Key points from article :
Libella Gene Therapeutics, a company based in Manhattan, has launched the first IRB-approved clinical trial aimed at reversing human aging by up to 20 years. The trial will be conducted in Colombia and comes with a steep price tag of $1 million per participant, making it the world’s most expensive pay-to-play medical trial. Only five people will be enrolled. Participants will travel to Bogotá after paying and signing consent forms in their home country.
The therapy focuses on telomeres, which are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. These caps shorten each time a cell divides, eventually leading to cell aging and dysfunction. Libella’s treatment introduces the enzyme telomerase, which can rebuild these telomeres and potentially extend a person’s biological clock.
The company believes this therapy could not just slow aging but possibly reverse it. According to Chief Scientific Officer Bill Andrews, this method has shown safety in roughly 200 earlier applications. The trial will primarily test for safety and tolerance.
Dr Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Foundation commented: “Libella is the brainchild of Bill Andrews, who has been a very prominent and very legitimate scientist in the anti-aging world for a long, long time.”
“He’s very well-known and a very good scientist,” de Grey continued. “He’s got a particular angle about what kind of therapy he thinks is going to be useful and how useful, and as far as I’m concerned, more power to him. He 100% understands the vital importance of gathering as much data as possible from all of those patients, irrespective of whether that’s good or bad.”
The work builds on existing studies from institutions like Stanford and the Spanish National Cancer Centre, which have linked telomere length to aging and longevity.
