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Fountain Of Youth: Startup Company Infuses The Body Full Of Young Blood

By Angela Laguipo | Update Date: Jan 17, 2017 08:10 AM EST

A private clinic in California will conduct clinical trials to pump people full of young blood in the hopes of finding the fountain of youth. The catch? It costs $8,000.

Ambrosia, a tech startup company, is out to find out if blood transfusion of young blood has health benefits. It is looking to enroll 600 participants for its clinical trial. The chosen participants will undergo a one-time transfusion of a two-liter bag of plasma, blood with the blood cells removed, from young people ages 16 years old to 25 years old.

Initiated by Jesse Karmazin, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, the clinical trial will pave the way in the discovery of the ultimate fountain of youth. He said that within just a month, most participants will see improvements after the blood plasma transfusion.

However, many scientists are questioning the clinical trial of the company, saying that it's poorly designed and cannot provide evidence about the effects of the blood transfusions. Moreover, some say the pay-to-participate study, with the potential to collect about $4.8 million from as many as 600 participants could be a scam, MIT Technology Review reports.

The clinical trial and Karmazin's idea were based on several studies. For one, in 2013, a study published in the journal Cell demonstrates a technique called parabiosis, wherein an older and younger mouse were sewn together so they would share a common circulatory system.

The researchers found that the cardiac health in the older mouse improved because of the increase in the levels of a protein called GDF11, Yahoo reports.

The Ambrosia clinical study, on the other hand, won't sew two humans together, though. Instead, it's offering patients above the age of 35 a blood transfusion. Furthermore, there would be no control group in the study because of the expensive admission price. That's why all potential 600 participants will receive real plasma.

In another study by Stanford University neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray in 2014, he found that after about 10 blood transfusions from younger mice, there were increased neuron growth and better memories in older mice. However, he does not believe the clinical trial on humans would live up to its expectations.

"People want to believe that young blood restores youth, even though we don't have evidence that it works in humans and we don't understand the mechanism of how mice look younger," Wyss-Coray as reported by the New York Post.

"I think people are just attracted to it because of vampire stories," he added.

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