How We Can Heal

From Stem Cells To Strength: Dr. Helen Blau On Healing Muscles & the Future of Regenerative Medicine

• Lisa Danylchuk • Season 6 • Episode 13

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A quiet shift in one enzyme may be steering how we age—and how strong we stay. Dr. Helen Blau, trailblazing Stanford scientist and 2025 National Medal of Science honoree, joins us to unpack a breakthrough decades in the making: prostaglandin E2 is essential for muscle stem cell repair, yet a degrading enzyme creeps up with age, draining that signal and eroding strength. Her team calls it a “gerozyme,” and blocking it with a targeted small molecule restored muscle size, power, and endurance in aged mice. The first human safety trial is complete, and a Phase 2 study in sarcopenia is on deck.

We dig into the practical takeaways for athletes and anyone over 50: why the inflammatory wave after training is needed for rebuilding, how common NSAIDs can blunt the very gains you’re chasing, and where a future therapy might help overcome anabolic resistance after illness, injury, or bedrest. Dr. Blau connects the dots across regenerative medicine—tissue‑specific stem cells, iPSCs, and organoids—to show how disease can be modeled in a dish and how patient‑matched cells are speeding smarter drug discovery. We also touch on her early work proving cellular plasticity, new insights on telomeres shortening in heart cells without division, and what “quality” muscle means for safe aging.

Beyond the lab, we talk truth about unproven stem cell clinics, the progress and remaining gaps for women founders in biotech, and the urgent threat of research defunding that stalls clinical trials and drains the talent pipeline. There’s a clear throughline: if we want longer, stronger years—true health span—we need rigorous science, sustained support, and smart training habits that work with our biology, not against it.

If this conversation sparked a shift in how you think about aging and recovery, tap follow, share with a friend who lifts or runs, and leave a review. Your support helps bring evidence‑based breakthroughs to more people—and speeds the path from lab bench to everyday life.

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This BONUS EPISODE is our holiday gift for you! If you're looking for somewhere to offer a holiday or year end gift, please consider directly supporting scientists like Dr. Blau & their labs. Donations keep projects alive while funding is disrupted.

Dr. Blau: https://profiles.stanford.edu/helen-blau?tab=bio


The Lab: https://med.stanford.edu/blau-lab.html

The Book: https://www.amazon.com/Stem-Cells-Rescue-Helen-Blau/dp/1621825280


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Lisa Danylchuk:

Welcome back to the How We Can Heal podcast. Today, our guest is Dr. Helen Blau. Dr. Blau is a trail-blazing stem cell biologist who has spent decades pushing the boundaries of what we once thought was possible in regenerative medicine. Dr. Blau is professor of microbiology and immunology, as well as psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University and has directed the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology there for decades. Today we talk about the research happening in her lab on pathways for healing related to muscle stem cells. She gives us a peek into the science behind it all and shares how research happening now could impact how we treat aging, disease, and injury. Dr. Blau's groundbreaking contributions have earned her some of science's highest honors, including the 2025 National Medal of Science awarded by President Biden. She's an elected member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which advises to the Pope, and co-organized their 2022 meeting focused on STEM cities. She's also a member of the Royal Society, the UK's National Academy of Sciences and the world's oldest national scientific academy. It was founded in 1660. Beyond her lab, she's a prolific inventor with dozens of patents, and she cares deeply about the next generation of scientists. Today, we'll dive deep into her journey, from her early experiments in cell fusion to the discovery of molecular regulators of aging, to her vision for future therapies that could help us age stronger, live healthier, and perhaps even reverse some of the damage time brings. It's an honor to have her here, and I'm thrilled to share this conversation with you. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Helen Blau to the show. Helen Blau, welcome to the How We Can Kill podcast. I'm thrilled to talk to you today, to learn from you and to share this with listeners. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you. Yeah. So I'd love to know how you came to specialize in stem cell research.

Dr. Helen Blau:

I guess I was always interested in plasticity of cells and cell fate. And when I realized that there were stem cells, I wanted to find the stem cells that are present in the body and see whether we couldn't enlist them to heal the body. And we knew from decades ago that stem cells existed in muscles and that they are there in a dormant state and they're poised, ready to spring into action if there's an injury, uh, whereupon they divide and they make more copies of themselves, and then they fuse into existing muscles and replenish them. And that's how you build muscles. For instance, when you do exercise, you're doing little injuries to your muscles. That's how you build muscle. So let's say you are a runner or you work out in the gym, you are doing little injuries, and that stimulates the stem cells that are present in your muscles to be enlisted in fusing into the muscle and replenishing it. And that's how you build muscle. It's a good thing.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So it's kind of injury response, and they're there to replenish your muscles throughout your life. So people didn't know how to isolate them though. So one of the first things we did in 2008 in Nature, we reported that a way to isolate the stem cells and know that you had them. And the way we did that was we created mice that were double transgenic. They expressed a firefly luciferase and a green fluorescent protein in all of the cells of their body due to DNA that we had introduced.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And that way you could track those cells. So we isolated single cells, we injected them into injured muscles of mice, and then we could tell whether we had the right cell. We used different markers to isolate them, and we could tell if we had the right cell because by bioluminescence imaging, you got this brilliant signal in the CCD camera. And then you could determine by sectioning and histology that they had contributed GFP. So they expressed both genes, and that showed that the cells were both self-renewing, making problems of themselves, and specializing in differentiating, which is the quintessential definition of a tissue-specific stem cell.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Okay. So backing up a little, what there's different types of stem cells, like uh someone's not in the field, general overview. There's embryonic stem cells, and then there's the ones that you're talking about right now, right? Yeah. So what are those? Is it just those two types? Are there other types of stem cells?

