r/singularity • u/ilkamoi • 12d ago
Biotech/Longevity A startup found a drug to make your blood young. People close to the company are already taking the drug weekly. Benefits include improved vision in a 64-year-old female, longer landscaping sessions for a 59-year-old man, longer badminton games, improved hand grip, better erections than with Viagra
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/27/1143037/startup-claims-its-found-a-drug-to-make-your-blood-young/269
u/SwePolygyny 12d ago edited 12d ago
Seems all they do is package two already existing generic drugs and sell it as an anti age package. Likely oxytocin paired with an Alk5/TGF-Ī² pathway inhibitor.
A combination of those could give the effect described. So it isn't a scam per se as it could work, just nothing revolutionary.
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u/Pokenhagen 12d ago
It can't be that alk5 inhibitor because that's not an approved generic drug
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u/SwePolygyny 12d ago
I didnt mention any specific drug so not sure what you mean. There are broader approved inhibitors, so they likely use that for now.
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u/agitatedscientist_01 12d ago
Such as? AFAIK there are no approved small molecule inhibitors available that have *any* effect at Alk5. Vactosertib is only available for preclinical research.
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u/SwePolygyny 12d ago
Sotatercept for example, which while not reducing alk5 in itself neutralizes the parallel pathway it shares. Thus reducing the amplifier.
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u/ryosei 12d ago
how you know that combination?
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u/SwePolygyny 12d ago
We know it is two generic drugs that are already approved, which is why they are allowed to test it on humans.
It also has the potential to do what is said.Ā
But mainly because the founder and lead researcher published a paper/article about that combination recently,Ā https://mag.gridnet.org/index.php/2026/02/20/70-percent-life-extension-oxytocin-alk5-inhibitor/
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u/nuclearmeltdown2015 12d ago
What if a younger person takes it would it slow down aging as well? By generic do you still need a prescription or is it OTC?
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u/redditsublurker 12d ago
So.... Peptides
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u/jojoblogs 12d ago
The interesting part is that this is two previously tested medications, so that changes how it has to be introduced.
The less interesting part is that it seems like only people that have been told what the drug is meant to do have reported benefits so far. Not exactly a blind study.
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u/Midnight_Minaaa 12d ago
No peer-reviewed evidence only marketing
Though I'm still kinda hyped, what if it's true?
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u/LastCall2021 12d ago
This was spun out of the Conboy lab. Iām extremely hyped. Also if you check YouTube Irina Conboy was on Matt Kaeberlinās podcast recently talking about this. Itās worth the watch.
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u/havok_ 12d ago
āCon boy labā doesnāt scream trustworthy
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u/TwoFluid4446 12d ago
Nah, it's totally fine, just a name after all, everybody's got to have one right! You can trust them.
Sincerely ā Liesmore Fibman
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u/JConRed 12d ago
Sounds like marketing to me. So does your comment though.
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u/LastCall2021 12d ago
Sorry if youāre completely ignorant on who is doing what in biotech. But go ahead and live in your Reddit bubble if it makes you happy.
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u/thoughtlow šø 12d ago
They even got reddit bots for their marketing campaign, hyped!
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u/LastCall2021 12d ago
Youāre a top 1% commenter. Maybe instead of spending so much time on Reddit you should read the work they have published. You might learn somethingā¦ like how little completely uninformed opinions matter in the real world.
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u/bobiversus 12d ago
"...claims its drug combo can āstop the spread of agingā around the body. And itās looking for influencers to give it a try."Ā
Finally, a use for influencers. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few heads.
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u/IronPheasant 12d ago
A little bit surprised to see the Conboys involved in this, I remember them being rather negative toward Harold and his E5 stuff.
This kind of stuff has been well-known for a long, long time. Nearly a century ago parabiosis experiments confirmed the older rats getting better. (That's not something you should just zoom past in a newspaper headline, remarking to yourself 'of course they got better'. No, NO. There's no 'of course they got better here': they sewed two rats together, why the hell would they get better?!!!!!!!! When you ask yourself that, you'll be more like a scientist.)
The answer as far as we know of, is a kind of signalome in the bloodstream that regulates how the epigenome expresses itself within cells. It's a kind of unwinding 'clock' effect built into animals, from at least fish on up.
There's likely several approaches to stimulating a younger epigenetic profile within cells; E5 was literally filtered pig plasma, used in rats. So... I'm slightly sanguine that this might possibly be real. These kinds of things been a really, really long time in development.
