Before the Diagnosis: How Cellular Intelligence Is Rewriting Longevity Medicine | Dr. Adrijana Kekic

What if your body has already been sending distress signals for years — signals your doctor's standard tests were never designed to catch?

Dr. Brandon Crawford sits down with Dr. Adrijana Kekic — longevity pharmacist, Futurome founder, and one of the nation's first pharmacogenomic clinical pharmacy specialists — to explore multiomics: the systems biology revolution that turns your cells into a real-time dashboard for your health. Dr. Kekic also unpacks cellular drift, the quiet erosion of your cells' ability to intelligently respond to their environment, and why detecting it early is the entire game in longevity medicine.

Resources

Futurome Longevity Quiz

Dr. Adrijana Kekic on Substack

Geneva College of Longevity Sciences

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Transcript

Dr Brandon Crawford (00:00.782)
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the longevity formula. I'm your host, Dr. Brandon Crawford. Today we're sitting down with Dr. Adriana Kekich. She is a pharmacist, but she has an intriguing personal story that has helped her to actually develop some things around multiomics. What the heck is that? We'll talk to you about it. Some AI driven healthcare optimization that she's going to give us a ton of information about.

And overall, we're going to be talking about cellular intelligence in action. Is that what you told me? Right. That's that's what we're going after. Fantastic. Well, yeah. So, Dr. Kekich, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited about this conversation.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (00:37.475)
Yes, yes, so, so what I said.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (00:48.63)
thank you so very much for the invite. It's a pleasure to meet you, Brandon. This is the first time we're meeting, so we're going to be learning about each other through this talk, and I cannot wait to dive in.

Dr Brandon Crawford (00:59.914)
Absolutely. Well, let's start learning a little bit more about you because you have a very interesting background, right? So you have a doctorate in pharmacy, which I have a whole side story about that. I was actually accepted to two different pharmacy schools. I, I, spent a lot of time in the compounding pharmacies. Like it was actually a really interesting world for me. I love biochemistry and then things really shifted for me. have a whole side story for that, but for you, so you started

in this pharmacy world, not that you're out of it now, but you started in this traditional pharmacy model. What's going on? Like how have you now arrived where you're at?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (01:39.294)
So great question. And I cannot wait to hear your side story, but to maybe put the answer to the question is, yes, I am a classically trained pharmacist, meaning I am a doctor of pharmacy. I was trained specifically in genetics. I trained at Mayo Clinic. I also worked at the Mayo Clinic for the past decade, but I've been in this realm of pharmacology, which I refer to as cellular intelligence in action.

for about three decades. And I think we share, we're probably kindred spirits in many ways. When folks have like this deep curiosity about what exactly is happening under the hood, I realized that I also had limitations in terms of understanding the body. Not only, okay, once you get a diagnosis, my role was typically how do we personalize treatments for you? And that's what I did as...

pharmacogenetic pharmacist, happy to explain what that is. But then I realized, my goodness, we are only looking at one specific piece of a puzzle here. And so in order for somebody to truly experience healing, it cannot be confined only to one part of that conversation. And where I'm going with this is I actually have a couple of more degrees. This is why I'm saying the curiosity kind of leads you down that path.

including a couple of masters, precision nutrition and neurogenomics, which focused on something called metabolomics, which is about the cellular talk. And then also healthcare innovation, because I wanted to build something that I feel is still missing from the healthcare system that we currently have, specifically in United States, which...

You know, we can argue about this. I used to say healthcare system is broken. think healthcare system is designed and it does what it's designed to do and that it's reactive, it's acute, and it's really focused more on that acute, providing acute help or care versus what I think both of us and many of us actually in this space are really keen on developing further. And that is how do we prevent you

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (03:57.948)
from becoming a patient in the first place. So my journey is also informed by my personal stories, not only by these professional kind of curiosities.

Dr Brandon Crawford (04:10.603)
So I agree with you, right? So we have this healthcare system that I'm thankful for. You know, if I have a broken leg, if I have an acute injury of some type, that's what that system is set up for, right? That system is not set up to prevent or manage these chronic conditions, right? And so ultimately, is that what you're going after here?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (04:36.572)
Yes, exactly. So for some of our listeners or your listeners here, I am sure that you have visited this concept of, you know, chronic disease and four horsemen of that many times. Yeah, exactly. So the idea is, and this is kind of how I think about this, Brendan, everything is information.

Dr Brandon Crawford (04:49.517)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (04:58.906)
That information does something to your body and body does something with that information. And I believe that we need to do a better job of understanding what that information is. How do we act on that? And how does that tailor your lifestyle and your healthspend, the number of years that you live in good health, vitality, physical, spiritual, emotional, cognitive, all of this is you, not just your body. So how does that actually inform?

how you know your cells and our tagline is know your cells, know yourself. And when I say ours, obviously I'm a founder of this company called Futurome. We do exactly this, help you understand your cells and the environment so that you can first course correct things that are going in the wrong direction that will likely lead to not only four horsemen of death, but autoimmune conditions and many other things that we have or do not have labels for or diagnosis for.

Secondly, help you optimize on that and thirdly, really put you on the path of that longevity. And we can, I'm sure, talk about what longevity actually even means.

