Dr. Greg Fahy, Chief Scientific Officer of Intervene Immune, has recently appeared on The Damage Report, a news and current events show that is part of The Young Turks (TYT) network. Hosts John Iadarola and Brooke Thomas talked with Dr. Fahy about the recent positive results of his company’s human clinical trial for thymus rejuvenation. We were really pleased to have helped set up this interview, which gave him the opportunity to showcase his amazing research.
The TRIIM study
Last year, Dr. Fahy and his team ran a small human clinical trial called Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation (TRIIM). The purpose of the trial was to see if the immune systems of older people could be rejuvenated to make them biologically younger and work better, as has been previously shown in mice.
The thymus is a small immune organ that is located just behind the breastbone and produces the majority of T cells, specialized cells that patrol our bodies and defend us from invading pathogens, cancer, and other threats. After puberty, the thymus begins to shrink in a process known as involution, and this shrinkage eventually causes the thymus to stop producing T cells; by age 60, the thymus in most people is all but wasted away and is the reason why so many older people die from infectious diseases such as flu and pneumonia.
In the TRIIM trial, Dr. Fahy and his team were successful in encouraging the thymi of older people to regrow and resume T cell production as they did in youth. While this study was very small, these initial results are great news, as they confirm that what was observed to work in mice also works in humans. This opens the door for larger-scale studies that will, hopefully, pave the way for this technique to be approved for use in healthcare, offering the potential to help older people stay healthier for longer.
Regardless of anyone’s political leanings, it is always a positive thing to have well-known shows covering this field. With 255,000 subscribers to the Damage Report and 4.5 million to the main TYT channel, there are going to be plenty of eyes on this important interview, which will hopefully build further support for this scientific field.
Dr. Fahy also appeared at our Ending Age-Related Diseases conference in New York earlier this year, and he gave a talk and went into further detail about TRIIM and the results of the trial.