Dr. Helen Blau:

So there are their tissue-specific cells that are in your body in specific tissues dedicated to repairing those tissues. Then there are embryonic stem cells that you can derive from an embryo. And now we have a third type, which is induced pluripotent stem cells. And those were defined by uh Shinya Yamanaka, who discovered and got the Nobel Prize for them about a decade and a half ago, that you could take four transcription factors and overexpress them, and you could turn anybody's blood cell or skin cell into a pluripotent stem cell, equal to an embryonic stem cell. So there's no need to destroy embryos anymore.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

You can make pluripotent cells from any cell in a person's body, and they're matched to you, which is pretty nice too. And then you can take those pluripotent cells that can, pluripotent means they can, they have multiple potential. You can direct them to become a liver cell or to be a muscle cell or an eye cell. And so those cells are actively being investigated now for treatment of eye diseases like macular degeneration or for use in diabetes, making eyelids. And the beauty is that you can use a person's own cells. That's a bit costly right now to do that in a personalized way. But um, they're also being used as general repositories of cells, and they're very, very useful for drug screening. So you can, for instance, get a cell from, and we do this in the lab actually, because we're studying cardiomyocytes as well, heart. So we can take cells from someone's blood, someone say with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, who has a mutation that causes a cardiac defect, um, beating defect, and we can convert those cells into cardiomyocytes that will exhibit that beating defect in culture, and then we can screen for drugs that will correct that defect. So it's a fantastic platform for drug screening without having to go through animals, uh, without having to test it in humans. You have the human organoid. You can even make it more complex, not just the cardiomyocytes, but the endothelial cells and the fibroless and other cells that are surrounding the cardiomyocytes in the heart. So you make a little, it's called organoid, a little organ, a little mini heart in the dish, and you can test drugs on that and it's breakthrough in drug discovery.

Lisa Danylchuk:

That's so incredible. I mean, you're making me wish I had become more of a biologist or something. There is just exponential. Of course, it also there's protocol, and you have to be careful, and there's you know things to figure out. So, what's what is happening in your lab right now? What are some of the things you're excited about?

Dr. Helen Blau:

What I'm most excited about right now is what I call a A quiet shift in one enzyme may be steering how we age—and how strong we stay. Dr. Helen Blau, trailblazing Stanford scientist and 2025 National Medal of Science honoree, joins us to unpack a breakthrough decades in the making: prostaglandin E2 is essential for muscle stem cell repair, yet a degrading enzyme creeps up with age, draining that signal and eroding strength. Her team calls it a “gerozyme,” and blocking it with a targeted small molecule restored muscle size, power, and endurance in aged mice. The first human safety trial is complete, and a Phase 2 study in sarcopenia is on deck.<br><br>We dig into the practical takeaways for athletes and anyone over 50: why the inflammatory wave after training is needed for rebuilding, how common NSAIDs can blunt the very gains you’re chasing, and where a future therapy might help overcome anabolic resistance after illness, injury, or bedrest. Dr. Blau connects the dots across regenerative medicine—tissue‑specific stem cells, iPSCs, and organoids—to show how disease can be modeled in a dish and how patient‑matched cells are speeding smarter drug discovery. We also touch on her early work proving cellular plasticity, new insights on telomeres shortening in heart cells without division, and what “quality” muscle means for safe aging.<br><br>Beyond the lab, we talk truth about unproven stem cell clinics, the progress and remaining gaps for women founders in biotech, and the urgent threat of research defunding that stalls clinical trials and drains the talent pipeline. There’s a clear throughline: if we want longer, stronger years—true health span—we need rigorous science, sustained support, and smart training habits that work with our biology, not against it.<br><br>If this conversation sparked a shift in how you think about aging and recovery, tap follow, share with a friend who lifts or runs, and leave a review. Your support helps bring evidence‑based breakthroughs to more people—and speeds the path from lab bench to everyday life.. Yes. An enzyme that we discovered that increases with aging. Okay. And uh we found it in muscle. We were looking for factors that increase stem cell function. And we realized that this factor we happened upon prostaglandin E2, which is a metabolite, a lipid, had more effects than just enhancing stem cell function. It rejuvenates stem cell function quite remarkably, so that the stem cells of an aged individual will behave like young and repair damage more robustly, but it does more than that. And so we realized that we were looking at something really important, which is the degrading enzyme of prostagland in E2. So the gerezyme is the degrading enzyme, which increases just a bit, 30 to, you know, maybe twofold, it increases with aging. Okay. So not much, but that's enough to decrease your PGE2 levels to levels that turn out to be deleterious. And no one realized that it plays such a big role in aging. It was known to be a very important metabolite and critical to stem cell function in a number of tissues and in the healing response. But it was not known that it changes with aging. And so we named it a gerozyme because nobody will remember PGDH, which is encoded by HPGD and the graze PGE2, and you have all these letters, and it's it's alphabet soup. So we call it a gerozyme, which people can remember, including me.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, and it's a an appropriate name because it's about aging, right? So gerosyme. So when the gerozyme increases, then the um prostaglandin E2 decreases. And that impacts, does that impact the entire body, just muscles? I know you're doing a lot of work studying muscles. Well, what's the impact of that relationship shifting as we age?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. So as we age, what happens is your muscles become weaker.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So, and that happens to everyone. After the age of 50, you lose 10% of your muscle mass and strength per decade. Ouch. And yeah, no matter what you do, it just declines. It's relentless. And by the time you are in your mid-60s, I'd say 15% of people have what's called sarcopenia, which is really debilitating muscle wasting, muscle weakness that impedes their ability to perform tasks of daily living, like walking across the room. And uh they have an increased incidence of falls, and that leads to injuries and hospitalization, and then you know, assisted living and an increased risk of death. So it's it's really serious. It's like part of this downward spiral. And by the age of 80, like one-third of people have sarcopenia. So its prevalence is increasing dramatically, and that's a burden on your quality of life and also a burden on society. It costs an awful lot of money to take care of people who have sarcopenia and this kind of muscle wasting. So our hope is that this drug, uh, oh, I didn't mention the drug, so that we have a way to overcome the gerosyme. Because what we've had found is that the gerozyme really distinguishes people with sarcopenia. And that means uh it comes up and it also means it could be targeted. And what we found in mice anyway is that if you it's really a pivotal regulator, if you overexpress the gerosyme in young adult mice, their muscles will shrink and weaken in a couple of weeks.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Wow.

