Mitrix Bio’s CEO Unveils Bold Plan to Extend Human Lifespan to 130 Years

Highlights

• Tom Benson shows how the DNA in mitochondria degrades with age, which likely impairs mitochondrial function and correlates with chronic conditions like heart disease and dementia.
• He plans to harvest stem cells from patients to grow more mitochondria then transplant the mitochondria back into the patients.
• Using this technique, Tom Benson aims to extend human lifespan to 130 years.

Mitrix Bio is a startup pharmaceutical company with big goals: they want to make us live to 130. To do so, they aim to harness mitochondrial transplantation. In a Modern Healthspan YouTube presentation, their CEO, Tom Benson, describes how mitochondrial DNA degrades with age, correlating with age-associated conditions such as heart disease and dementia. He then shares details regarding the technique that his company plans to use to restore a functional mitochondria supply in aged individuals—mitochondrial transplantation. He also says that his company is in the process of starting human trials to test for the safety of this procedure and depending on whether Mitrix Bio receives sufficient funding from investments, the procedure may be available for general use sometime in the next 15 years.

Extending Human Lifespan to 130 with Mitochondrial Transplantation

In the presentation, Tom Benson relays how mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which only exists within mitochondria, degrades as we get older. mtDNA codes for proteins in the mitochondria that are used to maintain mitochondrial function, although their precise mechanisms of action remain largely unexplored, according to Benson. Researchers at Mitrix Bio believe that the age-related degradation of mtDNA correlates with and possibly plays a role in the onset and progression of age-related conditions like heart disease and dementia. Not only that but mtDNA degradation may have a hand in reducing the abundance of functional mitochondria.

To get around mtDNA degradation, dysfunctional mitochondria, and lower quantities of functional mitochondria as we get older, Tom Benson and Mitrix Bio are proposing mitochondrial transplantation. They would do so by growing stem cells from blood or fat tissue in a device called a bioreactor to massively amplify their numbers—some 10,000 times. The stem cells’ mitochondria can then be used for transplantation into the very same patient that the stem cells came from (a technique known as autologous transplantation).

According to Tom Benson, mitochondrial transplantation can be done with a simple injection, either into the blood or into an area around the gut (intraperitoneal injections). What Benson says most people do not know is that cells can easily absorb mitochondria, especially when they are covered within a membrane-bound vesicle called an exosome. Although Benson did not elaborate on how the team at Mitrix Bio plans to extract mitochondria covered with exosomal membranes, they may have an undisclosed process in mind.

Mitochondrial Transplantation Has Been Proposed for Certain Diseases and Also Extends Mouse Lifespan

Interestingly, mitochondrial transplantation is not a new technique. In fact, it has been proposed for treating people with certain diseases, such as neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases. What’s more, as far as animal studies go, when Mitrix Bio researchers have given mitochondrial transplants to aged mice, derived from younger ones, their lifespans were significantly extended and their immunity improved. Tom Benson adds that the data from this Mitrix Bio study will be published in scientific literature in the future.

The increase in functional mitochondrial abundance from Mitrix Bio’s technique will be around 2% to 10%, according to Benson, constituting trillions of mitochondria transplanted into each patient. Tom Benson also says that this mitochondrial replenishment will provide about a 20,000-day (about 55 years) boost in cell energy-generation. The Mitrix Bio team believes that restoring mitochondria through transplantation will work to enhance muscle function, immunity, and cognition.

93-Year-Old William Shatner and a Handful of Astronauts Will Be the First to Undergo the Procedure

Some of the questions surrounding this therapy come from the observation that different kinds of mitochondria exist in different organs like the heart and brain. According to Tom Benson, though, the differences in these mitochondria stem from having different types of membranes. In other words, their mtDNA has the same sequence; however, something within the cellular environment of each organ changes things like the shape of the membrane. In this way, he thinks that the transplanted mitochondria grown from stem cells will integrate into each organ without any issues.

Moreover, since the degradation of mtDNA is associated with age-related conditions, there is also the question of whether getting mitochondria from stem cells will provide new mitochondria with intact mtDNA. Tom Benson did not confront this issue in his presentation; however, it would make sense that he believes the mtDNA from stem cells is sufficiently intact for restoring the abundance of functional mitochondria.

Interestingly, celebrities like 93-year-old William Shatner have joined the Mitrix Bio team and will be some of the first to undergo the therapy in clinical trials. Other individuals among the first to receive the therapy are astronauts since Tom Benson says they deserve the treatment, because they risk their lives by going into outer space. Moreover, astronauts undergo exposure to radiation in space, which is known to damage mtDNA, so replenishing their supply of functional mitochondria could help alleviate the adverse effects of space radiation.

Human Trials Are Dependent On Acquiring Necessary Funding

Additionally, the aim of Tom Benson and Mitrix Bio is to extend the average human lifespan to 130 years. To find whether they can do this, they need to get through human trials, first demonstrating the safety and then the efficacy of their treatment. Typically, for pharmaceuticals such as anticancer drugs, the clinical trial process takes between 10 and 15 years before an effective therapeutic is available to the general public. In that sense, it is possible that mitochondrial transplantation could be available to those over age 50 within the next 15 years.

At the same time, Tom Benson indicates that Mitrix Bio is a small company and may run into some funding barriers pertaining to running human trials. However, to overcome funding issues, Mitrix Bio plans to make mitochondrial transplantation available in Japan after proving the safety of this procedure. In Japan, once safety has been proven, the government will let companies sell a new therapy like mitochondrial transplantation to the public. In this way, data from patients who receive the therapy after safety has been confirmed can contribute to studies of efficacy. This would then alleviate some of the financial burden associated with running trials to prove efficacy.