Regenerative medicine is redefining what’s possible in healing and longevity, with stem cells, placental therapies, and cellular innovation leading the way. Dr. Dallas Kingsbury, Vice President of Regenerative Medicine at Fountain Life, dives into the therapies transforming how we age, recover, and perform. From orthopedic applications and wound care to tackling immune system decline and the root causes of aging, this conversation unpacks how stem cells and natural killer cells are powering the next evolution of healthcare. Learn how new legislation, rigorous science, and smart deployment are bringing cutting-edge treatments to the public—faster, safer, and more effectively than ever before.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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Inside Regenerative Medicine: What Stem Cells Mean For Aging And Recovery With Dr. Dallas Kingsbury

Welcome back to Fully Alive, the show where we explore the science, stories, and strategies that are helping us live healthier, happier, and longer lives. In a previous episode, we had the privilege of hearing from Dr. Bill Kapp, CEO of Fountain Life, about the company’s bold vision to transform the future of healthcare. We continue that journey. This time, diving deep into the cutting edge of regenerative medicine.

I’m honored to be joined by Dr. Dallas Kingsbury, who’s the Vice President of Regenerative Medicine at Fountain Life. He has extensive clinical experience and a passion for advancing science-backed innovation. Dr. Kingsbury is at the forefront of helping people not just recover, but regenerate. In this episode, we explore how Fountain Life is leveraging stem cells, exosomes, and other powerful therapies to target inflammation, repair tissue, restore function, and radically shift what’s possible when it comes to aging and longevity. If you’ve ever wondered what’s real, what’s hype, what’s right around the corner, and what’s here now in regenerative medicine, then this conversation is one you won’t want to miss. Let’s dive in here to my conversation with Dr. Dallas Kingsbury.

 

 

From Circus Performer To Regenerative Medicine VP

Dr. Kingsbury, thank you so much for being here. We’ve had a little bit of a chance to get to know each other through our work together in partnership with you at Fountain Life. I am excited to have you here at Shell Point and on this show. Thank you for being here and for the amazing work you’re doing. You’re changing so many lives. You’re a part of shifting this entire industry and entire healthcare system. Thanks for what you’re doing.

You’re welcome. It’s good to be here.

To start off, could you tell us a little bit about your own story, your own journey? How did you end up in this role at Fountain Life, this role of the Vice President of Regenerative Medicine? What was your background that led up to this?

It’s a good story. I’ll try not to make it too long. It goes back to when I grew up, my dad was a chiropractor. I grew up in a little bit of hippie family. There’s a lot of interest in health and wellness, and a little bit of an alternative medicine bent. Herbal medicine and Eastern medicine take on a lot of the things we did as a family. I learned to meditate when I was six years old. I went on silent meditation and yoga retreats with my dad when I was a teenager, when a lot of my friends at ages thirteen and fourteen were out at summer camp. I spent a week in Lake Tahoe with my dad in total silence and all meditation. I have this background of real appreciation for health and wellness.

I went to Johns Hopkins for an undergrad. I wanted to do research in alternative medicine. This goes back to the early 2000s. At the time, when I got to Hopkins, I was like, “Where can I do some research in meditation or something like that?” There was nothing at Johns Hopkins for that, at least at that time. I did Neuroscience. I found a love of the brain. I did research in movement analysis. I worked with people with Parkinson’s disease as an undergrad. I did a Master’s in Neuroscience. I found myself not wanting to do research. I watched my principal investigator, the head of the lab. He was stressed about getting grants, constantly in grant meetings, and trying to raise funds. I was like, “I don’t want this.”

I asked my dad’s brother and uncle, who was also a chiropractor. I said, “What should I do next? What do I do? I want to do this alternative medicine stuff.” He was like, “Can you be a doctor? Can you go to medical school?” I was like, “Sure, but why would I want to work as an allopathic? Why would I want to work in the system?” He was like, “It is because you could do anything. You can do anything you want.” I said, “Maybe yes. Let’s try it.” I applied to medical school. I went to Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. Now, it’s Rutgers.

From there, I found an interesting passion. Right after I finished at Johns Hopkins, I had a background in acrobatics, rock climbing, and some alternative sports, more or less. For the summer, I joined a flying trapeze school. Getting into medical school, I got the flying trapeze happening right around that area of medical school. I would go to New York City and work with this flying trapeze school. After about two years of medical school, I decided, “I don’t know what type of doctor I want to be.”

I was interested in flying trapeze. All of my other medical school colleagues were like, “I wanted to be a plastic surgeon for whatever. I want to be a dermatologist.” All my classmates, more or less, knew what kind of doctor they wanted to be almost from day one of med school. I was two years in and I have no idea. I asked one of the deans of my medical school. I went, “I need to take a year off. I want to do flying trapeze. I need some time to figure this out.”

He begrudgingly said yes. That’s when I joined the circus for a year. I took a year off from medical school and joined the circus. During that year off, I rubbed shoulders with professional acrobats and professional performers. They’re not thinking of it, but these are professional athletes. They get paid a fraction of what a pro basketball player does, but they are incredibly athletic. I met a lot of people. Three of my friends from that year off went to Cirque du Soleil and performed professionally. Many of these performers were beaten up. I saw some of the older circus performers. They had shoulder problems and back problems.

