Evelyne
Bischof

On senolytics and cancer

Evelyne Bischof“We have great conversations with Professor James Kirkland, who is working a lot right now on triple-negative breast cancer — something I’m super passionate about — and glioblastoma. Both entities will probably benefit a lot from senolytics.”

On AI, quoting Peter Diamandis

Evelyne Bischof“Citing Peter Diamandis, whom I respect so much — he said that at some point in medicine in general, not using AI to help guide you…”

Marek Piotrowski“Will be a crime.”

Evelyne Bischof“At least will be a breach of your Hippocratic oath. You do harm. And in longevity medicine, I think we have much more powerful tools than in oncology at that time. We have the whole omics. We have much more of the influence of epigenetics coming in. We didn’t have that, and we still don’t have enough of it, in oncology.”

On what the field actually needs

Evelyne Bischof“We have great science, and I’m certain we will have even more and even better if there are enough resources fuelled into it. So we need monetary resources that are appropriately put into the right places. But besides allocation, what we need a lot is engagement of many stakeholders — in a way that we can talk to each other.”

On the first longevity department inside a hospital

Evelyne Bischof“I have one foot still in the so-called sick care, really in the sick care system in university hospital, in internal medicine and oncology, and at the same time in longevity medicine. Now not only having my own longevity patients, which I have had for many years right now, but also directing the Sheba Longevity Department — so really the first department within a hospital that will provide longevity medicine to people for free. So really something that I was dreaming about, to democratize longevity medicine, and to bring it into the setting of what most people still associate with medicine. When you think medicine, you think: I go to a doctor. And that’s fine — you just need to learn more what’s there, how the doctor will be thinking, what the diagnostics will be. So I hope that being in this university hospital will allow to permeate to other specialties, to learn about longevity medicine and to work together.”

On making it a discipline

Evelyne Bischof“Bring longevity medicine to a position as a discipline in medicine, so that it will stop being something vague and undefined and somehow medicine-related but still outside of the healthcare systems. Being scientific, at the same time in the clinical setting… I think this will now break that. And this is a phenomenon that is now spreading, which I love. And bringing longevity medicine to people through public health and also through governance.”

On who actually carries the message

Evelyne Bischof“You are the marketing person who is bringing this to masses, and I’m just a scientist or a clinician that can do just that much. So we need people like yourself that will bring the message and vocalize it in a correct way… to educate people, to really bring them the knowledge what’s going on, and what are the dos and don’ts, and what the future holds, and why are we doing all this, although we still don’t know so much.”

On healthspan, and the people aiming further

Evelyne Bischof“Longevity as a domain is extremely inclusive… For myself, in terms of longevity medicine, healthy longevity medicine in a clinical setting, for me that’s really much focused on health span… To have visionaries who want to extend primarily the lifespan, and extend it really significantly — that’s not what we can do in the clinic, that’s not what we are trying to do in our practice. But I think that’s an important part of the community… Me as a clinician, what I always have to say: I only believe in what is proven by RCTs and what is safe. But I’m not a skeptic here.”

On the Sunday morning she read a paper and sent a message

Evelyne Bischof“I was following some people who are publishing, and Alex Zhavoronkov, he published a paper in Science around the year 2019 — one of his many, many papers. And I remember it so well. It was Hanukkah, and it was Sunday, and the routine coffee morning, we’re checking the science news. And something that I never did is, I reached out, because I saw on his status that he is in Shanghai. And we met the same day… I knew about aging and aging research, but I was not aware even that much about really the longevity movement. And I was just extremely fortunate to find him and to have him become a mentor for me in that area.”

On the teenagers writing papers

Evelyne Bischof“Many of my patients come even at that age, or the patients ask me: how about, can you help my child? And many pregnant women or couples who want to become pregnant come to optimize their health before that. The message would be: join the movement. It doesn’t matter which discipline you will go later into… We have a longevity association for teenagers. There are students from age of like 12 to 17… And what they are doing is phenomenal — they’re writing papers. They are so motivated.”

Her invitation, and her three wishes

Evelyne Bischof“Feel invited definitely to the Sheba Longevity Department. Would be really nice to have you there. Maybe you can go through the testing with your son, and then we will compare you — and then you can come a year later again.”

Evelyne Bischof“I would definitely wish you to be safe. Come back safe. Safe and healthy, or healthier, hopefully. Number two, I wish you so much that you will get the right messages from everything that you will see. You will be mining information from the maybe lowest levels of something extremely traditional… So I wish you a lot of knowledge mining and inspiration. And third, I wish you a great success at the end of your travel, to produce something that will really speak to even larger masses.”