S3E3 – Parabiosis – The Fountain of Youth or a scam
Hello, I’m Lydia Shompole and welcome to another episode of the Creepy Tech Podcast.
Introduction
Have you ever wondered how to reverse aging? We all grow old and as time passes, our bodies are become more and more susceptible to age related diseases.
I know some of you will say that there is nothing to worry about. That's fine if you have time on your side. But what if you can't put off aging for another 20 years? What if eating healthier, quitting bad habits, and working out more can no longer help you extend your life?
And what if you just happened to have large amounts of money to throw at this problem called age?
Well, I think I can help answer those questions, this week we are doing a deep dive into the problem of aging, and the companies hoping to find a solution.
According to Wikipedia the fountain of youth is, “A mythical spring, allegedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted around the world for thousands of years.”
For as long as humankind has existed, there have been a handful of constant unchanging desires.
The Longevity Industry
The most elusive of these being a remedy to aging and as technology advanced, a new industry was born. Specifically, the longevity industry which focuses on exploring the root causes of ageing and hopes to answer the questions, why do we age and how do we age,
Parabiosis was first invented in 1864 by a physiologist named Paul Bert who simply wanted to see if two beings could share a circulatory system.
The UMass Medical school website explains that “Parabiosis is the surgical union of two organisms, developing a single, shared physiological system. Through surgically connecting two animals, it can be proven that a secreted factor in one animal impacts the physiology of a second animal through their shared circulatory system.”
Then in 1957 came along a group of Cornell scientists who decided to actually use the procedure to study it’s impact on ageing. For the next 50ish years, the research into the depths of parabiosis kind of fell off.
In the early 2000’s when scientists brought back the experiments. One of the more interesting ones to me was when they, “used parabiosis in studies of scar formation and skin regeneration.” During these studies, “Physicians have observed that surgical wounds in the elderly heal with thinner scars than wounds in young patients.”
I have linked all of the research just incase anyone wants to read through those papers. Essentially the results showed that the older mice healed better when attached to the body of the younger mice.
Peter Thiel and Parabiosis
These results were promising, and it didn’t take long for companies to come to the realization that this research may prove to be extremely lucrative, if they could figure out how we to slow down ageing, their market would consist of billions of customers.
But since surgically connecting a young person to some rich older person isn’t really feasible, it was noted that the key thing being shared between the two mice was the blood. So, the next best thing would be the transfusion of young blood (or plasma) into older bodies.
This caught the interest of Jesse Karmazin, who founded the company Ambrosia in Monterey California. Ambrosia began its human trials in 2016, Inc.com released an article where The founder explained that the trail, “Has a simple protocol: Healthy participants aged 35 and older get a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for molecular indicators of health and aging. The study is patient-funded; participants, who range in age from late 30s through 80s, must pay $8,000 to take part, and live in or travel to Monterey for treatments and follow-up assessments.”
Which brings us to Peter Theil & his interest in the fountain of youth. So shortly after Jesse made the study public, he received a message from Jason Camm who was at the time the chief medical officer at Theil Capital. The message essentially said that they were interested in the work Ambrosia was doing and that they wanted to talk about it.
The Inc.com article also stated that when Peter Theil was interviewed about his thoughts on health & ageing, he said the following: “I'm looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting.”
Continuing to state that, “There are a lot of these things that have been strangely underexplored. And further stating that, “there's no FDA approval needed because it's just blood transfusions."
Which the FDA did refute later on, stating that the agency "regulates the collection and manufacture of blood and blood components to help protect the health of the blood donor and to ensure the safety, purity and potency of the blood product."
More recently, The Guardian published an article stating that Theil, “Has poured millions into anti-ageing research, notably the Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit that aims to make “90 the new 50 by 2030”.
They believe they can accomplish this through a 7 step process:
Replacement Parts – their website states that they “Would like to make replacing biological parts as easy as replacing parts in a modern car.”
Getting the Crud Out – meaning “Clear harmful substances from the body at both the microscopic (cellular), and macroscopic (organ) level.”
Restoring the Rivers – meaning “Improve these factors in the aged, including accelerated angiogenesis, more effective carriage and transfer of vital particles, and restored function of the circulatory system to youthful competence.”
Debugging the Code – explaining that “Our first goal is to create actionable metrics that can illuminate just what is happening in your cells due to changes in your habits, food intake, age, supplements you take, stresses from work and family life and etc. If you can't measure it you can't fix it. Once measured, we will need to return the code to a youthful state.”
Restock the Shelves – explaining that they would, “Provide the aged body with the tools required to rebuild and protect. It is essential to increase the number of stem cells and restore them to a youthful state, stimulating them to differentiate accurately.”