Dr. Helen Blau:

It's that potent, a single regulator just by changing the levels of PGE2. We never dreamt that a single regulator would have such a profound effect because you know, aging is pleotropic, multifactorial. Um, and in the aged mice, if we give them a drug, we discovered a small molecule that blocks the activity of the gerzyme very specifically, very effectively. And when we give the mice that drug, their muscles become larger and stronger, and their endurance running on a treadmill till exhaustion becomes greater, which suggests that more things than just muscle is involved because you need your heart to run, you need your joints to function.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So it's quite exciting to think that this might be a more generalizable modulator of aging and rejuvenation. So we've discovered a drug that can reverse this process.

Lisa Danylchuk:

And I'm sure anyone and everyone listening is like, sign me up, where do I get it? Right, especially if you're approaching or past 50. So uh, where does the drug stand right now? Is are you still just working with mice? Are you able to apply it to humans? Are there any tests happening?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Well, I I founded a biotech company a few years ago in order to bring this to people because I realized that's the only way.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, it was actually fortuitous. I spoke at a meeting about 10 years ago at Yale at the stem cell center. And a woman came up to me and said, So when are you going to have this ready for people? Like you just asked me. And you made all these mice so strong. Why not people? So I said, I need money for clinical trials. And she said, No, I think you need something else. And she said, I need to visit you with the woman I work for. And so the following weekend on a Sunday, they came to my office, and it was Li Ka Shing's investment firm. And his partner, right hand Selena Chow, came and met with me in my office with uh bodyguard out in the hall protecting her and and uh talk about muscles. He had lots.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Like he's already taking the drugs.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And Mr. Lee was on the phone from Hong Kong saying, when can I have the drug?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And I said, you know, you won't be my guinea pig. There, there's a process. We have to go through a long process. We have to manufacture the drug and under quality control, and we have to do a lot of clinical testing in volunteers and make sure it's safe, and then we can test whether it's efficacious. So they said, We think you don't just mean money for clinical trials, you need to start a company. And they were absolutely right. So they provided the seed money for the company, and which I called myo forte, strong muscles at the time. And so we hired a medicinal chemist, and the medicinal chemist designed drugs, and they were manufactured in India, and they were tested for their pharmacological properties in China, and it was all done with CROs, very, very interesting process of drug discovery and drug development, which I it was a learning process for me. So it was very good. It was a company with experts who knew what they were doing, and uh, and they developed a number of different drugs for this.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So are they testing those drugs in humans yet?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, so they did lots of pre-clinical testing in different animal models, and they just completed a phase one clinical trial. And the drug, I'm pleased to say, past safety, and is yeah, so they are raising the money now for phase two in sarcopenia in muscle wasting for aging in about five sites around the United States. And so I'm super excited because we passed the valley of death, as they call it, which is the first clinical trial and safety where many drugs fail.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So I'm excited that it could happen. And they're projecting that they will start the trial next year and in a couple of years complete that's still part of the process. Then there's phase three and so forth.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Do you have a sense of how long that full process is?

Dr. Helen Blau:

I think if they get through phase two in a couple of years, then probably it will be de-risked, as they say.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Okay.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And by that time, pharma will be interested. So some major pharmaceutical company that has the ability to really take it forward will know now that the drug is safe, that it's efficacious, and they will buy the company and develop it. So I would think, I don't know, it's very optimistic to think five years, but could well be.

Lisa Danylchuk:

But maybe in the next decade, the somebody has sarcopenia, they'd be able to get a medicine that essentially reverses it. And I'm sure most people with that 10% drop per decade would also be interested. Is that something that's potentially on the horizon for like a more general application?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, and I think it could be, I'm envisioning it for more short-term sorts of things. For instance, yeah, I get heart-wrenching emails from people in their 80s who say I was always active. I'm a hiker, I ride a bike, and then I got COVID and I was in bed for two weeks and my muscles just shrank. And now I can't walk up the stairs and I have to move to assisted living. Give me your drug. So I'm thinking that for one thing, even though we may not know what it does long term, in the short term, it could give someone a boost, get them back on their feet again. So after you break a hip and you're lying in bed for a few weeks, or you get COVID and you're in bed for a couple of weeks, your muscles shrink. And when you're older, it's much harder to build them up again. It's called anabolic resistance. You so a person in their 40s doing a certain resistance exercise training with weights can build 20% increase in strength in six weeks. An older person in their 60s doing the same weight training will build it by 5%. How unfair is that? It's so unfair. Yeah, because it's harder to do when you're older and you get less bang for your buck. So my thought, and what we found in mouse models is that it actually helps with anabolic resistance, that the mouse that does exercise in conjunction with the drug can build muscle much more effectively.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Um, more like a young person or young mouse, because mice go through the same thing as the humans. Yeah. So you can overcome anabolic resistance. So I think it's got potential to really help people get back on their feet again. And potentially long term, though, you know, it remains to be seen. In any event, I think it could really help short term, and that could have a major impact in keeping people active.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. It makes me think of just trends, and I've always been an active person and fitness and things like that. Like protein is the macronutrient of the day these days, right? So do you feel like there's outside of disease and extreme circumstances, like you're talking about COVID and being in a bed for two weeks, for folks who are naturally aging and wanting to maintain their muscle, is there anything you've found in your lab or anything that just you generally recommend for folks to not be at risk for some of these more challenging circumstances or diseases?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yes, I would recommend. And yeah, you're a yoga expert.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So doing all the yoga. I like to lift weights, I like to run, but I'd love to do those things when I'm 80 too, right?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, maintaining it. That's the thing.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Uh, you know, move it or lose it.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, my grandma used to say that all the time. Shout out to Peggy Brown.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. And you know, people walk a lot, but they need to do more than that. They need to do weight training as well. Yeah. Resistance training. That's essential to keeping your muscles fit.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

You need to keep active and you need to be more, more conscientious as you're older and doing it daily, doing something daily. People get lazy about it, and then it gets harder and harder, and it's a downward spiral from there. So I think eating well, maintaining your weight, not becoming obese helps, and staying active. Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I have to ask because you know, we had your husband, Dr. David Spiegel, on the podcast, and that's when I learned some more about you. And oh, I want to interview her too. Her work sounds so fascinating. Is there a role for hypnosis in just maintaining muscle or the activity? Have have you played with that or even oh that's funny?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Explored it. Um, we like to joke that he takes care of the mind and I take care of the body. Right. Between us, we got it covered.

