Life Biosciences, a Boston-based biotechnology company founded in 2017 by Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair, is poised to become the first to conduct human clinical trials for a therapy that targets aging by rejuvenating cells without altering their core function. The company is developing a cellular reprogramming treatment that, if successful, could address a wide range of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s. This potential breakthrough for longevity science also raises a host of ethical concerns, from overpopulation to “hyper-beautification.”
The longevity industry is in the midst of a boom. Valued at $19.29 billion in 2023, the global market is projected to grow to $63 billion by 2025, according to Market Research Future. Altos Labs, a company backed by Jeff Bezos, is pursuing cellular rejuvenation programming—similar to Life Biosciences—to combat aging. Hong Kong–based Insilico Medicine is developing A.I. technologies to accelerate drug discovery for age-related diseases. Meanwhile, Retro Biosciences, funded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, aims to extend human lifespan by 10 years and plans to begin human trials of its Alzheimer’s pill by the end of 2025.
The field has grown large enough that consumer brands like L’Oréal and Nestlé now apply longevity research to develop anti-aging skincare and nutrition products targeting age-related health issues.
As humans age, our DNA accumulates epigenetic markers—chemical tags that alter gene expression and contribute to disease. However, during the very first days of life, about a week after fertilization, a developing embryo’s epigenetic markers reset. This explains why a baby born to parents with Alzheimer’s doesn’t show symptoms from birth, though they may carry a genetic predisposition to the disease later in life, said Life Biosciences chief operating officer Michael Ringel. Ringel, who has a background in biology, joined Life Biosciences in early 2025 after serving as a strategic advisor since 2018.
In 2020, Sinclair, who currently serves as Life Biosciences’ chairman, discovered a method of epigenetic reprogramming that partially replicated the body’s natural rejuvenation process—restoring damaged tissue to a “younger,” functional state without turning it into pluripotent, embryo-like stem cells. In essence, the therapy reprograms the cell’s epigenetic markers to restore youth at a cellular level. Sinclair’s method successfully restored vision in aged, visually impaired mice.
Three years later, Life Biosciences announced preclinical results showing that its gene therapy restored sight in previously blind non-human primates. The company plans to begin its first human trials in early 2026, focusing on glaucoma and NAION, two leading causes of blindness. From there, Ringel said, the company aims to expand to more age-related diseases “and perhaps ultimately rejuvenate whole [human bodies] simultaneously.”
If successful, the implications for human mortality could be enormous. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s rank among the top causes of death in the U.S. “More than 90 percent of what afflicts us are actually age-related diseases in terms of mortality in the developed world,” Ringel noted. He emphasized that Life Biosciences’ goal isn’t immortality, but to “significantly lower mortality.”
The social costs of living longer
Critics warn that such therapies could create new risks, including overpopulation, the diversion of medical resources and heightened age-related stigma.
Carolyn Ringel, Michael’s wife and a course instructor at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, believes the benefits outweigh the risks. Anti-aging therapies, she told Observer, could extend “the timespan that people are most engaged in their community, in their family, in their jobs,” increasing the socioeconomic contributions of older populations.
Still, concerns persist about the social ripple effects of anti-aging medicine. A paper in the Harvard Medical Student Review argues that classifying aging as a disease could “reinforce ageist stereotypes and marginalize older adults” by “medicalizing” a natural process that “deserves respect.”
That worry extends to cosmetic misuse. Some fear that longevity breakthroughs could be repurposed to promote aesthetic enhancement rather than health—echoing the recent trend of Ozempic, a diabetes drug increasingly used for short-term weight loss.
Carolyn Ringel cautioned against such commercialization. “This treatment isn’t about making people look beautiful or having a society of [exclusively] pretty people,” she said. “It’s about helping the formerly active 75 or 80-year-old who wants to do all the things they did when they were young.”
Another concern is access. The Nuffield Foundation, a U.K.-based charitable trust, warned that “access to ageing interventions is likely to be unequal,” potentially leaving marginalized groups behind.
Carolyn Ringel acknowledged that inequality is “always a worry in any health care setting,” but said that shouldn’t deter research. The preventative nature of longevity therapies, she argued, could actually make them easier to distribute globally. “Instead of trying to get expensive medication to [poorer] countries, it’s actually easier and more democratic and cheaper [to deploy the interventions] before that disease gets to the point where it’s requiring an expensive medication that those people can’t currently access,” she said.
