Phil Micans: What does Putin know about peptides?

What did the Soviets discover about peptides? 

Soviet researchers were studying peptide bioregulators decades before today’s longevity boom. Their work helped reshape Phil Micans’ thinking about food, gene activity and aging. 

A co-founder of International Antiaging Systems and editor of Aging Matters magazine, Phil was drawn into bioregulators by a 2010 lecture in Istanbul. The speaker was Professor Vladimir Khavinson, with whom he would later coauthor a book. 

He joins Richard Skaife to discuss what he observed in Russian clinics, the research involving gas workers in Siberia, and Khavinson’s hypothesis that these compounds could activate a “biological reserve.” 

He explains: 

■ How bioregulators differ from other peptides
■ Natural versus synthetic forms
■ The three bioregulators he prioritizes
■ The Gazprom studies and “biological reserve”
■ Conquering aging versus conquering death

Chapters 

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:17) - What are bioregulators?
• (04:37) - Food, genes and Soviet science
• (11:47) - Natural vs. synthetic
• (13:35) - Sourcing and quality
• (16:14) - What does Putin know?
• (18:55) - Can peptides extend lifespan?
• (23:31) - Conquering aging

Watch the full episode on YouTube

Further reading

PubMed: Review co-authored by Professor Vladimir Khavinson examining short peptides and gene regulation: Peptide Regulation of Gene Expression: A Systematic Review

PubMed: A 2003 study of thymus and pineal peptide preparations in 266 older adults followed for six to eight years, separate from the Gazprom research: Peptides of pineal gland and thymus prolong human life

Vrach: Related 2016 research on personalized prevention and peptide bioregulation among Gazprom workers. English abstract; full article in Russian: Personified Prevention of Diseases Under the Conditions of the Far North

PubMed: Phil Micans’ paper on aging populations, healthcare costs and preventive medicine: The Need for Anti-aging Medicine

Follow Phil Micans

Website: International Antiaging Systems
Publication: Aging Matters magazine
Book: Peptides in the Epigenetic Control of Ageing

Follow Richard Skaife

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardskaife/

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Peptide Show explores the science, medicine, business, and people shaping the rapidly evolving world of peptides.

Presented by Longr: longr.io

Follow Peptide Show for new episodes every Tuesday.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Some compounds discussed in this episode are investigational, unapproved for the uses discussed, or subject to changing regulatory requirements.

Creators and Guests

Host

Richard Skaife

Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and CEO of Longr, focused on longevity, health technology and emerging science.

Guest

Phil Micans

Phil Micans is a co-founder of International Antiaging Systems and editor of Aging Matters magazine. He has spent more than three decades working in anti-aging and longevity, with a particular interest in peptide bioregulators. He coauthored *Peptides in the Epigenetic Control of Ageing* with Professor Vladimir Khavinson and Alexander Mary

Editor

Toby Sorabjee

Co-founder and COO of Longr, working across longevity, health technology, investing and media.

What is Peptide Show?

Welcome to the world of Peptides. New episodes every Tuesday.

I mean, I remember using the word anti-aging,

you know, 20-plus, 30-plus
years ago, and people laughed.

I honestly remember that.
And I'm telling you the truth.

And I have a photograph of Professor Khavinson

receiving a medal
for outstanding work in medicine

from Putin himself. So, 100%, no question of it,

he knows all about bioregulators.

Is it an accident

that the average lifespan in the West is 80

and yet the maximum verifiable
lifespan is nearer 120?

My dream is that we conquer aging.

I think it's the biggest
problem the human race faces.

Thank you very much for joining
us on today's Peptide Show.

We really hope you enjoy this episode.

If you do, please like,
subscribe and share it with a friend.

We'd very much appreciate it.

In a South London classroom,
Phil Micans started wondering

what else our food might be capable of.

Nearly 30 years later, a lecture in Istanbul

gave that thought a new lease of life.

