Key Points:
- A hot mic from Chinese state television recently caught China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin discussing the prospect of dramatic human lifespan extension.
- While the discussion left many somewhat anxious and confused, personnel at longevity science startup companies in China believe helping people live to 150 is within reach.
- These longevity-related aspirations have led to a surge in the Chinese public’s interest in longevity as well as investments from the state and private companies in aging research.
Recently, when a hot mic from Chinese state television caught China’s President, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s President, Vladimir V. Putin, discussing the prospect of living to 150 and possibly even forever, many reacted with anxiety and dismay. However, this was not the case in the laboratory of a longevity medicine start-up in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, called Longvi Biosciences.
“Living to 150 is definitely realistic,” said Lyu Qinghua, the company’s chief technology officer, who has helped develop anti-aging pills based on a molecule found in grapeseed extract. “In a few years, this will be the reality.”
Qinghua remains skeptical of whether modern medicine will defeat death entirely—something Mr. Putin has said is possible with organ transplants—but he thinks that longevity medicine is advancing at such a rapid pace that dramatic human lifespan extension may happen eventually.
“In five to 10 years, nobody will get cancer,” he predicted.
The Quest for Immortality in China Began Two Millennia Ago with China’s First Emperor
The search for a lifespan-extending elixir, espoused with enthusiasm in recent years by American tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, has been ongoing in China for a few thousand years. As such, it started with China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who oversaw a nationwide search for death-defying potions. Qin Shi Huang also ordered the creation of thousands of terra-cotta warriors to protect his grave in case he were to die. Ironically, he died at age 49, possibly from mercury poisoning that may have come from an anti-aging treatment.
The State and Private Companies in China Are Now Investing in Longevity Science
A certain degree of skepticism from the public has lingered over the longevity field from the start. However, investments from the state and private companies, along with surging interest from Chinese leaders, have turned longevity science into a legitimate branch of medicine.
Along those lines, China has sought to keep pace with the West, and surpass it when possible, in biotech, artificial intelligence, and other advanced fields. As such, industry and state leaders in China have recently made the advanced field of longevity science a national priority, pouring billions into research and related longevity-focused start-ups.
“They have improved very rapidly. A few years ago, there was nothing here, and the West was still far ahead,” said Vadim Gladyshev, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has done groundbreaking work in aging research, including a study that found lifespan extension in old mice through the connection of their circulatory systems to young mice.
As such, according to Gladyshev, Chinese researchers “are rapidly catching up.”
China’s Recent Strides in Extending Life Expectancy
As for the current expected lifespan in China, last year, it reached 79 years, five years greater than the global average, according to the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s news outlet. That expected lifespan, achieved through steady lifestyle and healthcare improvements, still lags behind Japan’s average of 85 years and is a long way from the 150 years that Mr. Xi mentioned.
Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin, both 72 years old, may have just been engaging in small talk when they discussed dramatic lifespan extension. However, exiled opponents of the Communist Party took them quite seriously and pointed to a video from 2019 that appeared on Chinese social media, purported to be a promotional segment from an elite military hospital in Beijing that treats senior officials. The video, which Chinese censors quickly took down, relayed that the hospital was doing pioneering work for the “981 Leaders’ Health Project,” which aims to extend the lifespan of senior government officials to 150 years.
“The average lifespan of Chinese leaders is far longer than the lifespan of leaders in developed nations,” the video said. The video also pointed to the hospital’s work in keeping leaders alive, such as Mao Zedong, who died at 82 in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping, who died at 92 in 1997.
Being sensitive to the discussion of leaders’ health, Chinese state television, which, by mistake, captured the conversation between Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin before a military parade in Beijing, ordered Western news outlets to delete the footage.
More People in China Now Have the Money and Time Necessary to Devote to Pro-Longevity Therapeutics and Strategies
Aside from the hot mic discussion between Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin, the enthusiasm in China for extending human lifespan has grown alongside its rapid economic expansion. In that regard, the economic gains in China have given hundreds of millions of people the money and time required to look beyond daily necessities related to survival.
Capitalizing on this phenomenon, one company riding the wave of interest in longevity has been Time Pie, a Shanghai-based company that got its start selling dietary supplements. The company now organizes aging science conferences and publishes a magazine called Aging Slow, Living Well.
“Nobody in China was talking about longevity before, only rich Americans,” said the company’s co-founder, Gan Yu. “Now, many Chinese are interested and have the money they need to extend their lives.”