Dr Brandon Crawford (06:09.357)
True. Yes. that, would be a great topic to break down. love your concept of information. You're right. Everything that we, well, everything that we put into ourselves, everything that we do, like this is all information coming in to ourselves, to our inner access, to our bio photon systems, right? The bio photon system is essentially where I'm going and my research. and that's very, very exciting for me. So can you

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (06:33.17)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr Brandon Crawford (06:37.869)
I would love for you to break down just a little bit what this concept of pharmacogenomics, I'm sorry. Yeah, pharmacogenomics actually is, and then like, why should we really care about it? Because this isn't something that's easily digestible to most patients.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (06:55.292)
Yes. So pharmacogenomics, you can think of it simply like this. We can use DNA testing. So we can look at some of your genes and essentially see how you would process, break down and respond to medications. So pharmacogenomics is simply a tool in precision and personalized medicine, which we can also unpack as well. It's a tool that we use to help you

your physician and you personalize your treatments. Why should we care about it? Well, I don't think that many of us know that adverse drug reactions are between fourth to sixth leading cause of death in United States. So, medications that are correctly prescribed for the diagnosis that's correctly identified and given to you, those very medications

for a variety of different reasons, including your own DNA and biology, can lead to adverse drug reactions, essentially serious side effects that can land you in hospital and also unfortunately cause deaths. So we need to do better in meeting people where they are and understanding their DNA makeup. Now, DNA or genetics, your genetics, is not an old be-all.

But there are certain mutations that Brandon, you and I have inherited from our parents and our ancestors that will make us respond to drugs differently. So let's say that we needed a pain medication. Let's say we needed a blood pressure, statin, and I'm not saying we do, but should you needed it, your body has different perhaps ability to metabolize those drugs and respond to them, meaning will they work or not? Then maybe.

mind does and that is absolutely informed by your genetics just like your eye color is determined by it.

Dr Brandon Crawford (08:54.901)
Right. So the sounds really important. This sounds almost like, sorry, the pollen is going crazy here in Texas. And, my gosh, there you go. so what's that? I've got some things. Yeah. So this is a really big topic and it's really important because so many people don't understand that we actually have technology and we have the ability to analyze.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (09:03.866)
Here for us too. I'm with you. I have my water.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (09:13.317)
hehe

Dr Brandon Crawford (09:23.147)
your DNA, we have the ability to analyze all these different snips, all these different genetic markers. And then that can actually determine how you respond or don't respond to certain medications. I mean, are we to the point in healthcare to where everyone should be transitioning to this model and using this technology before starting a medication?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (09:48.476)
Great question and I'm going to give you a two-fold answer. So are we at the point? The short answer is not really.

And there are reasons for it, including insurance reimbursements, education, also huge discrepancy in terms of testing platforms that are out there along with their clinical decision supports. Essentially the way to interpret the report for you as a clinician to come in and say, I can act on this as opposed to try to spend minutes and hours figuring this out. What does this mean for you, Adriana? So are we there yet? Not really.

Should this be done as a standard of care? Brandon, I've been preaching about this for over a decade now. When Mayo Clinic, yes, the short answer is yes. When Mayo Clinic hired me, they actually specifically, I'm here in Arizona. I was very, very lucky and privileged to, where Mayo Clinic reached out and hired me to help spearhead this pharmacogenomic service here in Arizona. And I became one of the first.

or nations, pharmacogenomic clinical pharmacy specialists. Why am I saying that? I'm saying that because even in my world, the pharmacy world, most of my colleagues did not know about pharmacogenomics. And I think pharmacogenomics is very neatly aligned in this space of pharmacology because pharmacogenomics, Brandon, is simply pharmacology on steroids.

Why? Because pharmacology has two components, pharmacokinetics, which is a story of how things move through your body, meaning how do drugs get absorbed, metabolized, distributed. But there is another story, pharmacodynamics, which is what that drug does to your body. And both of these components are imprinted by your genetics.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (11:48.614)
And so understanding that is crucial. This is one of the reasons why people who have tried many medications say, simply cannot tolerate it. Even a miniature dose, it affects me in a specific way. And so it's really important that we at least educate clinicians and us clients, meaning patients, individuals, that genes indeed dictate this, have a conversation with your clinician or physician or

pharmacist even to say, what does this mean? How do I pursue this? And can we work together in figuring this out? And my final thought is we at Mayo and I'm no longer at Mayo, I just want to make that delineation, but there are so many amazing courses that have been developed by those of us who have actually been practicing this in clinical practice. So you're not stuck with something theoretical, but rather you have a roadmap that guides you

in your clinical decision making process, meaning even as an individual, what does that mean for me? What medications should I not take and what medications can I do well with?

Dr Brandon Crawford (12:57.111)
That's beautiful. And you made a good delineation there talking about your pharmacist or your clinician. I've always been, there it goes again. I've always been a firm believer that, and I think it, I don't think it's an argument. The pharmacist is the expert when it comes to medications. And I think that providers are sometimes taking a little bit too much creative freedom when they're prescribing some of these medications. So is this concept best handled?

by the pharmacist and then communicated to the clinician.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (13:31.848)
The short answer is yes. I mean, think about like what Mayo Clinic did. They did not necessarily, I mean, we had to do develop this, which the whole team of physicians, PhDs, and whoever needed to be part of that, administrators even, needed to be a part of that conversation to pilot this. But really acting on this, guiding our teams, this is very disruptive. So you need to have your team player that you can tag and say, hey, what does this mean? Or at least, you know,

have somebody who will create these recommendations or at least PDF, however you're engaging with this, that will actually make sense. Pharmacists are, I agree with you from the perspective that pharmacists are extensively trained in pharmacology. I have spent a long time, but most of us at least as a baseline will get six years, not a semester, six years dedicated just to understand how things move through your body, essentially this world of pharmacology.

So yes, the short answer is yes.