The speaker that day was Russian
scientist Vladimir Khavinson,

whose work drew Phil into
the world of peptide bioregulators.

They would later coauthor a book.

Which brings us to the bigger question:

what exactly did the Russians discover?

In this conversation, we explore
the Soviet research behind these compounds,

what sets them apart from other peptides,

and what Phil took from a 12-year
study of gas workers in Siberia.

My guest today is Phil Micans.

Welcome to Peptide Show.

Welcome to Peptide Show from Longr.
My name is Richard Skaife.

I'm a venture capitalist and entrepreneur.

And my guest today is Phil. Phil,

thank you very much
for joining us on Peptide Show.

I'm really looking forward to this one.

Well, it's very kind of you,
Richard. It's a pleasure to be here.

Now,

given the name of the show,

we pretty much exclusively talk about peptides

and the business of peptides,

but this is a small divergence

in that a lot of our conversation
is going to really be around

peptide bioregulators.

Am I getting the term right?

Is it a peptide bioregulator
or just a bioregulator?

Well, to save time, I might
suggest just saying bioregulator,

but they are peptides.

What is the difference between

a peptide and a bioregulator?

Okay. For somebody who's
kind of just stumbling into

this and doesn't yet quite
know what a peptide is?

Sure. Well,

I suppose we have to give credit to the late,

great Professor Vladimir Khavinson.

And I'm sure we'll

talk a little bit about him as we go on,

from Saint Petersburg in Russia.

And he was really the one
who played with these things

many moons ago. And he
defined them as being both...

And the term people like to use now,

I was scolded the other day.

I used to call them short-chain peptides,

but we can call them ultrashort peptides.

As you know, peptides are
made up of amino acids.

So as soon as you've got
two amino acids conjoined,

it becomes a peptide,

a dipeptide, specifically.
But to be a bioregulator,

typically, it has to be two, three, four,
five, six. We don't know, as of yet,

any bioregulators that are
beyond six amino acids.

But the crucial part of what
the bioregulator does

is they have been proven to

interact with DNA

in order to either activate or silence genes.

So there are a lot of peptides out there,

as you well know. I think

the school is basically up to 50 amino acids,

which is a lot.

But by being these very ultrashort peptides,

they have a number of advantages,

which will... which we can get into.
And they have a lot of research

behind them as well because, as

I think I alluded to,
the Russians or the Soviets,

perhaps I should say, were

playing with these in the 1980s. So they...

And that's a fascinating point,

isn't it? I think, you know, when you
throw in a term like bioregulators and,

you know, off camera, full disclosure,

we were having a little bit
of a chat, and, you know,

I said I stumbled into bioregulators

and the science around them,

actually through a Russian,

before I started to look at peptides.

Now we're saying that, you know,

bioregulators have really
been around for 40 years.

What do we know about them?

Yeah. Thank you.

And what do you think we
need to know about them?

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Well, okay.

I'm going to tell you a little story.

So my first learnings were in the early 1980s,

and when I went to South London College,

which is now called Thames University and

sounds much nicer.

But I did a course there, my first one,

which was called Food and Vitamin Technology.

I think today we might call
it nutrition. And one day,

the lecturer put up on
the overhead projector. Hey,

no PowerPoints, kids. No emails, no cell phones.

Only just had electricity.

That's right. [Laughter]

So basically, he put up
a pie chart on the screen and

he said, and I don't... Forgive me,

I don't actually remember the numbers.

It was rather a while ago.

But he put this pie chart up and he said,

"This is typically what you find in food."

He said, "You find X percentage of vitamins,

X percentage of minerals, X percentage of fats."

And most of it was fiber,
like 55%, if I remember rightly.

And I had a thought
in the classroom on that day.

And I said to myself, "Wow,

fiber must be more important than we think."

And in the '80s, people weren't
thinking too much about fiber. Okay,

I know it's different now.
And so I thought to myself,

well, fiber must be more
important than we imagine,

because I've always believed
that nature wastes nothing,

right? Whatever's in it, it's not wasted.