I said, “I want to do sports medicine.” I got back to medical school, finished medical school, and decided, “I want to do rehab and sports medicine.” I got into residency. By the way, I kept doing flying trapeze through my residency. I went to Mount Sinai in New York City for a rehabilitation medicine residency. Hospital for Special Surgery is where I did my fellowship in sports medicine, which is the number one orthopedic and sports hospital in the world. I kept doing trapeze throughout that time.

Now that I look back on it, that’s where I started to see the importance of regenerative medicine. My interest grew in “What is it going to take to keep these older aging performers doing the thing that they either want to do or that they feel like they have to do to make a living?” I saw a lot of them get surgery. My interest in regenerative medicine started there. When I was at Sinai and HSS in New York, I did research on platelet-rich plasma for tendons, tendinopathy, tendinitis, and shoulder arthritis. It was PRP.

I was involved in two randomized control trials where we had a placebo arm and did a sham procedure on some people, and a real procedure on other people. We were able to publish some of those studies. That’s where I realized that being in this space of trying to help people reduce their orthopedic and musculoskeletal pain to keep them moving, to keep them doing the sports and the activities they want to do, that’s where it all started. It started with me taking a year off from medical school to join the circus.

That’s an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. It’s always fun to see where people’s passions come from. Oftentimes, it comes from a joy that they want to perpetuate in others’ lives. That sounds like where you’re stemmed from. Now you get to do this amazing, cutting-edge work with Fountain Life. We have had your CEO. Dr. Bill Kapp was with us on a previous episode. We talked a lot about the detection part of what Fountain Life does.

Unlocking Longevity: The Future Of Regenerative Medicine

I like your three pillars: detection, optimization, and restoration. You get to oversee the restorative part, that regenerative medicine part. Maybe we can jump to that part of the conversation since we’ve heard about the detection part earlier from Dr. Kapp. I know this is an interesting time for us because, as we’re recording this, there will be some significant regulatory changes in our state, here in Florida. You’re about to launch these new things here, which by the time this episode comes out, will already be happening. It’s a fun time to be talking about this. What’s on the cutting edge? What’s coming in terms of some of the therapies? You and I have talked about this before we started recording. Let’s dive into the stem cells, killer cells, and all the fun things.

I’ll do my best to make this work without slides, graphs, and charts. The framework for thinking about these advanced regenerative cellular therapies or biologic therapies is the studies that date back almost 40 years. They are epidemiological studies of human lifespan by an epidemiologist, whose name is S. Jay Olshansky. He did some seminal work in looking at how long people are living, what the average age people are living to, and what they are dying from when they die.

He showed that, let’s say, the average woman who is 50 years old at the time would have about another 30 years of available life left on average. He did some modeling. He said, “If you eliminated all cancer, how many more years would she live? It was about two years.” You gain about two years on average if you eliminate cancer. Some people will be saying, “That’s insane. If you eliminate cancer, you get to gain more years.” I said, “If it’s one person, yes. If you caught cancer early and treated it before it developed metastatic cancer, that person could extend their life by ten or twenty years.”

You gain about two years on average if you just eliminate cancer. Share on X

If you’re talking about the population on average, people die of other things. That’s where this work is very interesting. If you eliminate cancer, you get about two years. If you eliminate heart disease, you get another three years. If you eliminate all heart attacks, the whole population would get about an extra three years. If you eliminate heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, you gain fourteen years across the population, which is tremendous.

That would be significant if you got actuaries to model out what that would look like. That would be life-changing, or rather, society-changing. That’s what you said, the early detection piece that Dr. Kapp talked about before. That’s the detection piece of Fountain Life, trying to either reduce or eliminate heart disease, cancer, and those kinds of things, or diminish their impact on mortality. The issue, though, is that if you wanted to look at radical life extension and you’re saying, “That would move the needle by fourteen years,” what’s it going to take to go any further than that?

If you look at these exponential curves, once people get into their 70s or 80s, there’s an exponential increase in every cause of death, whether it’s infections, pneumonia, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or kidney disease. Every organ is aging. At least given the tools that we have now, with early detection, the low-hanging fruit is detecting cancer earlier and preventing heart disease and strokes earlier, and probably preventing metabolic disease by better exercise and nutrition. Strangely enough, that’s low-hanging fruit.

Every organ essentially is aging. Given the tools we have now, the low-hanging fruit is early detection: preventing cancer, heart disease, strokes, and probably metabolic disease. Share on X

The difficult part is this. What do you do about all of those other diseases of aging that there’s no simple early detection for? What do you do with the fact that our immune systems get worse and worse at fighting infections? Our immune systems get worse and worse at fighting off cancer cells. Our immune systems also switch over. Our immune systems not only do worse and worse at fighting off bacteria and viruses, but on the flip side, they cause sterile inflammation. That’s the underlying process behind autoimmune diseases, and even diseases that are inflammation-related, like arthritis, tendinitis, and probably certain cognitive diseases. This has been termed sterile inflammation by the aging geroscience community. Geroscience means the science of aging.

When you see these processes that ultimately tie back to most causes of death, then you start to say, “If we’re going to achieve any kind of ‘radical lifespan extension,’ we have to start targeting the underlying biology of aging.” That’s a tall order. That’s a huge order. I’m not saying that anything we’re going to talk about in a few minutes has strong evidence backing that this is going to give people an extra 30 years of life. What we will talk about are what you alluded to, some of these cellular therapies that are basically going to be multifold. Preclinical studies, in animal models and test tube models, show that a lot of these therapies do affect the underlying biology of aging.

