Anti-aging medicine is so hot even this controversial idea has investors

What if aging didn’t have to suck?”

That’s the slogan of a new Harvard University spinout that plans to put millions behind a hotly disputed rejuvenation discovery.

The startup,Elevian, which is based in San Francisco, says it intends to explore whether daily injections of a protein called GDF11 can promote “the body’s ability to restore itself” and eventually treat conditions including coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s, and the muscle-loss condition sarcopenia.

The company builds on research findings several years ago that if the bloodstreams of young and old mice are connected together, it seems to rejuvenate the older ones.

Acofounder of Elevian, Harvard biologist Amy Wagers, later concluded that a protein, GDF11, was the key “rejuvenating factor” in young animals’ blood that produced the effect.

What’s more, she and other Harvard researchers said levels of the protein declined in older people, suggesting that boosting it could counter some effects of aging.