Dr Brandon Crawford (14:31.915)
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm assuming that the platform that you've created, the solution you've created in future Rome incorporates some of these concepts of pharmacogenetics. Okay. And then of course, multi, what is it? Multiomics. See, I'm even having trouble with these words. Okay. So let's dive into the concept of multiomics. What the heck is that?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (14:47.656)
mix.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (14:56.978)
Multiomics, what exactly is multiomics and who came up with this terminology to start with? Maybe an engineer. I'm thinking an engineer was involved in coining the term here. So multiomics, you can think of it like this. If pharmacogenomics gives you a sneak peek, really an intro opens the door to see what's happening inside of your body as far as your DNA and your genes that are related to medications.

Dr Brandon Crawford (15:03.681)
Probably a pharmacist, right?

Right. Okay.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (15:27.528)
genetics obviously looks at your genes, that's your hardware. We often say, think of it like this, if you are running a system, and really multiomics is a system approach thinking to our biology. So if our system, our body, you can think of it like, okay, if my hardware is my DNA, essentially instructions that are somehow encoded there,

then what I run on is not just my hardware, I'm running on softwares. And depending on which software is running is what I might be experiencing through life. So let me bring it maybe to more practical. So multiomics is a universe of self. So we can look at your genes, genes that's called genetic or genomics. Genes give instructions to make proteins.

And we can look at this world of protein or layer of proteins, is called proteomics. On top of the genes, you have switches. Those switches we called epigenes or epigenomics. So now we have genomics or genetics, epigenetics, epigenomics, proteomics, and down the line, you know, how things are communicated in the bodies through metabolites. So we can look at the metabolomics as well. There are

Those are elements of our internal self. There is a lot more. Transcriptomics essentially looks at how RNA is transcribed. There's also something called exposome. So we continuously react to information that's coming from within that I described, but also information, Brandon, that's coming from all around us. So that's exposome. Our environment is that exposome layer. So when I think...

So for example, when I meet with a patient and we're going through their history, what's going on, hopefully they're trying to prevent maybe family history, condition that they have or personal course corrected. We never just look at pharmacogenomics or genetics or microbiome or metabolomics or their Digitome data, meaning the data that's coming from digital devices. We try to collate their cellular cells.

Dr Brandon Crawford (17:26.795)
Right.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (17:36.08)
And so I'll pause here because there is a lot to unpack, but multi-omics is a world of yourself that exists in the environment.

Dr Brandon Crawford (17:39.83)
Okay.

Dr Brandon Crawford (17:46.634)
So this is, you're essentially talking systems biology. Yeah. Okay. And then you're folding that into the information theory of aging, right? Okay. there you go. because I'm hearing a lot about

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (17:50.974)
Correct.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (17:57.48)
Correct. Correct. Exactly. With 12 whole marks of aging.

Dr Brandon Crawford (18:06.483)
What you're saying, it sounds like a lot of David Sinclair's work. sounds like a lot of, things taken from that field, but then all these other systems of biology approaches and you're pretty much just taking all of these different ways to analyze the body and the cells. And you're putting it all into a platform that is going to be faster, easier for the clinician, for the patient. Am I getting there?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (18:33.478)
You're absolutely right. So you can think of it, all of this generates so-called big data, hundreds and thousands of biomarkers. We cannot sift through that manually. I mean, you could, it's going to take you a long time and also try to make relationships out of them. That's going to take you a really long time. So this generates multiomics, generates big data. Now we can put that big data onto a computer and leverage technology called digital twin.

Dr Brandon Crawford (18:45.42)
Yeah.

Dr Brandon Crawford (18:50.401)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (19:00.85)
that can not only identify what biomarkers have we tested, but more importantly, do two things. One, see what's happening at the cellular level and hopefully early before you end up with a certain condition or at least give you a trajectory where you're going. And secondly, knowing what's happening at the cellular level, not just at the organ level, cellular level, we can then personalize.

Uber personalize your lifestyle recommendations. This is specifically what we do. So this is based on six pillars of lifestyle medicine, meaning we can tell you nutrition wise, what to eat, how to eat, when to eat. So nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, relational health, meaning emotional and mental wellbeing. And the sixth pillar would be so to cause or substances. that can be toxins, but also can be things like personalizing your

supplementation, medicinal food, peptides. There is a whole story on peptides that we can go into. And of course, medications, exosomes and more, stem cells even and more.

Dr Brandon Crawford (20:11.853)
So this is a big topic I wanted to pick your brain about. So you're telling me you can essentially clone me, right? You can create a digital twin. Okay. And then you can play out different scenarios based on all those different factors that you just mentioned. And you can say, look, if you do X, Y, and Z,

This is a likely scenario based on everything we know about you at this moment in time and you can play out different scenarios. Is that what you're telling me?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (20:43.346)
That's exactly right. We can, as opposed to guessing what may work for you, Brandon, we can simply leverage your digital twin, your computer version of yourself, essentially feed it a thousand of different interventions. Let's say this supplement, this peptide, this medication, this circadian rhythm protocol, this sort of exercise, a number of different interventions. And then evidence-based say there is

This is a chance of probability that you're going to have favorable versus unfavorable outcome. We're going to go with those favorable outcomes, meaning to actually help you either course correct or live long healthy.

