The longevity shift with dsm-firmenich

Sonia Hartunian-Sowa: Hi, I'm Sonia Hartunian-Sowa. I work at dsm-firminish, and I'm the head of translational science and advocacy.

Paulo Santos: I'm Paulo Santos. I'm the Associate Director for our dietary supplements North America.

Sebastian Krawiec: So obviously, you guys have an interactive installation here at the show. I wonder if you can describe this new interactive installation, TheLongevity Shift, and what the message is that you want to get across?

Paulo Santos: I think what we are bringing to the show this year is a very unique experience. As you go through, you're gonna go through four zones where we're trying to explain the gap, where we see that people are living longer, but not necessarily healthier. So there's a gap between those two things. We also want to show them there's a shift. People are not thinking about the reactive health, they are moving into preventive so they want to actually avoid things from happening. We actually bring some of the ideas through the science and the hallmarks of aging, some of those that are backed by science and why you believe those are key. And by the end, we bring some solutions where we can help you and the customers to offer ways for consumers to bring that to life.

Sebastian Krawiec: How has the conversation around healthy aging evolved, and what ways would you like to see it evolve further.

Paulo Santos: Yeah, I can start and Sonia and definitely help me to answer that, right? I think the it goes back to that preventive, right? So I think we today, we myself as a consumer, we are very reactive, right? We feel like some pain, we start taking actions afterwards. I think what we are seeing now, and where I think it's going to continue to evolve, is that preventive. There are a few things that are driving those trends, including technology. People have ways to capture their markers, their wearables. They know where how things are going. They have friends, they have social media that they also can get information from and science is out there. People can learn about the science. They have conversation about the science, and they are very knowledgeable. So I think that the trends are going to that direction,

Sonia Hartunian-Sowa: And I'd like to pick up on that, to talk about the science. So never before have we been able to understand healthy aging, healthy longevity, until now, because of science and the advances of science have really shown us that there's 12 different hallmarks of aging, all of those which have robust clinical trials and research behind it. But at dsm-firmenich, we're really focused on four of those that show modifiable nutrition factors that really can be enhanced by dietary supplementation.

Sebastian Krawiec: I wonder if you could elaborate on some of those hallmarks of aging that dsm-firmenich is trying to target for this ingredient.

Sonia Hartunian-Sowa: So out of the 12 hallmarks for aging, not all of them can we control, but the ones that we can control through nutrition, we've focused on chronic inflammation, which is the underpinning of most age related processes, we focus on mitochondrial dysfunction. And mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. You may remember from science classes when you learned about ATP production. So that slows down as we age, and that is a marker of aging, but also, we'd like to keep the mitochondria healthy. We talk about cellular senescence, which is a rather unusual term if you haven't heard before, but cells healthily divide every day, and when they stop dividing, they become what we call zombie cells. So they're kind of like ghost cells, and they can put out some materials and metabolites that are actually a little bit dangerous. So we don't want senescence to occur. So we can work on that also. And then the last one is gut dysbiosis. So as we age, sadly, our digestion slows. There's many aspects that happen, and again, through nutrition and dietary supplementation, you can really make a difference toward how how well you age and the process of aging.

Sebastian Krawiec: So what are the some of the ingredient solutions you guys are highlighting today at the show that support healthy aging?

Sonia Hartunian-Sowa: Okay, first and foremost, I want to start with a clinical trial that just published this year. It's called the DO-HEALTH study, and this is a very Hallmark study. It happens to include our life'sOmega, which is an omega-3, EPA, DHA, and also our Quali-D, which is a vitamin D3 and in the amounts that they were combined, people were supplemented for three years. And what's really exciting is that during the supplementation, they measured things like biological age, biological clocks, frailty, bone health and more. And the results showed that supplementation with vitamin D and omega-3 actually slowed the biological clock. Yep, that's right, it actually nudged it backwards. So in addition to showing markers for chronic inflammation that were decreased, it actually shows maybe modestly, but we could have a 10% reduction over three years in our biological clock.We also have other solutions that target inflammation, for example, neuroinflammation: Lutein, zeaxanthin, curcumin, l-theanine. We have other aspects, looking at a tri-biotic, a pre-, pro-, and post biotic for gut dysbiosis, and also sort of a cellular antioxidant shield, resVida, lycopene and other antioxidant that are really, really important in the aging process, and we've incorporated those with multiple vitamins to show a benefit toward healthy aging.