Lisa Danylchuk:

You got it covered.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, I don't know what hypnosis to motivate yourself to to do the exercise, or yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I mean, there's literally a you know, Reverie App Heat talked about it on the show, and I have it. And there's one that's like preparing for workouts, and you give a rating at the beginning. How prepared do you feel for your exercise? And I'm usually like four in the beginning. And then by the end, most of the time I'm like, okay, I'm a six. It got me over the tipping point, and I'm gonna go do my thing now. I'm not gonna like drag my feet to put my running shoes on quite as long as I would have without that. So I just yeah, think about how we can use our minds.

Dr. Helen Blau:

I'm sure you're right that you could get yourself in a state of mind where you're not feeling uh, oh dear, exercise again. Or you could get yourself in a in a frame of mind that is more receptive to hypnosis, decreasing risk of sarcopenia, hypnosis.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So I just want to track because again, I learned about your work and then dug into it and was really fascinated and inspired. And one of the first things you did wrote a really popular paper about was what I think of maybe this is the right term in the field, but like cell plasticity. Like people were thinking cells were so fixed before. And I relate to this so much in the psychotherapy world because we talk about neuroplasticity all the time. Oh, we used to think that you know your brain was just set and it aged, and now we know if you learn a new language or if you keep, you know, working out and doing these different things, that there's some plasticity there. There's a lot of plasticity there. So, can you talk about your journey with that of just testing that assumption that things were fixed and what that was like for you?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, I wanted to test the notion that had been shown by Sir John Gurdon in Frogs. He showed that you could take a highly specialized intestine nucleus and put that into an enucleated frog egg, and that you could get a swimming tadpole. And that showed that this intestine nucleus had maintained all the information that was needed to make a whole organism. And but people said that's just a frog phenomenon. Yeah, human cells are different, they're fixed, they're specialized. Once it's an intestine nucleus, that's that. Once it's liver, that's that. And I thought maybe not. And I like to think that there was plasticity, I guess, because I had adapted to different different cultures. I grew up in in England and in Germany and France and US. And so I felt, you know, I was plastic, why not cells?

Lisa Danylchuk:

Right. Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So, you know, why shouldn't they be able to adapt to different environments? So I created a system for testing this. And I fused, I thought about it as a grad student. I didn't figure out how to do it, and then I didn't figure out how to do it as a postdoc, but as an assistant professor, came to me. So we fused multinucleate muscle cells, and that's how I got into muscle, it was mostly because it had lots of nuclei and didn't divide as a special cell. And then I could fuse cells into it. So I had mouse multinucleated muscle in culture and fused into that human liver cells or human connective tissue cells or human skin cells, and they reprogrammed and turned on muscle genes they normally never would express. And so that that got me the cover of science as a young professor and um and I guess earned tenure because it really overturned the dogma that cell fate was fixed and irreversible. And to your point, I think that you know we are malleable as well. I think that, for instance, doing yoga is increasing your plasticity and what you do is really important. I'm sure you've seen that, you know, some older people who come to you are people who just haven't done much to take care of their bodies. At first, it's hard to train the body, but as you do it more, you find there is plasticity and you can become more supple and more able to stretch and do things that you didn't think you could.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. And even in my experience postpartum, my daughter's two and a half of the slow comeback, right? And I had her in my early 40s. So it's like just that the patience of you know, things being wobbly and moving through that. I'm grateful that I had that orientation because I can see how it could be easy to be like, oh, I just can't do that anymore. I'm gonna stop doing it. But I knew if I just keep showing up shaky, and and it's true over the course of a few years, like, oh, now I can do those things I used to do. Again, it required a lot of patience and repetition and and like the not fun. It's fun when you can balance on one hand and pick up your foot with your other hand and hang out there and breathe. But when you're like wobbling or it's hurting, it's not as fun. Like I'd like to reframe that, but you know, my experience is like it gets frustrating, or so there's all the mental sides we can work with there, but there's also a truth of kind of committing to the long haul. And so when I see older students or students who've had an injury come in, I really try to impart that. Like it's always messy before it's graceful. Like it's you're not meant to be good at yoga before you show up at yoga class, you know, good at yoga in quotes, yeah. Before you show up in class. And I always think of you remember there were those plastified muscle exhibits in museums.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