Dr Brandon Crawford (21:23.467)
That's so that helps with multiple things. mean, number one, obviously you can play out different scenarios and pick the most probable, most favorable outcome. But number two, this is huge for compliance because the patient can actually see, that's the outcome. If I do this, that's the outcome. If I don't, and it's not just my doctor sitting there, you know,

saying, hey, this is probably what's going to happen if you don't do this or you know, that conversation doesn't even usually happen. It's just, here's what I recommend. Here's what's going on. See you later. You know, and there's no really, you know, forethought, you know, is well, what does this really look like if I do that? What does it look like if I don't? What's in between, right? Because there's so many different scenarios to play out.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (22:12.03)
100%. What I'm hearing you say is exactly what I say all the time. This, what we are discussing right now, especially what I'm working on and have been building is all about agency and empowerment. I mostly work, at least right now in this phase where we are, I mostly, we're obviously concierge, virtual concierge company. So we work with folks from United States, Europe, Canada, from different parts of the world. These are the folks.

who want to really be at the driver's seat of their health, which doesn't mean, I own this and I don't need a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, actually quite the opposite. They have agency of their experience. They get to understand themselves better. And when you're leveraging this sort of technology, at least this is what I have learned.

We are not looking for another PDF or some sort of a fancy gadget or an app that you're going to have on your phone. You're not going to use what we are looking is how do you empower me? So I can actually clearly see if I stay where I'm at right now, this is going to be my path. And if I do these things that Dr. Crawford recommends that I do based on my digital protocol, I mean, a twin, then I can see.

six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, depending on what that recommendation is. And that's where the empowerment, compliance, adherence, and really you owning yourself really comes into play. I always say my goal is to prevent me and those who I work with to not become biological liability. And the way to do that is exactly what you just described.

Dr Brandon Crawford (23:46.06)
Thank

Dr Brandon Crawford (23:53.42)
So this is a platform that both the clinician and the patient can leverage. Is that correct?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (24:01.82)
This will be the platform that both the patient and the clinician can leverage because, Brandon, it's a really heavy lift in terms of all of these technological requirements. We're knee deep right now in two things, data ontology. I can explain essentially what it is, but essentially how the data correlates and communicates so we can really predict things appropriately, effectively. And the other thing is this user-client experience. We just actually brought a colleague on board to help us.

truly redesign, assess our client journey. And we call our folks clients as opposed to patients. This was a survey that we'd done and they're like, do not call me a patient. I do not want to be a patient. so, yeah. And so that part is going to be what you're asking. Is it both facing right now? Yes, we're working exactly on that.

Dr Brandon Crawford (24:41.261)
Sure, that makes sense.

Dr Brandon Crawford (24:53.069)
I love that. Okay. So I'm sitting here. Okay. So I have a love hate relationship with AI. Part of it scares the living Pagesis out of me. the other side is like, I mean, there's no way I can analyze the amount of data and come up with all these different scenarios. mean, it clearly has a place. in, mean, at this point in time, we don't have a choice. It's going to be part of life. It already is part of life.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (24:59.484)
Hahaha

Dr Brandon Crawford (25:22.445)
so I'm going to throw a situation out to you, right? So this is my own story, right? So I had a back surgery, I guess about a month ago, I, it was a, it was a third disc herniation, same disc herniated. I'd had two prior surgeries. I did everything I could to avoid another surgery during that time. You know, about a four month period of time, I lost about 25 pounds. was mostly muscle.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (25:33.448)
time.

Dr Brandon Crawford (25:50.082)
my cognitive abilities began to decline. I mean, I was just, I was not in a good space. So what I'm doing now, obviously I'm doing all my rehab. I'm doing stuff in my office. I'm also working with physical therapy. but I decided, Hey, I'm going to leverage my biology to gain muscle back faster, gain my cognitive skills back faster, et cetera. So

I'm on exogenous testosterone because I had a baseball injury back in the day. So I had a primary hypo gonadism due to a traumatic event, but I take Kaiser tracks. So what I did is I said, I need a little bit more, drive. I need more. I need to be able to build muscle faster, build my brain faster. So I increased that dose slightly. also switched my peptide strategy to hexa relin, to increase my growth hormone.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (26:44.349)
Okay.

Dr Brandon Crawford (26:46.253)
Uh, pulsing a little bit more effectively. Now, when I pulled my labs, my testosterone went up, obviously it was, uh, my total was to about 1300. My free T went up to 40. My DHT was fine. My hematocrit, all those things that that was all fine. So I'm monitoring that PSA was fine. Um, my IGF one increased, it was high, but I'm sitting there looking at that, that going, I like this for the short term. This is what I'm trying to achieve. Right. So.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (27:14.738)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Brandon Crawford (27:16.129)
That's me being a human applying what I, what I want out of this situation. And I don't want to lose that human ability with my patients in an AI model is, is that a concern or can you account for this?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (27:33.416)
So I hear you. have the same concerns, actually. once you... One second, something is flagging me here. Okay, I think we're good. Once you start engaging with this technology and understanding how to use it in a way that's, of all, HIPAA safe, compliant. if you're using... I have two thoughts on that. If you're using some sort of an LLM or AI-based tool, you need to understand...

if what you're using is indeed actually safe and evidence based on good evidence. The good thing is that I'm seeing right now is we have Claude, ChachiPT going into HIPAA mode. We have Perplexity Health now has gone into HIPAA mode. So there are these layers of securities that are being added. The second part is we need better solutions and these solutions, Brandon,

really need to be built by clinicians as opposed to by technologists. So that means that somebody like you, and I have daily conversations with my fellow physicians and pharmacists who are trying to leverage either multiomics or AI or both. And so what they are defaulting to is some sort of a makeshift model.

where they are either using Chagypti or Claude or whichever LLM they're using. And what they're doing is they're continuously regenerating new prompts. Okay, this is what I had, the surgery, low testosterone, this is the protocol that I'm currently on. What are the long, short and long-term consequences and help me build out essentially the short roadmap and longer roadmap.

