breakthroughs

Podcast: Tech for Mental Wellbeing with Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP

Podcast Health
Podcast: Tech for Mental Wellbeing with Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP

An image from one of TRIPP's virtual reality experiences for mental wellness. Nanea Reeves is TRIPP's CEO.

TRIPP

The "Making Sense of Science" podcast features interviews with leading experts about health innovations and the ethical questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by Matt Fuchs, editor of Leaps.org, the award-winning science outlet.

My guest today is Nanea Reeves, the CEO of TRIPP, a wellness platform with some big differences from meditation apps you may have tried like Calm and Headspace. TRIPP's experiences happen in virtual reality, and its realms are designed based on scientific findings about states of mindfulness. Users report feelings of awe and wonder and even mystical experiences. Nanea brings over 15 years of leadership in digital distribution, apps and video game technologies. Before co-founding TRIPP, she had several other leadership roles in tech with successful companies like textPlus and Machinima. Read her full bio below in the links section.

Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP.

TRIPP

Listen to the Episode

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This conversation coincided with National Brain Awareness Week. The topic is a little different from the Making Sense of Science podcast’s usual focus on breakthroughs in treating and preventing disease, but there’s a big overlap when it comes to breakthroughs in optimal health. Nanea’s work is at the leading edge of health, technology and the science of wellness.

With TRIPP, you might find yourself deep underwater, looking up at the sunlight shimmering on the ocean surface, or in the cosmos staring down at a planet glowing with an arresting diversity of colors. Using TRIPP for the past six months has been a window for me into the future of science-informed wellness and an overall fascinating experience, as was my conversation with Nanea.

Show notes:

Nanea and I discuss her close family members' substance addictions and her own struggle with mental illness as a teen, which led to her first meditation experiences, and much more:

- The common perception that technology is an obstacle for mental well-being, a narrative that overlooks how tech can also increase wellness when it’s designed right.

- Emerging ways of measuring meditation experiences by recording brain waves - and the shortcomings of the ‘measured self’ movement.

- Why TRIPP’s users multiplied during the stress and anxiety of the pandemic, and how TRIPP can can be used to enhance emotional states.

- Ways in which TRIPP’s visuals and targeted sound frequencies have been informed by innovative research from psychologists like Johns Hopkins’ Matthew Johnson.

- Ways to design apps and other technologies to better fulfill the true purpose of mindfulness meditation. (Hint: not simply relaxation.)

- And of course, because the topic is mental wellness and tech, I had to get Nanea's thoughts on Elon Musk, Neuralink and brain machine interfaces.

Here are links for learning more about TRIPP:

- TRIPP website: https://www.tripp.com/about/

- Nanea Reeves bio: https://www.tripp.com/team/nanea-reeves/

- Study of data collected by UK's Office for National Statistics on behavior during the pandemic, which suggests that TRIPP enhanced users' psychological and emotional mindsets: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-03...

- Research that's informed TRIPP: https://www.tripp.com/research/

- Washington Post Top Pick at CES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/...

- TRIPP's new offering, PsyAssist, to provide support for ketamine-assisted therapy: https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/tripp-acquires...

- Randomized pilot trial involving TRIPP: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/11/4/e0441...

Matt Fuchs
Matt Fuchs is the host of the Making Sense of Science podcast and served previously as the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He writes as a contributor to the Washington Post, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Nautilus Magazine, Fortune Magazine and TIME Magazine. Follow him @fuchswriter.
longevity

Podcast: Has the First 150-Year-Old Already Been Born

Podcast Health
Podcast: Has the First 150-Year-Old Already Been Born

In today's podcast episode, Steven Austad explains why we should want to live a long time as long as that involves longer healthspans.

Photo by Casey Andersen on Unsplash

Steven Austad is a pioneer in the field of aging, with over 200 scientific papers and book chapters on pretty much every aspect of biological aging that you could think of. He’s also a strong believer in the potential for anti-aging therapies, and he puts his money where his mouth is. In 2001, he bet a billion dollars that the first person to reach 150-years-old had already been born. I had a chance to talk with Steven for today’s podcast and asked if he still thinks the bet was a good idea, since the oldest person so far (that we know of), Jeanne Calment, died back in 1997. A few days after our conversation, the oldest person in the world, Kane Tanaka, died at 119.

Steven is the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Health Aging Research, a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama Birmingham. He's also Senior Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research, which is managing a groundbreaking longevity research trial that started this year. Steven is also a great science communicator with five books, including one that comes out later this year, Methuselah’s Zoo, and he publishes prolifically in national media outlets.

See the rest of his bio linked below in the show notes.

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Matt Fuchs
Matt Fuchs is the host of the Making Sense of Science podcast and served previously as the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org. He writes as a contributor to the Washington Post, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Nautilus Magazine, Fortune Magazine and TIME Magazine. Follow him @fuchswriter.
stem cells

New therapy may improve stem cell transplants for blood cancers

In The Lab Feature Story
New therapy may improve stem cell transplants for blood cancers

Ivan Dimov, Jeroen Bekaert and Nate Fernhoff - pictured here - recognized the need for a more effective cell sorting technology to reduce the risk of Graft vs Host disease, which affects many cancer patients after receiving stem cell transplants.

Orca Bio

In 2018, Robyn was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a blood cancer causing chronic inflammation and scarring. As a research scientist by training, she knew she had limited options. A stem cell transplant is a terminally ill patient's best chance for survival against blood cancers, including leukaemia. It works by destroying a patient's cancer cells and replacing them with healthy cells from a donor.

However, there is a huge risk of Graft vs Host disease (GVHD), which affects around 30-40% of recipients. Patients receive billions of cells in a stem cell transplant but only a fraction are beneficial. The rest can attack healthy tissue leading to GVHD. It affects the skin, gut and lungs and can be truly debilitating.

Currently, steroids are used to try and prevent GVHD, but they have many side effects and are effective in only 50% of cases. “I spoke with my doctors and reached out to patients managing GVHD,” says Robyn, who prefers not to use her last name for privacy reasons. “My concerns really escalated for what I might face post-transplant.”

Then she heard about a new highly precise cell therapy developed by a company called Orca Bio, which gives patients more beneficial cells and fewer cells that cause GVHD. She decided to take part in their phase 2 trial.

How It Works

In stem cell transplants, patients receive immune cells and stem cells. The donor immune cells or T cells attack and kill malignant cells. This is the graft vs leukaemia effect (GVL). The stem cells generate new healthy cells.

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Sarah Philip
Sarah Philip is a London-based freelance journalist who writes about science, film and TV. You can follow her on Twitter @sarahph1lip.