Below is a tidied transcript (cleaned wording, clearer speaker turns, corrected obvious misspellings, kept meaning the same), followed by a summary and a critique.
Context: this appears to be the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee “Innovation showcase” segment on Tuesday 20 January 2026, with John Hemming as the featured innovator (listed as “Representative at Biohacking to Improve Everyone’s Health Team”). (UK Parliament Committees)
Tidy transcript (approx. 0:00–9:10)
Chair (0:00)
Order, and welcome to today’s Innovation Showcase. The Committee wants to understand how the UK supports innovators, and what more can be done. To inform our work, we select an innovator to share their story before our main evidence session every week.
Martin Wrigley has suggested this week’s innovator, from the controversial but fast-growing field of biohacking. I’ll hand over to Martin to introduce him.
Martin Wrigley MP (0:35)
Thank you, Chair. I’ve always struggled with the idea of planning and formally structured innovation. Much of my experience in big business suggests it’s less fruitful than hoped.
We know many innovations and discoveries come from unusual beginnings—Super Glue, bubble wrap, Post-it notes, even penicillin. And sometimes we see highly unorthodox work, such as Professor Kevin Warwick putting silicon chips in his own arm.
I remember as a teenager talking with a friend in the school computer club—yes, of course I was in the school computer club—with me. Long before PCs or home computers, we had an early computer in the school. My friend said he wanted to write a program to predict the next word in a sentence. That seemed utterly impossible—orthodox thinking said it was impossible.
Fast forward: about 20 years ago, some years before the iPhone, I found myself working on app-store rollouts for Orange across Europe with a former university friend and colleague, Ronjon Nag. Ronjon had made his first fortune by selling SMS text prediction software (to Motorola) and settled down as a Silicon Valley tech investor. Today we have generative AI systems that can predict complete speeches. So how wrong were we, when I was a teenager?
Working with Ronjon, he told me what he was looking at next: aging and biohacking. Since then I’ve followed with fascination the efforts of former tech entrepreneurs joining the longevity search.
Now, while many longevity investigations use unorthodox ideas and testing methods, I do wonder how we balance “thinking out of the box” innovation with academic orthodoxy—and, of course, consumer safety. I was listening to the beginnings of ARI on Radio 4 over the weekend, which also brought this to mind.
My innovator this week is John Hemming. John’s been a serial tech entrepreneur in the UK, with several successful and innovative companies. We got talking about his latest project in biohacking, and while the Committee may not support unorthodox techniques, I wanted to explore the mindset that clearly follows a significant Silicon Valley trend.
Over to you, John.
John Hemming (2:54)
Thank you. I’m 65, and I do have a track record of innovation.
In 1983 I created the John Hemming Company, which became JHC Systems Ltd, a software house. At one point its product processed about 10% of UK equity trades. We sold that business in 2019.
In 1994 I launched a number of internet businesses under the heading MarketNet. More recently, I created Sir Strata Edra, a provider of Making Tax Digital software, and—together with Samuel Collingwood Smith—On Time Under Budget AI Ltd (unsurprisingly, an AI business).
I’m here today to present Hemming Biohacking. Hemming Biohacking is a business working to develop small-molecule interventions that provide a cost-effective way of improving health.
My academic scientific background was a scholarship in Natural Sciences at Magdalen College, Oxford, where I specialised in atomic, nuclear, and theoretical physics. I moved into commerce after my first degree. I don’t have a second degree.
I’m criticised because a lot of the experimental work I do is self-experimentation. However, Werner Forssmann, Barry Marshall, and Ralph Steinman are among people who won Nobel Prizes following self-experimentation—and it has a solid track record of obtaining replicable results. In the end, replicability is the key scientific test.
Oddly enough, my first peer-reviewed publication was in November 2025, as a junior co-author on a paper titled Open problems in aging science: a roadmap for biogerontology, published in GeroScience. My part concentrated on mitochondrial function.
The underlying scientific thesis behind the company is one I presented at Imperial College in November 2025 at a conference titled Emerging Technologies for Healthy Aging in the Prevention of Non-communicable Diseases. My presentation was titled: Aging: a feature, not a bug—evolutionary software arguments for acetylation being upstream of methylation.
There isn’t time to go into all the molecular biology. I have a website, citrate.science, and a YouTube channel called John Hemming, with further details. I’m happy to do further presentations and answer questions if useful.
The principle is this: within the nucleus there are splicing factors, histones, and other proteins. By adding and removing acetyl groups to these proteins, you change gene expression. That process is acetylation.
What’s interesting is that there are small molecules—under ~1 kilodalton—that can intervene in these pathways. Many have well-known safety profiles. It becomes a question of managing the combinatorial effect to improve health and wellbeing.
A good example of food changing gene expression is how royal jelly changes gene expression in bees—the queen is only the queen because she eats royal jelly.
Around the world, many organisations are working out how to handle diseases of aging. At this stage I can’t be certain how much progress we’ve made, but given the geroscience hypothesis, it looks like a useful pathway.
Interestingly, the main source of citrate in cells comes from mitochondria via a transport protein called the citrate carrier. It’s also interesting how translocation of ATP citrate lyase to the nucleus effectively maintains a separate pool of nucleocytosolic acetyl-CoA to maintain acetylation of nuclear proteins.
