Assertion Supported
Topol: Personalized vaccines are curing pancreatic and kidney cancers
“So vaccines now are capable Of cures of pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, with these personalized vaccines using the proteins of the person's tumor.”
Opinion
Topol: FDA-approved Alzheimer's drugs do not work and are very risky
“The Alzheimer's drugs, which don't really work, and they're very risky”
Assertion Partly supported
Topol: Mass screening detects only 14% of cancers despite massive costs
“We only pick up 14% of cancers from that mass screening, which costs over hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Topol: Risk-partitioned care can add seven healthy years to life
“There should be a reboot new standard of care based on intelligent partitioning of risk. Seven years more of healthspan free of the major three diseases.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: Age reversal therapies like senolytics remain unproven in humans
“Where you get reversing of aging, so you keep people healthier body-wide, and that's where we see all this remarkable investments in companies like Altos and with reprogramming, Senolytics, and a long list. But they're really focused on a monumental task, whic…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Topol: Immune system therapies will eventually eliminate cancer deaths
“And so, you know, whether it's antibody drug conjugates, a tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, and all these different ways, it's hard to imagine that in the future, we're gonna lose people with cancer, Because of being able to bring your immune system to the high…”
Opinion
Topol: GLP-1s are the most momentous drug class in medical history
“It's the most momentous drug class in medical history.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Topol: A large proportion of the population will take oral GLP-1s
“It wouldn't be surprising to me that now with pills that are remarkably effective to substitute for injections that can be much less expensively. That a large proportion of the population would be taking one of these drugs, or even their successors, that is, t…”
Insight
Topol: Longevity requires preventing major diseases, not reversing aging
“We have a path to prevention. It isn't reversing aging. It's just preventing the age-related morbidities of the big three.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: Lifestyle changes can prevent up to 90% of cardiovascular disease
“They, ah, are preventable variably, so cardiovascular, 80 and 90% from lifestyle and related factors, modifiable factors, like your LDL cholesterol, that kind of thing.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: Lifestyle factors can prevent 50% of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases
“And cancer and neurodegenerative, just from what we know today with lifestyle factors, we're about half that can be prevented.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Topol: Comprehensive proteomic panels are now available inexpensively
“So the omics, it includes not just gene sequence or arrays, but it has all the proteins, all the proteomic panels, That we can get, which we never could get before, inexpensively.”
Assertion Partly supported
Topol: B-cell depletion resets the immune system to cure autoimmune diseases
“In the last couple of years, we've seen Unprecedented cures. We never had anything. Lupus. Progressive systemic sclerosis. Even cases of multiple sclerosis. Dermatomyositis. So, basically, it's depletion of all the B cells, and when they come back, they have f…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Topol: Lifestyle alone cannot prevent major age-related diseases
“So if each of us did, pulled out all the stops for the lifestyle factors, which is a long list, that will help. But it's not going to be only lifestyle factors that are the ways to prevent the big three age-related diseases.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: AI biomarker models can predict Alzheimer's onset decades early
“For example, with Alzheimer's, you get a P-Tau, two 17. It's modifiable by lifestyle. You check it again in, you know, six months or a year. Now you have two data points, and you can say, you know, with all the other data that's available, when you're gonna se…”
Prediction Held up
Scripps will run a GLP-1 trial for non-overweight long COVID patients
“We're gonna be doing a long COVID trial in people who are not overweight.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: At least half of patients regain weight after stopping GLP-1s
“We don't have encouraging data at the moment, because at least half of people gain weight back when they stop.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: P-tau protein testing provides 20-year warning for cognitive impairment
“We can also look at specific proteins, like, for example, For the brain, p-tau- . And what's amazing about that protein, which we can get now, and it's not that expensive, but that in itself gives us over a twenty-year warning about mild cognitive impairment.”
Assertion Contradicted
Topol: Lifestyle modifications can reduce p-tau protein levels up to 80%
“It's modifiable by exercise and lifestyle. We've seen people in studies that drop more than 50%, even up to 80%.”
Assertion Supported
Topol: 88% of women will never get breast cancer
“88% of women will never have breast cancer.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Topol: Countries with fewer obstacles than the US will implement preventive care
“And we will see countries that will implement it because they don't have the obstacles that we have.”
Assertion Supported
Scripps study finds little genomic explanation for healthy aging to 87
“We had done a big study we called the Welderly, where we basically found very little in the genomes of people who had gone to the age of 87 on average with never having had an age-related disease.”
Assertion Partly supported
Topol: Major age-related diseases incubate for 20 years before symptoms
“It takes 20 years to get these diseases, with rare exception. You know, heart disease, almost all cancers, and neurodegenerative, they are incubating for a very long time.”
Opinion
Topol: AI is the most critical dimension of modern healthcare
“So the first most important one is AI, because you need that to pull all this other data we're going to talk about together.”
Dr. Eric Topol