Whether you’re talking about the aging of the immune system and the ability of the immune system to not only fight off bacteria and viruses, but also not cause all of that sterile inflammation, that would be one of the goals of this concept of cellular therapy. By hitting many different organ systems, you’re trying to hit the innumerable number of diseases that are going to get us. I’ll do a little bit more building blocks that lead up to this.

For the prevention of cardiovascular disease, we think that you don’t have to do all that much that targets the “underlying biology of aging” to prevent most heart attacks and strokes. What Dr. Kapp talked about you was if we can detect artery plaque in your heart arteries with some of the AI enhanced scans that we do, and that are available all over the country, there are pharmaceutical ways and lifestyle things we can do now to regress artery plaque and either delay or prevent heart attacks. By the way, these are things that have been published in the cardiology literature.

Many well-established academic cardiologists more or less agree on this. If we start early enough, we can more or less eliminate artery plaque that causes disease and death. That’s only one little slice of the pie. The rest of these things that are going to catch up with us in our 70s and 80s are going to be all of these other things that are part of the underlying biology of aging. That’s the little preamble to what you asked.

It’s super helpful. On that note, you and I have looked at the inside of my vascular arteries in my heart with the CT angiogram. You’ve shown me where the plaque is, how it can be reversed, and all those things. It’s out there. It works, and it’s happening. Thank you for that. Thanks for sharing those building blocks. It’s looking at combating those twelve hallmarks of aging at the cellular level, but now, we have advanced new therapies. They’re not that new. They’ve been around since 1956, when the first stem cell study was done in the US. It’s been going on for a long time, but now it’s becoming more mainstream, popularized, and open for us. It is becoming allowable in our country.

Stem Cell Therapies: History, Controversy, And Current Applications

Most of your readers are probably more or less familiar with or have heard the term stem cells. Stem cell therapies started in the mid-1950s using bone marrow, or what are called hematopoietic, meaning the precursors to red blood cells and white blood cells. Those bone marrow stem cells were used to treat early leukemia. Still, that is the one FDA-approved indication for the use of stem cells in the United States. Over the last decades, many other medicine-forward and science-forward first-world countries have approved stem cells for a variety of different diseases.

Japan approved stem cells many years ago for spinal cord injuries. South Korea approved it for Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS. India has approved it for a certain type of vascular disease. Canada approved it for something called graft-versus-host disease, which happens if you get a transplanted organ. Your immune system starts to attack that transplanted organ. That’s called graft-versus-host disease. Stem cells can ameliorate that. Canada has that approved.

This is already in the realm of the widely accepted. Stem cells from a variety of different sources and preparation techniques have been more or less accepted by many mainstream science circles that these have huge potential. Even in individual circumstances, they are saying, “Yes, we should use these.” Where was the controversy? An interest in stem cells has been brewing for decades. In the early 2000s, there was a concern about embryonic stem cell use.

The laws that were passed in the Bush administration in the early 2000s decided, “We’re going to halt all embryonic stem cell research.” At the time, a lot of the funding, science scaffolding, and resources were in embryonic stem cell research. That put a huge dampener, not only in the zeitgeist of the population and society, thinking, “This is bad. It’s unethical,” for reasons we don’t have to really debate anymore, because the field moved on to non-embryonic stem cell research. They were adult stem cells or other perinatal stem cells, where you didn’t have to use a fertilized embryo. You didn’t have to use embryonic cells in any way. That’s what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about stem cells that are either derived from the bone marrow or the fat, or the peripheral blood of an adult human. He is either donating those tissues and therefore, those stem cells, for either research use or theoretically for some treatment, which is now becoming available in Florida, or perinatal stem cells. They are stem cells that come from a placenta, an umbilical cord, or the umbilical cord blood. Those are the terms that we’re talking about. What are stem cells? If you were looking at this under a microscope, even a cell biologist can’t necessarily look at a cell and be like, “That’s a stem cell.”

There are certain things under a microscope, like a brain cell or a neuron, that even if you don’t know anything about cell biology, you could tell the difference between a neuron and a pancreatic cell. It is because they look wildly different. Everybody has an idea of the tree-like branches of neurons. When you’re looking at stem cells in the muscle, the pancreas, or the liver, they look like everything else. What differentiates them is their cell surface markers and their function.

When they’re in your tissues, working in your body, they are the source of renewable cells that get activated when an organ gets damaged. As we age, our latent stem cells get a little bit worse at doing their function. That’s why there is some push toward researching stem cells from adult humans, maybe leveraging a weaker source of renewable biology, energy, or fuel.

 

 

If my stem cells are about 46 years old now, I’d rather have some that are zero days old from a placenta.

That’s the debate that’s currently being held. That’s also why there’s still a lot of interest in perinatal stem cells, which you can get from umbilical cord tissue, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, or the placenta itself. Research on those stem cells dates back decades and decades. We talk about what this is coming in terms of the opening up of the legal regulations. In late June of 2025, there are several states that have passed similar laws, like Utah, Nevada, and Montana. I can speak mostly to Florida because that’s what I’ve been following. The SB 1768 law passed in both houses of the Florida state legislature was 149 to 0 or something like that.

