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An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

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Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#61

Post by markkat »

From what I understand, Ambrosia is transfusing plasma, not whole blood.

There are a number of studies, going back many years, suggesting that young blood has a rejuvenating effect in older animals.

I have been using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to develop therapies for stroke and other forms of neural injury for more than a decade. What is particularly striking, is the effect of age upon these cells is quite obvious, both in vitro and therapeutically. In our own work, we found that when we treated stroked older animals with syngeneic MSCs from younger mice, they recovered much better than if they were treated with aged-matched MSCs.

What is even more interesting IMO, is that a couple of groups have reported that transplantation of young-to-old bone marrow, or just young-to-old MSCs significantly extends lifespan in mice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355586

Based on the value of preserving your own autologous bone marrow stem cells, and their potential to be used in self young-to-old rejuvenating transplantation, I co-founded https://foreverlabs.com. In short, we cryopreserve your own bone marrow stem cells, to be used later in life. It's much like cord blood stem cell storage, but for adults.

The blood is born out of the bone marrow. Furthermore, the bone marrow cells (including MSCs) produce many soluble factors (proteins, cytokins, microvesicles, non-coding RNAs, etc.) that can significantly alter the blood profile. Thus, there is reason to believe that the parabiosis or the 'young blood effect' could be conferred by rejuvenating the bone marrow niche. Indeed, we this might be happening in the studies cited above.

We just launched our own version of a young-to-old bone marrow stem cell transplantation study in mice. It is our goal to better understand and optimize the young-to-old bone marrow transplantation effect, and to eventually offer the ability for our clients to donate their own younger bone marrow to their older selves (in addition to providing a store of young cells for other potential therapies).

There is much work to be done, but IMO there is real opportunity for a health-maintenance approach to medicine, and this is one of them. Disease treatment will not long remain as the most rational or economical approach to healthcare.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#63

Post by savanaly »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #41
savanaly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a concept in economics whereby the gains from trade tend to accumulate to the owners of "fixed resources" in a system. In this case that would be the people selling the blood. So I would expect that in the long run the market would stabilize with people selling their blood getting paid the full worth of their blood (decreased by transaction costs of all the middlemen involved in getting the blood to other peo…

But do we want to allow rich vampires to drive the price of blood up? It seems to me that maybe blood shouldn't be treated like a commodity which is driven by the market. Most people receiving blood are not exactly in a position to turn it down or shop around and so some technologists driving the price up to $8,000 is going to hurt you.

To the extent it's a competitive market (and it seems like it would be-- a lot of potential buyers and sellers), the price should be determined by the minimum average cost, not by the willingness/ability of the buyer to pay. This outcome is not dependent on the ability of the buyer to walk away (as you note, their life might depend on it so some of them can't), but on the sellers pursuing their self interest which we can probably count on them to do.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#64

Post by savanaly »

joe_the_user wrote: post #54
savanaly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a concept in economics whereby the gains from trade tend to accumulate to the owners of "fixed resources" in a system. In this case that would be the people selling the blood. So I would expect that in the long run the market would stabilize with people selling their blood getting paid the full worth of their blood (decreased by transaction costs of all the middlemen involved in getting the blood to other peo…

I think the problem of the sale of blood isn't people not getting paid fairly for their blood in the purely economic sense. There's no reason to think that the "full worth" of blood is that high since producing blood is pretty common "skill". The problem is abetting those desperate to sell their blood and body parts are going to be abetting the downward spiral such people tend to be on. The most blood donors are home…

That is a good point and I am somewhat concerned about that. If the decision were put to me I would personally have to think long and hard about whether it's actually good for society to let people sell their body parts. But it's still helpful to have a clear economic picture of what is going to be affecting the market price of these things and that's fun to think about so I try to focus on that.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#66

Post by Overtonwindow »

tyingq wrote: post #9
sp332 wrote: post #6

They buy the blood from blood banks, so people donating blood don't know it's going to paranoid rich people instead of sick people, and they don't get any of the money! Edit: I thought it was illegal in the USA to pay for body parts, but there is an exception for plasma (and maybe the rest of the blood?). But it's already predatory http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html and this new business only ma…

"His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions" And a quick google search says that people donating to a blood bank get $20 to $60 a pint, and the blood banks sell for $200-$600 a pint. I wonder if blood banks will figure out the model here and sell direct.

Blood banks don't usually pay for blood. That's why it's called donating... If someone is paying for blood where do I sign up because I could use the money.. :-/

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#67

Post by Overtonwindow »

maxerickson wrote: post #28
tyingq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Apparently to discourage people with diseases from selling their blood. The plasma doesn't have the issue due to how it is processed, broken down, and used. As mentioned, though, this creates an odd situation. The donor is sort of misled that they are doing something charitable, which is clearly not the case here.

Blood banks do have plenty of real costs and a payment to the donator would just get passed through to the patients receiving the blood. It looks like I donate to a for profit organization, but for instance, the Red Cross isn't paying shareholders profits from the blood they sell.

Paying for blood, and the ethical issues around that, reminds me of pharmacies giving out gift cards and other discounts for flu shots. I recall CVS was giving out a $25 gift card to anyone who got a flu shot, and I imagined a lot of low income and poor people lining up for a shot they may not need, and in fact may be harmful, just to get money to buy food, etc.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#68

Post by kolbe »

acd10j wrote: post #33
_jal wrote: post #30

I love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids. Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they c…

This will discourage voluntery doners from blood donation. It's really shame that there is no regulations to prevent this behavior.

I hope it does. If we need to ruin the system to rebuild it then so be it. But it is colossally fucked up that we ask/pressure teenagers to give blood without compensation. It's fucked up that we don't tell them, "we're going to sell this for $1000, and use that money to help pay our CEO $10,000,000 this year."

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#69

Post by tyingq »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #66
tyingq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions" And a quick google search says that people donating to a blood bank get $20 to $60 a pint, and the blood banks sell for $200-$600 a pint. I wonder if blood banks will figure out the model here and sell direct.

Blood banks don't usually pay for blood. That's why it's called donating... If someone is paying for blood where do I sign up because I could use the money.. :-/

Elsewhere in the thread, but the nuance is what it is used for. You can get paid if it ends up as plasma.

Re: An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

#70

Post by crowbahr »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #66
tyingq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions" And a quick google search says that people donating to a blood bank get $20 to $60 a pint, and the blood banks sell for $200-$600 a pint. I wonder if blood banks will figure out the model here and sell direct.

Blood banks don't usually pay for blood. That's why it's called donating... If someone is paying for blood where do I sign up because I could use the money.. :-/

I had friends who sold plasma to get through college. Like 50-100 each time they went.
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