There they had one that was like a yoga woman, and so they said she's surprisingly muscular. And I was like, of course you're muscular. It's just you're using your body weight to hold you in all these different positions. So I think we can have, I'd be interested in your input here. We can have this expectation that having muscle looks like being a bodybuilder, but having muscle can also look like standing on one foot for 10 breaths and being able to hold that.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Absolutely. And I think one of the beauties or one thing that I find exciting about our drug is that it builds the quality of muscle, not necessarily larger muscles, but muscles that contract better and that utilize energy better.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So that's important because older people are frailer, they have bones that are weaker, and so building the mass in proportion to the strength can be difficult for them to tolerate. So I think the quality of the muscle is very important. And that's we're we're building up these type two fibers, which are the ones you need for fast movement and that you need very much for exercise. And I think the drug in conjunction with exercise should have a really important beneficial effect. But yes, I think there's a lot of plasticity in our bodies as well that we can capitalize on and build those muscles. It doesn't happen naturally, it takes work. It takes, yeah, as you know.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, yeah, it takes work, it takes patience. And usually I know we live in a culture that likes things really fast and quick results. And there's all kinds of programs that promise that, but I've really found the slow, steady, habitual, what you do every day, even if it seems small, to be really helpful. To I mean, if you want to hop on a bandwagon and do a program for 30 days or 60 days, okay. But then what are you doing after that? And what's really sustainable is important too. Yes. No. So because I'm also I've been an ultrarunner, I mean, I guess I ran a 50k in August, so I can still call myself an ultrarunner postpartum, but it was very slow. It was in the mountains. How old is your kid now? She's two and a half. Yeah, she's two and a half. She came. We went to Switzerland and ran. I got to run through the Alps, the most beautiful race of my life. It was great to be back out there. Um, but I know people who will take anti-inflammatories after a race like that. And so, in digging into your work and you're talking about the metabolic pathways and prostylantany too, and terrorzyme and all these things. And I was just tracking, and you've said it other places, like, don't do that. Can you explain to because you've probably got some ultra listening right now who are like, oh yeah, that's how I manage inflammation post-race. So, what's the role of inflammation in those pathways? And what would you recommend?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Well, inflammation, part of that inflammatory wave that you get after injury is prostaglandin E2. And we showed that the stem cells absolutely require prostagland and E2. If we eliminate the receptor for PG2, we can do that genetically ablated in mice and then subject them to an injury or to an exercise. They cannot rebuild the muscle. The stem cells will not function and they die prematurely. And if you give a mouse after an injury, you give it an NSAD like ibuprofen, it also cannot rebuild the muscle. So it it is absolutely required by the stem cells for viability and for proliferation, for dividing and giving rise to more stem cells. Um, and that was picked up by the New York Times about 10 years ago. It was on the front page. No pain, no gain.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. So next time you think about, you know, when you feel achy after working out in a gym or after a long run, yeah, resist the ibuprofen. Of course, if you're really in pain, you need to treat it. There also are differences. There, for instance, some drugs, like a leaf, that's also an NSAD, have less affinity for the COX enzymes that are involved in PTE2 generation. So some are better than others if you have to take something. And I wouldn't say, you know, if you're in really bad pain, you need to take something. But you need to know that you're negating the good you did in building muscles.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, I mean, I know people who not even because they're in pain. I mean, most ultrarrunners, if you're running 50 miles, 100 miles, like people call it, they go in the pain cave and they get used to being in pain. And yeah, I think most people that I've heard taking it post-race are doing it to improve their recovery, which is the opposite of what it's doing.

Dr. Helen Blau:

That's right.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So in it 10 years ago, that article was out, and still these things exist.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And yeah, it's not that well known. Yeah. But you know, cardiologists used to tell patients to take aspirin, that's that, an anti-inflammatory agent, to take that daily as a preventive. They're not saying that anymore.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

You should take it when you're flying, maybe.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Okay.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Baby aspirins, but not daily. And part of the reason is it's interfering with muscle building and muscle strength.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I mean, they recommend that still when someone's pregnant to take baby aspirin to prevent something. I can't remember what it was recommended to me full of years ago. Take baby aspirin every day for your whole pregnancy. So I want to talk a little bit about the larger systemic things in science. I mean, you became a professor at Stanford in a time where there weren't a lot of female professors. What have you seen in your career in terms of evolution of gender roles in science and things that you've seen change and improve?

Dr. Helen Blau:

I think there have been wonderful changes. Uh, it was really difficult when I was hired. I was one of the first women on the faculty. And when I had my baby, I was given four weeks off. And yeah. So the baby was born, and I was immediately thinking, how do I train someone to look after my baby? Which was heartwrenching.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And they checked up on me every day to make sure I was in by nine. And the guy next doors, assistant professor like me, his wife had a baby at the same time, and he stayed home mornings, and they thought he was a hero. So it was a real double standard.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Oh, yeah. Like those types of things still happen where people go, oh, look you. I mean, my partner stays home with our daughter half the time, and he gets a lot of accolades for that.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. So I think that's changed a lot. For one thing, there are many more women in the workforce and more scientists, and they get a nice maternity leave, which is appropriate, so they have time to bond with their baby and really enjoy that special time after the birth of the baby.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And not have to be heroic like I was, which I don't think is really a good idea for mom and boy or baby or society. So I think it's come a long way. And and women in universities are doing extremely well, women scientists. I think in industry it's still not so equal. I think it's much harder. I saw one statistic that 2% of funding for biotechs goes to women founders of the biotechs. It's still extremely hard for a woman to convince investors and to raise the funds and to start companies. So there's a ways to go in in industry. And I think there are not so many women investors. And as a result, there it's also an old boys' club to some extent.

Lisa Danylchuk:

What would you like to see change in the coming decades for you, for your students, for the field?

Dr. Helen Blau:

I'd like to see more women entrepreneurs. I'd like to see them able to start companies with their own inventions and raise the money and have a big say in the development of their discoveries and have more prominent roles in industry. It's happening, but slowly. It's behind academia. And I think academia is doing quite well now in terms of giving women awards, giving women promotions, giving them leadership roles. I'm really pleased with the progress that's been made. Wasn't anything like that when I joined.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

No women chairmen and so forth. But now there really are. So it I've seen a lot of progress and it's great.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

What I would like to see is funding for science and a belief in science. And right now, that is a great risk. And I do want to say that strongly on your show because I think people may not realize that what's happening at the NIH with cutting grants is not just a, oh well, they didn't get their grant. It is really harming progress of drugs like the one I talked about, of drugs for cancer, drugs for Alzheimer's, things that were in progress. Clinical trials have been disrupted. Research in labs is being disrupted. People are laying off so many scientists. And this is demoralizing to young scientists. Going to lose a generation of young scientists. Many are thinking of leaving, going to Europe, going to China. Yep, they are leaving. And they're making attractive packages in those countries to attract the best from the United States. We've always been the leaders in technology and medicine. It's sort of tragic to see that and to reverse it is not going to be easy at all. And this has happened very quickly. The defunding, which destabilizes the whole enterprise, makes people scared to enter that. They're choosing alternate career paths. And labs are having to really shrink, if not shut down. And that's going to impact discovery, and that's going to impact generations of medicines, like clinical trials. You can't just stop it and pick it up again.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

It's bad.