There was not a single dissenting vote. The wording of the law says the Florida legislature is not only allowing but encouraging the use of stem cells, whether adult-derived or perinatal tissue-derived cells and tissues, in cellular-based products for the advancement of regenerative medicine. Whether you agree or disagree with how aggressive that wording is, this is what we’re looking at now in Florida. As it stipulates, these tissues and cells need to be derived from companies.

Manufacturers have to abide by current good manufacturing processes, CGMP. These facilities have to be inspected by the FDA or according to FDA guidelines. For cell therapies, there needs to be pre- and post-thaw because a lot of these cells get shipped around frozen. There needs to be viability testing. Every batch of cells that gets sent from these companies needs to be tested before and after. Once you thaw these cells, they’re alive. They have the potency that they should. That’s a viability testing that not every stem cell company that’s operating in the United States is able to do.

The last thing is that patients need to sign very specific consent forms. The advertising around this needs to be stringent. What you’re wording and how you’re wording it need to explicitly say that the claims that you’re making have to be substantiated and can’t be embellished. The most important thing is that at least these manufacturers that are selling their stem cells have to have one of four different accreditations. For perinatal placental-derived stem cells or umbilical, they have to have certification from the AABB, the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies, or the American Association of Tissue Banking.

Those are very stringent certifications that take months and months of diligent back and forth with these organizations in order to get that certification. That’s what’s required by Florida law. It’s stringent what’s coming out of this law. Mark my words, it’s June of 2025, it’s going to be the Wild West. That’s what everyone is calling it in these states. If you’re opening up the opportunity to do this, there’s deregulation.

As people who are following health and politics in the United States, there’s a lot of deregulation that’s going to be happening in the health space. There are concerns on both sides. Is this deregulation good? Is it bad? I don’t know. The Florida laws and the Florida legislature have spoken. This is what they want to open up. The one thing that we can say is, at the very least, they’ve stipulated some stringent guidelines on what can be used and how it can be used. The last thing on that is that you have to be doing it for the purposes of either orthopedics or sports medicine for pain and wound care. It has to be within that scope of practice for the physician.

It is anything that falls within those categories, starting on July 1st of 2025 in Florida, Utah, Montana, or Nevada.

I don’t know about the other states. I also don’t know about the wording for those laws, but I can tell you that what I said is for the Florida law specifically.

Demystifying Stem Cells: What Happens After An Injection?

Those things will be potential treatments that people can start trying and using. The stem cell’s differentiator is its actual function when it’s turned on. What can people expect? If they get an injection, either intramuscular or through an IV, what kinds of things will people be coming to a place like Fountain Life for treatments for, and then what can be expected?

Let’s say we have a stem cell treatment. Usually, it’s measured in millions. These are millions of stem cells that are either injected or infused into somebody. First of all, what’s happening? What I don’t want potential patients and readers to think of is this. These foreign stem cells, stem cells that do not come from your body but from someone else’s placenta, umbilical cord, or even bone marrow, are not getting injected and engrafting long-term inside your body, persisting for and becoming various cell types in your body. You’re not getting a stem cell injection. These cells aren’t migrating to your liver and then becoming liver cells from somebody else. You’re now getting a chimera.

A chimera is a merging of different cells from different organisms. That’s not what’s happening, at least for the duration. In clinical trials, these stem cell injections do not last for more than a few weeks, which might sound like a long time. This is not permanent. The question is, if they’re not there to renew your tissue directly, what are they doing? When somebody is thinking about an activated stem cell that’s having some effect in a biological system, imagine a circular cell that has all of a sudden sprouted little tiny appendages.

This sprouting of activity has two different flavors to it. An activated stem cell has an immunomodulatory effect. It means it can dampen immune system-related auto-inflammation like autoimmune disease, the type of out-of-control inflammation that happens in severe COVID, for example, and also the type of autoimmune disease people are familiar with, like multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, or rheumatoid arthritis. With those kinds of autoimmune diseases, at least theoretically, the immunomodulatory side of a stem cell can dampen down those effects of the human immune system.

That is also what underlies the more pedestrian versions of inflammation that a lot of people experience as they get older, which is arthritis or joint inflammation. Even if it’s not a direct autoimmune, there is some auto-inflammation that happens there. The other side of that activated immune cell is pro-regenerative. It upregulates signaling molecules called cytokines and other factors that encourage other local stem cells to get activated. It recruits blood vessels to renew and nutrients to come to that area. There’s this renewal aspect to stem cells and an immunomodulatory effect.

The immunomodulatory aspect of a stem cell can dampen the effects of the human immune system. This also underlies the more common inflammation experienced as we age. Share on X

That’s what is happening. All the applications I said were approved with those various countries for those various things, but also for the types of things that have been researched by some top-tier companies and that are going to be delivering their stem cells under the new Florida law. What has been shown? I’ll speak to one of the companies that I know the best. Fountain Life is not the same as this company, but there will likely be a partnership or an operating agreement between them. I’ll say why in a second.