This is linked to the state of mitochondrial DNA, as membrane potential is reduced by damage to mitochondrial DNA, which occurs gradually over time. It’s possible—though we don’t have time for details—to see how this links to both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, which are at least partly driven by mitochondrial issues.
Similarly, fertility is affected by mitochondria, as processes like follicular atresia relate to maintaining mitochondrial quality.
Using small molecules has the advantage of normally having a known safety profile, and they are often not expensive because they can be found in food and normal metabolism—useful to the end user.
However, this raises a problem: the essential absence of IP rights—though I do have some patent applications going through—limits availability of funds for complex regulatory processes.
If regulation were focused more on safety, and less on potential risks of “expensive” interventions, more progress could be made with small molecules. On the other hand, because there is a global market, progress can be made in other markets and then feed back to the UK later. I’m in discussions with potential partners in various global regions about launching outside the UK.
Thank you for hearing me.
Chair (7:43)
Thank you very much, John. It’s good to hear different—and indeed unorthodox—voices in this important area of aging. We know this is of great interest to many groups around the world, particularly in Silicon Valley. Martin, would you like to close?
Martin Wrigley MP (8:08)
Well, most of the science went completely over my head—but I think it’s fascinating. The old axiom “you are what you eat” clearly has something to it. Thank you very much.
Committee Member (8:19)
Very quickly: my master’s and PhD were on aging and neurodegenerative diseases, so I did follow the science. I’m quite interested to read up on it—and I can see Lauren is similar. I wouldn’t mind [receiving more].
Chair (8:34)
I know some of you will follow the science—I’ve looked at the CVs. I think Parliament has got a bit more scientific since I was here, which is good.
Member (8:42)
Only a bit.
Chair (8:44)
A copy of your speech would be lovely. We’ll share the contact details so others can get in touch.
John Hemming (8:54)
If you want: look up the website citrate.science. I’ve got my posters from 2024 and 2025 there. I’m very happy to come on another occasion and discuss things, either in a formal or informal session.
Chair (9:06)
No difficulty at all. Great. Thank you very much. Order.
Summary (what was said)
- The Committee’s Innovation Showcase features one “innovator story” each week before the main evidence session. (UK Parliament Committees)
- Martin Wrigley MP frames innovation as often arising from unorthodox beginnings and introduces longevity/biohacking as a fast-growing, controversial area that raises orthodoxy vs innovation vs safety tensions.
- John Hemming presents “Hemming Biohacking” as a venture focused on small-molecule interventions that modulate acetylation (and downstream gene-expression control via histones/splicing factors).
- He argues mitochondrial citrate export and ATP citrate lyase / acetyl-CoA availability connect mitochondrial state (including mtDNA damage and membrane potential decline) to nuclear regulation, with relevance to neurodevelopment, neurodegeneration, and fertility.
- He closes on an innovation-policy point: small molecules may be cheaper/safer but harder to fund and regulate due to weaker IP and costly regulatory pathways; therefore he’s considering non-UK launches.
Critique (strengths, weaknesses, and what would make it more convincing)
What lands well
- Clear “mechanism-first” story: tying acetyl-CoA supply (via citrate) to nuclear regulation is a coherent frame that many biologists can engage with.
- Pragmatic translational point: the “cheap molecules + weak IP → hard-to-fund validation” problem is real in general, and it’s relevant to UK innovation policy discussions.
- Good scientific instinct in one place: emphasising replicability is directionally right (even if it’s not sufficient on its own).
Where it’s weak / risky (scientifically and rhetorically)
-
Self-experimentation is not a substitute for clinical inference.
Self-experiments can generate hypotheses, but they’re highly vulnerable to placebo effects, regression to the mean, selection bias, confounding, and “n=1 overfitting.” Nobel anecdotes don’t generalise into a reliable methodology for interventions in aging. -
Several claims are asserted, not evidenced (in this clip).
Examples: “acetylation upstream of methylation” as a general rule; the degree to which mtDNA damage → membrane potential decline → nuclear acetylation changes → disease phenotypes; and how often small-molecule combinations produce net benefit rather than trade-offs. -
The “known safety profile” framing is shaky.
A molecule being “in food” or previously used safely in one context doesn’t guarantee safety at different doses, combinations, durations, or in older populations with comorbidities—especially with multi-compound stacks. -
Regulation caricature risk.
Suggesting regulation is “less focused on safety” can come across as hand-wavy unless paired with specific proposals (e.g., adaptive licensing, real-world evidence frameworks, clear supplement/drug boundary handling, etc.).
What would strengthen the case quickly
If the goal is to persuade a science/policy audience (and not just “signal the thesis”), the next step is to show one clean chain of evidence:
- Define 2–3 measurable endpoints (e.g., specific proteomic markers, inflammation panels, NAD/acetyl-CoA proxies, epigenetic marks, functional outcomes).
- Specify one intervention at a time (and only later combinations), with dose/rationale.
- Pre-register a protocol (even for n-of-1), include washout periods, blinding where possible, and publish raw data.
- Show reproducibility across people (even a small cohort) or in a model system, before implying broad health improvement.
- Be explicit about the product category (supplement vs investigational medicinal product) and the exact regulatory path you’re proposing the UK should make easier.
If you want, I can also convert this into a one-page committee-style brief (key claims → evidence needed → policy asks), using the transcript above as the source.