Recently, an article titled “A billionaire suffered serious side effects after transplanting someone else’s fat into his face to stay young” attracted attention. However, this article contains a mixture of medical misunderstandings and exaggerations, so it seems necessary to accurately understand and evaluate his experiments.
The main character of this article is American businessman Bryan Johnson. He is attracting attention for his various experiments and projects to stay young. In 2013, he is known to have secured about $300 million (about 400 billion won) in personal assets by selling the online payment platform ‘Braintree’ to eBay for about $800 million. Although he is not a ‘billionaire’ based on a net worth of over $1 billion, it is clear that he is very well off financially.
He became famous not for money, but for his experiments and projects aimed at maintaining youth and reversing the aging process.
Several articles reported that he transplanted fat from other people to get a younger look, but this is not a medically feasible procedure. This is because if you transplant fat from someone else, the entire fat will die due to a rejection reaction.
What does it mean that Brian Johnson received someone else’s fat transplant?
Facial aging manifests itself in the form of sagging or loss of soft tissue volume. To solve this problem, autologous fat transplantation is widely practiced around the world and its effectiveness has been proven. Brian Johnson restricted his diet to less than 2,000 calories a day and exercised, losing weight all over his body, resulting in a ‘skinned’ face, and his face looked too old compared to his physical age. To solve this problem, an autologous fat transplant was planned, but for the same reason, there was no excess fat in the body.
The procedure that Brian Johnson actually underwent uses Decellularized Adipose Matrices. This is not a transplant of fat from another person, but an injection of extracellular matrix extracted from donated fat tissue, and is not living fat tissue. It is said that the structure containing the collagen, proteins, and growth factors remaining after removing the cells provides a structure that helps your own fat cells to gradually fill up, like a honeycomb. It is characterized by the fact that it can be simply injected like filler, and it is known that immune rejection reactions are rare because the immunogen is removed. These immunogen-depleted human tissue-based product (HCT/P) procedures do not require individual approval under regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Brian Johnson experienced swelling on his face immediately after the procedure, which he explained on social media as an allergic reaction. Allergies can also be caused by other factors, such as the anesthetic used in the injection, or it may just be swelling. What makes his experiment controversial is that the new treatment remains in a small-scale study phase and lacks long-term data.
Fat-derived extracellular matrix products are already commercially available in the United States and can be performed in front-line clinics. Although there are not many research papers published so far, relatively good results have been shown so far in terms of safety and continued effectiveness after the procedure. If you were to ask me, ‘If this product were introduced in Korea, would I immediately recommend the procedure?’ I would say, ‘Not yet.’ Until new methods are sufficiently validated, clinicians need to maintain a conservative stance.
That’s why I’m grateful for the bold and sometimes eccentric challenge of a person who puts his own body on the test bench.
What I personally found difficult to understand about this controversy was the way the domestic media treated Brian Johnson. He is depicted simply as “an immature adult who drains his son’s blood to rejuvenate,” with his experiments relegated to the level of cosmetic procedures.
However, Brian Johnson’s rejuvenation project, also known as ‘Project Blueprint’, is not just a cosmetic procedure, but a scientific exploration for human longevity and healthy aging. He invests about $2 million (approximately KRW 2.7 billion) every year, monitors more than 70 organs with 30 medical experts, and makes various attempts to stay young.
Brian Johnson also has a business selling supplements based on his research called Blue Print. We don’t know yet whether it will be just a marketing campaign to sell health foods using one’s body as a hot topic, or whether it will be a pioneer in discovering the secret to a healthy longevity. Either way, it doesn’t seem like we should be ridiculed for our plastic surgery addiction. However, the media’s behavior is no different from that of celebrities who are ridiculed for failing plastic surgery, leaving a bitter impression.
Science begins with seemingly reckless challenges. Edward Jenner, the founder of the 18th-century pox method, had to endure ridicule from the public that he might turn into a cow if he got vaccinated.
Robert Goddard claimed that we could go to the moon by rocket, but the New York Times ridiculed this and published an editorial saying, “Action and reaction are impossible in a place where there is no air.” This editorial was only corrected more than 50 years later, after humans had actually set off for the moon.
It is not yet known whether Brian Johnson’s challenge will end in failure or whether it will open up new possibilities. However, we must respect him for moving forward in the forefront of science. In his challenge, we may be able to glimpse new possibilities in aging research and longevity science. I hope that his efforts will make great progress over time.
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Source: kormedi.com