Lisa Danylchuk:

That's a really big loss.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. And I think it's important to highlight that that's already happening. So it's kind of like when there's already an injury. How do we try to work with it and reverse it or repair it? Just like the drugs you're studying are trying to are doing. How do we do that on a larger level when we see, oh, there's this loss of talent, there's stalled projects, there's things that we won't be able to bring back. Like, how do we nurse that injury within the field?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, we need to protest with our government, make it clear that this is a priority for our country. Yeah. First of all, it leads to a lot of jobs. Secondly, all the pharmaceutical companies rely on the trainees from universities. We are stopping the number of students being taken into the universities now is being curtailed. That's going to have a long-term effect on the pipeline. We're going to really see that affect the economy as well as advances. You think about drugs like Ozempic, these drugs for GLP receptor agonists that are really wonder drugs in terms of helping people with obesity. Imagine not having those advances. Imagine not having a way to treat COVID and to prevent COVID. These are really important advances that happened in the United States. And I think people may not realize, but that is at stake right now. It needs to be reversed quickly. People need to speak up and talk to their congressmen, and they need to make their voices heard that this is an important priority.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So that direct political advocacy is really important for science and for labs like yours and others to continue the important research they're doing.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Not being passive and saying, oh, it's their problem, because it's our problem, everybody's problem. It's not a partisan issue, science and medicine. I think we would all agree that everyone benefits when new discoveries are made that can help with Alzheimer's, that can help with Parkinson's. We all want those drugs, we all want those advances. We take them for granted that they will happen, but we shouldn't because if labs aren't functioning, and if people don't want to go into science or can't anymore because there are no graduate school positions, we'll really feel the effects for a long time.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I know you've also talked about, as a scientist, climate change and the role that plays in all of this. I know you're also a scuba diver. So there's that element of the reef. It really read up on me. I listened to any interview I could find. So there's the impact of not being able to go to the Great Barrier Reef and See the same things you saw 20 years ago, but there's also that backdrop here. I mean, I sometimes think I'm a trauma therapist. I'm like, well, what does it matter if we are like doing therapy to resolve a trauma if we're in a climate crisis and we don't have trauma therapists talk a lot about safety and through social interaction, through, you know, even your home, just finding that sense of safety in your nervous system? And I feel like with climate challenges, it's harder to feel that. And I think even, you know, as a scientist, that can be a challenge. Is there any way that shows up in your work?

Dr. Helen Blau:

It's not really part of my science, but I do think it's a major issue. Right now we are free to fly everywhere and experience the world. It as there are worse storms and cyclones and hurricanes and tsunamis, I think it will get uh more terrifying to try and fly to those places. And more and more of these natural disasters are happening, and that's quite worrisome. And it's clearly linked to climate change, and there are things we can do to reverse it. So I'm a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and they've had some really good meetings on climate and how it can be reversed. For instance, growing mangroves, you know, that there are active things we can do to actually reverse it, not just to stop it. But it takes society wanting that and influencing the government to also want that, and to realize that this is influencing the future that our children and grandchildren will experience. Do we want them to be able to enjoy the world the way we have?

Lisa Danylchuk:

I find myself thinking like we need to find, and maybe we already know this comparatively speaking, like find the gerizime and find the medicine. And right on a much larger scale, there's harm that's happened, and we need to find the pathways to repair and really invest in those. And I think we're still at a point where we can do that.

Dr. Helen Blau:

We are, yeah, we are at a point where we could still do that, but we need to act soon. Yeah, it takes time and uh it's getting worse rather quickly, yeah, alarmingly quickly. So, I mean, we all know about these various disasters. We have to acknowledge that they are to a large extent man-made.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Yeah, and that's where dissociation can come up, right? You mentioned that people are being passive, and sometimes there's actual like inability to see or let in or recognize that different levels of consciousness happening. So I appreciate that you're encouraging people to be aware and be awake and be engaged and act in whatever way they can. And it makes me think of what we were talking about earlier, those little daily habits. Like I have an app I go on and it immediately connects me to it's called climate action now. You just you just like send an email, send an email, send an email, send an email, sign a petition, sign a petition, share an article. Uh, it makes it really easy. So I think even things like that that we can do, that can also build momentum. Like over the course of a few years, what does that turn into? Right. So finding these larger pathways of healing, but then also engaging, you know, I'm sure not every day in your lab is a day of discovery, right? You have like what, like 20-something patents and you're like a celebrated inventor, but that doesn't mean every day you're finding something, right? It's a lot of confusion or not knowing and testing and getting surprised and finding something you weren't even looking for, and right creativity and invention. You're absolutely right. Yes, a messy process, but a joyful one at that, right?

Dr. Helen Blau:

That's right. It's uh the process of discovery, it it requires patience, diligence, and writing that emotional roller coaster.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, having a wide window of tolerance for a lot of different experiences.

Dr. Helen Blau:

But I think it's also wonderful to do something that is not just eye-oriented and self-improvement, but something that is intellectually stimulating and that could really benefit a large number of people.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think you get a lot of gratitude or benefit when something helps that, you know, most of us feel really good about that, right?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. I know you have a children's book available and it's on order for my daughter. Can you tell me about that? Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So about a year ago, well, I guess it was a bit more than a year ago, I decided I wanted to write a book for children because I have grandchildren and I enjoy reading to them about science, and they are very receptive. So I wanted to give them joy and teach them about stem cells. Yeah. And also I wanted to inform the parents and grandparents who read the books to them. So I wrote a book, Stem Cells to the Rescue. And I could show you that book. Here we are.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Nice.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And the frogs are the people. There we see the little stem cells. And the first half of the book is all about what happens to kids that you fall off a jungle gym and you break your arm, and your bone stem cells come to the rescue and repair the bone, or you skin your knee and blood is coming out, and the blood stem cells come and stop the blood flow and restore your blood. So stem cells are coming to the rescue in these different scenarios. And then I get to the point where your grandparents, their stem cells, are not working that well. And what can we do to help uh grandpa get to his projects in the basement? He has to climb the stairs and his knees are bothering him. And then I talk about stem cells for cartilage and how that could develop, or stem cells for vision, macular degeneration. And I even talk about pluripotent stem cells, although I call it concoctions. And so I don't use any jargon in there. And it's all in rhyme, which is fun too. Yeah. And so I talk about stem cells for vision, stem cells for hearing, stem cells for memory, stem cells for your joints. And these are all in progress. These are in clinical trials now or in advanced trials in animals. And I think people should know what the hope is for stem cells and what they can do for our lives.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. And that's such a brilliant way to get it out there. I mean, just to make it accessible for everyone. And then, you know, generations are reading books. That happens all the time. You know, my parents come over, I'm reading a book, they're reading a book to Isabella. And to be able to learn these types of things while doing that and fold it into the discussion, it's so powerful. I mean, I'll teach Isabella something and she'll just start using the word right away. So can you imagine to be thinking about stem cells from when you're two years old and knowing you know, at different ages, they get different things from it.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. And I've I've heard people have told me that, you know, their two-year-old is enjoying it, or their six-year-old, or 12-year-old. Yeah. Um, and it can speak to them at different levels. I'll read you one bit about joints. Your grandpa's knees hurt such a pain, but he gets around with his trusty cane. He needs surgery, knee replacement to reach his projects in the basement. AIDS stem cells cannot mend the joint. Can we restore them? We're near that point. Come rescue stem cells to the poor. We need you now to come restore.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Oh, I love that. It must have been such a joy to write too. Last book I was writing and I was doing all the references, which has never been my favorite part, just like organizing references and making sure they're all on point. And I was like, my next book's gonna be poetry. It's gonna be like a kid's book, poetry, just like that. It's perfect. You know, you mentioned in the book the possibilities for cartilage, organs, hearing, eyes. Can you talk a little bit about that for folks? Again, just it seems like we're really close. Even brains, I heard you mention somewhere asked, someone asked about that, right? What can we get brain transplants?

Dr. Helen Blau:

I don't know if we're really gonna want that, but what are you what's your butt we are working out the areas of learning and memory? Yes. And one approach is to transplant stem cells. Another approach, though, is to stimulate the stem cells that exist in your body. And and that's for instance, what our drug does. It stimulates the stem cells that are there. So we can stimulate the muscle stem cells to build the muscle. And we're now looking at whether it can do that in cartilage and can it do it in the eye? Because that's much easier than taking cells out, reprogramming them, putting them back. Although a lot of advances are being made in that way. I would caution about stem cells. There are stem cell clinics that are rogue clinics that take advantage of people. Okay. And for instance, there really is no evidence that taking cells from your fat and purifying them and sticking them in your knee is going to do any good at all. So far, it hasn't done any harm, but it hasn't done any good, and there's no biological basis for it to do any good.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And so these clinics are making a lot of money off of people's hope to do something other than knee replacement.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

But I caution people not to do that. Stem cells are not at that point yet. Yeah. So, yeah. So people are working on ways to stimulate the cells that exist there, like we are. Other people are working on ways to find the cells that would function there and make cartilage, but not every cell will.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I'm realizing we didn't talk about telomeres at all, and that's such a thing in the mindfulness world. And you know, sitting and paying attention to your breath and yoga can help us not shorten our telomeres as much. Can you talk at all about what how that shows up in your research and what you've learned?

Dr. Helen Blau:

So the aspect of telomeres that I was interested in is in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. We showed is a disease of stem cell exhaustion and telomere exhaustion in the muscles. But then the surprise came when we looked in the heart. And we've shown this now in cardiac tissues and also from these pluripotent stem cells that I told you about from people who have a genetic defect that leads to cardiac disease, dilated cardiomyopathy. We can recreate that in culture, and we see that the telomere shortened. So we found that uh telomeres can shorten in cardiomyocytes without any cell division. And that was a completely new and unexpected finding. And the exact mechanism of how that works is I gave to one of my postdocs who's gone off to start her own lab who did some of this pioneering work. But I think um it's very important to understand that, but also it says there's another way to intervene in cardiac disease, which is to stop the telomere shortening. And there are ways to do that with shelterins and proteins that protect telomeres from shortening. Okay. So yeah, telomeres are very important, and a lot of research is being done on that. For me, that was sort of tangential. Okay. And I've moved on from there.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, yeah, more focused on the stem cell side.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Although I have two students who were then my postdocs, and now they started their own company, rejuvenation technology, to bring telomere extension to the clinic and work on lung diseases and liver diseases to extend the telomeres, rejuvenation technologies. Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I just want to celebrate all of you there in the lab and everyone you've mentioned that you have worked with other folks who are doing similar research and work because this is so important and impactful and challenging long-term work, right? Like it takes a long time to figure out how this could apply to humans, but the hope is there, the potential is there, and you're doing that due diligence to make sure it's safe to go through the steps as patiently as possible. Yeah. In a way that could really transform people's lives and experience of life. I've heard you talk about, I think it's the Aurora myth where someone says, oh, grant them eternal life, but they forget to say and health.

Dr. Helen Blau:

That's right.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Oh, but yeah, we don't just want to live forever, we want quality of life. And for all of us, even folks we know and love who are aging, it's hard to see that experience when there's degeneration of anything, of muscles, of mind, of heart. So I just want to thank you and celebrate all the work that you're doing. And especially, you know, you and those of you out there where there's frustrating moments of like banging your head against the wall, trying to move forward. I'm sure it's not just the science and the figuring things out, it's also navigating political systems within universities, outside universities. Funding. And funding.

Dr. Helen Blau:

So one way people can make a difference is funding to labs because right now we need we need donations to keep going. Honestly, gifts make a huge, huge difference. That's how I was able to develop this drug was through GIFs, uh, which allowed us to do research that we might not otherwise have been able to pursue so quickly.