One of these companies, called Celularity, is based in New Jersey. In June of 2025, they are one of the few companies that have been doing the type of research that we’re interested in for human age-related conditions. They abide by all of those good manufacturing processes, the post-thaw viability, and have the accreditation from the AABB and AATB. There are very few of those companies around, and those that are willing to sell their products for commercial purposes. Many companies that have those certifications are purely research, and they’re sometimes out of universities.

A university-based company may not sell its cells to companies, even though there may be good cells. They may have all the certificates, but they may not sell them. Some of the preclinical studies and clinical studies that have shown some very significant improvements with stem cell therapy have been in inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn’s disease. It’s a significant autoimmune condition. They’ve tried using intravenous infusions of these placental stem cells for people with refractory Crohn’s. They got some interesting remission rates, 40% to 50% remission rates at one year and two years, which were on par with some of the best medications for Crohn’s. That’s exciting.

That is without any side effects.

The side effects for intravenous infusions of stem cells, long-term, were almost none that I’m aware of. The short-term side effects would be some irritation at the infusion site. There was one, not an allergic reaction, but an inflammatory response from one of those research trials that used very high doses of stem cells. This was an FDA-approved clinical trial. They realized, “When we infuse 400 million stem cells, it could be a little on the high side.” The interesting thing about what a lot of these studies show when we’re talking about the number of stem cells infused or injected is that the higher didn’t mean that people got better responses.

They did dose-ranging studies and found this moderate dose of cells, which usually is somewhere between almost as low as three million, but definitely no more than 100 million, depending on how it’s injected and where it’s injected. Crohn’s disease patients had remarkable remission rates at one and two years that were durable. These were people who generally had two doses of IV infusions done about a week apart, with durable remission. This is a disease that, if you were going to be on a Humira, one of those autoimmune drugs that you would see on TV that get promoted, these are drugs you have to either take weekly or monthly as infusions that have significant immune depressing side effects.

That’s what these autoimmune drugs do. These drugs depress your immune system so you don’t fight the cells in your gut or something like that. This stem cell therapy doesn’t depress your immune system. I don’t think they know exactly how this works, but it modulates your immune system, so you’re not fighting yourself. It is modulatory, not suppressive. There are other studies that have looked at improvements in wound healing and people with diabetes and severe vascular disease in their legs. The wound closure rates were much higher in people who got these stem cell injections into the muscles of their legs. It is on par with how good a surgical wound graft would work.

We’re talking a huge amount of potential benefit. With this new Florida law opening up and there being a lot of other research for orthopedic conditions, we think that this is probably going to be the first place that we start with. Celularity hasn’t done a lot of human-level research on these cells for orthopedic conditions. Many other centers that are doing stem cell research have looked at this. The results are promising for things like arthritis and tendinitis.

We’re going to be focusing our efforts on pain, orthopedics, and potentially wounds. That’s where we’ll start in accordance with the law. We’re excited to see where indications start to expand and what the results are going to be. We’re committed to internally tracking and having a regenerative medicine registry where we are tracking outcomes and potential side effects. We are working with governing bodies to make sure that this is done ethically and with very open, informed consent.

The Wild West Of Regenerative Medicine: Navigating New Regulations

I imagine, as all of this launches, we’re going to have a huge amount of data, a huge amount of trials, and things like that, because it’s open enrollment. We can try this out. If I had a torn ligament in my elbow, I could come and get an injection. You can see what happens. It’s like, “Now, we can treat torn ligaments and elbows.” All of that’s right here on the cusp.

There are other treatments for tendonitis, a torn elbow tendon, tennis elbow, or mild to moderate knee arthritis, that don’t require surgery. We already have things like cortisone injections, steroid injections, or platelet-rich plasma. Why don’t we take out your blood, centrifuge your blood, and use your platelets? There’s pretty good evidence, although even that’s debatable, as to how well platelet-rich plasma works. Why don’t we use that? We still can, but it comes to the idea of variability of effect.

Your platelets might be great because you’re pretty young and healthy. We also don’t necessarily know you specifically. They might be great. Your body may not respond the same, but the variability comes into what the dose is and what those other factors are. There are a lot of dose yield and activation-related questions that have plagued the world of PRP for a long time. What centrifuge are you using to spin your blood to get your PRP? How much yield of platelets are you getting?

We have external factors. We have internal factors. That variability may underpin why PRP injections for orthopedic and sports-related conditions have been modest and debatable, at least in large clinical trials. It could be down to variability. On the other hand, when you’re talking about perinatal stem cells, you can get these culture-expanded and viability-tested in the laboratory. You can guarantee you’re getting ten million cells. They’re the same. We know how well these work.

We think that consistency in product can only be beneficial in the sense that you know exactly what you’re injecting and how it was prepared. We’re not getting it from you, so we don’t have to worry about your internal factors. We’re also not worrying about how it’s being manufactured, because we can measure everything before we even do the procedure. That’s one of the reasons why this is exciting and among others.

It’s amazing. I imagine people who have issues are probably going to be coming to Florida to have these treatments done here. They’re going to have all kinds of exciting stories to share. I’m sure.

It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be an interesting year. I foresee there being a lot more confusion in this space, so I think there’s going to be some deregulation. Deregulation is already happening, but for various clinics in the states in which it’s approved, are they going to get their stem cells from the right companies that are doing the right things? Are they going to say, “These are stem cells?” The law makes everything open. “Here are some stem cells.” They may totally skirt right over a lot of those post-thaw viability testing and hopefully not CGMP.

