A rare job perk: Stem cell storage
Two employers attract and retain workers with a unique benefit: Hope for a longer life.
As MyCrypto mulled over what benefits to offer employees, the new blockchain start-up asked them what they wanted. “Surprisingly, we found that the traditional health benefits and 401(k) benefits — they had no interest in those,” said Taylor Monahan, the Redondo Beach company’s founder and chief executive.
If employees didn’t want two of the biggest reasons to be full-time workers, what did they want?
“They’re early adopters and they’re tech-minded people, so the concept of living forever turns them on,” Monahan said. “That’s how we figured Forever Labs would be a good fit.”
A stem-cell storage company that promises the chance for a longer and healthier life, Forever Labs says young, healthy cells may someday be used for what Chief Executive Steven Clausnitzer calls “health maintenance.” These cells, the company says, could come in handy for treating a variety of maladies — assuming medical technology catches up.
“We are a longevity company helping to extend life spans,” Clausnitzer said. “It’s not so dissimilar to being healthy and active. People have healthy diets and lifestyles. This is one of those things that you could do as well, to be prepared for the inevitable.”
The human body contains many types of stem cells; Forever Labs stores what are known as the mesenchymal variety. On behalf of its employees, MyCrypto pays the $2,500 fee to gather stem cells via a bone marrow collection procedure. Additionally, MyCrypto covers the $250-a-year storage fee — until workers quit or get fired.
A majority of MyCrypto’s 21 staffers are younger than 30, and many use their parents’ health insurance. A distinct benefit such as this may be what keeps them from jumping ship in a competitive labor market, Monahan said.
“I’m always looking for ways to keep people for longer,” she said. “The turnover rate in crypto is very high.”
Over at Forever Labs, being a benefits provider was novel territory. So far, only one other company, Promanas Group, a Michiganbased real estate investor, has come to Forever Labs for stem-cell benefits.
John Bogdasarian, chief executive of Promanas, said it has helped with retention, recruitment and morale. Both companies came to Forever Labs through their CEOs, who had had the procedure done themselves.
Figuring out how to live longer has historically drawn the attention of billionaires and technologists. Companies such as Forever Labs offer that glimmer of invincibility for a few thousand dollars. As a graduate of seed accelerator YCombinator, the company has become a darling of the tech set.
But much like egg freezing — a benefit Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and other big companies have begun offering lately — stem-cell banking promises more than it delivers. Critics have accused egg-freezing clinics of preying on women’s fears about aging out of motherhood, when only a tiny percentage of frozen eggs result in live births.
Similarly, it’s unclear how useful young stem cells will be in the future.
“There is no way to extend anybody’s life with stem cells,” said Sean Morrison, former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. While there are many ongoing clinical trials, he said, there’s no convincing evidence yet that stem cells could reverse brain- or heart-related illnesses.
For diseases that currently benefit from stem-cell treatments, such as blood cancers, most people don’t use their own.
“There’s no reason to think people would benefit from banking their own stem cells,” he said.
Forever Labs contends that it isn’t promising anything more than possibility.
“We’re not trying to claim more than the science,” said Mark Katakowski, the company’s chief science officer. He pointed to the growing number of clinical trials as evidence of the promise of stem cells. “There’s a lot of potential here. There’s not much downside to banking your own biology.”
Despite a lack of viable uses right now, clinics promising results have proliferated across the U.S.
“Dozens of companies come up with claims about how they are able to cure any number of incurable diseases,” Morrison said. “People can make a lot of money with snake oil.”
There’s also the potential for injury. After some people went blind because of an unauthorized stem-cell procedure to treat macular degeneration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration moved to block two clinics. (Forever Labs doesn’t do treatments; it merely stores the cells for later use.)
So far, nobody has dipped into Forever Labs’ 3year-old bank of stem cells.
For companies such as Promanas and MyCrypto, the benefit may already be paying off. After all, while insurance pays for healthcare and a 401(k) provides security, a stem-cell benefit provides something much more elusive: hope.