Lisa Danylchuk:

How can people find your lab, follow your lab, support your lab?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Look for me on the Stanford website. It would make a huge difference. We've had to cut our lab by half because of the funding crisis, and we're not even a university that's been hit. Don't realize that all universities in the United States have now been hit and that it's really uh interfering with research. So, in order for us to move forward maximally without really severe delays, uh donations, yeah, donations to scientists would make a huge difference. I want to test this drug in different scenarios. I want to see if it helps with spinal cord injuries, I want to see if it helps with cardiac deficiencies, I want to see if it works with the eye, macular degeneration. Um that all takes funding.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

So advocating for government to reintroduce funding, directly donating, are there other ways people can support with time or energy or advocacy there?

Dr. Helen Blau:

They can encourage others to donate.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

But I think uh donations to scientists, this is a crucial moment where private money could make an incredible difference to what we can do because we're all we're scaling down, our scope is changing, our dreams are being curbed. It's terrifying in a way.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And it's very sad. I see so much promise, for instance, for this drug that targets the gerzyme. We've shown what it can do for muscles, and that's getting to the clinic. I'd really like to show what it can do for other tissues and to develop some of the other. We have a whole battery of these drugs that can be used for different indications that could be given locally for the eye, for the joint, but we need to prove them in animals. We before we can ever take them to people. You want to be sure they work and are safe. They are showing preliminary promise, but funding is absolutely key.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. If folks want to get into this field or learn more, they can go to your website. Is there anything else you'd recommend for folks who just want to learn more?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Uh, the book, it's not just for kids, it's for grown-ups. It has a glossary for anybody who wants to go further. It has a whole lot of references. It goes really deep, but you can also just deal with it at a superficial level and enjoy the poetry.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Poetry sinks in. It gets stuck in your head. Like you can't not learn when things are in rhyme.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. Um, other than that, I don't know. I've done podcasts, but I haven't really written anything major for the public. There are press articles that Stamford has done on various aspects of my research that I think make it accessible. So people, you know, search Stamford news.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. Yeah, I'll put some links to things I found in the show notes as well.

Dr. Helen Blau:

I'm so impressed with how much you have done research and know about what I've done.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I've tried, I tried to learn as much as I can.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Like the Aurora myth.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah, yeah. I heard you mention that, and it makes so much sense, right? We don't just want to live forever, we want to enjoy our lives.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yes. Health span, not just lifespan.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yes, exactly.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Longer with quality of life.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. So I often ask at the end what brings you hope. And I feel like your research brings so much hope. Is there anything else you'd like to share that brings you hope in life or just brings you joy in life?

Dr. Helen Blau:

Well, you mentioned scuba diving, and I absolutely love that seeing the coral reefs and the this whole world beneath the surface, the colors, the variety. It's exhilarating.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Just to float in that world and observe it. Uh, the other thing is my grandchildren and my children. I'm so proud of them. And and they're just fun. They are curious, they're full of joy of life, and that curiosity and energy is thrilling. Yeah. So I have a lot of fun with them. Yeah, we did jack-o'-lanterns recently, and we made the pumpkin seeds, and then we decided to take the pumpkin and make cookies, and we couldn't find a blender. I was at my daughter's house and I couldn't find the mixer. Uh-huh. So my granddaughter said, I'll be the mixer. And she jived in with her hands and she said, I love flour. And there was mess everywhere. She was completely covered. I love it. It was tremendous fun.

Lisa Danylchuk:

That's so amazing. I feel like kids can bring such a curiosity and joy that it's just palpable and just to share and to sort of let go of, oh, it needs to be clean, or oh, it needs to like dive into the mess of it. Yeah.

Dr. Helen Blau:

At first I was horrified, and then I thought, this is really fun. And I'm doing something her parents will never let her do.

Lisa Danylchuk:

I mean, me as a parent, I have that moment like once a day, it feels like we're like, no, okay, yeah, let's just do that. Let's just make that. It'll be more fun.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Yeah. And we go collecting, we have so much fun. We just little things become really fun, like collecting colored leaves as we walk along and and then we make things with them and just simple things, but that they become projects and games.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. And just connecting with the earth in that way, like collecting leaves. We don't think of that as climate advocacy, but it's building a relationship with nature.

Dr. Helen Blau:

And you look at things differently when you're looking for how can you interact and have fun with it. And yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Yeah. I want to thank you so much, Dr. Blau, for coming on the show today. I'm so grateful that I just heard your name and dove into your research some more. I know you also talk about how communication and getting things out there is so important. And I always felt that way in academia myself, where it was like, if just we are talking about this and no one else is hearing it, then like it feels so isolated. But yeah, I really I know your work has been on the cover of the New York Times and all these different places, and I hope that just continues. And I I wish just the best for you and your lab and your work and your family. I can really feel the dedication and um hope that comes through your work. And so I hope people share this episode and dive more into your work and continue to share it and that your lab gets tons of support so you can just continue doing this work that could really deeply benefit us all.

Dr. Helen Blau:

Thank you, Lisa. I've really enjoyed being on your show.

Lisa Danylchuk:

Thank you so much for listening. Now I'd really love to hear from you. What resonated with you in this episode and what's on your mind and in your heart as we bring this conversation to a close? Email me at info at how we can heal.com or share your answers and what's been healing for you in the comments on Instagram where you'll find me at How We Can Heal. Don't forget to go to howwecanheal.com to sign up for email updates as well. You'll also find additional trainings, tons of free resources, and the full transcript of each and every show. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and keep sharing the shows you love the most with all your friends. Visit how we can heal.com forward slash podcast to share your thoughts and ideas for the show. I always, always love hearing from you. Before we wrap up for today, I want to be super clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions. It's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and I encourage you to consult with any healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. In addition, everyone's opinion here is their own, and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the host or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guests today and everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking care of the babe and taking the fur babies out while I record. Last and never least, I'd like to give a special shout out to my big brother Matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music and it makes my heart so very happy to share it with you here.