Grifols makes a $146M bet on a Stanford play in a controversial anti-aging field
For the last couple of years, when it came to the vaguely vampiric field of young blood plasma transfusions, there was Alkahest and there was everyone else.
Since the field was briefly mocked on Silicon Valley in 2017, one startup charged $8,000 to $12,000 to pump the elderly with the plasma of young donors and one doctor pitched his clinical trial in a glitzy West Palm Beach gala where he reminded retirees they were likely to die soon, prompting FDA’s chief Scott Gottlieb to warn such treatments were “unproven” and that “some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors.” But Alkahest, founded by a Genentech alumn and a Stanford neuroscientist, has promised to take a more measured, scientific approach to the still-fringe science, running phased clinical trials for their plasma-derived products and couching their press releases accordingly.
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