Welcome to MIT Technology Review Narrated. My name is Matt Honan. I'm our editor-in-chief. Every week, we'll bring you a fascinating, new, in-depth story for the leading edge of science and technology, covering topics like AI, biotech, climate, energy, robotics, and more. Here's this week's story. I hope you enjoy it. Narrated by NOAA. Listen to more of the best articles from the world's biggest publishers on the NOAA app, or at newsoveraudio.com. Jessica Hamzaloo writes, this company is developing gene therapies for muscle growth, erectile dysfunction, and radical longevity. At some point in January, 2026, a handful of volunteers will be injected with two experimental gene therapies as part of an unusual clinical trial. The drugs are potential longevity therapies, says Ivan Morganov, the CEO of Unlimited Bio, the company behind the trial. His long-term goal, to achieve radical human life extension. The 12 to 15 volunteers who will be covering their own travel and treatment costs will receive a series of injections in the muscles of their arms and legs. One of the therapies is designed to increase the blood supply to those muscles. The other is designed to support muscle growth. The company hopes to see improvements in strength, endurance, and recovery. It also plans to eventually trial similar therapies in the scalp for baldness and penis for erectile dysfunction. But some experts are concerned that the trial involves giving multiple gene therapies to small numbers of healthy people. It will be impossible to draw firm conclusions from such a small study, and the trial certainly won't reveal anything about longevity, says Holly Fernandez Lynch, a lawyer and medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Unlimited Bio's muscle growth therapy is already accessible at clinics in Honduras and Mexico, says Morganov, and the company is already getting some publicity. Khloe Kardashian tagged Unlimited Bio in a Facebook post about stem cell treatments she and her sister Kim had received at the Eterna Clinic in Mexico in August 2025. And in mid-December, the biohacking influencer Dave Asprey posted an Instagram reel of himself receiving one of the treatments in Mexico. It was shared with 1.3 million Instagram followers. In the video, Eterna's CEO, Adil Khan, says that the therapy can help with vascular health systemically. I'm just upgrading my system for a little while to reduce my age and reduce my vascular risk, Asprey said. Gene therapies typically work by introducing new genetic code into the body cells. This code is then able to make proteins. Existing approved gene therapies have typically been developed for severe diseases in which the target proteins are either missing or mutated. But several groups are exploring gene therapies for healthy people. One of these companies is Minicircle, which developed a gene therapy to increase production of folly statin, a protein found throughout the body that has many roles and is involved in muscle growth. The company says this treatment will increase muscle mass and help people live longer. Minicircle is based in Prospera, a special economic zone in Honduras, with its own bespoke regulatory system. Anyone can visit the local clinic and receive that therapy for a reported price of $25,000. And many have, including the wealthy longevity influencer Brian Johnson, who promoted the therapy in a Netflix documentary. Unlimited bios, Morganov, a Russian-Israeli computer scientist, was inspired by Minicircle's story. He is also interested in longevity. Specifically, he's committed to radical life extension and has said that he could be part of the last generation throughout human history to die from old age. He believes the biggest bottleneck slowing progress toward anti-aging or lifespan-extending therapies is drug regulation. So he, too, incorporated his own biotech company in Prospera. A company like ours couldn't exist outside of Prospera, says Unlimited Bios Chief Operating Officer Vladimir Lushko. There, Morganov and his colleagues are exploring two gene therapies. One of these is another full of statin therapy, which the team hopes will increase muscle mass. The other codes for a protein called vascular endothel growth factor, or VEGF. This compound is known to encourage the growth of blood vessels. Morganov and his colleagues hope the result will be increased muscle growth, enhanced muscle repair, and longer life. Neither treatment is designed to alter a recipient's DNA, and therefore, it won't be inherited by future generations. The combination of the two therapies could benefit healthy people and potentially help them live longer, says Lushko, a former electrical engineer and professional poker player who retrained in biomedical engineering. We would say that it's a preventative slash enhancing indication, he says. Potentially, participants can experience faster recovery from exercise, more strength, and more endurance. Of the 12 to 15 volunteers who participate in the trial, half will receive only the VEGF therapy. The other half will receive both the VEGF and the follow statin therapies. The treatments will involve a series of injections throughout large muscles in the arms and legs, says Morganov. He is confident that the VEGF therapy is safe. It was approved in Russia over a decade ago to treat lower limb ischemia, a condition that can cause pain, numbness, and painful ulcers in the legs and feet. Morganov reckons that around 10,000 people in Russia have already had the drug, although he says he hasn't done deep fact checking on that. Other researchers aren't convinced. VEGF is a powerful compound, says Sapo La Hurtola, a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Eastern Finland who has been studying VEGF and potential VEGF therapies for