Exosomes 2.0 with Dr. Greg Maguire and Steve McGee, Founders of Neogenesis

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Facially Conscious. I'm Trina Renea, a medically trained master esthetician here in Los Angeles, and I'm sitting with my rock star co-host, Dr. Vicki Rapaport, a board-certified dermatologist with practices in Beverly Hills and Culver City, Rebecca Gadberry, our resident skincare scientists and regulatory and marketing expert, and Julie Falls, our educated consumer who is here to represent you. 

We are here to help you navigate the sometimes confusing and competitive world of skincare. Our mission is to provide you with insider knowledge on everything from product ingredients to medical procedures, lasers, fillers, and ever-changing trends. With our expert interviews with chemists, doctors, laser reps, and estheticians, you'll be equipped to make informative decisions before investing in potentially expensive treatments. 

It's the Wild West out there, so let's make it easier for you, one episode at a time. Are you ready to discover the latest and greatest skin care secrets? Tune in and let us be your go-to girls for all things facially conscious. Let's dive in.

01:22 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Good morning, you guys it's been a while. 

01:23 Julie Falls: It has been a while. 

01:25 Trina Renea: Not to the world out there. They don't know how long it's been. 

01:28 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: That's true, that's true. Okay, I have a pop quiz for you both. 

01:31 Trina Renea: You do?

01:32 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: What did you put on your skin this morning? 

01:35 Trina Renea: Oh, all of it? 

01:36 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: You did all of it? Did you put exosomes on? Stem cells? 

01:39 Julie Falls: No, I use my exosomes at night. 

01:41 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Okay. Did you put exosomes on this morning? 

01:43 Trina Renea: Yes. I put my exosomes on in the morning. So first thing on the skin is I do a little spritz of some sea salt water. 

01:54 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Why?

01:56 Trina Renea: It's like... 

01:57 Julie Falls: She doesn't wash her face. 

01:59 Trina Renea: No, I don't. Wash my face. So it's not like water, sea salt from the sea. it's like a mister from Dan Frieda, who is the chemist who works with the sea stuff.

02:13 Julie Falls: We had on our podcast. It was great. 

02:14 Trina Renea: Yeah. And so I spritz that and then I put exosomes, hyaluronic acid, antioxidants, moisturizer and sunscreen.

02:24 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Did you wait in between the steps? 

02:27 Trina Renea: Exosomes go right into the skin really quick, so by the time I put the other stuff in my hand, it's, like, in already. Then I put the two serums on and I do let those sit for a second before I put my moisturizer and sunscreen.

02:41 Julie Falls: I'm using my exosomes at night, but maybe our guests can tell me I'm doing it incorrectly.

02:45 Trina Renea: I don't think it matters. 

02:45 Julie Falls: It doesn't matter, okay. 

02:46 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Well, speaking of exosomes, we have an expert on our show today, actually two experts on our show today. He is a repeat guest since the topic of exosomes just won't go away. And his name is Dr. Greg Maguire. He is the founder of NeoGenesis, which is a company dedicated to the study and development of uses of exosomes for the consumer. He has written over 100 scientific publications in his field and he has written a book on stem cell health, which I think is pretty cool. 

And then with him today is Steve McGee, his CEO of the company NeoGenesis. Steve is here to help us all understand exosomes and their uses from a non-doctor perspective. Welcome, Dr. Maguire and Steve McGee.

03:29 Trina Renea: Welcome.

03:30 Dr. Greg Maguire: So nice to be with you, Dr. Rapaport 

03:33 Trina Renea: Hi, guys. 

03:34 Steve McGee: So nice to join you all. Thank you for your time today. 

03:36 Trina Renea: Thank you.

03:37 Dr. Greg Maguire: And Steve is my co-founder of NeoGenesis.

03:40 Trina Renea: Oh, great. 

03:41 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, we're in this together. We've gone through a lot of trials and tribulations getting this thing put forth and feel really good about what we're doing, so it's a pleasure to be with you.

03:55 Julie Falls: We loved having you last time. We had some amazing feedback. I think one of the reasons we wanted to have you on again was we wanted to possibly make this a little bit more understandable for our listeners. I think we really dove a little deeper into the science of it last time, which was fascinating, but we thought maybe we could also talk about some of the newest uses and how our listeners could incorporate this into their skincare routine. 

