Among the more unusual stories this week: a 91-year-old experimental physicist named John Kramer allowed a company called Mitrix Bio to extract mitochondria from his 26-year-old granddaughter's blood and inject them into his vein.
The theory is straightforward even if the science is not: aging cells lose mitochondrial function, and introducing younger, healthier mitochondria could restore energy production and slow decline. Mitrix believes those transplanted mitochondria will replicate and propagate through the body.
So far, two people have received three infusions each, Kramer and a 71-year-old lawyer from Houston. Both are scheduled for a fourth. The trial's goal at this stage is safety data, not efficacy conclusions.
Mitrix operates at the fringe of a longevity industry that has attracted serious capital. Retro Biosciences, New Limit, and Altos Labs, backed by major billionaires, are pursuing cellular reprogramming, a technique designed to revert cells to a more youthful state rather than supplementing one component. The two approaches are in intellectual and financial competition with each other.
Neither will produce an approved treatment soon. The FDA approval process for any drug is long and expensive, and most longevity companies are still in early-stage trials. Mitrix's approach of enrolling participants in their 60s, 70s, and 90s rather than younger cohorts is unconventional in drug development terms. The risk of confounding health conditions is higher. But the company's financial constraints make a traditional, slower trial design difficult to sustain.
The longevity industry's timeline for delivering something clinically meaningful to the public remains genuinely unclear.