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Critics Blast Star-Studded Advisory Board of Anti-Aging Company

Nobel Prize winners lend their faces, credibility, to supplement maker Elysium’s advertising campaign.

MIT Technology Review by Karen Weintraub January 6, 2017
https://goo.gl/ZNcXUB

ritics are assailing seven Nobel Prize winners and two dozen other high-profile scientists for lending their names and images to a New York supplement company selling an anti-aging pill.

The company, Elysium Health, was started two years ago to market $50-a-month subscriptions to a nutritional supplement called Basis whose ingredients can extend the life span of mice.

Since there’s no proof the supplement pills can do the same for people, Elysium can’t legally say that. And that’s where Elysium’s unusually long list of 35 “scientific advisors,” including the Nobel laureates, may come in. By lending their immense credentials to the company, they are in effect being used to boost sales of what could be a placebo, critics say.

“Some of these people may think that they’re being asked to do this because of their deep insights,” says former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey Flier, an expert in metabolism. “That’s the part that’s a joke. They're not. They are part of a marketing scheme where their names and reputations are being used.”

Several of Elysium’s scientific advisory board members said their involvement should not be seen as an endorsement of the company or its pills. “The SAB [scientific advisory board] does NOT endorse the products of Elysium. Its sole role is to advise Elysium on the development and testing of its compounds,” Thomas C. Südhof, a Stanford University neurophysiologist who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and who serves on Elysium’s board, writes in an e-mail.

Unlike prescription drugs, supplements such as vitamins and plant extracts are lightly regulated. If they’re safe, they can be sold to the public so long as companies don’t make specific health claims. This is why Elysium offers only vague promises for its supplement Basis, such as saying that the pill will “optimize your health” and “support the long-term health of your cells.”

But savvy anti-aging enthusiasts will know the real promise of the pill is life extension based on the latest scientific discoveries in cells and animal research, an impression only enhanced by the huge roster of famous names, far more than the half-dozen science advisors most biotech companies rely on.
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https://goo.gl/ZNcXUB

The Anti-Aging Pill

Facing a long wait for evidence, a longevity researcher takes an unusual path to market.

by Karen Weintraub February 3, 2015
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534636/the-anti-aging-pill/

An anti-aging startup hopes to elude the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and death at the same time.

The company, Elysium Health, says it will be turning chemicals that lengthen the lives of mice and worms in the laboratory into over-the-counter vitamin pills that people can take to combat aging.

The startup is being founded by Leonard Guarente, an MIT biologist who is 62 (“unfortunately,” he says) and who’s convinced that the process of aging can be slowed by tweaking the body’s metabolism (see "Is There a Fountain of Youth in Our DNA?").

The problem, Guarente says, is that it’s nearly impossible to prove, in any reasonable time frame, that drugs that extend the lifespan of animals can do the same in people; such an experiment could take decades. That’s why Guarente says he decided to take the unconventional route of packaging cutting-edge lab research as so-called nutraceuticals, which don’t require clinical trials or approval by the FDA.

This means there’s no guarantee that Elysium’s first product, a blue pill called Basis that is going on sale this week, will actually keep you young. The product contains a chemical precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, a compound that cells use to carry out metabolic reactions like releasing energy from glucose. The compound is believed cause some effects similar to a diet that is severely short on calories—a proven way to make a mouse live longer.

Elysium’s approach to the anti-aging market represents a change of strategy for Guarente. He was previously involved with Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a high-profile biotechnology startup that studied resveratrol, an anti-aging compound found in red wine that it hoped would help patients with diabetes. That company was bought by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, but early trials failed to pan out.
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534636/the-anti-aging-pill/