04:28 Trina Renea: And also to explain what exosomes are, because a lot of consumers out there are hearing mixed things about where the exosomes are coming from, if they're dangerous, how to be aware of what body part they're coming from. I mean, there's so much out there. 

And even inside the industry with cosmetic chemists, they're like, "Oh, it's so dangerous. You shouldn't be using those." And like, “Where do they get them from? How do we know they're safe? Are they causing cancer?”

So, we would like for you guys to explain, like, how can the consumer find that information out? And also, what is an exosome? So, let's start with that one. 

05:15 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, it's difficult. It's really so difficult because there is so much misinformation out there because there's lots of different kinds of exosomes. We're just seeing stories being told by those who aren't expert in the field and putting out misinformation. 

First of all, exosomes are pretty much everywhere in biology in both animals and plants. I'm working with, for example, a company that isolates exosomes from different types of vegetables. There's actually a company developing vegetable-derived exosomes as therapeutics. 

One of the therapeutics they're developing is from grapes, and you'll see in the literature, and this has been known for well over a decade, that, for example, if you're drinking grape juice, grape juice, if it isn't highly processed, will have exosomes in it. Those exosomes come into your gut and they help feed your gut. We're really dependent on the environment for our health. And part of our health is what we're consuming and part of what we're consuming with all these vegetables, or at least we should be eating all those vegetables, are molecules inside exomes that these plants make for us. 

So, what is, and break in here any time if I'm not being clear, because I know last time I used a lot of jargon and we kind of went deep into things. I'll try to be a little more general and not use so much jargon. 

07:03 Trina Renea: Pretend you're talking to a five-year-old and explaining it really basic. 

07:10 Dr. Greg Maguire: I’ve done that in the past.

07:11 Julie Falls: I have a quick question. Do the grapes have anything to do with resveratrol? 

07:17 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, actually the grape exosomes will contain resveratrol, antioxidants of different sorts. They'll contain, for example, something called myricetin, which is a plant-derived molecule. German scientists have shown that if you put myricetin on the skin, it actually does away with lines and wrinkles. So, to use some jargon, it does so through changing your epigenetics. 

That's another buzzword out there that people are hearing about. I don't think we want to go on that today, but the point is that the exosomes in the grapes are very powerful and the molecules inside are doing a lot of things. 

And why does the grape make an exosome contain these molecules? It's, for one, to protect the molecules, the exosome does, since it's this little bubble in which the molecules exist and that bubble is very protective. 

08:22 Trina Renea: That's an exosome, right, is the bubble?

08:24 Dr. Greg Maguire: That's an exosome, yeah, the little bubble.

08:26 Trina Renea: And inside is the ingredients that it's carrying through your body somewhere. 

08:32 Dr. Greg Maguire: Right.

08:32 Steve McGee: Right. 

08:33 Trina Renea: And then deliver. It's a delivery system, basically.

08:35 Dr. Greg Maguire: It's a delivery, it's a protection and delivery system, yes. 

08:39 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: The way I'd explain it to my patients, so if you want me to explain it to you as a five-year-old…

08:43 Trina Renea: Yes. 

08:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: You know, I explain that your body is a city, and the cells in your city are houses. The houses need to communicate with each other, and there are delivery trucks that bring mail from house to house. The mail in the delivery trucks contain all the information about how houses can communicate with each other. They contain fats and proteins and mRNA, and they will communicate good and bad things. So it helps the city communicate, the houses communicate, helps your cells communicate about the life and status of the parent cell. So it's bringing all these little packets of information to the next cell. It's just a way that the cells communicate. 

And we want it, for skincare we imagine it's positive things being put on the skin to help us proliferate our better cells. But perhaps you guys can pretend that you're also speaking to five-year-olds and tell us how you would explain it.

09:42 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, one of the facts— that's a great analogy. One of the keys here is inside the exosome with all these molecules that are being delivered within the city, these molecules need to go and to enter into, when they're being delivered, they need to go into the house in which they're being delivered. 

And so these molecules on the inside work through like a lock and a key. So the proteins that are inside the exosome, it's like a key. The protein goes into the door as a key, it opens the door and then they can do their magic inside the house. 

10:22 Trina Renea: Clean that house. 

10:25 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Right, release all the good things inside the little vesicle. 