Lust for Life – explaining that they would, “Help older ones to want to increase their longevity, and to empower them to make the most of longer life. By restoring the senses, cognition, and physical ability, older ones will be capable of independence and productivity.”
Rebuild the Walls – explaining that, “Developing technologies that restore integrity and rebuild our walls, from the fascia that surround every nerve fiber to the skin that hold us all together.”
In addition to Methuselah Foundation, both Jeff Bezos and Peter Theil invested in another company (back in 2016) called the Unity Foundation. Their purpose? “Developing therapeutics to slow, halt, or reverse diseases of aging.”
To do this they would focus on senescent cells which they have found to be a common feature of several age-related diseases. I have linked both websites just in case you are interested in reading a bit more about their work.
Now, unlike Methuselah & Unity which both have functioning websites & information. When I looked Ambrosias’ study on the official government website for clinical trials, even though the trial is technically completed, the results of the trials are not available for reading. Additionally, when you try to go to the company website for Ambrosia LLC, you’ll find a 404-error page from Wix stating that the website no longer exists.
An article on OneZero.Medium.com explained that the company, “Stopped offering the procedure after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a buyer beware, cautioning consumers against using the service.”
However, the same article and a few others from 2019 also stated that the founder had not given up on his pursuit of the fountain of youth and that he was in the process of forming a new company Ivy Plasma.
The same can be said for other companies and individuals, they are just not ready to give up their search. Currently there are at least 5 other companies hoping to find the answer to reversing ageing before anyone else does.
Some of the companies like Fountain Therapeutics are using data collected by AI and machine learning to help resolve degenerative diseases all together.
While others like Alkahest are developing drugs that are taken for diseases like Alzheimer’s and end stage renal disease.
There’s even companies like Altos’s Cambridge Institute of Science, which was under construction early 2022 that has multiple locations and is actually supported by a Nobel Peace prize stem cell scientist named Professor Shinya Yamanaka from Kyoto University in Japan.
Even though parabiosis sounds insane, I will say that some of the most impactful advancements have come from the most farfetched ideas.
I’m interested to see what realistic applications companies come up with, and in the meantime, I’m wondering how many of you would sign up to test them out on yourselves?
Alright, that is all I have for you this week, if you find information that you’d love to share with me, feel free to message me what you found either by email, DM on socials or leaving a voice message on the creepy tech Anchor page...
As always, if you have a quick moment, head over to the apple podcast app and leave me a review.
You can follow me on IG @Tech_Creepy & on Twitter @TechCreepy & you can find the links I mentioned in this episode on my website Lshompole.com.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Youth
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2012/yamanaka/facts/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22994447/
https://www.umassmed.edu/fitzlab/core-services/parabiosis/
https://www.karger.com/article/pdf/210677
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/young-blood-might-rejuvenate-older-adults/
https://www.inverse.com/article/29604-parabiosis-peter-thiel-blood
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02460731
https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctor-anti-aging-blood-clinic-again
https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.html
https://forum.age-reversal.net/t/x2hkg8c/the-conboy-plasma-dilution-treatment-is-available-now
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662775/
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/life-sciences-and-health-care/articles/longevity-science.html
YouTube:
Tissue Rejuvenation via Plasma Dilution | Irina Conboy, UC Berkeley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrgOCq1MVQc
How young blood might help reverse aging. Yes, really | Tony Wyss-Coray - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsECS5qsGLs
Why Are The Super Rich Injecting Young Blood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8rKgUJ05YU
Can Transfusing Young Blood Reverse Ageing? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycw96w3-S0w
Teen Blood and the Science of Anti-Aging - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N88pPUWrc5k
Young-Blood Parabiosis, Ambrosia, and Silicon Valley Biovampirism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_TluGiYfGg
Heterochronic Parabiosis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7W2MDWu1D4
Everything wrong with the young blood injection craze - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N73uKSkN1pI
Is young blood the answer to anti-aging? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA8baDcHUEU
Young Blood Transfusion For Anti-Aging | New & Safer Method? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAdRCo-ALok
Young Blood for Old Brains - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAmzg2ZaaHE
Photo credits:
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Photo by Claudia Love on Unsplash
Photo by Connor Wang on Unsplash
Photo by Tom Wheatley on Unsplash
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
Photo by Matt Bennett on Unsplash
Photo by Eduardo Barrios on Unsplash
Hashtags:
#AntiAging #YoungTransfusion #jeffBezosantiaging #Longevity #metforminforantiaging #peterThiel #thecontrarian