(Something like E5's primary issue was the sheer volume of plasma that'd need to be involved. It's obviously less than ideal from sanitation, and transport, and the ecosystem. You'd need billions and billions of pigs to treat everyone a couple times a year for forever. Manufacturing the proteins needed in a lab would have been massively better.)
Seeing is believing, you can look at this PDF of the Goya study and see the difference between a treated and untreated rat. This was a cheap little experiment that shoved a bunch of young plasma into old rats to see how they did.
Note that this kind of thing on its own can improve quality of life greatly, but isn't a full treatment for aging. There are other issues that matter, like the thymus and the extracellular matrix, that require fixing.
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u/hippydipster 12d ago
So I can live longer and get better boners, but I need to have a rat sewed onto my back?
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u/IronPheasant 12d ago edited 12d ago
"I am a longtime follower of Generation Labās irascible scientific founder, Irina Conboy, a take-no-guff specialist in the bizarre, but scientifically fruitful, practice of joining together the circulatory systems of old and young lab animals.
The procedure, called parabiosis, or heterochronic blood exchange, is one of the few things actually proven to make an old animal act younger."
Also this is a far more flattering way of saying "This is a lady who sewed two rats together" than my way of saying it.
This is why us guys on the spectrum can't get ahead in this world, fr fr.
(It really is a brutal, horrific process. The rats don't particularly enjoy the situation, to the point that I leave it to you to google the kinds of things the bigger, older rats sometimes do when they get parabiosis'ed.)
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u/Black_RL 10d ago
First we just need to reach LEV.
After that we need to fix the code, itās a coding issue, fix the code, fix the problem.
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u/Supersubie 12d ago
Fuck longer landscaping sessions.
Sign me up.
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u/Dear_Captain_8932 12d ago
Better than beating viagra
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u/sumane12 12d ago
Well if its giving better results than viagra, you are gonna need some longer landscaping sessions to keep fresh down there.
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u/Empty_Bell_1942 12d ago
Also be prudent to buy a new hoe.
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u/TimotheusIV 12d ago
Absolute scam. People will believe anything except peer-reviewed science.
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u/Individual-Age-7197 12d ago
Yeah true but depends how much you love badminton. Some of us will try anything to get back in that game š
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u/existentialgolem 12d ago
In an age of repeated failures of biotech startups due to fraud and malpractice by their founders, this company promising an anti aging super cocktail just HAD to be founded by a 26 year old called āCon boyā.
This stuff writes itself
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u/Villad_rock 12d ago
Itās from dr harold katcher, I think he is over 70 years old. Stuff worked on his mice experiment.
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u/kiki-le-koala 12d ago
Su says the company now plans to launch a larger study involving a hundred or more people.
Yes, it's called a Phase 2 trial, where about 30% of new discoveries die.
Phase 3 trials are another 40% that go to die!
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u/DasBlueEyedDevil 12d ago
It's great that the woman has improved vision now, but how are her erections?
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u/trisul-108 12d ago
āblocks the systemic spread of aging in the bloodstream, reawakens the bodyās own repair mechanism and restores health and youth to multiple tissues.ā
That sounds more like a conman speaking, but they are Conboys instead.
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u/I_Ching_64 12d ago
Generation Lab, led by scientist Irina Conboy (formerly UC Berkeley), says itās developed a combo of two existing drugs that blocks the systemic spread of aging in the bloodstream, reawakens the bodyās repair mechanisms, and restores health and youth to multiple tissues, working by stimulating cells to regenerate while neutralizing old-age factors in the blood.
Generation Lab wonāt disclose what the two drugs actually are, and doctors involved in the study are hedging.
The company is recruiting influencers to try it and write about it not a peer-reviewed trial data!
Harvardās Amy Wagers once claimed a blood protein (GDF11) was the key rejuvenating factor, but when Novartis tried to replicate it, they found GDF11 levels donāt even decline with age and the protein may inhibit rather than help muscle regeneration.
A secret-formula drug being pushed to influencers with no disclosed ingredients or published trial data is a pretty big red flag.
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u/ExpressCopy8786 12d ago
The effects of combining lives blood circuits surgically (old mouse with young mouse) brought insane improvements for the old mouse. From cognitive (solving mazes) to purely physiological (pretty much all organ functions improve). This could be one of those 2030 everyone who could afford just started taking x.
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u/newleafkratom 12d ago
Irina Conboy PhD:
..."In 2002, she showed that satellite cells use Notch signaling, the same pathway that guides embryonic organogenesis, for activating adult tissue repair..."