It's all energy of some description or another.

Or they've missed something.

That was the thought I had on that day.

Fast forward to 2010,

when I first had the privilege
to listen to Professor

Khavinson, strangely enough,
in Istanbul at a lecture.

And when I realized that their discovery

was that these ultrashort peptides

that are found in foods, right,

act as individualized gene switches,

both activating and silencing.
We'll come to that.

It was like a light bulb.

I had an epiphany at that moment because

it took me back to that classroom

when I asked myself, "Oh,

they've missed something."

And that was the point I thought

they had. We now know that these peptides,

these bioregulators found in different foods,

interact with us.

It explains our epigenetics.

It certainly explains the DNA methylation.

So it's something really fundamental

and really at the core. So, as a result of that,

you can imagine that

depending on which genes you're activating

or silencing, you could have
quite profound effects in

different areas of the body. And

amazingly, and I'm sure we'll talk about it,

the Soviets did the largest human studies

you've ever heard of, and I'll be happy to

you know, tell you more about those results.

We'll put them up on the screen

so people can go away and read them.

I mean, we talk about their presence in

food groups, if there are
any really obvious foods

which sort of jump out in terms of

that prominence. Yeah, awareness. Well,

I have a... And then, in terms
of bioregulators, what are we looking at?

What are the most common bioregulators

which are out there? Well, you know, today,

And are people getting as excited?

Yeah. Well,

you know, you could take this either way.

You might like it, you might not like it,

but of course these peptides
can be made synthetically.

Right? That's always possible, of course.

But what I've mainly been involved in

for various reasons,

including regulatory,
are the natural sources. Okay.

Now, for convenience,

the main sources of

the natural bioregulators are
either pigs or cows. Okay.

And it's a very exact...

If you want to get into how they're extracted,

I'll get into that, but otherwise

I'll skip over it, but it's a very,

very precise process.

There's very, very high safety.

This is not some organ extract

that we've all known about

and you can get from the butchers, you know.

This is something... It's a very, very fine

filtration process.

But that's the normal. But there are different

short... different ultra...

peptides are found in different food groups.

Just to give one example,

Professor Khavinson,

the last thing he was involved with,

and it's published,
was with the University of Tel Aviv,

where they'd asked him

to improve the output of strawberry production

in the deserts, you see.

And he...

And you're going to have
to forgive me right now,

because I can't remember
the precise peptides they used.

We can find it.

And basically

what they showed was: same strawberries,

same conditions.

One being grown as they're normally grown,

the other being grown the same way,

but now adding some peptides.

And they actually increased

the yield of strawberries,

the amount of fruit by 30%.

Three-zero percent. And that is a magic number

that I'd like to come back to

and talk to you about because I think

there's no accident that

30 keeps coming up again and again.

Interesting. So,

in terms of bioregulators that people

will commonly see,

what are the most common
bioregulators? And, you know,

do they have names in the same
way that we have with peptides?

How does that work? Well,

unfortunately, the names will drive you crazy,

because you need to learn
another language, right?

The Russians, when they

first started all this,
they named them... If they...

They named them one name if they were synthetic,

one name if they were natural,

and I'm talking about the same.

So let's take the pineal, right,

which is, I think, epitalon,

probably one of the best
known synthetic bioregulators.

It's a pineal bioregulator. Okay.

But if you have the natural source,

we call it epithalamin.

Right. And then they change the names again,

depending whether you inject them,

take them sublingually

or take them orally, right?

So all of a sudden you can
have six different names

for what is essentially the same
blinking molecule. Okay.

So it gets pretty horrible in that respect.

And sometimes when people throw names,

I have to really stop and

"Hang on a minute," you know.

So I actually cheat a little bit,

and I just go, "Pineal bioregulator,

kidney bioregulator," right? I

kind of do this cheat

because it simplifies everything.

