Who’s selling longevity? Biohackers are buying.
GLP-1 medications hold lots of promise for diverse areas of health, but any broad benefits of microdosing are still unknown.
Stefania Pelfini la Waziya/Moment/Getty Images
By Susanna Camp
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the blockbuster success of GLP-1 drugs for regulating appetite, metabolism and blood sugar. The medications are also in clinical trials for a slew of alternative use cases: long COVID symptoms, irritable bowel syndrome, addiction treatment and more. Now, biohackers are going rogue (as they tend to do), taking subtherapeutic levels of semaglutides (brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatides (brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound) in a quest to slow the biological aging clock. Jamie Ducharme has the skinny for Science News.
🪓 Hackers gonna hack
The shift toward microdosing is rooted in the discovery that GLP-1 receptors are found in the brain and heart, not just in the digestive tract. However, the medical community isn’t ready to hand over the prescription pad to everyone just yet. Experts have expressed significant skepticism in a letter to a diabetes journal, noting that we lack long-term data on how these drugs affect people who are already at a healthy weight. Since every drug has side effects, the risk-benefit calculus is different when benefits aren’t yet proven. And no matter the substance, once users start self-medicating, all bets are off.
♾️ The $80 billion tailpipe
Selling products to address insecurities around aging is, well, age-old. From beauty formulas such as expensive skin care products to LED light masks to all manner of supplements, the antiaging market is currently estimated at approximately $60 billion but is projected to hit $80 billion by the end of the decade. The antiaging industry is a masterclass in aspirational marketing, awash in semiscientific or evocative language (cellular regeneration, DNA repair, adaptogenic and the like) to make products feel more like medical breakthroughs than retail items. Users are increasingly willing to pay up for monthly subscriptions that promise cellular longevity, and microdosing lends itself well to that category.
💸 Who’s selling longevity?
Several companies are currently positioning themselves at the crossroads of metabolic health and longevity:
- AgelessRx sells treatments (personalized advice, product recommendations and care plans) for areas of interest including general longevity, weight loss and aging skin, for both men and women. They closed a $5.5 million venture round in March 2026.
- Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA) is focused on engineering cells to repair damaged tissues, a cornerstone of longevity medicine. The company went public in 2021 and has since raised over $170 million for a total of $950 million to date. No word yet on their stance on GLP-1s.
- Longevity Biotech develops pharmaceuticals for neurodegenerative diseases. They offer a platform to tailor peptides for applications like longer-lasting treatments or delivery in pill form, and have a very early stage research program on next-generation GLP-1 analogs.
The appetite for metabolic optimization is anything but suppressed.
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