It was the moment I knew I'd officially become a 'longevity influencer': Generation Lab reached out to offer me a chance to write about - and even receive - their new rejuvenation treatment, an injectable combo of two existing drugs they call 1-Generation.
This wasn't just any antiaging treatment, mind you. According to the company, it 'blocks the systemic spread of aging in the bloodstream, reawakens the body's own repair mechanism and restores health and youth to multiple tissues.' The offer was 'extended to a limited number of people whose judgment on the science we trust, under close physician supervision.'
'There's a long wait list including a lot of celebrities, well-known people, people who you have heard of,' Generation Lab CEO Alina Su told me on a conference call. 'So we're super excited to, like, create this therapeutic and [are] letting you know that this first longevity drug in [the] human body is here and it's actually working.'
Clearly, this was a marketing campaign, and like most claims in the world of longevity medicine, probably too good to be true. Especially since they wouldn't even tell me what the two drugs are - a detail that seems kind of important for a drug.
Still, the pitch piqued my interest because I've long followed the work of Generation Lab's scientific founder, Irina Conboy, a no-nonsense specialist in the bizarre but scientifically fruitful practice of sewing together the circulatory systems of old and young lab animals. This procedure, called parabiosis (or heterochronic blood exchange), is one of the few things actually proven to make an old animal act younger. But since we can't all go through life attached by the veins to a younger person, the quest has been to find practical ways to mimic those benefits.
Conboy says she's now achieved that with a combination of two existing drugs that produce youthful effects - without any bodily fluid exchange. Over the last two months, she's been taking the combo and feeling 'quite a bit better and more energetic.' So have a handful of insiders, including Su, the 26-year-old CEO, and Conboy's husband and collaborator Michael Conboy.
The company's PR staffer sent me a spreadsheet of supposed benefits: improved vision in a 64-year-old female, longer landscaping sessions for a 59-year-old man, longer badminton games, improved hand grip, better erections than with Viagra, and - brace yourself - 'increased bowel movements.'
Obviously, any age-reversal drug that actually works would be the best-selling product of all time. But none have ever been shown to do that, and Generation's approach to evidence raises several red flags. For instance, Su says they plan to launch a larger study with a hundred or more people - but subjects will be asked to pay for enrollment. Such 'pay-to-play' clinical trials are often seen as a sales channel, not science.
Even more eyebrow-raising: the trial will be led by longevity doctors who practice alternative medicine, including Matt Cook, founder of BioReset Medical. Cook's clinics offer unproven treatments like stem-cell injections, and a 2021 article reported he'd recommended covid-19 treatments designated as 'fraudulent' by the FDA - including inhaling amniotic fluid from a nebulizer.
In a phone call, Cook admitted he initially agreed to prescribe the combo to Conboy and a few insiders as a favor, with zero confidence it would work. 'Like, I did not believe it was actually going to work,' he said, since 'it's two safe, generic drugs that are not even longevity drugs.' But after taking the weekly injections, he experienced a surprising mental clarity that lasted for days, and other subjects reported a sense of well-being and old aches evaporating. 'There was a fairly significant broad set of symptoms that doesn't really match what either of the drugs do,' he said. 'I have many more questions than I have answers.'
Conboy's background lends some credibility: she spent years at UC Berkeley, where her 2005 experiment connecting two-month-old mice to aged ones showed dramatic improvements in the old animals' healing. That suggested young blood contains powerful molecular signals, sparking startups like Elevian and Alkahest to raise millions for stroke or Alzheimer's treatments - though none have hit commercial paydirt yet.
Conboy also discovered that 'old blood dominates': even a single exchange of plasma from an aged mouse has powerful negative effects on a younger animal. So in 2020, she tried a different tack - removing old animals' plasma and replacing it with a neutral albumin-saltwater mix. This 'Delete key' approach had even stronger rejuvenating effects, and within two years she'd tested it on human volunteers who agreed to have nearly half their blood volume removed and discarded.
Longevity clinics quickly latched on, offering 'therapeutic plasma exchange' for up to $10,000 a session. One doctor, Jeffrey Gladden, raced to California to meet Conboy after reading her work. By the end of 2025, Conboy had retired from Berkeley to join her startup full-time. She wanted to find a drug that could mimic the benefits of plasma exchange, so she used a microfluidic device she'd codeveloped that bathes human cells with blood serum from old people. This 'awesome screen' allowed her to test which molecules might keep tissues young even in the presence of old blood. That's how 1-Generation was discovered, she says.
Without knowing the drugs, I can't offer my own opinion on their promise. Some doctors working with Generation Lab expressed surprise the combo would work. 'I will say right now, candidly, it's an unknown how it will play out,' said Gladden, who's skeptical but optimistic. His Texas clinic will be involved in the study.
Pressed on why the drugs remain confidential, Su said it's to avoid imitators - important because Generation doesn't own the molecules. Instead, they'll seek FDA exclusivity for a combination of existing drugs with a new use, which could give them about three years of market protection.
In the meantime, the buzz is building. Generation Lab is hosting an invite-only event on August 28 featuring George Church, the Harvard synthetic biologist, and researchers from Anthropic, whose CEO Dario Amodei has been saying AI will cure all disease within a few years. Church says he was also offered a chance to take the drug combo. Cook's office is fielding calls from 'high-end doctors, venture capitalists, and people in this community who are kind of biohackers.'
As for me, I won't be taking the drugs any time soon. Not until I know what they are.