It's still...

At the end of the day, it will be from a gland,

from an organ or from a tissue. Okay.

And today, commercially,

not every country, of course,

but commercially, there are
21 current ones available.

And I'll be happy to describe to you

the most popular ones
or the most fundamental ones.

But like everything in life,

you address your weak points.

If you have an issue with your thyroid

or your eyesight or whatever it is,

you're going to focus on that, aren't you?

You're going to say, "I need to fix
this." So everybody starts there.

It's different, of course,

if you're into regeneration or prevention.

That's a different side to the game.

And do people sort of...

We've seen this argument
before with cannabinoids

and with, you know, psychedelics.

Natural versus synthetic. Do you see a similar

conversation in your field of work?

I do, actually, and it's fairly recently,

about within the last year or two,

that I came to realize
a certain fundamental difference

between naturals.

I'm talking bioregulators all the time here,

you guys, okay?

I'm not talking about other peptides.

So, because when I first went out to Russia,

I was fascinated to go into the various clinics

and see how they were using them.

Of course, most of the patients
they were dealing with

had problems, right?

Some of them were there for preventative
health reasons, whatever,

but most of them had issues.
And I was asking them,

I was saying, "Well, you know,
how do you use them?"

And they do use injections as well,

but I can assure you, and we'll come back to it,

that the orals are effective.

And they said,

"Well, normally, Phil,"

they said, "We start the patient on synthetics."

And I went, "Oh, okay."

So he said, "We'll do that for about a month."

I said, "All right."

"But after about a month,
we flip them to the naturals."

So I, sort of confused, said,

"Well, why would you do that?"

And they said, "Well, we find that
when they're on the synthetics,

they act faster.

But when they're on the naturals,

they last longer, a lot longer."

And we can get into how dosing and cycling...

And the good news about the naturals is

there's no way you have
to take them every day. Okay.

It's quite a low...

Does delivery mechanism impact on

duration and tendency? A bit.

Is that something? A little bit.

A bit. A bit,

but not as much as you might imagine.

When you follow the...

when you follow the history of bioregulators,

like you say, so much of that work has been done

in the USSR and then Russia,

has that sort of impacted

the locations where there is,

you know, awareness and availability? Yeah.

Definitely. I mean,

we were using the Russian bioregulators

for a number of years
and we'd regularly order them

and they'd be delivered
from Saint Petersburg to us.

But the conflict, let us call it that, has

caused no end of problems in many countries.

So, to take the UK as an example,

my country,

then, you know, you can't
send money to a Russian bank.

They can't send money to you, right?

So there's one block, and there are many,

many products that you
cannot import from Russia.

I'm not saying that if you order
three packs from a Russian pharmacy,

they won't arrive in London,

but if you're running a business,

that's a totally different kettle of fish.

So, yes,

there are many countries
around the world where it has

impacted their ability to get
hold of the Russian products.

But what we did, actually, is we moved ahead,

knowing that Russia was going to be a problem.

So we source the materials from Denmark,

believe it or not, and then

we actually do all the encapsulation

work in the United Kingdom.

And that has overcome the issues.

But we followed...

we followed Khavinson's
original work to the letter.

Same source, same product, same dose,

same everything.
So that's what we've been doing.

So now, if you buy...

I won't mention names unless you want me to.

If you buy, or maybe you can put... Okay.

Thank you. Well, we branded it Nature's Marvels.

That's the thing that we called it.

Of course, other people are now
coming out and doing things,

you know, but as I'm sure you...

I don't think I'm telling
any secrets here when I say,

let's be honest,

the peptide world at
the moment is the Wild West.

Right? When you can be browsing through Facebook

and see an advert come
down about some injectable

peptide, probably from China,

that you can purchase,
and it says clearly on it,

"Not for human use. Research only," right,

which is their way round the problems. Okay.

Indeed.

And the challenges that come,

and we've done many episodes

just talking about the challenges of that.