A Longevity Science Conference in Shanghai
As far as the surging interest in longevity research in China goes, a recent gathering in Shanghai, organized by Time Pie, hosted Chinese and foreign scientists presenting their research. Moreover, the gathering included businesses peddling anti-aging creams and serums, goji berries, and different types of pressurized and cold temperature-producing chambers that people could enter to supposedly slow aging.
In that regard, Rlab, a company based in Shanghai that claims “technology can prevent humans from aging,” invited participants at the gathering to enter a telephone booth-like device. The device, a cryogenic chamber, immersed those who entered it in temperatures that dropped to -200 degrees Fahrenheit. Ivor Yu, an entrepreneur from northeast China, stepped into the chamber, only to jump out after a few seconds in the extreme cold temperature.
Also at the conference, representatives from SuperiorMed, a healthcare company that touts itself as having the world’s biggest “longevity hospital,” located in Chengdu, China, promoted “immortality islands.” They acknowledged, however, that the islands do not actually exist yet and are still being planned. The company’s founder, Li Dale, was vague about whether the islands would be anything more than luxury spas in exotic locales that would offer blood tests and other ways to gauge clients’ pace of aging.
All the same, the gathering in Shanghai also attracted some serious scientists in the aging research field, such as Harvard’s Dr. Gladyshev and UCLA’s Steve Horvath. As such, Horvath is somewhat of a legend in his field, having developed the first “aging clock,” based on measurements of biological markers of aging.
According to Dr. Horvath, aging science used to be overrun with “wild claims” that alienated many legitimate scientists. However, he says he has seen a “vast improvement” in recent years, including with research in China.
“Nobody serious talks about immortality at scientific conferences anymore because it is so absurd,” added Dr. Horvath.
Marketing Dreams of Immortality
At the same time, the idea of immortality still lingers as a key marketing tool. For example, Immortal Dragons, a Singapore-based investment fund that focuses on longevity products, is currently run by a young Chinese entrepreneur named Bo Yang Wang. Accordingly, Wang has explored ways of making money based on the 3-D printing of organs and cryopreservation (a process that uses very low temperatures to preserve cells and tissues for future use).
Lonvi Biosciences, the biotech startup from Shenzhen, has less ambitious goals, though. It opened a laboratory in 2022 on the edge of Shenzhen after scientists in Shanghai discovered that a natural molecule found in grapeseed extract—procyanidin C1 (PCC1)—significantly extended the lifespan of mice. PCC1 did so by selectively eliminating cells that have permanently stopped dividing but remain metabolically active and often emit inflammatory molecules, called senescent cells. Notably, senescent cells accumulate in tissues with age, and their elimination has been tied to rejuvenative effects across various organs.
As far as lifespan extension, mice treated with PCC1 lived an average of 9.4% longer across their lifetime. This groundbreaking finding was published in Nature Metabolism in 2021. Furthermore, subsequent studies, such as one in Japan, have supported this initial finding.
Whether Lifespan Extension in Mice Translates to Humans
Translating what works in mice to humans, though, requires long and rigorous testing. Moreover, what works in mice often disappoints in humans, according to Dr. David Barzilai, an American physician and founder of Barzilai Longevity Consulting. An example of this, according to Barzilai, is rapamycin, a compound that has been found to robustly extend mouse lifespan but has uncertain effects on healthy human adults.
Barzilai also says that China is “increasingly taking longevity and aging biology seriously at both the institutional and policy level.” He added, however, that “strong scientific intent does not guarantee uniformly high rigor or translational success. The challenge is not just doing more, but doing better.”
Along the lines of PCC1’s source, grapeseed, it has long served as a popular health-promoting food in traditional Chinese medicine. However, Lonvi Biosciences claims to have isolated multiple compounds from it that eliminate senescent cells and have found ways to produce capsules containing high concentrations of these compounds.
“This is not just one more pill. This is the holy grail,” said Yip Tszho, Longvi’s chief executive, who goes by the name Zico.
Lonvi thinks that the pill they have produced, combined with a health-conscious lifestyle and solid medical care, may help people live past 100 and up to 120. As far as these pills go, David Furman, a professor at the Buck Institute, an aging research-focused biomedical research center at Stanford University, said these pills “seem promising.” However, they need testing in large clinical trials. In that regard, Dr. Furman said the Buck Institute is going to start trials to “demonstrate efficacy and validate” Lonvi’s previous claims and findings.
Mr. Yip (AKA Zico) sees lots of promise for the longevity market and its future. In that regard, he referred to China’s first emperor, saying, “Rich people are like Qin Shi Huang and they are looking for immortality — or at least longer lives.”
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