The question is, where are people going to go to get stem cells from the right place? I hope that my goal is to make sure that Fountain Life is the beacon of, “This is how we think this can be done right, ethically, but also legally, and according to all the guidelines.” My other fear is that with this pervasive nationwide sense of deregulation and all these stem cell laws happening, people may get the sense that the FDA is not going to look into this. It’s going to almost lower the bar a little bit for clinics that can’t get stem cells from the best companies.

Maybe you can just do them. Who’s going to look that deeply if the FDA is not looking into this that hard anymore, because there’s deregulation? It’s going to let all these players play in that space. I don’t know who’s going to be the umpire. All that we can do is follow the rules, treat our patients ethically, and rise above what I think is going to be a crazy time.

It’s important for readers to understand that if they are going to a clinic, they need to look at where those stem cells are sourced from. What company is providing them? Do they have this post-thaw viability testing in place? Those are some basics on the lookout. We know that Celularity is a company that has been vetted and has the certifications.

That’s not the only company. It may not be the only company that Fountain Life works with. I can only speak to what’s happening at this point. As everybody knows, this can change. My message to your readers is to be very familiar with what the law in whatever state you’re in allows. Be clear about what the stipulations are. Require whatever clinic you’re getting treated at and say, “What company are you using? How is that company abiding by each one of the line items in the law?”

It’s not something that most people would think about when they’re getting treatments. They think, “This is a popular place. I’ve researched it. There are good testimonials on the website.” It’s going to get harder and harder to know in that way, like from a personal referral, or “Their website looks great.” It’s going to be the Wild West for a little while.

Natural Killer Cells: A New Weapon Against Aging And Disease

It is until some of this gets worked out. Maybe we can shift gears for a few minutes. We were talking downstairs here earlier about placental-derived natural killer cells as well. This is another thing that can really create a healthy environment within our bodies to then introduce the stem cell therapy afterwards. Using those in combination sounds like that’s the big win. “Let’s reduce all of the disorders and things that are caused by senescent cells, zombie cells, in our bodies.” We have this great environment to introduce the stem cells into.

 

 

This is much earlier on. This is going to be a very evolving place. What we’re now talking about is engineering a theory, a concept, for targeting the underlying biology of aging. What can you target with a powerful global type of treatment that’s not going to just tick off one of those hallmarks of aging? You can think about various longevity-related drugs that are in development or processes that are in development. Should we improve our mitochondria? Should we reduce DNA damage? Should we reprogram our epigenetics?

I didn’t define any of those things, but some of your readers may be aware of the defined hallmarks of aging. Even supplement companies are purporting to, “We’re targeting this hallmark of aging.” One of the underlying key pieces of that puzzle is a decline in total body cellular function, which is driven by a senescent cell. Most of our cells, when they either get damaged or get “old enough,” should commit what’s called cellular suicide. You have 30 trillion cells in your body. Some of those cells, when they get damaged, should end it.

That’s what evolution has created. Those cells, as they get DNA damage, should undergo a process called apoptosis. The problem is that some of those aging cells don’t do that. They don’t commit cellular suicide, and they persist. They don’t divide. They don’t function normally. They encourage other cells in the area to also become senescent cells. They release inflammatory factors. Cellular senescence is not only one of the hallmarks itself, but it’s a driver of other hallmarks of aging. It drives inflammation. It drives DNA damage and other issues in other cells that surround it.

Cellular senescence has become a target of interest in geroscience, the field of science that’s interested in aging. What would this benefit? Going back to the original framework, if you do everything we can with optimal medical therapy and do early detection for coronary artery or heart artery plaque, you could potentially eliminate most heart attacks and strokes.

What about all the other diseases? Attacking cellular senescence has been a goal of aging research because the theory would be that if you could reduce the senescent cell burden in an aging individual, and we know that starts to escalate in your 60s, 70s, and 80s, then you can more or less rise the tide or bring the tide down on all of those age-related diseases, theoretically. Some stem cell companies are looking at the particular subtype of cells that you can find in placental tissue, which are called natural killer cells.

We all have natural killer cells as part of our white blood cells, the police officers, the law enforcement agency, or the military, that our body uses to fight off infections, bacteria, viruses, and even cancer cells. Natural killer cells are one of our white blood cells, along with B cells, T cells, macrophages, and things like that. Natural killer cells have a very important function in clearing away senescent cells. The problem is that as we get older, our immune cells get older. It becomes this negative feedback cycle, this downward spiral of an aging immune system itself becoming senescent and not able to clear the senescent cells. The picture I’m building here is that this is potentially what’s underlying that exponential rise in all diseases as we get into our 70s and 80s.

The problem is, as we get older, our own immune cells get older. This creates a negative feedback cycle—a downward spiral where the aging immune system itself becomes senescent. Share on X

The thinking could be, “What can we do to reduce our senescent cell burden as we get older? Could that reduce these aging-related diseases? How do you do that?” People may have heard of certain drugs or supplements that are “senolytics.” They may have heard of rapamycin, metformin, quercetin, and fisetin. There are quercetin and fisetin that are supposedly senolytic supplements. There’s been a lot of debate on how well some of these small-molecule drugs or nutraceuticals even do this. For sure, there have been some drugs that can affect senescent cells.