And have you, you know,

even covering how somebody
can identify a fake COA,

which, of course, when you can fake a Rolex,

you can probably fake a COA.

And I imagine anybody who's

watching this, the next video they'll get,

if the YouTube algorithm does its work,

will probably be

a video about Putin,

and a lot of people suggesting that,

you know,

his physical form,

love him or hate him, at his grand old age,

has perhaps got something
to do with bioregulators.

Well, okay.

Again, this is no secret.

Professor Vladimir Khavinson, look,

was one of the doctors looking after him.

So, and he...

And I have a photograph.

No, no. I'm not... I'm telling you the truth.

And I have a photograph of Professor Khavinson

receiving a medal
for outstanding work in medicine

from Putin himself.

So, 100%, no question of it,

he knows all about bioregulators.

No question of it. And

I don't...

I have no evidence whether he uses them or not.

But he knows that.

I think it's likely.

Indeed, he does look pretty

decent physical shape

for his age. I think he's

mid-70s now. Yeah.

Yeah, no. He takes it very seriously.

In fact, several years ago,

he told his doctors

that the average lifespan
in Russia was not good enough,

which it isn't, you know.

I mean, they have one of the lowest

average lifespans across Europe.

I mean, there's all kinds of reasons for that.

Obviously, it's not one singular thing,

but he's conscious of it
and he wants to improve it.

Indeed.

Now you've spent,

you know, a considerable part of your career

working in this space. What

do you think has sort of changed?

You know, is there a difference
in consumer perception?

Is the peptide noise helping

the bioregulatory conversation?

I suppose it is, yes.

I mean, it is a different world.

When I started out,

I don't want to call them fads,

and this isn't a fad,
but over the course of my career,

there were constant... I mean, the very first
thing I remember people into was chelation.

Later on, I did quite a lot with nootropics,

which morphed into smart drugs and

then bioidentical hormones,

which are still around, of course.

All these things are still around, of course.

And now, very much at the front
and center, is peptides,

without question.

They're all... And words, I mean,

I remember using the word anti-aging,

you know, 20-plus, 30-plus
years ago, and people laughed.

I honestly remember that. Now,

you know, every advert on television,

every... You know, it's all over the place.

You know, because... Well, I mean, yeah,

now you can buy yourself
a longevity chocolate bar.

So, I mean, you know, exactly. Exactly.

Two final questions before we bring our...

bring it to a close. You did touch on, you know,

the terminology of anti-aging and now,

you know, sort of longevity.

What's the significance

between bioregulators
and anti-aging and longevity?

Where do the bedfellows meet? Right.

Well, that's really interesting.

And if you don't mind, Richard,

I'm going to give you the one-minute story

about the biggest study they
ever did with the humans.

Okay.

So... Please. Which Khavinson
was behind, of course.

So they took three bioregulators,

and I still quantify these
as the three most important,

unless you're treating a problem.

If you have a problem with your thyroid, yes,

you want to take a thyroid bioregulator, right?

Whatever. But if you're not sure

and you just want good

general health for as long as you want,

et cetera, I think this
trial focused on these three

and really proved it. So it was pineal,

thymus, blood vessel. Okay.

So what did they do? Well,

they did two big studies,

but the biggest study they did is

they took 11,000 workers in Gazprom.

Gazprom are Russia's oil and gas people, right?

Khavinson said most of these workers
were living in Siberia, right?

So already they're in a tough environment.

I always say to people

they weren't office workers in New York,

you know, they already had a tough day.

So there we are. So, 11,000 of them.

Now they put 3,000 of them on placebo,

which was vitamin pills, right?

And then the other 8,000,

they gave these three bioregulators

which I just described. And over 12...

Was that an oral bioregulator?

Was that an oral bioregulator, or...?

It was oral. It was oral, yeah.

So it was thymus, pineal,

blood vessel. Okay.

