Bryan Johnson, the 46-year-old tech mogul who spends $2 million a year to get an 18-year-old’s body, flew to an island off Honduras for a radical new gene therapy that claims to boost muscle mass and bone density while reducing body fat — at a cost of $25,000 per treatment.
Johnson, whose anti-aging regimen includes counting nighttime erections and swapping blood with his son, is part of a group that has volunteered to undergo the genetic enhancement technique offered up by the startup company Minicircle Inc., which is backed by billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
He told Bloomberg News that the gene therapy has the potential to allow him to reach his goal of living to the age of 200.
“We’ve built out the basics of diet, exercise, sleep and all the stuff we know we should do,” Johnson told Bloomberg. “But that’s not going to get me to 200 years of age. Gene therapies have the promise of doing that.”
Johnson’s treatment allowed him to rip his T-shirt in half with his bare hands, though he added that he had not yet set any new endurance or workout records.
He said he plans additional gene therapy injections whose benefits he hopes will accumulate with time.
“It compounds over time,” Johnson told Bloomberg News.
“I do expect that in the next few months he’ll start noticing things.”
While the company is based in Austin, Texas, its main facility operates out of Roatán, a tropical island just off the cost of Honduras, according to Bloomberg News.
The island was chosen due to its lax regulations — a necessity for a treatment that has yet to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The gene therapy aims to bolster the body’s production of follistatin, a protein that triggers a process in the body that leads to increased muscle production.
Minicircle’s claims that the gene treatment could lead to increased longevity has been met with skepticism among scientists who say that no studies have been produced to support the assertion.
“These have no evidence for working, don’t make sense from a scientific perspective and likely will kill someone by inducing cancer or liver failure,” Christin Glorioso, a physician and neuroscientist who has criticized gene therapies, wrote in his newsletter.
According to Minicircle, the therapy introduces new genetic instructions into a human cell.
The introduction of follistatin “improves tissue composition and extends lifespan in healthy mice by 34%,” according to the company.
“It has marked effects improving the felt sense of well-being and has been shown in early human studies to increase bone density and muscle mass, decrease body fat, improve insulin sensitivity and cholesterol
The company said it conducted a trial in which 44 people between the ages of 23 and 89 saw their genetic age reduced by 11 years on average.
“We also saw improvements in muscle mass, bone density, decreases in body fat and general feelings of enhanced well-being,” Mac Davis, a co-founder of Minicircle, told Bloomberg News.
Davis hopes that Johnson, who has gained a cult following online through his much-publicized and documented Project Blueprint anti-aging regimen, will give the company attention in hopes of attracting a larger clientele.
Minicircle did not charge Johnson for the treatment despite the fact that Johnson is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“He’s by far the most high-profile person to come down here,” Davis told Bloomberg News.
“Bryan is giving us something worth more than what we would charge him.”
Johnson recently told Vanity Fair that he entertained the thought of running for president. He also revealed that he has been hanging out with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
