longevity,

458
00:28:29,360 --> 00:28:33,000
the perseverance, and, you know, younger for longer. So go Novos

459
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:35,520
and go Halo. Good to see you. Thank

460
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,840
you, Pete. This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain speaking. I

461
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,600
am the founder and managing partner at Integrity Square. We've been

462
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:53,100
around now for 15 and one half years. We have

463
00:28:53,180 --> 00:28:56,580
been helping people like yourselves get capital through

464
00:28:56,580 --> 00:29:00,260
mergers and acquisitions, consulting, strategic advice in

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the health, active lifestyle, and outdoor, Halo sector, trying

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to help as many entrepreneurs as possible get to the

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next level, take that inflection point to be the force behind

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your growth. We are helping companies that have at least $3

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million of EBITDA, around $10 million of

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revenue, and we are positioned to help you get institutional

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growth capital or to negotiate deals with

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strategic partners. If you go

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to IntegritySQ.com/ISQ, you can see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation

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at any time. That is free of charge, and we look

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forward to helping solve obesity, loneliness,

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and diabetes. Go HEN.