Startup's 'Youth' Drug Claims Draw Skepticism Even From Doctors Testing It

A startup called Generation Lab is offering an experimental "rejuvenation" treatment, an injectable combination of two existing drugs the company calls 1 Generation, to a small group of insiders before it has published evidence that the treatment works. The company's scientific founder is longtime aging researcher Irina Conboy of the University of California, Berkeley, and the company will not disclose which two drugs make up the combination.

Conboy is known for parabiosis experiments, in which she surgically joined the circulatory systems of old and young lab animals. In a widely cited 2005 study, she connected two-month-old mice to much older ones and found the old animals' ability to heal from injury improved dramatically, suggesting young blood carries molecular signals that can restore an old animal's regenerative capacity. Scientists have also found the reverse: even a single exchange of plasma from an old mouse has strong negative effects on a younger one. Other startups, including the Harvard spinout Elevian and the Stanford-linked Alkahest, have raised money to pursue treatments based on such blood-borne signals for conditions like stroke and Alzheimer's, but none has yet reached the market.

Generation Lab's chief executive, Alina Su, says a wait list for the treatment includes well-known people, and the company plans a larger study of 100 or more participants — even as it offers the drug combination to others before firm evidence of a benefit is available. That planned study will be led by longevity doctors who practice alternative medicine, including Matt Cook, founder of the BioReset Medical clinic network, whose clinics offer treatments such as stem-cell injections and who a 2021 report said had recommended covid-19 treatments the FDA had called fraudulent.

Cook, who has taken the drug combination himself, said he was initially doubtful it would work, since neither drug is a longevity treatment on its own. He described a lasting sense of mental clarity after starting the injections, and said other participants reported a sense of well-being and old aches and pains disappearing. "I have many more questions than I have answers," he said. "I still feel like I don't understand exactly what the mechanism is."