Silicon Valley longevity startup Generation Lab is making bold claims about a secret injectable treatment it says could make blood stop aging, suggesting a meaningful quality-of-life advance for people trying to maintain activity, mental sharpness, and independence later in life.
However, important details about the treatment are being withheld, and the buzz around it appears to be ahead of the evidence.
Here's what to know
According to MIT Technology Review, as written by Antonio Regalado, Generation Lab has started offering its injectable — 1 Generation — to a small, select group of people, including Regalado himself.
The company describes the injection as a combination of two existing drugs designed to reduce harmful age-related factors in the blood and help tissues operate in a more youthful way.
Alina Su, CEO of Generation Lab, said the treatment is limited to a private cohort and asserted that interest is strong. Generation Lab has also declined to identify the two drugs, saying it wants to discourage copycats while it pursues a limited period of FDA exclusivity for a new use of an existing drug combination.
That lack of transparency has added to doubts, particularly since the support for the treatment appears to be mostly anecdotal.
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BioReset Medical founder Matt Cook said he was highly skeptical when he first began prescribing the drug combination to insiders. "My confidence this was going to work was a zero. Like, I did not believe it was actually going to work." So he took it himself, saying he was shocked to experience a mental clarity that lasted for days. "So it's interesting. [But] I have many more questions than I have answers … I still feel like I don't understand exactly what the mechanism is."
Regalado noted that until he knows what the drugs are, he will not be partaking.
More background
Generation Lab's scientific founder is Irina Conboy, a former researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She is best known for parabiosis experiments, which involved old and young mice sharing circulation and suggested that blood-borne factors can influence tissue aging and recovery.
In 2005, Conboy reported that older mice healed better when matched with younger mice. In 2020, she explored another approach by removing plasma from older animals and replacing it with albumin and saline.
MIT Technology Review said that "reset" seemed even more rejuvenating than exposure to young blood, and that the work helped inspire therapeutic plasma exchange offerings for humans costing as much as $10,000 per session.
A safe drug combination that could recreate those effects would be a far more practical option for daily life, potentially aiding stamina, grip strength, focus, and mobility without an invasive procedure.
Conboy says 1 Generation works by stimulating cells to regenerate while neutralizing the old-age factors in a person's bloodstream.
What's being done?
Generation Lab says it intends to conduct a larger company-sponsored study involving at least 100 participants.
The company is collaborating with longevity doctors including Cook and Jeffrey Gladden, a longevity doctor whose Texas clinic is expected to take part. Because the treatment uses drugs that already exist, Generation Lab may be able to advance more quickly than a startup trying to invent an entirely new molecule.
Generation Lab also hosted a private event on August 28 featuring George Church, the Harvard synthetic biologist, and researchers from Anthropic.
Gladden said, "I am skeptical and optimistic at the same time."
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