Would it not be maybe even more effective to harness the power of the innate cell that we already have to augment that and then deliver that as cell therapy to reduce the cell? Why would you not use this super-intelligent multi-modal delivery system called a natural killer cell, as opposed to taking a drug that supposedly is clearing away your senescent cells? None of this has been tested side by side, but the theory is that this could be potentially even better.

It has been the next wave of this after you start to see placental-derived stem cells come on board, as you start to see other various gerotherapeutics come online. These natural killer cells may be one weapon in the armamentarium that affects the underlying biology of aging. At least, we’re waiting on some early studies to be done on this. For the purposes of specifically attacking various cancer cells, we know that natural killer cells, that is derived from placental tissue, have a very compelling ability to attack cancer. We’ll see. This could be exciting.

You were showing me a video earlier of what those natural killer cells are doing. There was a senescent cell. The natural killer cells came around it attacked it, and wiped it out. It’s pretty cool to watch that.

It’s very interesting. I hate to be too Pollyanna about the possibilities. Could there be side effects? Could some of this stuff not work out as well as we hoped it would? Yes, absolutely. That’s why these things need to be studied. The tension is going to be around what’s going to be available outside of FDA regulation, more or less, outside of FDA clearance. What’s going to be available in Florida and other states is going to be non-FDA-approved stem cell therapy. It’s going to be an interesting place where hopefully, people are going to be driven toward organizations that are doing this in a way where they’re monitoring outcomes. They’re trying to test for efficacy and side effects. This is all going to be happening outside of FDA-approved indications.

Accelerating Innovation: The Impact Of New Stem Cell Laws

Instead of something taking seventeen years to get approval, you could come to Florida and go to Fountain Life by the time this is out. Get an injection of stem cells and then find out what’s going to happen. I imagine if we have another conversation, which would be fun, there are going to be all kinds of stories and outcomes.

Hopefully, it is data. What we’re committed to measuring is getting outcome data. Will it all be randomized and double-blinded? Probably, not all of it. Will we have some objective outcome that we’re tracking? The idea is to track enough objective outcomes that are unlikely to change with chance alone. If you look at enough tests, you know that people don’t miraculously gain muscle mass, for example. They don’t miraculously get wild changes in their cellular senescence markers or certain inflammatory markers.

If you look at enough people, and they’re all getting some similar therapy and benefiting in multiple ways across it, that’s what Fountain Life is trying to do. It is to do large-scale biobanking of your body’s data across hundreds of different data points. The hope is that we can again look at these data points change over time. If you don’t have a placebo arm, you’re going to be limited in how you can interpret that data. We call those a single-arm trial. If you’re looking for potent enough effects and people are getting significantly noticeable subjective improvements in their pain, their daily activities, and the way that they feel, this is part of the data that’s going to drive other rigorous clinical trials and test some of these things against a placebo.

To be honest, this is what’s going to be allowed by the Florida law. This is what people are going to be looking for. The one thing I will say is that I have thousands of clinical trials with various types of stem cells. By and large, when you look at the safety data on these, it’s incredibly safe. Are there reports of people having various effects, especially with IV infusions? Definitely, in the early days, but as the procedures and protocols have evolved, the side effect profile is incredibly low and relatively benign. We’re talking about mild site reactions and mild systemic inflammatory reactions that are more mass cell, not a true allergy.

We think that most of those are going to be worked out. Given thousands of clinical stem cell trials that have been done and also dozens of stem cell clinics that are operating in the Caribbean, we don’t know how many side effects. Some of those clinics are doing registry collections. They have published some small data samples that suggest that, by and large, we don’t know how many people are getting huge amounts of benefit yet, because it’s hard to know. We do think that the safety is incredibly high.

That was used by the drafters of the Florida law and some of these other laws. They are saying, “We’ve had enough scientists and some of these analysts or consultants to draft these laws. This looks very safe. This is not an experimental drug that hasn’t been tested on enough people. There are a lot of people who have received these and have not had significant problems.

It’s super exciting. I would thank you for the work that you’re doing to stay on the cutting edge and to do it in a way that’s ethical, safe, and legal. I am excited. We’ll have to have you back and hear about the data and the outcomes. I like that all of these things can be measured with our biomarkers. There are biomarkers to measure our senescent cells, the p16.

The quantification of cellular senescence and the measurement of more global markers of frailty and aging are not the easiest biomarker space to be in. We think that there’s enough that we can at least start to measure these things. We could probably get off on the right foot on it. There are some blood-based biomarkers that hint at cellular senescence. For sure, the biggest cell surface marker, the one way to know a cell has become senescent, is the expression of a marker called p16.

There are some companies out there that have some very compelling strategies to measure p16 levels in peripheral blood T cells, for example. It strongly correlates with the senescent cell burden and various tissues. That’s going to be one way that we know we’re having an effect. It’s not going to be perfect right off the bat, but we’re going to narrow in on a core set of markers that we can at least look at over time and get the hint that these things are working. Stay tuned.

Beyond The Lab: Dr. Kingsbury’s Personal Wellness Journey And Fountain Life’s Mission

There is more to come. Here are a couple of last questions for you. When’s the last time you flew on a trapeze? I’m sure our readers are curious.