10:28 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah.

10:28 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Steve, is that how you would describe it?

10:32 Steve McGee: I loved what both of you said. I think that's a great analogy. And I think it sounds like between this show and the prior show, you really just discussed the fact that exosomes are a delivery system. They protect the molecules. And equally important, they pick up on signals from distressed cells and they migrate over to dock up to those distressed cells and deliver those helpful nutrients into the cell. That’s where the good health comes from.

11:02 Trina Renea: That's where the repair on the skin happens. They go around and they find damage. 

11:05 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Right. So if you have a neighbor who's sick and you bring chicken soup to your neighbor, you're bringing them good, healthy exosomes so that they can get better. How do like that?

11:14 Steve McGee: Chicken soup for the soul, yes. 

11:17 Dr. Greg Maguire: And this is fresh, what we use is fresh chicken soup. I mean, it's right out of the pot. It hasn't been dehydrated and frozen. Ours is really fresh stuff. It works really well because if you've ever gone camping and eaten like freeze-dried food, it doesn't have the same texture. It doesn't taste as good. 

11:43 Trina Renea: I tried that once. It's pretty gross. 

11:44 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: That's a good analogy, though, because we did discuss on the previous episode that exosomes can be freeze dried. And you were describing that that is not as good as the fresh chicken soup analogy, and that is something that is hard for a consumer to understand which one is better. I know that we're going to go into that, but I feel even as a dermatologist, I have to just believe what the companies tell me. 

I'm not doing the studies. I'm not doing the testing. And it sounds like you all do very extensive testing. So would you mind telling us a little bit about that one more time, because I feel like that's really important. How do you know that the product is good? And you all do this certain testing. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit as if we're five-year-olds on the testing?

12:23 Dr. Greg Maguire: First of all, to maintain and heal the skin, it's the skin cells doing that. So you want to derive your molecules from the skin because these are what we call tissue-specific molecules. It's the molecules from the skin that best know how to heal the skin. It's like choosing the good versus the bad. The good guys, especially for the skin, are using good healthy skin cells to derive your molecules. 

So, you don't want to be using, for example, a cancer cell. Cancer cells can send out bad signals. They're the bad guys in the city and they're doing nasty things to tear up the homes. So you have to be careful to pick the right cells. And we're picking the cells from the skin because skin cells know how best to maintain and heal skin.

So we've gone through and many others, and I stand on the shoulders of many great scientists, lab scientists, clinical scientists, but we do a lot of our own work. We took the time to publish a safety study, for example. 

And we have a sister company that is in a long, slow process of taking this technology through FDA approval as a therapeutic for different diseases, including brain diseases. But the point is, in doing that, we have to do a lot of safety studies to convince the FDA that this is a safe and, eventually, efficacious technology. 

But we wanted to assure ourselves and others this is a safe technology, so we made sure that these cells or these molecules don't induce tumors. We made sure that these molecules don't change your DNA. It's called mutagenesis. But a lot of environmental chemicals out there will impinge on your body and some of them are mutagens. They change your DNA. And if your DNA is mutated, it can induce cancer. 

So we did irritation studies in the skin and the eye. We did the cancer studies to make sure it was clean, toxicity studies to make sure it's clean. We even did with our molecules, to make sure when the molecules go in, they don't malform protein structure. So we did a lot of studies and we published this in a peer-reviewed PubMed-listed journal, which means it's vetted. Other scientists review it very carefully to make sure what you're saying, there's good evidence for what you're saying, your studies are done well. So we took the time to do that and most other companies haven't. 

There's another great company that plays in the same field. We're in San Diego, they started up in Irvine. I won't mention the name, but they're a big player in the field. And if you look at the ingredients on their bottle, the ingredients will say fibroblast conditioned media. So they're using part of what we use. 

They don't spell it out, but they're using the molecules that the fibroblast release, and part of the molecules are packaged into the exosomes. And they've been doing their work. That company was developed by both a bench scientist and a clinical research dermatologist. They did a good job. They too did a lot of studies to make sure this technology is safe and efficacious. 

So there are other good players in the field as well, taking this seriously and making sure we're doing safe and efficacious work. So that paper is available for free, if anyone should want to read that. 

16:34 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: And do you need to test every batch or are these safety tests done once and then you have your cell medium and you continue to use that cell medium?

