In 2016, a tiny Bay Area start-up announced an experiment that seemed equal parts medieval sorcery and science fiction: It would inject older people with the blood plasma of young donors in a bid to slow aging. Last week, the FDA got involved.
. The regulator, echoing individual medical experts, issued a warning saying the treatment’s benefits are unproven and that the practice could be harmful.
For 150 years, scientists have been stitching together old mice and young mice to enable their blood to pump through each other’s veins. The practice, called parabiosis, often resulted in lab rats contracting infections and dying, and in the 1970s it was largely discarded. But advances over the past 15 years have revived the technique. Nowadays, parabiosis pairs are sniffing around cages in university laboratories across America.
Karmazin had just graduated from Stanford University Medical School around the time Villeda’s study was published. Originally from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Karmazin said he had long been interested in the “often overlooked” field of aging.“I was thinking about the [mouse] research and it just occurred to me, like, ‘Wow, transfusions are the same thing for humans,’ ” he said. Karmazin said he dropped out halfway through his residency and founded Ambrosia.
“The research we are doing can be sensationalized,” said UC San Francisco’s Villeda. “In order to avoid hoax studies we need appropriate clinical trials.” Human longevity has been a popular topic in Silicon Valley. Billionaire tech entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel, Y Combinator President Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have been pouring money into bioengineering start-ups. The tech industry’s desire to cheat death was even lampooned in a 2017 episode of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” The TV comedy showcased human-to-human parabiosis, with a young “blood boy” directly transfusing his blood into a wealthy, aging recipient.
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