I was doing it all the way up to the point that I had my first child right before COVID-19 hit. It was probably in late 2019. COVID hit. All the circus schools, especially the trapeze, closed for a long time. That’s when I moved to Florida from New York City. It’s been since 2019. I haven’t been on a trapeze since then. My kids are old enough to maybe be interested, so I might be back up there one day, sometime soon. We’ll see.

What do you do to stay fit?

I went from doing a lot of unique sport-related things before I had kids and before I got very busy in my career. These are rock climbing, circus stuff, trapeze, trampoline, and a lot of acrobatics. Doing the sport was enough. I don’t have that as much. I have to compress my sports activities. It’s boring. I try to lift four or five times a week. I try to do some form of running or cycling again four or five times a week. If I can get on the pickleball court or the tennis court, I’m trying to do that as much as possible.

It’s the basics of some type of aerobic work. I’ll get my heart rate up four or five times a week and do resistance training four or five times. I am trying to live that because that’s what I recommend to my patients. If you can swap out any of those things for a sport that mimics that, you’ll probably have more fun doing it, but not everybody can do it. At this point, it’s less time-efficient. I have taken my kids to a bounce gym trampoline, and they love it. That’s the few times I can do some flips and twists still, and years out from the trapeze rig.

I have one other random question. Do you still have a meditation practice?

That’s another thing that has suffered the consequences of a compressed time. I have a little bit, but I get a handful of minutes here or there. One of the things I’ve had to come to terms with is this. I know this isn’t a parenting show, but if you’re a busy entrepreneur or you’re busy in life, you do have to figure out, “When I do have free time, how do I spend that in the most efficient way to get me to 95% of my goals?” feeling that I have even ten minutes to sit there with my eyes closed and do that is one of the things that I’ve not been able to commit to half the time.

I’m not that much before my kids most days. I never wanted to make meditation something where my kids are tugging at my elbow while I’m trying to sit there with my eyes closed, being like, “Sorry. I’m meditating.” It seems selfish. I feel like there are other ways to get that. I’m sure other people can figure out how to do it. I do look forward to getting back to it when my kids start sleeping in a little bit more, and I can get ten minutes. They’re young. I look forward to that, but for me, it is family time and exercise. That’s what I devote the majority of my free time to.

It’s weird to talk about this longevity stuff. I know that most people, when they’re on their deathbed, are not thinking about, “I wish I meditated more,” or “I wish I made more money.” Most of the time, it’s like, “I wish I spent more time with my family.” When I’m internally justifying where I put my time, I’m not going to zip away for 30 minutes while my kids are playing alone and try to meditate. That’s where my head is at now. I can’t get those minutes back, so I’m trying to devote all that time, as much as possible.

Where can people find you? How can they get started with Fountain Life?

FountainLife.com is the way to find us. We have four locations in Naples, Florida, Orlando, Florida, Dallas, Texas, and Westchester, New York. We are soon to be opening a Houston, Texas location. That’s in the Q4 of 2025. Late 2025 will be our Miami location, plus or minus the LA location. Miami, LA, and Houston are coming up next. By the end of 2026, we should have seven Fountain Life locations. FountainLife.com is where you find us. We have social media, too, at the typical places. Probably, the best place to find me would be LinkedIn. I don’t do much social media, but I’m on LinkedIn, under my name. You can see that. That’s where to find me.

Thank you so much for this fascinating conversation and deep dive into all things stem cells and what’s on the cusp of happening. We’ll have you back again. We’ll look at some of the data and outcomes of all these exciting new things that are starting here very soon. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

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What another fascinating conversation with Dr. Kingsbury from Fountain Life. We dove into all things stem cells. This is amazing timing because the regulations, as we talked about, are changing here. Even by the time this episode comes out, you’ll be able to have these treatments throughout Florida at all different clinics, but especially at Fountain Life. Make sure that if you do get some treatment, there is post-thaw viability testing being done. Make sure they’re coming from an approved source that follows all the regulations there.

Celularity is the company that we mentioned has been vetted. Anything with wound care, orthopedics, and pain, anything related to any of those issues, falls under the regulations in the state of Florida to be treated with stem cells. It’s remarkably safe, has no side effects, and has amazing benefits. I’m excited for what’s on the horizon here and what kinds of data we’re going to be seeing from these treatments that are happening starting in July of 2025.

Also, we talked a little bit about these placental-derived natural killer cells that can optimize our body’s own ability to fight off age-related diseases in a natural way. It is a one-two punch there if you have these natural killer cells. They are already in our bodies, but then they’re optimized and enhanced with these placental-derived cells as well as placental-derived stem cell treatments. They are available in July.

Thanks so much for tuning in. If you have any stories, please share those with us as you experience this for yourself, potentially. You can find Dr. Kingsbury on LinkedIn and also on FountainLife.com. I am a beneficiary of Fountain Life, as we shared briefly. I’ve been through all their diagnostics and testing as well. They do an amazing job. Check it out. Thanks again for tuning in. We’ll see you next time here on Fully Alive.

 

Important Links

• Fountain Life
• Breaking The Longevity Code: How To Live Healthy To 98 and Beyond With Dr. William Kapp
• Dr. Dallas Kingsbury on LinkedIn
• Jay Olshansky’s Website
• AABB
• American Association of Tissue Banks
• Celularity
• Fountain Life on Instagram
• Fountain Life on Facebook