16:45 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah. Part of what you do in these biologics is you have, the FDA makes sure you have SOP. Every batch is done at least nearly identically. That's one of the safety features.

But as we're culturing the cells and making the media that we use in the products, everything is vetted. So we're making sure the cells are growing right, that there's no viruses or bacteria, that the cells look normal, that the secretion process is normal. And then…

17:22 Trina Renea: That there's no cancer in there either? 

17:25 Dr. Greg Maguire: Right. Time and time again, the cells we use, the molecules we use from these cells have been found not to cause cancer. Just the opposite. We can't, no one can make any claims about that, but there's work ongoing about how these molecules actually impede cancer. I could go into the mechanisms of that another time. But, yeah, perfectly safe. You can even take the cells we use from cancer patients and then take those molecules and put them into another person and they won't induce cancer. So that's been done by a scientist and published, again, in PubMed-listed journals.

18:12 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Do you have an idea about what age somebody should start using exosomes on their face?

18:20 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah. Aging is a funny thing. You want to control it early on. So people are starting to think that certainly in the 20s, you want to start thinking about preventing the onset of some of the aging features. That would include you start to get senescence of cells. The cells in our body, a constant lot of them, are constantly replicating themselves. As we age, they've replicated more and more. And so that's an aging process where the cell will kind of get tired out. We call it senescence in the field. And then they no longer are secreting the right molecules. 

The molecules we use help to keep the cells away from aging, away from the senescence. 

19:19 Trina Renea: So they could start in their 20s if they wanted?

19:23 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, yeah. My daughters have been using it starting in their 20s. We're all subject to all kinds of damage and, you know, poor eating habits. There's a concept of the exposome by one of my mentors at Berkeley, another Dr. Rappaport, Stephen Rappaport. You know, most disease is environmentally induced. Dr. Rappaport really started this whole field of the exposome and causes of disease by all the chemicals that impinge upon you. That includes the environmental chemicals coming in, but it includes the chemicals you make in your body. 

Like cortisol. When you're stressed, you're making a lot of cortisol. If you have chronic cortisol, that can actually damage components of your body, cells and the matrix around the cells. So, you want to be careful to control this damage as early as you can. That means eating well. 

And for a lot of us, that means feeding some of these molecules into your skin from topically applied products.

20:46 Trina Renea: So the exosomes are healing damage that you get on a daily basis as the environment is attacking you, you're eating bad things, these things that break down your cells. Applying exosomes at the surface topically is going to help with the surface topicals, I mean the epidermal layers of your skin on your face, basically?

21:08 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, you're feeding nutrients topically into the skin. You've got the stem cells in your skin producing these molecules, but, for example, if you're aged and/or you're not eating well, you're not enabling your stem cells to make these molecules. You're just not enabling that. You're cutting down their function. 

21:29 Trina Renea: Especially in your 20s when you're partying a lot. 

21:30 Julie Falls: Yes, but if you're just using the exosomes and you're not sleeping well, you're not eating well, you're still going to be kind of fighting an uphill battle. I would imagine it's got to be everything together. 

21:46 Trina Renea: All together, yeah.

21:48 Dr. Greg Maguire: All together, yeah.

21:48 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: And your genes.

21:49 Steve McGee: That’s the integrated solution, for sure. I would just mention though, in addition, I know you're talking about when should you begin applying these exosomes. But keep in mind teen acne as an example. Keep in mind eczema for young people as an example. There are a lot a lot of ways to benefit people with the exosomes at different ages, starting at a very young age. It's just helping that skin to rebalance itself at the end of the day. 

22:16 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: What about hair loss and the pigment in hair? I went to a laser conference the other weekend and they were ultrasounding in exosomes into the scalp. It was an exosome cell type from Italy. It was their proprietary item that was a consumable that you needed to use with their laser. But the idea of just ultrasounding it in, and not only were the befores and afters pretty impressive with the hair growth, but the pigment and the hair came back. So, people who were graying had their pigment back. Do you have any information on that? 

22:47 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yes. 

22:49 Trina Renea: Yes, they work with that. 

22:51 Dr. Greg Maguire: So we have a product called hair thickening serum. It contains the molecules, including the exosomes from fibroblast, mesenchymal stem cells, and within the hair follicle there's a cell called the dermal papilla. So we have the molecules from those three cell types and those three cell types are really very important. 

