#193: 🎙️ The Next Currency in Healthcare is Cells | Drew Taylor from Acorn Biolabs

I asked Drew if we were heading toward a future where my younger cells become a currency I could trade. He didn’t say “no”.

There’s a version of you from ten years ago. Skin that bounced back, hair that grew in thick, cells that healed fast and inflamed less.

That version is gone.

Unless you saved it.

This week on the Nina’s Notes Podcast, I sit down with Drew Taylor, CEO of Acorn Biolabs, whose team figured out that the stem cell goldmine we’ve been drilling into hip bones to reach has been sitting at the root of your hair this whole time.

With their protocol, you pluck about hairs from the back of your head at your doctor’s office, the follicles get shipped to a lab, checked for viability, and dropped into liquid nitrogen at -196°C.

At that temperature there’s no metabolism. No aging. Nothing.

A version of you, frozen mid-sentence in storage for when you need it.

And, banking those cells costs less than Netflix. $190 a year for frozen storage.

Acorn has already taken plucked hair follicles, turned them into iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells which can become anything) and turned them into cartilage, bone, fat, and neurons. They even pushed those neurons into the exact dopamine-producing cells that Parkinson’s destroys. Acron is also exploring using their protocol to create pancreatic cells for type 1 diabetes, and natural killer cells that hunt down senescent and cancerous cells, the same population that falls off a cliff as we age.

Oh, and three patients have reported their gray hairs coming back. Nobody was tracking for that!

I also asked - Who actually owns your cells if the company gets acquired? Does banking at 12 versus 45 create a two-tier longevity system? He answered both without flinching.