Inside Silicon Valley’s Obsession with Longevity

Key Takeaways

How did you come across this business of mitochondrial donors? Um one of the delightful parts of covering longevity is that people, especially older people, reach out to me and share their anti-aging strategies. And John Kramer, who's one of the people featured in my story, sent me a copy of a book he'd written about his own regimen and making a case for mitochondrial transplantation as an anti-aging therapy. And I was intrigued. And tell us about John Kramer. Is he Is he Is he's been in Silicon Valley Valley for a while? Who is he? John is a pretty renowned experimental physicist who's done research on the origins of the universe. He's 91 years old. He lives in Seattle, actually. Um and he got excited about this particular modality. Mitochondria are the energy centers of the cell, and so maybe as a physicist, he found himself gravitating towards energy. Okay. And so tell us a little bit about John's journey. I mean, who is the company that he turns to? What is the ultimate path that he takes? John is part of a company called Mytricks Bio, which is located down the road from Silicon Valley. And Mytricks is doing something pretty unusual. Mitochondrial transplantation is being used to treat diseases and and in clinical trials. But Mytricks has been applying this in a new way as you know, as a therapy against normal aging. And it's having people invest and also take the therapy, which is an unusual strategy to take. So so he's he's also an an investor in in Mytricks? Yes, he is. He paid >> Okay. He invested $50,000 for a share of equity, small share of equity, and also to be one of the first people to try it at 91. Okay. And tell us about how this therapy actually works. Now, you and mitochondria, they are the energy centers. I think when I was in fifth grade, what I remember is they are the powerhouses of the cell. Uh and I'm I'm imagining the you know, the cell diagrams with all the organelles in it. I can still see the mitochondria right now. How does this therapy actually work? Yes. I I mean, calling on our old biology here, but yes. The way it works right now, I mean, the way Mytricks is doing it is they are having a family member donate blood, a young family member, cuz the idea is as you age, your mitochondria don't work as well. So you want to have a young donor. John's granddaughter, 26-year-old granddaughter, was his donor. She donated blood, and they extract the mitochondria from those cells, and they prepare it, and then they inject it into John, and into his vein. And and then I mean, in terms of the science here, so if that's what happens on the outside, on the inside, it's it's basically what you're just getting a a nice healthy dose of young mitochondria that you're then hoping the cells will sort of replicate and proliferate throughout the body? Well, the mitochondria are you know, they they are inside your cell. What's What's unusual about all this is, and this is sort of the emerging science which people are still studying, they go they find their way back into the cell. They go where they're needed in your cells. And the idea is that you'll increase the young mitochondria, and it'll start to work better, and you'll sort of your energy system will come back online. I guess that's kind of a layperson synopsis of it. Huh. Now, what have been the results of these mitochondrial transfusions, I guess, that Mytricks has been working on? So Mytricks has only tried this in two people so far. They want to make sure it's safe. John One of whom is John. Yes, he's 91. And then they also have another man who's 71, a lawyer from Houston, who also received this. They've received three of the infusions so far. They're going back for a fourth, and then they're going to analyze the safety data, and they're hoping that there will be three more older people who are paying participants of this small experiment. And tell me about Mytricks here. I mean, there are a number of companies in the longevity space, some of whom are even backed by billionaires, CEOs of even companies like Coinbase. I think he's he's behind Actually, we I mean, we had uh we had Jacob Kimmel from New Limit on the show here. And I mean, is Mytricks one of the big fish in in this sea? No, it's I I would call it a small fish. I mean, you know, you have to when you think about the sort of key players in Silicon Valley in the longevity field, you're thinking about Sam Altman, who put up $180 million of his own money to help launch Retro Biosciences. You're thinking about New Limit, which Brian Armstrong has backed and which has raised over $200 million, including from Founders Fund, you know, Peter Thiel's fund. You know, these are Altos Labs, which has $3 billion in funding. I mean, these are big players. And they have primarily focused on a different technique called cellular reprogramming, which tries to revert the entire cell back to a more youthful state and restore functions. So you have a difference in opinion on what's the best way to do do this, to sort of try to like reverse your age or slow down your aging, make you more youthful. And you have a big money difference. It's It's an intellectual argument and a financial argument, too. And do we have any sense for timelines? I mean, you know, here we have Mytricks that's done two patients. They're trying to get to five, I guess. And I'm reminded of of a story that I did on Synchron, a brain chip implant company, which is a Neuralink rival. I mean, again, this is a company that I think at the time that I wrote the story, they only had 10 patients with their technology. I mean, that's a totally separate ball game. But my question is, I mean, how how close is are these longevity treatments to actually, you know, making their way Well, I guess we have to figure out if they're even safe or not first in the first place. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, the cellular reprogramming companies, they have they have a lot of funds, and they're going to probably take a longer, you know, period of time. New Limit has said they hope in the next few years to launch a preliminary a preliminary trial in people. Retro Biosciences has has reported that a small number of healthy volunteers have have received some preliminary type of thing in an in an early trial. Trying to get an FDA approval for a drug is a very arduous, long, expensive process. And the cellular reprogramming companies have indicated that that's the path they're going on. But if you're a smaller fish in the longevity sea, your money you don't have as much money, you're you know, you're trying to like build the airplane and fly it at the same time. They took a different path, Mytricks, and it's quite risky because I mean, there's a reason why most drug companies prefer not to enroll people who are over 60, let alone over 80, in their trials. And that's because they fear that if something goes wrong just because the person is already kind of sick or has some sort of underlying health condition, they blow up their whole program. You know, but Mytricks needs to gather safety data. They need to get more funding, and they need to do it at the same time. So they've taken this different, unusual, but you know, it a path that could be a model for other companies in this space and for other companies in Silicon Valley that don't attract the attention of investors, big pocket investors, right away. Right. Well, Amy, I want to thank you for coming on. It was a fascinating story. That is Amy Dockser Marcus, our health and science reporter here at The Information.