As you know, the hair follicle goes through phases, cycles where it builds itself up, grows hair, pigments the hair and then eventually you shed and you start going into a deconstructive process where the hair follicle kind of, to some degree, falls apart. Our molecules rebuild the hair follicle and they also augment the— there's melanocytes, pigment-making cells inside the follicle. Those melanocytes in the follicle inject pigment into the hair shaft. 

Well, guess what our hair thickening serum does? It helps to grow hair and it repigments, at least to some degree, the hair. And Steve has worked doing a lot of clinical studies on that and has a lot of case studies. We're actually presenting at a medical conference in a week or so, Steve?

24:15 Steve McGee: Yes.

24:15 Dr. Greg Maguire: Some of that work with a dermatologist that we work with.

24:16 Trina Renea: I'm going to that.

24:19 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: And also Steve pointed to his own head. Are you saying that you were bald and now you have a full head of hair? Because your hair…

24:25 Trina Renea: No, it's not gray. 

24:26 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Oh, it's not gray. 

24:28 Steve McGee: I was thinning, so I used the product up top because I was thinning. So my hair grew back but it grew back with its normal color versus growing back gray. I was definitely gray and thinning. 

24:39 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Nice.

24:40 Trina Renea: That's impressive. 

24:41 Julie Falls: Did you use anything else or just the NeoGenesis? 

24:44 Steve McGee: You can use just the product as a standalone or you can complement it with the different modalities via laser…

24:50 Julie Falls: Minoxidil?

24:51 Steve McGee: Microneedling. I'm sorry?

24:53 Julie Falls: Minoxidil, like Rogaine too?

24:55 Dr. Greg Maguire: You can, yeah. You can use it in conjunction with minoxidil because they work through two different mechanisms of action. They're working differently in the follicle. So, yeah, you can use them together. 

25:08 Trina Renea: Can you guys tell— we have to wrap it up here in just a sec. Can you tell the consumers out there how they can watch out for the bad stuff and find the good stuff? Because it's hard because there's a lot of it coming out right now and all over the place, and there's so much fear on Instagram and people talking negative about it. So how is a consumer supposed to find— I know your company is safe. I found you and I trust your company. But how are people supposed to be able to know if they're getting the exosomes from the skin cells or how are they supposed to know that they're getting them from the donors are being tested properly? Like, how do you do that research as a consumer? 

26:00 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, that's difficult. I would tell you, if you look on the bottle and you see it's a product made in the US, and there's a couple of good companies doing similar work to us that are in the US and one is a very big player. If you look on the bottle and it says "fibroblast conditioned media” that's derived from the skin and that's safe and effective. 

And that's another good company. I don't think I can mention company names here, but it's another good company. I know a lot of dermatologists carry that product and sell it, and it's safe and effective. 

Also, if you see companies, and there's a couple of good players doing this, where they use adipose mesenchymal stem cell conditioned media, perfectly safe. 

But the one that I would say be aware of is there are some companies using bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells. Bone marrow, first of all, it's not skin, but bone marrow can induce, these mesenchymal stem cells can induce inflammation. There actually can be cancer signals in the bone marrow, and that can be part of the exosomes coming out of the bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. 

We don't use those. We could. It's just as easy and the same expense to use bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. We choose not to do that for a lot of reasons. They're not as effective, they're not skin derived, and there's a potential of inflammation and actually oncogenic signals coming from those exosomes derived from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. 

So I would say, if you have a product that is from a US company and it’s skin-derived stem cells fibroblast…

28:01 Trina Renea: And that being said, US company because we don't know, when they come from overseas, where they're getting them, how they're testing them. It's not FDA approved to come into the US. They're not testing it. That's why you want to stick in the US right now with this. 

28:20 Dr. Greg Maguire: Right. The companies I know, and I know some of the people making the molecules for the other companies, they're using cells that are actually from California, which has very high stringency, more so than the federal standards. They're using good cells, they're making good products. 

We are a vertically integrated company, so we make the molecules. We do the stem cells ourselves. Everything is done. We formulate, we manufacture, so we can do complete quality control. Some of the companies will have other people make it for them, so they're not sure what's going on in the other company's laboratory, but we oversee it here. 

