DoNotAge has a direct financial relationship with an unusual preclinical project in the current rejuvenation landscape: an attempt by the Rejuvenation Science Institute (ICR) and the University of Campinas (Unicamp) to reproduce Harold Katcher’s rat rejuvenation experiments.
How much did DoNotAge fund?
ICR reported in March 2025 that DoNotAge.org had committed US$25,000 toward the rat experiment. In January 2026, after ICR announced that the full US$75,000 funding target had been reached, the institute again thanked DoNotAge.org for its US$25,000 contribution.
ICR has also described the project as being conducted in partnership with DoNotAge.org, Heales and other donors.
What is the experiment trying to replicate?
The programme is attempting to reproduce work associated with Harold Katcher using pig-plasma extracellular particles, or PPEPs, derived from young animals. ICR signed a formal research agreement with Unicamp in November 2025 for an experiment titled “Effectiveness test of rejuvenation in rats through the injection of extracellular particles from young pigs’ plasma.” Unicamp researcher Marcelo Mori is identified by ICR as the university-side research lead.
Did the replication succeed?
Not yet.
ICR’s August 31, 2026 update says its March attempt did not replicate Katcher’s reported grip-strength result. The institute also says it subsequently identified ambiguities in the published methods and began receiving additional clarification from Katcher. ICR therefore does not treat the March outcome as a definitive test of the underlying hypothesis and has continued preparing revised rat and mouse experiments.
The scientifically accurate status is an ongoing preclinical replication programme, not a successfully reproduced rejuvenation effect.
Why this project is useful to track
Replication is particularly valuable when an original result is unusually large or potentially paradigm-changing. A transparent failure to reproduce a result can be scientifically informative, while a successful replication would still need independent repetition, mechanistic work, safety assessment and eventually human research before supporting clinical claims.
What the DoNotAge relationship does—and does not—mean
DoNotAge’s US$25,000 contribution establishes a documented funding relationship. It does not make DoNotAge the university investigator, and it does not mean a DoNotAge retail supplement was tested in the experiment.
The funding relationship is notable because it documents DoNotAge support for external preclinical research rather than a retail-product study.
Primary sources
- ICR — March 2025 funding update
- ICR — January 2026 funding-completion update
- ICR — Unicamp research-agreement announcement
- ICR — August 2026 replication-status update
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Linked entities and research
ICR–Unicamp Rat Rejuvenation Replication Experiment
ICR states that DoNotAge.org committed US$25,000 toward the rat rejuvenation experiment and describes DoNotAge.org as a project partner.
Nicolás Cherñavsky
DoNotAge Conference 2026 speaker and lead of an ICR/Unicamp preclinical replication project to which DoNotAge contributed US$25,000. Cherñavsky also co-authored a separate 2025 peer-reviewed acute feasibility/safety study of young-pig-plasma extracellular particles in young rats; that paper is not rejuvenation-efficacy evidence.