Now, the beautiful thing about this is you can actually be at the driver's seat of what you are building. It is a steep learning curve, but it's intuitive. think for many of us, it's actually intuitive. I don't see this. So what I'm really getting at is depending on how you frame this and

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (29:40.766)
how you learn to use this and what you're using, this can become your next, I mean, your best rather, right hand. So AI tools, the way that I had experience with them, I cannot imagine doing what I'm doing or anything in the future unless I'm leveraging them. But I took some time.

to build them. And that's what we're actually, that's what I'm trying to do for my fellow, you know, physicians and pharmacists and clinicians who want to use these tools, but don't necessarily have time or know how, how to do them. How do we empower you for you, Brandon, to have one-on-one conversation with me? Were you looking me in my eye as we're talking? And then AI can capture that, you can play with that, and you can have that be your right hand. Hopefully I gave you some sort of an answer, but if not, please poke back.

Dr Brandon Crawford (30:30.387)
Thank

No, that that's good. And you know, where my mind was going with that is, well, first of all, the, the model that you've built is definitely one of the best that I've seen in concept, when it comes to healthcare, right? Because you've got, I mean, you've probably seen these things that have been deployed in China, right? It's like a little clinic. You walk in, you type in your symptoms or you communicate with the AI and it says, here's your diagnosis. Here's your treatment. Right.

I understand how that can have a place, but it kind of scares me, but in your model, do you foresee some type of consciousness being created in your platform and then being able to be even more autonomous, maybe moving into that full healthcare experience, perhaps.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (31:10.92)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (31:26.608)
I can foresee it, but I'll be frank with you. This is not what my focus is. My focus is for folks like us who are indeed frontline, helping people, you know, owners of their health, heal them, help them. I want us actually to be empowered to use what we have here.

Use what we have with these collective brains that are evidence-based. Imagine how amazing would it be for me, Adriana, to tap into Dr. Crawford's brain? This is not what you do. Brendan is not my obviously area of expertise. If I were able to tap into that, I have Dr. Crawford on my team now. That's what I'm really interested in building, something that is going to be safe.

evidence-based and empowering, not only to the individual who's receiving the care, but really my step number one is how do we empower each other to be able to do what we are trained to do, just elevated, almost like, again, I use this term incorrectly, this term on steroids, but imagine this collective knowledge elevated and you are still using your critical thinking, your personal skills to get the essence of where you're going, really helping you.

Dr Brandon Crawford (32:48.203)
Yeah, that's great. That really is. even I'm trying, well, I'm not personally doing it. have people in the background doing it, you know, doing it for me, which is really exciting, but they're actually working on creating, you know, taking what I have in here and putting it in these models so that that can be deployed in various ways. I definitely understand, you know, the model or the concept, and I think it's a good one.

with AI going in the direction it's going, this concept of consciousness is what everyone is kind of talking about right now in that field. let's, we'll, we'll pivot just a little bit from AI because I feel like we could definitely go off the rails on that one. I've heard you talk about cellular drift. And I would love to understand that a little bit more because I think it's a concept that everyone actually understands, but they don't actually have a word.

to place with it, right? So can you explain the concepts of cellular drift and what you mean by that?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (33:53.682)
Yeah, I will explain what I mean with cellular drift. So three things. Number one, I already mentioned that everything, the way I see it, everything is information. That information does something to your body, specifically to your cells. And how we think of things right now is in very mechanistic, reductionist way. Cells like the component, like there are components of the cell with these organelles. What we're still not considering is

everything is energy. It's not these cellular components. It's, you know, what Nicola, I come from a land of Nicola Tesla and I proudly display that every time I have an opportunity to talk. But really, I believe in this concept as well, where everything is energy, frequency and vibration. considering your work in biophotons, I'm sure that we can geek out on this in future as well. But

Dr Brandon Crawford (34:48.748)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (34:50.062)
Everything is information and that information affects not only your cellular components, but the whole energy system that your cells operate within and on. So that's the first part. So everything is information. The second part is we now are starting to build these frameworks to help us think. So, Brendan, we already mentioned 12 hallmarks of aging.

I think this is going to continue to obviously expand. We started with nine, now we're 12, we really are into 15. Who knows how many of these we're going to have. What that means is we still have a problem elucidating, really understanding what is happening that's causing these changes that eventually will lead to this third thing I'm going to say, and that is this concept of the cellular drift. Cellular drift essentially means

that cells have started or have lost their ability to intelligently respond to the environmental things. And so what does that mean? Well, it could be like, for example, if you do a test, you can tell if somebody's mitochondria is affected or not. These tests, by the way, are not ideal, but they are certainly much better than what we...

had before, meaning not having a test that can look inside of your organelles, including like something like mitochondria. And really quickly, I'm sure your listeners know this, but mitochondria are parts of our cells that are basically engine part of the cell. They help us make energy, but they do a lot more obviously than just make that energy. So cellular drift in short is loss of cellular intelligence or at least a path.

Dr Brandon Crawford (36:33.997)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (36:41.214)
to a loss of that cellular intelligence where cells are no longer able to properly respond to whatever is happening, food, movement, stress, environmental toxins, radiation, and of course, aging, which is deeply imprinted inside of our genetic code.