The lady who runs our laboratory to make the molecules, she was actually a lab director in a university biotech institute for over 20 years with cell culture experience. So she just knows what she's doing in the lab. She does this day by day with us. She's part of our company. So we're very confident of the quality and the safety of our products.

If you don't like our products for some reason, I can recommend the other really big player in the field. 

29:39 Trina Renea: Do you want him to say it? 

29:39 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Yeah. 

29:42 Trina Renea: You can say it. 

29:44 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah. The other good company is SkinMedica. So SkinMedica has fibroblast conditioned media. 

29:52 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: We call it the penis cream. In dermatology, we call it the penis cream. Remember that? 

29:57 Julie Falls: Yep. The foreskin…

29:59 Dr. Greg Maguire: Exactly. 

30:00 Julie Falls: Well, speaking of that, I listened to an esthetician-based podcast and there was so much misinformation. They were kind of frightening people, talking about, “Oh, you have to be careful, this stuff comes from umbilical cords and dead people's organs’ tissue,” and just scaring everybody. 

And, by the way, I don't know what's wrong with tissue-derived things. I don't know where these women were getting all of this. 

30:31 Trina Renea: Well, there's a lot of that fear out there. 

30:33 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Can we talk about the dangers of injecting exosomes, and if there is a future for injecting exosomes, eventually, with some kind of FDA approval? And if so, what would it basically be used for besides skin health?

30:48 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, that's a big business. So I have a chapter I wrote a few years ago and it's in a pharmacology series of books. The exosomes, because they are such good protectors of molecules and because they penetrate through barriers, and because they deliver the molecules to cells in need, the exosomes are becoming a very important drug delivery device. So that's one of the aspects of using exosomes. 

Most of us know about liposomes, which are artificial constructs, whereas the exosome is made naturally by the cells and so they're much more stable, the exosome, than a liposome, and they better penetrate. They're more flexible. They actually have penetration qualities so it's much better than a liposome. 

The industry is looking to exosomes. I may have mentioned in the last podcast, I have an MD-PhD friend in Sweden. He also has a company where they're taking exosomes and they split them open and load them with different drugs. And then the exosome comes back together and they use that as a delivery device for drugs. So it's really a burgeoning field.

And then it's also a matter of choosing, as we were hinting at, choosing the right cells to make your exosomes because the content of the exosome is so important. If you're trying to heal the skin, maintain the skin, probably exosomes, molecules derived from the skin are going to work best. 

32:40 Trina Renea: Of course. Yeah.

32:42 Dr. Greg Maguire: People are using umbilical cords. You know, umbilical cord doesn't have skin structure and function. Those umbilical cord-derived stem cells and the exosomes derived from them do have some good qualities, such as anti-inflammatory qualities, so they can be used for inflammatory problems. 

But we find, and others find, that the big, big player right now is the adipose mesenchymal stem cell because it is very hardy. It is very safe. It's what we call immunoprivileged exosomes. They don't have any proteins on them that trigger a negative immune response. And the adipose mesenchymal stem cells are able to replicate, replicate, replicate without damaging themselves, unlike other cell types like bone marrow. Bone marrow can't keep replicating. The bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells can't replicate as often so they age more quickly. 

The adipose mesenchymal stem cell is a big, big player now, very important. 

34:01 Julie Falls: I have a quick question. I know when I started your product, Trina mentioned that I should stay away from anything I was using that had growth factors in it. So, are there contraindications that you shouldn't be mixing different products together? 

34:17 Trina Renea: In the beginning, when I was talking to you, Dr. Maguire, I was saying I use another company, products that have growth factors, human growth factor and stuff like that in it. And you were mentioning that maybe you shouldn't layer exosomes with that because it can be too much for the skin. 

34:38 Dr. Greg Maguire: Too much, yeah.

34:40 Julie Falls: But is there a way to have a cautionary advice on the product? Like how do people know that? How do we get that out? 

34:49 Trina Renea: If you don't have an esthetician telling you, or a doctor, saying like, "By the way, don't use lots of products with this. Only use one."

34:57 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Or an educated BFF who knows everything about skincare. 

35:01 Trina Renea: Yeah, so how does a consumer know that? Do you guys put that out there on the jars? 

