Alina Su: Can We Really Turn Back Our Biological Clock?

What drives a brilliant young scientist to drop out of Harvard Medical School and bet everything on a moonshot mission to reverse human ageing? For Alina Su, it was deeply personal - the loss of her grandfather before she was born sparked a lifelong quest to give people more time with their loved ones.

In this captivating conversation with Méline, Alina reveals how she went from bringing coffee to a legendary scientist at Berkeley to co-founding Generation Lab, a company at the cutting edge of longevity science. Her journey challenges everything we think we know about ageing - it's not the steady decline we imagine, but rather more like a car that starts making noise at certain mileages. The exciting part? We might be able to fix it.

Alina takes us into the fascinating world of biological age, explaining how our bodies don't all age at the same rate - your heart might be younger than your brain, or your immune system might be ageing faster than your muscles. It's a bit like having different parts of your car wearing down at different speeds. Through Generation Lab's groundbreaking work, we can now actually measure this, opening up the possibility of targeted interventions before problems arise.

But the real showstopper comes when Alina discusses their therapeutic plasma exchange treatment. Remember those controversial "young blood" stories from Silicon Valley? Alina explains how her team has transformed that concept into something far more sophisticated - a treatment that could potentially wind back our biological clock without needing young donors at all.

Looking ahead, Alina paints an optimistic but grounded picture of human longevity. While living to 120 or even 150 might be possible, she emphasises that the goal isn't just to live longer - it's to stay healthy and vibrant throughout those years. Imagine being 100 but feeling like you're 40, with all your faculties intact and energy to spare.

This episode of The HumanWare Project isn't just about science - it's about reimagining what it means to age. What would you do differently if you knew you had another 50 healthy years ahead? How would society change if retirement at 65 became a mid-life sabbatical instead of the end of our productive years?

Through Alina's eyes, we glimpse a future where ageing isn't something that happens to us, but something we actively manage - not through questionable anti-ageing creams or fad diets, but through precise, scientifically-measured interventions. It's a future where we might not just live longer, but live better, with more time to pursue our dreams, spend with loved ones, and maybe even make it to Mars.