Dr Brandon Crawford (37:02.039)
So this is essentially the software side of us being damaged, right? And we're starting to lose that. So it's like scratching a CD.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (37:14.11)
That's what David Sinclair, I heard him speak not too long ago. That's exactly what he said. Yes, I think that would be a really good analogy. And I want to just add one more thing. I have enormous respect for David. But we also need to, and of course, his work on Sertouin and many other elements.

we still need to continue to build communities of thinkers and those who are not only testing this in labs, but really working on this in real life so we can better understand what exactly is our biology. Like we literally don't even know what is biological age. How do we even define that? We have many different ages.

Dr Brandon Crawford (37:58.124)
Yes. Right. And I agree with that. I definitely don't subscribe to everything that David puts out there, but again, huge respect for the guy has done a lot of positive things. I'm curious, how are you measuring mitochondrial function? Is that a lab marker? Is that a cumulative, you know, what, is it?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (38:08.369)
of 100%.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (38:16.99)
goodness.

Both, actually. Great question. So two-fold answer. We measure mitochondrial function through mitochondrial tests. One of the first mitochondrial tests that I engaged with is from my friend and colleague from University of California, San Diego, Dr. Hemel. He has a couple of companies really now that are spin-off of that original work. Happy to connect you, but...

I chose them specifically because of the depth of evidence that came from those tests. So what some of these tests can do is they can tell us what's the energy production of the mitochondria? What's the overall damage that has occurred? Are there also genetic variations that a person may have in their mitochondria? I'm gonna pause here just for a moment, just to bring us all on the same board.

We have two types of DNA. We have nuclear DNA, which is what most of us think of when we think of our DNA. You'll get half from your mom, half from your dad that exists inside of your cells organelle called nucleus. However, we all have mitochondrial DNA, which is a circular DNA, not the one that you would think of, helix. It's a circular DNA. has just a couple of dozens.

a little bit more of these genes and you only inherit that from your mom. And so some of these tests also can look at the genetic changes that may have either you inherited or have been acquired over time. And the second part is we have our proprietary actually protocols and algorithms that we integrate kind of predictive model where we use the test data for micro, excuse me, metabol...

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (40:11.324)
mitochondrial test, and then we use other clinical biomarkers to be able to say, what does that actually mean in terms of overall health? Because we cannot just be focused on oxidative stress or a specific biomarker that comes with that. It has to be taken in full entire picture.

Dr Brandon Crawford (40:31.711)
Right. I like to describe the mitochondrial DNA is like air traffic control. it's right. It's up there. It's controlling in coordinating a lot of the nuclear DNA, epigenes, et cetera. that's a very, very watered down version of that, but, but I'm also curious because what I look at, especially

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (40:37.219)
that's great!

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (40:52.999)
Love it.

Dr Brandon Crawford (40:59.173)
when it comes to spectrum disorders and things like this are mitochondrial haplotypes in circadian mismatch. like yesterday, I was talking to someone that they, the kid was born in Canada, and they still live in a higher latitude, but the mom's mom. Came from Mexico. So the mom's lineage came from Mexico. Right? So you have this.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (41:07.339)
yeah.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (41:20.946)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Brandon Crawford (41:27.371)
mitochondrial DNA that was adapted to these lower latitudes. Dad came from Germany and now you have this kiddo and then, you know, I'm not saying this is the primary driver of the, of what was going on, but he had a lot of mitochondrial stuff going on. And so I'm sitting there talking to them about this mismatch. know, you, you have these mitochondrial genes that were designed to live in these lower latitudes because this is coming, this is coming from your mom.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (41:45.96)
Mmm.

Dr Brandon Crawford (41:56.844)
Right. This is where the mitochondrial DNA came from yet. You're up here in the Northern latitude and that's a mismatch. Right. And so is there any way to start to play with some of that data, in your platform, perhaps.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (41:57.65)
Bye.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (42:13.438)
I love where you're going with this. I definitely would love to pick more of your brain, especially with your focus on biophotons. I think you're nailing it here. So to answer your question, can that be incorporated in the data model? Absolutely. Should that be incorporated? Absolutely. And then the question is going to be, what evidence is there for that?

So as opposed to settling for the level one evidence like randomized controlled trials. And I think this era of randomized controlled trials is actually shifted. It's changing. We really need to think about the end of one trials, right? Which is, you know, if we talk about organoids and then bringing organoids, you can think of them like if you donated your blood and you use pluripotent stem cell therapy, excuse me, technology, you can build these organoids, are

Dr Brandon Crawford (42:51.821)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (43:09.298)
biological representations of your tissues and you can test things on them. If you have these emerging technologies, even if you did not have level one evidence from randomized controlled trials, and we start reporting on some of this, could we not use that to help us guide persons' journeys and help us understand why some of these conditions, diseases and syndromes.

happened so frequently, especially because we live in a very different, shifted environment than we did 50 or definitely 100 years ago and more. And we humans have not evolved yet to catch up with these changes, which is why we're seeing a lot of these, you know, autoimmune conditions and many other, you know, conditions that we did not see as much before.

Dr Brandon Crawford (43:57.258)
Absolutely. would I be able to perhaps use a part of your platform or your, maybe just the entire thing, but I'm sitting here thinking that you have all these great ways to capture data and analyze it. And now we have this forward thinking model, because I'm, I'm in the middle of designing, various clinical trials and research studies, for my lasers, right? Cause I I've got one that I can't talk about.

right now because it's going to be an FDA trial and whatnot. And so we need to not go public with that right now. But, but I'm sitting here going, well, I can put together a protocol with our lasers. We can monitor all these multi-omics. can see how mitochondria is affected, et cetera. Are you even looking at how this can interact with research?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (44:48.102)
100%, 100%. We have a number of partners, both current partners like Clinics. I assume you have a clinic. So we have a number of partners where we are at right now is they usually will bring us on board and we will do all of the multiomic testing. We will consider whatever clinical inputs that they're providing and build out these protocols. So we reduce.

