Biohackers Are Self-Funding Risky Gene Therapies in a Bid for Immortality. Experts Are Worried.

Sometime next month, a group of 12 to 15 volunteers will pay their own way to receive a pair of experimental gene therapies. The company behind this unusual clinical trial, Unlimited Bio, isn't shy about its ambitions. According to CEO Ivan Morgunov, these injections are potential longevity therapies, with the long-term goal of achieving "radical human life extension."

The trial, which involves injecting the therapies into the muscles of participants' arms and legs, aims to boost strength, endurance, and recovery. One therapy uses vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to increase blood supply, while the other uses follistatin to promote muscle growth. The company also has its sights on future trials for treating baldness and erectile dysfunction.

However, this frontier science is raising red flags among experts. Holly Fernandez Lynch, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that giving multiple unproven gene therapies to a small group of healthy people is deeply problematic. "It will be impossible to draw firm conclusions from such a small study," she says, adding that it "certainly won’t reveal anything about longevity."

The experiment is taking place far from the oversight of agencies like the FDA. Unlimited Bio is incorporated in Próspera, a special economic zone in Honduras with its own bespoke regulatory system. CEO Morgunov believes traditional drug regulation is the biggest "bottleneck" to anti-aging research. "A company like ours couldn’t exist outside of Próspera," says Unlimited Bio’s COO, Vladimir Leshko.

This regulatory loophole has fostered a booming ecosystem of biohacking influencers and direct-to-consumer clinics. Khloe Kardashian gave Unlimited Bio a shout-out, and biohacking influencer Dave Asprey shared a video of himself receiving one of the treatments in Mexico with his 1.3 million Instagram followers. Wealthy longevity seeker Bryan Johnson has similarly promoted a competing therapy from a Honduras-based company called Minicircle.

Experts are particularly concerned about the safety of the compounds being used. Seppo Ylä-Herttuala, a professor who has studied VEGF for decades, calls it a "powerful compound." He warns that if the therapy travels beyond the injection site, it could cause blindness if it reaches the eye or fatal fluid buildup (edema) in the heart. He dismisses the company's claim that VEGF is a longevity drug, stating plainly, "VEGF is not a longevity drug."

Unlimited Bio defends its approach, noting the VEGF therapy was approved in Russia over a decade ago and has been used on an estimated 10,000 people—a figure the CEO admits he hasn't "done deep fact-checking on." The company argues any circulation of VEGF in the body would be short-lived. COO Leshko is adamant about the ethics, writing in an email, "Over 120,000 humans die DAILY from age-related causes. Building ‘ethical’ barriers around ‘healthy’ human... trials is unethical."

The core conflict is clear: a race for superhuman futures, fueled by influencer marketing, is clashing with the slow, methodical pace of scientific validation. Michael Gusmano, a health policy professor at Lehigh University, worries about the hype. "There is huge potential for therapeutic misconception when you have some kind of celebrity online influencer touting something about which there is relatively sparse scientific evidence," he says. For the volunteers, he adds, "the only thing you can guarantee is that they will be contributing to our knowledge."