Khavinson said, of course,

blood vessel is synergistic with them all.

Not really surprising when
you realize what it does,

right? But anyway,

long story short, by the end of the trial,

the end of 12 years,

they had a thousand... They...

The numbers did go down over time.

They didn't give it 11,000,

8,000 people all the time.

But by the end of the trial,

and, by the way, people
started at the ages of 40, 50,

60. These were not 20-,

30-year-olds in the trials. Okay.

So by the time the trial ended 12 years later,

we were talking about people in their 50s,

60s, 70s, even a few in their 80s. Okay.

And they studied that group

and then they studied the group

that just took the vitamins.

And they found that in the peptide group,

in the bioregulator group,

they had 30% less

morbidity and 30% less mortality, right?

Now, again, that number 30's
come up again, hasn't it?

And what Khavinson said was
that what these peptides...

I keep saying peptides.

What these bioregulators are fundamentally doing

is they are activating

what he called the biological reserve.

And he's discovered that every cell

in our body has a biological reserve of 30%.

It's sitting there waiting to be used,

but obviously sometimes it isn't activated.

And so his theory was,

if the longest-lived people, verifiable,

have been about 120... I mean,
Jeanne Calment was 122.

There was a lady in England, actually,

just the other day, 117, right?

And it's extremely rare, folks, to get over 110

because they call them supercentenarians.

They reckon if you haven't
got enough fingers and toes...

You have enough fingers and toes to count

the number of supercentenarians on this planet

right now. Okay.

It is rare, but he,

Khavinson, surmised that the peptides

would activate this biological reserve.

And is it an accident

that the average lifespan in the West is 80

and yet the maximum verifiable
lifespan is nearer 120?

Are these... It's only a hypothesis, folks.

Are these long-lived people

activating their biological reserve?

So we may have something that

not only improves overall health

but actually will increase lifespan as well.

Maybe. Indeed.

Now, talking of lifespan,

we're going to jump forward
over the next 10 years.

What are your hopes,

prayers and dreams for bioregulators

and where do you see...?

My dream is that we conquer aging.

I think it's the biggest
problem the human race faces.

I'm not saying that's conquering death.

That's a completely different subject.

So let's not have the religious
people writing in.

That's a whole different debate.

Years and years ago,

I got involved
with a parliamentary subcommittee,

and I gave them some facts and figures.

If we break down what all diseases are,

they fall into four categories. Okay.

They are either inherited disease,

genetic disease,

or they are trauma, accidents,
or they are infectious,

right, or they are degenerative.

And I think there's a strong
argument to make that

degenerative diseases are principally aging.

How many 20-year-olds do you know

with Alzheimer's disease,
just as an example, right?

It's very likely, the older you get,

the more likelihood there is of having

a degenerative disease. That's a given, really.

So if you then take the financial
cost for most countries,

and I looked up the UK at the time,

and you broke it down into
those four categories. Okay.

We spend, as a society,

75 to 90% of the money on degenerative disease.

Right? So, if you want
to make a financial impact,

help people not suffer from
degenerative diseases, right?

Job one. And it would make... And, of course,

it would make an enormous
impact to people's lives.

Not to have cancer, not to have Alzheimer's,

not to have arthritis or whatever it is, right?

I don't want to put words in your mouth,

but you're sort of suggesting,
or leaning towards,

we may actually have some of the answers,

they're just hiding in plain sight.

Yeah, I think so.

I think so. The issues,

as I think you already know

from your previous episodes, Richard,

it will come down to regulations.

Will people... Can we get at... I mean,

there's no accident, of course,

that medical tourism exists today,

because people are flying
to Turkey or wherever, right,

or to get treatments

and procedures that they just can't get locally.

And we're going to see a lot more of that,

I think. But my dream is we defeat aging.

That's my dream.

Well, it's a bold dream to have, Phil,

one I happen to share with you as well.

So, thank you.

Well, it really has been a pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you.