Joe Betts-LaCroix and Retro Biosciences recently raised funding at a $1.8 billion valuation. In his first podcast appearance since the announcement, Joe shares his vision for extending healthy human lifespan and the breakthroughs driving the longevity industry forward.

Joe Betts-LaCroix explains why aging is becoming a legitimate scientific target. He shares how new discoveries are turning longevity from speculation into measurable biology.

The conversation explores how AI is accelerating research, while highlighting why biology remains one of the hardest problems to solve. Even with smarter models, real-world testing and clinical trials still take time.

Joe also discusses Alzheimer’s, partial cellular reprogramming, and the future of longevity medicine. He shares why exercise remains the best longevity tool available today and what the next decade could look like for human health.

Joe is the CEO of Retro Biosciences and a longtime entrepreneur focused on science and technology. His mission is to extend healthy human lifespan and accelerate breakthroughs in aging research.

This episode is brought to you by NADclinic, the go-to destination for longevity and human performance. Check them out at https://nadclinic.com.

Non-invasive eye scans allow doctors a zoomed-in, three-dimensional look beneath the eye’s surface without causing discomfort or pain to the patient. Used routinely in clinics worldwide, the scans produce detailed views of individual layers of the eye’s interior to help diagnose conditions that threaten vision. But with that level of precision comes a flood of data—hundreds of images per scan that physicians have to review manually, a time-consuming process that is vulnerable to human error.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle and Genentech, Inc., have developed an experimental artificial intelligence (AI) system that can speed the scan review process and help doctors spot subtle signs of eye disease sooner. The technology, called OCTCube-M, includes a family of three AI models that are designed to read and interpret 3D images of the eye’s retina as well as other types of eye scans.

In a new study, the researchers found that, compared with older models, the new AI system more accurately identified eight different retinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration, a common disease that damages the retina and is the leading cause of blindness in people over 50. It also was more accurate in its predictions of how fast a severe form of this condition, called geographic atrophy, would progress.