For £38,000, Sceil will store stem cells for you - hoping that these frozen, healthy cells will be able to “repair” damage such as injuries and illnesses in the future.
As regenerative medicine develops, the process may offer a way for the rich to “stay young”.
“We believe it’s going to be very popular with a certain class of people who have everything they want but cannot go against ageing,” said Cellectis chief executive Andre Choulika, speaking to the Telegraph.
“This is expensive, so only reserved for a certain class of people who can afford it. Twenty years ago only rich people had cell phones. Now everybody has them.”
The company’s slogan is, “Don’t delay, back yourself up today.” The service is launching in Britain, because the process would encounter legal difficulties in some countries, including Cellectis’s native France.
The process involves taking a small sample of skin cells under local anaesthetic. The biotech firm Sceil - part of Cellectis - then alters these into “pluripotent” IPS stem cells, and freezes them.
The cells are stored at -180 degrees centigrade and do not age - they will remain fit and well throughout your life, Sceil claims, ready to deal with illnesses, or even provide “spare parts.”
Sceil says, “Your iPS cells are stored for your lifetime until you have a need in the future for treatment with the latest regenerative medicine techniques. This technology may have the potential to reverse, or even cure, disease and repair damaged tissues.”
“Due to the ageing process, there is no better time to have your sample taken than today – your preserved cells will maintain their existing ‘fitness’ levels while the rest of your cells continue to age.”
The process is based on the work of Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who reprogrammed human adult cells to function like pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells in 2007.
“Shinya Yamanaka broke a paradigm of science,” says Cellectis chief executive André Choulika. “He discovered that you can take any cell of the body, put a cocktail of things inside and it then forgets the state it is in and comes back to the first stage of life, nine months before birth."
"These cells have the potentiality to give any kind of tissue of your organism. You freeze time at the second a sample is taken and the cells won’t age after this moment.”
“Scéil is the first and only company in the world to offer individuals the chance to have a sample of their cells transformed into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells,” the company said. “Just think, since you started reading this information your cells have aged further because on average the total cells of your body acquire 1.8 million mutations to their DNA every second.”
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