Dr Brandon Crawford (44:59.905)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (45:16.318)
These build out protocols, by the way, don't mean that they're set in stone. There are recommendations that you can act on or re-edit them however you see clinically fit. So that's where we are right now. We're being incredibly careful how we build this data model because it has to exist in reality and it has to be evidence-based.

The short answer is yes. And I will let you know as soon as we're ready to run with that. But yes, the multiomic testing, the putting in these different data points, building out the protocol and recommendations. Absolutely.

Dr Brandon Crawford (45:52.962)
That's amazing. Definitely interested in that. I would love to, you know, stay up to date. Like I said, I've got multiple studies that we're designing and wanting to carry out and whatnot. So that's great. And, well, thank you. It's definitely not easy and it's not cheap. No, it's not. No. But, you know, just to speak to your evidence base and all of the things that you're

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (46:05.246)
amazing. Congratulations. Amazing.

Dr Brandon Crawford (46:21.581)
talking about. Yes, we do have a clinic from what I can tell. I don't know if this is official, but we appear to be the largest functional neurology clinic in the world at the moment. I can't find one that I think is larger. Not that I care. That wasn't the goal. And I only say that because we've moved forward just how you said, right? We're doing this forward thinking. We're doing this with proper communication, informed consent, evidence based.

rehab strategies. And I mean, when you put all of that together, things just naturally grow and build because it works. And I say that just because that's the model that you're putting together. So I just see a mushroom cloud here, you know, in your future with this thing, just completely exploding because this is just fascinating and really what we need. So I'm very impressed.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (46:59.378)
Yes.

Dr Brandon Crawford (47:17.517)
I do have another question for you because I wanted to ask this. saw cancer detection as well on your website. So what are you looking at there and what are the abilities as far as like detecting cancers?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (47:36.124)
This is in development. That's the short answer. What we're doing right now, practically, that's really more of evidence-based as opposed to what's emerging, especially with pluripotent stem cell therapy and things that we're working with our partners on is we, and you are very familiar with this. use gray algal area testing. Should we do a little bit of what's happening potentially inside of your body? Is it ideal? Is it helpful? Yes. Is it ideal?

My short answer to that is no, because it still needs to exist in overall context, number one. And number two is we're not detecting everything that might be going on in your body. Do we have excellent ways to detect cancers that are non-invasive right now? We don't. So that still needs a lot of buttoning up and a lot to do.

Dr Brandon Crawford (48:27.415)
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, you call yourself the first longevity pharmacist, right? Am I correct about that? Yeah.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (48:34.98)
I am a longevity pharmacist. I'm not sure if I'm first, but I know when I was trademarking for this, there was nobody else who had the title.

Dr Brandon Crawford (48:41.463)
Okay. Well, I mean, I've never heard of it, right? I've never heard of a longevity pharmacist. So mean, when I was reading through your background, I mean, you you appear to be the first longevity, you know, pharmacist. So, so when it comes to longevity, and I know we're running out of time here, but can you give me just your spiel on where are we in the longevity space?

Are we progressing? Are we digressing? What do need to be focused on? What is this thing of longevity? Like help us break this down.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (49:15.512)
As a longevity pharmacist, I think of longevity more focused on health span expansion versus life span expansion. Health span, number of years that we live in good health, and life span would be the number of years that we live. Where the field is at right now, we're still in that Wild West territory. We still, I mean, it's a growing field. As a matter of fact, life...

I mean, longevity medicine is the fastest growing field in medicine. And most of us really have never had, you know, conversations or sit downs with a longevity physician. Like how many longevity physicians up until maybe a year or two ago have you actually met? So the field is expanding. Where I see we are right now, we are definitely progressing. Why? Because technology is progressing at exponential rate.

What we lack or what's holding us down are two things, evidence, especially clinical evidence translated from the labs like mice model, rodent, non-human models into human studies. then, so evidence is one. And of course, the second big one is regulatory space. I'll give you one example. You know this better, I'm sure than most that I speak to, peptides.

Peptides are a very confusing world to step into because most of us have not trained on that. Most of us also don't know how to think about peptides. And recently we had, you know, obviously the shift from schedule one to schedule two. I'm going to flip it. I'm sure that I'm saying this wrong, but the FDA finally stepped in and said, Hey, listen, this is a dozen of these peptides that now we are giving kind of

Dr Brandon Crawford (50:43.426)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (51:06.494)
you can start prescribing them. So there is a little bit more safety and regulation about them. And I think what I am seeing in longevity, in the world of longevity is we're finally moving from this nebulous world of wellness, biohacking, and there is nothing wrong with either. I actually love both of those worlds and really moving more towards

towards the clinical kind of version of what that longevity is, which is evidence-based, based on proper technologies, and actually moving the clinical needles in the right direction and where it's at right now is still health.

span expansion. If we can reduce the number of folks who are going to end up with chronic disease, we have enormous economic impact in our countries or any country around the globe. 93 % of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. So before we have these conversations, what total plasma exchange should I do a peptide? Not to say the peptides cannot be used. Absolutely, they should likely. Or stem cell, how about

Dr Brandon Crawford (51:55.777)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (52:12.516)
We help people understand their bodies and correct for these cardio metabolic issues that are going to cause them health span compression. Basically, they're going to die prematurely.

