Myota’s early research revealed significant individual variability in gut microbiome responses to prebiotic fibers, leading it to develop personalized formulations that cater to the diverse population.
Hall underscored the importance of focusing on improving foundational health factors, such as diet, exercise and social interactions, to boost the overall population’s health span and longevity, rather than solely targeting the “biohacking” community.
“There’s essentially two different camps that we’re looking at at the moment,” she said. “There’s a group of researchers that are focused on the biohacking community. How do we improve health for potentially the 1% at the moment, the 1% of the population that might be hyper-personalizing everything and maybe increasing lifespan by a very insignificant amount of time.
“What I personally would like to focus on is the population-level longevity. We know that in the UK and certainly in the US, Canada, Australia, there’s one in five people with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. The same goes for metabolic syndrome, for heart disease, for Alzheimer’s. All of these are on the rise, and you could argue that instead of going to the 1% and increasing longevity in those that can afford it or are already in good health or potentially the worried well, should we instead focus our attention more on the mass population?”
Hall added that while stem cell treatments, personalized postbiotics and other biohacks do have a place, foundational level actions such as exercising and getting enough fiber are a more practical way to boost longevity.
As a company, myota is working to advance the longevity space by focusing its research efforts on cognitive function and cognitive decline—particularly to gain a better understanding of the delicate timeframe in which mild cognitive impairment begins to present.
“Can we address it while it’s in that window of vulnerability where we can still recover or rescue some of those benefits?” Hall asked.
A 12-week clinical trial is currently underway that involves participants age 60 and over who are experiencing mild to moderate cognitive decline. The participants receive 10 grams of myota’s prebiotic fiber blend every day. From there, inflammatory levels, gut microbiome profiles, cognitive function, mood, stress and anxiety scales are measured.
“So we’re looking at the whole picture—how they’re feeling, what’s happening in their blood, what’s happening in their gut, and trying to put the whole picture together,” Hall said.
“Another really interesting study that we’re currently working on is we’re putting that prebiotic fiber blend into a bread product, so a functional food. Does that have any differences compared to a supplement or do they perform equally as well? So we’re looking at form factor, we’re looking at cognitive decline and cognitive impairment and seeing what ways we can approach longevity.”
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