At 16, Chris Mirabile was lying in a hospital bed the night before brain surgery, wondering whether he would wake up the next morning. Years later, as he was building NOVOS, he lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. Those two experiences reshaped the way he thought about health and ageing, and eventually led him to found a longevity company built around a simple but demanding question: can we actually prove that what we are doing to slow ageing works?
In this conversation, Chris Mirabile, Founder and CEO of NOVOS, takes us through the science of the 12 hallmarks of ageing and explains why NOVOS is trying to tackle all 12 at once rather than focusing on a single pathway. We also get into a less obvious problem: ingredients that look promising individually do not necessarily behave the same way when combined. It is one of the reasons Chris believes longevity products should be tested as complete formulations, rather than relying only on evidence for their individual components.
We then look at the animal and human research behind NOVOS Core, including its cardiovascular study in healthy adults. We also discuss the science — and marketing — behind Face Age, and Chris’s take on some of the biggest claims, controversies and myths currently circulating in the longevity space.
Guest information
Chris Mirabile — Founder and CEO, NOVOS
Chris survived a brain tumour diagnosis and surgery at 16, went on to study finance, accounting and international business at NYU Stern, and won NYU Stern’s Business Plan Competition before co-founding Hotlist, an early social planning network that reached more than 220 million social plans.
He later founded NOVOS, a longevity company structured as a Public Benefit Corporation, donating a portion of its profits and equity to nonprofit organisations supporting ageing research. NOVOS assembled a scientific advisory board that includes Harvard Medical School professor George Church. Its Head of R&D, Dr Diogo Barardo, created DrugAge, one of the world’s largest databases of compounds studied for their effects on lifespan in model organisms.
Links & References
* NOVOS: https://novoslabs.com/
* The Science Behind NOVOS Core: https://learn.novoslabs.com/
* NOVOS Core Cardiovascular Research: https://learn.novoslabs.com/cardiovascular
* University of Surrey NOVOS Core Study — SSRN Preprint: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6241278
* NOVOS Core: https://novoslabs.com/product/novos-core/
* Chris Mirabile on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slowmyage
Chapters
00:00 Podcast introduction and guest
02:11 The experiences that changed how Chris thinks about health
02:52 A brain tumour at 16
06:50 From finance to startup founder
09:51 What does longevity actually mean?
12:40 Going upstream — the 12 hallmarks of ageing
17:34 Self-experimentation, data and discovering PubMed
21:18 Why Chris believed NOVOS needed to exist
23:17 Bringing leading scientists on board
29:09 Why target all 12 hallmarks at once?
33:35 Choosing the ingredients for NOVOS Core
36:47 Why the complete formula needs to be tested
40:25 NOVOS Core and lifespan in aged mice
41:04 Moving into human trials
42:00 What the cardiovascular study measured
43:47 Why start with heart and blood vessel health?
45:21 What happened after a single dose?
46:25 The results after six months
49:19 Can you make an already healthy person healthier?
51:58 FaceAge — science, marketing and biological age
56:28 NOVOS Life, wearables and AI
58:07 What longevity advice are people getting wrong?
01:03:04 Sleep, cholesterol and Chris’s CAC scan
01:08:48 Rapid fire
01:12:30 The longevity myth Chris does not believe