decades. He doesn't know how many people have had VEGF gene therapy in Russia, but he does know that the safety of the therapy will depend on how much is administered and where. Previous attempts to inject the therapy into the heart, for example, have resulted in edema, a sometimes fatal buildup of fluid. Even if the therapy is injected elsewhere, VEGF can travel around the body, he says. If it gets to the eye, for example, it could cause blindness. Lesko counters that the VEGF should remain where it is injected, and any other circulation in the body, if it occurs, should be short-lived. And while the therapy has been approved in Russia, there's a reason it hasn't been approved elsewhere, says La Hurtola. The clinical trials were not as rigorous as they could have been. Well, it probably works in some patients, he says. The evidence to support the use of this therapy is weak. At any rate, he adds, VEGF will only support the growth of blood vessels. It won't tackle aging. VEGF is not a longevity drug, he says. Lesko points to a 2021 study in mice, which suggested that a lack of VEGF activity might drive aging in the rodents. We're convinced it qualifies as a potential longevity drug, he says. There is even less data about fullestatin. MiniCircle, the company selling another fullestatin therapy has not published any rigorous clinical trial data. So far, much of the evidence for fullestatin's effects comes from research in rodents, says La Hurtola. Clinical trials like this one should gather more information, both about the therapies and about the methods used to get those therapies into the body. Unlimited bios VEGF therapy will be delivered via a circular piece of genetic code called a plasmid. Its fullestatin therapy, on the other hand, will be delivered via an adeno-associated virus, AAV. Plasmid therapies are easier to make, and they have a shorter lifespan in the body, only a matter of days. They are generally considered to be safer than AAV therapies. AAV therapies, on the other hand, tend to stick around for months, says La Hurtola, and they can trigger potentially dangerous immune reactions. It's debatable whether healthy people should be exposed to these risks, says Fernandez Lynch. The technology still has serious questions about its safety and effectiveness, even for people with life-threatening diseases, she says. If you are a healthy person, the risk of harm is more substantial because it'll be more impactful on your life. But Lesko is adamant. Over 120,000 humans die daily from age-related causes, he wrote in an email, building ethical barriers around healthy human, in fact, aging human trials, is unethical. Morgunov did not respond to a request for comment. Some people want to take those risks anyway. In his video, the biohacker influencer, Asprey, who has publicly stated that he's going to live to 180, described Vegev as a longevity compound, and Eternus CEO, Khan, who delivered the treatment, described it as the ultimate upgrade. Neither Asprey nor Khan's clinic responded to requests for comment. Michael Guzmano, a professor of health policy at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, worries that this messaging might give trial participants unrealistic expectations about how they might benefit. 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. In reality, he adds, the only thing you can guarantee is that the volunteers will be contributing to our knowledge of how this intervention works. I would certainly not recommend that anyone I know enter into such a trial, says Guzmano. The muscle study is only the first step. The unlimited bio team hopes to trial the Vegev therapy for baldness and erectile dysfunction too. Leschko points to research in mice that links high Vegev levels to larger denser hair follicles. He hopes to test a series of Vegev therapy injections into the scalps of volunteers. Morganoff, who is largely bald, has already started to self-experiment with the approach. An erectile dysfunction trial may follow. That one we think has great potential because injecting gene therapy into the penis sounds exciting, says Leschko. A protocol for that trial has not yet been finalized, but he imagines it would involve five to 10 injections. LaHertula is an optimistic about either approach. Hair growth is largely hormonal, he says, and injecting anything into a penis risks damaging it, although Leschko points out that a similar approach was taken by another company almost 20 years ago. Injecting a Vegev gene therapy into the penis would also risk edema there, LaHertula adds. Andy points out that we already have some treatments for hair loss and erectile dysfunction. While they aren't perfect, their existence does raise the bar for any potential future therapies. Not only do they have to be safe and effective, but they must be safer or more effective than existing ones. That doesn't mean the trials will flop. No small trial can be definitive, but it could still provide some insight into how these drugs are working. It is possible that the therapies will increase muscle mass, at least, and that this could be beneficial to the healthy recipients, says LaHertula. Before our call, he had taken a look at Unlimited Bios website, which carries the tagline, The Most Advanced Rejuvenation Solution. They promise a lot, he said. I hope it's true. You were listening to MIT Technology Review, where Jessica Hemseloo writes, this company is developing gene therapies for muscle growth, erectile dysfunction, and radical longevity. The article was published on the 22nd of December, 2025, and was read by Adrian Walker for NOAA. The article you just listened to was narrated by the team at NOAA. Continue listening to more great journalism on the NOAA app, or by visiting newsoveraudio.com.
