For years researchers have been joining the circulatory systems of old and young animals and observing about the joined animals that the old animals become younger and the young animals become older. Researchers at first believed that there must be some substance in the young blood that turned old animals young. GDF-11 is one substance that was studied and most researchers have rejected it.
Researchers Irina and Michael Conboy at Berkeley observed the whole fiasco with GDF-11 and did an important experiment that seems to suggest that the problem is there is something in old blood that causes aging, rather than something in young blood that produces youth. In interviews they did over a year ago, the Conboys proposed an experiment using plasmapheresis to try to take out proteins from the blood of old animals and observe what effects this has on aging.
Does anyone know:
1) Was the Conboy's research ever funded? Is there a study in progress?
2) Is any research group testing this idea in mice or other animals by doing plasmapheresis on old animals at regular intervals?
To my thinking, this is an incredibly powerful idea and very low hanging fruit because plasmapheresis is already an FDA approved procedure and the equipment and methods already exist. Getting regulatory approvals to use these procedures in humans would be far easier than the FDA approvals needed to administer any new drug. It's quite frustrating that such an obvious idea has problems even getting financing.