35:09 Dr. Greg Maguire: That is something we should be better about communicating to people because if you're using— and some products use just a great abundance, for example, of EGF. And they use EGF to remove the hair from sheep, for example, there's a lot of EGF and it plumps the skin and it cuts off the hair follicle and the hair just sheds out. You don't want to be doing that to your skin. So you wouldn't be wanting to use a lot of EGF and then layer on top of it the NeoGenesis factors. 

But, having said that, what's going on with the NeoGenesis factors or the factors from SkinMedica is you're using a complete wide array of growth factors and other molecules that are normally in the skin and they're not going in at high concentrations. Unless you're just bathing in the stuff all day, you're just not going…

36:14 Trina Renea: I do that. Just kidding.

36:17 Dr. Greg Maguire: One of my colleagues drinks it because he had gut issues and these exosomes can help with gut issues. So he's really dosing and he's been doing that for like 15 years and it's really helped him with his autoimmune conditions. 

36:39 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Steve, is there anything else you feel like we've missed asking you about, anything else you need to elaborate on exosomes for our listeners?

36:51 Steve McGee: I think in general, also an earlier question that you all had asked, the guiding principle from my very simple standpoint is, what does Mother Nature do? And let's honor what Mother Nature does and try to supplement what Mother Nature does. So that's where when you started asking these questions about the dangers or the benefits of certain types of exosomes. Well, what is Mother Nature doing in the skin naturally? 

And like Greg was saying, Mother Nature is not delivering just one or two targeted molecules, like growth factors. She's delivering this whole symphony of molecules. And Greg refers to that as a systems therapeutic. But, in simple terms, do what Mother Nature does. Mother Nature does not freeze her exosomes, right? She delivers them fresh. 

So just the guiding principle, because there is so much misinformation. There will be even more misinformation out there. And it's very difficult for the consumer to go to the PubMed peer review medical journals, scientific journals, to try to make heads from tails there. So the guiding principle is just what does Mother Nature do? Let me buy products that do what Mother Nature does. 

37:58 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Great advice. 

37:59 Trina Renea: Good advice. 

38:01 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, and we're just putting back into the skin what was normally there. As we age or different conditions where these stem cells aren't releasing the molecules so well as they normally would, we're just simply putting those molecules back into the skin that were there when we were young and healthy. 

38:20 Trina Renea: Right. And so when you're using exosomes, which is this new thing in our world right now, which is great, you don't have to use other growth factors from other products and stuff like that. You just need to use the one. 

38:37 Dr. Greg Maguire: Yeah, we talked about these factors from the stem cells aren't the only thing that your skin needs, of course. You're going to need your carotenoids coming in, your polyphenols, using your retinol. We have a retinoid product that also has carotenoids in it. You put the carotenoids on the skin. 

And, now, scientists have found that they'll convert over to the various active forms of vitamin A, like retinoic acid. And they're also acting as antioxidants as they normally would if you're eating your carrots and other carotenoid-rich vegetables. 

And I stress this because now we have medical foods with evidence behind them where people— so, I'm trained in CNS and retinal degeneration, brain degeneration, and they have medical foods for retinal degeneration, which includes a lot of the things we need for the skin, the carotenoids, the zincs. You need to get all these things ingested. So it's not just the stem cell molecules, but it's all these other molecules you need in addition. 

So, yes, using the products you love and work well for you in conjunction with our stem cell release molecules is it's spot on. It's what you need to do. 

40:09 Trina Renea: Yeah.

40:08 Julie Falls: Great. 

40:10 Trina Renea: Again, I appreciate both of you coming on and sharing with our guests this information. Hopefully, they can make good choices. 

And I would say to everybody out there, before you just buy exosomes from somewhere, just talk to your doctor, talk to your esthetician. They are going to be more in tune with where you should get them. We mentioned a couple of companies right now that we trust on the show, and so good luck, everybody.

I'll see you guys in Texas. I'm coming to the show. 

40:44 Steve McGee: We're seeing you, Trina, and Dr. Vicki, pleasure meeting you as well. Thank you for your time and thank you for the wonderful work you are doing to inform and educate the general consumer. That's really awesome. 

40:56 Trina Renea: Thank you.

40:56 Julie Falls: Thank you for all your wonderful information. 

40:58 Dr. Vicki Rapaport: Yeah, we appreciate it, both of you. It was a nice banter. We really loved it. 

41:02 Trina Renea: Yeah, thank you.

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