Dr Brandon Crawford (52:23.883)
Yes. And I couldn't have said it better myself. You know, when it just, when it comes to peptides, they are powerful, but they're very specific. So if, if what I don't like, I don't like non clinically trained, let's just say biohackers out there ordering peptides from God knows where and injecting themselves with 10 different things and not understanding how this is all interacting in their body.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (52:48.413)
Okay.

Dr Brandon Crawford (52:53.633)
that that's a dangerous situation. number, I mean, we could just talk about the sourcing being a problem for one. so if we're using peptides, you know, obviously we're moving slow. being very focused, very targeted because peptides are targeted. and we're only getting them from the proper compounding pharmacies. So I love peptides, very effective, but you're right. Like they need to be

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (52:53.694)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (53:00.722)
Yes. Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (53:13.128)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (53:17.895)
Yes.

Dr Brandon Crawford (53:21.805)
properly implemented, properly measured, monitored, et cetera. I mean, even for myself, I mean, I've had peptide training. Well, I consult with Dr. Seeds for mine or my peptides. You know, it's like, I want to make sure that, I mean, usually I'm like, yeah, that, that makes sense. That's probably, that's what I was going to do. But I mean, I still want that help, right? That guidance even for myself.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (53:33.096)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (53:46.238)
I could not have said it better, honestly, Brandon. And this is why I think for those of us who are in this space, it's really important that we curate our tables, who sits at our tables, who can we call on or leverage for help. This goes back to that brain of AI, building your second clinical brain with AI, because you can tap into that infinite knowledge, but not defer your critical clinical decision-making to your AI, whatever you're using.

On the topic of peptides, and I feel like this is a world we could explore in many different directions. I'm going to make two comments here. Don't rely, if there is one suggestion that I can give to folks who are listening, don't rely on influencers, social media, especially influencers, recommendations, as well-meaning as they are going to be. Rely on somebody like Dr. Crawford and his team, Dr. Seed, whoever that is, that is

actually trained in peptide world. I've been in the world of peptides for the last three decades. You're familiar very closely with BPC 157. BPC 157 is a peptide that was actually developed by my next door university professor, University of Zagreb in Croatia. That was developed in like 95, 96, 97. I was a...

Dr Brandon Crawford (54:56.065)
Yes.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (55:08.43)
I actually was accepted to both medical and pharmacy school. I wanted to go down the pharmacy realm because I was fascinated with this world of just like molecules, you know, running in your body, peptides being one of them. I'm going to be giving a brief lecture. I'm a faculty at, there is a longevity school called Geneva College of Longevity Sciences in Geneva, Switzerland. I'm a faculty there. I'm actually giving a lecture not too far out.

on peptides to be able to empower those of us who want to step into that world, but step into that world with clinical rigor, as opposed to just putting the stuff in LLM and getting spit out recommendations that you are then going to share with your patient, which you should be very careful about. Absolutely.

Dr Brandon Crawford (55:56.526)
Absolutely. And I'm going to shift just a little bit because you also, you also talk about retreats and events on your website. And I think that's great because you're talking about a lot of models that don't always incorporate, you know, bringing people together. And I think this is where a big component is missing. And so you're bringing people together. Tell me a little bit about the retreats and events such that you guys are doing.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (56:21.714)
Thank you so much for giving us a shout out on that. I have two focuses right now, client experience and content creation. And it all serves the same purpose. Empower us as individuals to be at the driver's seat of our health and build the teams around us. Physicians, pharmacists, nurses, nutritionists, health coaches, whoever that is that sits at that table to allow you to drive your vehicle, your health.

As far as retreats, we do not have any retreats right now, but we are putting a lot of content out. So we launched a YouTube channel. This is my just sharing my thoughts with folks who are interested about living well and healthy. have a sub stack that I go deep dive into the world of multiomics.

We are filming actually a documentary where we're documenting not only my journey as a founder, but more importantly, we're documenting our clients journey to say, what are people looking for? What is this longevity thing? And how do we become our own agents? So we don't become this biological liability. I'm happy to provide all of the links for anybody who's interested and you can reach out to me, LinkedIn, Instagram, Dr. Adriana Keikic, A-D-R-I-J-A-N-A-K-E-K-I-C.

And of course, Futurome, you can take our longevity quiz just to see where are you along the longevity journey. Super easy. You can just put F-U-T-U-R-O-M-E, futurome.com and take the quiz.

Dr Brandon Crawford (57:50.177)
That's perfect. So thank you for outlining all of that. I hope that everyone checks out this amazing technology, this amazing, let's just call it movement that you've started here. This has been a fascinating conversation. I'm thoroughly impressed by everything that you're doing. Obviously you're highly intelligent, but you understand also why this matters to clinicians, why this matters to.

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (58:10.117)
Thanks.

Dr Brandon Crawford (58:17.805)
clients, how to bridge that gap and bring these populations together and incorporate this plethora of data that we're constantly collecting on ourselves. So I really appreciate that. I appreciate everything you're doing for the world. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell the world before we sign off here?

Dr. Adrijana Kekic (58:37.404)
I wanted to thank you, Brandon, for your very kind words. Thank you for the invite and creating the space to have the conversation. My takeaway message is own your health, know yourselves, know yourself. Don't become a biological liability. Your wisdom is precious. We need more people to really lead this world in the right direction and change it for the better.

Dr Brandon Crawford (58:56.929)
That's perfect. You heard it. Well, if this information has been valuable to you, or if you know someone that needs to hear this information, please like, share, subscribe, do all those things. And thank you again for joining us and everyone we will see you next time.