#1

More than a decade ago, scientist Tony Wyss-Coray stitched together the blood vessels of two mice, allowing their blood to intermingle. The results of this gruesome and pioneering experiment facilitated a leap forward in our understanding of longevity: that younger blood can help the memory.

The blood of the younger mouse had a clear impact on the older one, Wyss-Coray said. “We found that there’s less inflammation in the brain [of the older mouse], there’s more stem cell activity, and most importantly, [the older mouse] was doing better in memory tests,” he explained.
Even though the experiment was in mice, not humans, it kicked off a US West Coast craze for “young blood”. One tech billionaire — the longevity evangelist Bryan Johnston — tried out transfusions of plasma, the liquid component of blood that carries blood cells, from his teenage son.

Jörg Schüttrumpf, chief scientific innovation officer of Grifols, said that because plasma was like the “internet of the organs”, carrying substances such as proteins, antibodies and hormones, studying it can be very helpful to gain a wider understanding of the body. “It plays a tremendous role in disease, development, ageing and all kinds of biological processes,” he said.

Wyss-Coray said the “biggest frustration” had been trying to identify the key components in blood that helped or harmed neurological function. There was now an acceptance, he added, that there were myriad factors. “It’s really almost like a cocktail that has these beneficial effects,” he said. “So an ideal drug would mimic both: neutralising some of the most prominent negative factors and then supplying you with the younger factors.”

While Grifols invests in the long-term work of finding drug candidates, it is also running a pilot in Barcelona for treating Alzheimer’s disease with therapeutic plasma exchange: an hour-long process where a machine removes 2.5 litres of a patient’s plasma and replaces it with a solution containing the protein albumin.

Schüttrumpf said small studies had shown the treatment was as effective as current Alzheimer’s drugs, but without the risk of common side effects of swelling and small bleeds in the brain. Because the procedure is already used to treat other conditions, it does not need the same level of regulatory approval as a new drug. Grifols said that doctors can use it according to the recommendations of medical societies.

The company is also working with the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to try to understand what triggers Parkinson’s disease. With a database that stretches back 15 years, Grifols can examine blood from before a person started to develop it. There are an average of 20,000 proteins in a sample that could lead to answers.

Wyss-Coray thinks that while early efforts to use therapeutic plasma exchange to slow ageing was “without any scientific basis”, this is changing. “Now I think there’s enough scientific evidence that . . . as a physician, if you do this, you don’t even have to feel bad.”

Read the full story: The quest to make young blood into a drug (FT)

This is the first part of a five-part FT series examining the business and science of longevity

Part one: Inside the billion-dollar quest to live forever

Part two: Start-up takes aim at ageing with drug to block cell death

Part three: The quest to make young blood into a drug

Part four: The supplement that promises youth but awaits full proof

Part five: US “wellness” industry scents opportunity to go mainstream

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4 Likes
A missing protein (PF4) may hold key to rejuvenating aging blood cells (and brains)
#2

Platelet Factor 4 (PF4) was the component of young blood that provided the benefit, also the component that Klotho worked through and also the exercine induced through physical activity // All 3 articles were published at the same time(Nature) explaining PF4. It will be difficult to monetize.

Since PF4 is readily available and studied for 20yrs in the surgery setting,. I wonder why no one is injecting this every 2 weeks.

Nature (2023) Platelet factors attenuate inflammation and rescue cognition in ageing — Schroer et al. /

Nature Aging (2023) Platelet factors are induced by longevity factor klotho and enhance cognition in young and aging mice— Park et al. (Dena Dubal group

Nature Communications (2023) *Platelet-derived exerkine CXCL4 / platelet factor 4 rejuvenates hippocampal neurogenesis and restores cognitive function in aged mice* — Leiter et al.

2 Likes
A missing protein (PF4) may hold key to rejuvenating aging blood cells (and brains)
#3

FWIW…

https://www.chromatec.de/1/products/platelet-factor-4-human/

1 Like
#4

Pricing… For PF4 (from CGPT5):

Pricing depends quite a bit on the grade, form (recombinant vs purified vs peptide), labeling (e.g. biotin), and intended use (research vs regulatory/clinical). Based on current supplier listings, here is a ballpark range:

  • Small peptide fragment or domain (e.g. PF4 (58-70), human): ~ USD $65 for 1 mg
  • Purified human platelet factor: ~ USD $315 for 100 µg
  • Highly pure recombinant protein: ~ USD $5,567 for 1 mg
  • Biotin-labeled PF4: ~ USD $1,720 for 200 µg
  • Purified PF4 (e.g. 100 µg): ~ USD $521

So, overall, you can expect ≈ USD 50 to several thousand dollars, depending on specs.

If you tell me the exact form (recombinant, labeled, purity, vendor region, intended use) I can give a more precise estimate.

#5

I believe that this is just one of the “positive” factors. And I’ve talked with Irina Conboy and she’s developing what sounds like a pro-drug that targets some of the “negative factors” in old blood; and she’s currently doing, or soon doing, clinical trials on this.

#6

Hol’ up. This thing is at the clinical stage and we don’t know what it is?

#7

I’m just repeating what Irina said… so, I think so.

#8

Any chatter you get from that lab is likely worth hearing. They find interesting things, and make some decisions I don’t understand from an outside perspective (for example, why should oxytocin and ALK5i in particular synergise?).

#9

Until the “young blood” factors are fully identified and productized, people will continue to seek out the real thing…

It appears Ben Greenfield got in on the action last year (2024):

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#10

Just stumbled upon this article, where Josh Mitteldorf talk about the benefit of exosomes:

Large doses of young exosomes, delivered intravenously, have been shown to have extraordinary rejuvenation power in rats. We have known this for 5 years, but translation to human trials has been slow, not for technical reasons but because of trade secrets and intellectual property law and the inability to guarantee that he who funds the translation research will profit from the finished product.

In the interim, a cottage industry has developed around a weaker human therapy based on the technique that is so successful in rats. Plasma infusions are a well-developed, safe and approved procedure for trauma injury and other applications. It has been adapted by clinics in Texas as an anti-aging therapy. For some tens of thousands of dollars, an old person can buy two liters of blood plasma from a guaranteed healthy young donor.

For those with the money to spend, the limit of two liters comes about because the volume of the body’s circulatory system can be stretched only so much. Putting extra fluid into the system, with extra pressure on the arterial walls, can be dangerous. Typically, one liter of blood plasma can be removed and two added, for a net volume increase of one liter. (An adult might have 5 liters total, so this amounts to a 20% expansion of the blood volume.)

Some people report good results from this procedure, but no one has been restored to youthful appearance, health, endurance, and learning potential comparable to the rats in the laboratories of Harold Katcher or Xi Chen. I’m guessing this is because the exosome dosages in these rat experiments were far larger than the ~35% replacement that is achieved in the Texas clinics. I believe that Katcher and Chen both used exosome infusions large enough to overwhelm the reservoir of old exosomes in the blood of the old rat.

Proposal for infusing larger plasma doses in human trials

Blood plasma is 90% water. If it is the water volume that limits the dosage of young plasma, an obvious work-around is to concentrate the exosomes and other plasma ingredients before infusion. Freeze dried plasma is already a well-developed technology, in use for 80 years. Under a vacuum, the plasma is evaporated and the evaporation lowers the temperature. Over the course of 10-20 hours, almost all the water is removed, and the plasma is reduced to a slurry.

Read the full blog post here:

https://scienceblog.com/joshmitteldorf/2025/02/01/proposal-for-enhancing-experimental-anti-aging-treatment-with-young-plasma/