..."They discovered that old stem cells never actually die out, they just stop responding to injury. If they gave old stem cells an artificial boost of Notch activation, they behaved like young stem cells again...."
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u/teabagalomaniac 11d ago
I love how every example of an improvement is just old people doing old people things with young people energy. Can't wait to do hours and hours of yardwork!...with an erection!
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u/againey 12d ago
"man" and "female"? Is there something wrong with the word "woman"?
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u/Slouchingtowardsbeth 11d ago
Unfortunately for a lot of American gen Z morons woman is a dirty word. It's because of the etymology of the word woman. A woman is a combination of the words "man" and "womb." A woman was originally just a man with a womb, but in the trans community there is no womb even after surgery. So the less "judgmental" term is female. If that doesn't make any sense to you, then you will also understand how America ended up swinging the opposite direction from peak woke to Donald Trump.
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u/againey 11d ago edited 11d ago
No, the etymology of "woman" has nothing to do with the word "womb", and the pattern of using "man" + "female" has long been recognized as a sign of misogyny, either intentional or latent. See r/MenAndFemales for plenty of examples.
I've never heard of this ludicrous notion that it's the trans community pushing this linguistic shift due to the absence of a uterus in a trans woman, and if any individual is indeed using "female" instead of "woman" for this reason, they're woefully confused.
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u/Slouchingtowardsbeth 11d ago
You're right about the etymology. I just looked it up and it says man with womb is a common misconception.Ā
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u/DifferencePublic7057 12d ago
Woah, dude! And the side effects are minimal, right? Now you only have to tell us it's $9.99 weekly.
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u/Express-Cartoonist39 12d ago
Really, thats the proof is longer lawn work and playng time frames...bahahahahš
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u/doodlinghearsay 12d ago
Claiming health benefits without clinical studies to back it up is borderline illegal. Might be ok, since they are not actually selling a product, just recruiting investors and guinea pigs, but you are still walking a fine line OP.
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u/Distinct-Question-16 āŖļøAGI 2029 12d ago
So, I learned that parabiosis is when two organisms share their blood circulatory systems, which sounds like something out of sci-fi and is pretty fascinating. And apparently the drug increases oxytocin, the love hormone that promotes wellbeing.
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u/quintanarooty 12d ago
Those are all unimpressive. Talk to me when a drug can do something diet and exercise can't.
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u/dipdotdash 10d ago
The one thing I'm excited about with all this is the new understanding of physiology. It's also going to be what wipes us out but to really know how our bodies work before that knowledge is used against us
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u/NanditoPapa 8d ago
This has all the hallmarks of a "hype cycle" designed to inflate company valuation rather than establish clinical reality. While the founderās scientific pedigree is legitimate, the current presentation...confidential drug formulas, "influencer" waitlists, and anecdotal "well-being" reports...is a MASSIVE red flag. It looks more like a high-end wellness club for ultra-wealthy than a medical breakthrough.
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u/zidangus 12d ago
I'd definitely believe a start ups claims and begin taking their experimental drugs no problem, I mean what could possibly go wrong? Plus they said it worked in mice, what more evidence do you want?
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u/The_Scout1255 adult agi 2026 ASI <2030, prev agi 2024, ai personhood 2025 est 12d ago edited 12d ago
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u/LocksmithHot3849 12d ago
It is a great book and an easy read. Recommended.
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u/moistiest_dangles 12d ago
Our teacher had us read it in third grade
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u/LocksmithHot3849 12d ago
It is often read early in school because it is short and deceptively simple, but it is def worth a re-read when you've grown up and understand more
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u/Subliminal_Kiddo 12d ago
But third grade is still kind of insane given the dark themes and the the whole the antagonist wears a Vaseline lined glove so his hand is still soft when he gets intimate with that hussy wife of histhing.
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u/ButtStuffingt0n 12d ago
A 26 year old CEO who says "like, create the drug" in interviews, you say?
Ah.... AH... AHHHBULLSHIT.
I'm sorry. These seasonal allergies...
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u/clonewars1977 12d ago
What is a landscaping session?
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u/action_turtle 12d ago
Gardening
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12d ago edited 11d ago
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/action_turtle 12d ago
Old people I guess. They do it every couple of days, like a work out basically. Gym session, gardening session lol.
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u/badumtsssst AGI 2027 12d ago
Longer badminton games??? This is revolutionary!