Petro Trush on turning wartime biotech into peacetime longevity innovation – and why Ukraine is poised to lead in healthy aging.
I look back with a sense of nostalgia at my last article in 2022, written during the first year of the war. We are now in the fourth year of a full-scale and destructive war in Ukraine.
While the combined forces strive to stop the bloodshed, Russia continues its devastating assault, but we believe that justice will ultimately prevail, and we continue to show tremendous resilience, looking to the future with hope for bright and progressive change in all areas of life.
For the people living in Dnipro – a large industrial city in Ukraine, located near the war zone – air raid alarms, power outages, drone attacks and shelling have become a ‘normal’ part of daily life. After each attack, the city recovers quickly. Over time, it has adapted to the new reality: recovery now takes just a few hours, whereas at the beginning of the war, this process could take days or even weeks.
Dariia Dantseva lives and works in these exact conditions.
Dariia is a Biotechnologist, Partner and Principal Investigator at Longevity Ukraine, and the founder of Ukraine’s first open DIY bio lab, YANELAB, as well as the Skin Open Source project. She has organized over 30 biotech events in Amsterdam, Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Nicosia, and Zaporizhzhia. For the past six years, she has dedicated her work to democratizing biotechnology, creating open protocols, and popularising science in Ukraine.
Dariia likes to repeat her father’s words: “Think globally, act locally.”
Starting in 2022, within the Skin Open Source project, Dariia responded to the urgent need to provide effective treatment for victims of war by creating a protocol using stem cells derived from adipose tissue to treat and rehabilitate burn injuries and wounds.
As it turned out during the process, the protocol became scalable, affordable (estimated to be 40 times cheaper than analogues), and capable of delivering effective treatment.
The technology emerged as a response to ‘war wounds – however, it is now developing further and finding applications in other areas of life.
After my fateful meeting with Dariia, we – within Longevity Ukraine – began applying technologies for healthy aging.
Our innovation focuses on developing the therapeutic potential of senescent adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) and their secretome to combat aging. ASCs, obtained from adipose tissue, exhibit regenerative properties.
By inducing senescence in these cells, we aim to harness the beneficial effects of their senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). The SASP, characterized by the release of growth factors, chemokines and proteases, can stimulate tissue repair, reduce inflammation, and potentially clear senescent cells that accumulate with age.
This approach offers a novel anti-aging strategy by leveraging the therapeutic potential of senescent stem cells through controlled administration to promote tissue rejuvenation and mitigate age-related decline.
ASCs can be readily isolated from easily accessible adipose tissue, and the senescence induction process can be standardized and optimized for large-scale production. Furthermore, autologous cell therapy minimises the risk of immune rejection, enhancing both accessibility and safety. This approach has the potential to be translated into an affordable and widely available antiaging therapy.
As some longevity specialists say, “You need sums with six zeros to conduct
research and development.”
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that implementing projects in Ukraine offers distinct advantages.
Leveraging the existing Ukrainian healthcare infrastructure can lead to cost-effective production and distribution, while collaboration with local institutions facilitates access to a diverse patient population – all within moderate, not inflated, budgets. That is why I invite you to invest in R&D and production in Ukraine.
In early 2025, the UK and Ukraine signed a landmark 100-Year Partnership to deepen security ties and strengthen cooperation for future generations. This agreement includes scientific collaboration and technology exchange – promoting innovation and recognising its vital role in shaping the future, particularly in health, education, transport, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and biotechnology.
At Longevity Ukraine, we deliberately choose large-scale competitions and ambitious goals. We understand that the primary challenge we face is to make healthy aging possible for everyone. The Longevity Ukraine team is a part of the $101M XPRIZE Healthspan competition. XPRIZE Healthspan competition is the ‘“’Apollo program’ in longevity. The Longevity Ukraine team is the only one from Ukraine to participate in the XPRIZE Healthspan competition.
Unfortunately, at this stage, the Longevity Ukraine team was not selected for any of the awards. However, the organisers have encouraged us to continue participating in the competition.
Longevity Ukraine has also recently joined the ‘Innovating for Asia’s Demographic Future’ Challenge. This challenge was launched by financial services giant Manulife through UpLink — the World Economic Forum’s early-stage innovation platform aimed at tackling the world’s biggest challenges.
The ‘Innovating for Asia’s Demographic Future’ Challenge calls for innovative
solutions that promote multigenerational financial resilience, equitable healthy aging, and fulfilment across longer, multi-stage lives in Asia.
This aligns with Longevity Ukraine’s manifesto: Humanity is waiting for the opportunity to live longer, healthier, and happier lives. We believe aging is a disease – and our goal is to fight it.
We, a team of scientists and entrepreneurs at Longevity Ukraine, have taken on this mission even in times of full-scale war. With the goal of improving human life on a global scale, Longevity Ukraine leads investment projects and educational initiatives, driving advancements in technology, research, and development in the field of longevity.
The next decade will be a defining one, bringing a new era of technological breakthroughs where progress becomes unstoppable.
Stay tuned – Longevity Ukraine is bringing innovations to life through the therapeutic potential of senescent adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) and their secretome, making healthy aging possible for everyone.
Thank you all for your continued support! Our projects and initiatives require financial backing and community engagement, and we are deeply grateful for any assistance. We invite you to invest in Ukraine – a nation facing great challenges, but offering vast opportunities.
Live longer, live smarter – embrace health and support Ukraine.
About Petro Trush
Petro Trush is the Founder of Longevity Ukraine. An entrepreneur, strategist and dreamer-innovator, he is at work building the Longevity Ukraine Society. With valuable expertise in the field of aging and a strong network of collaborators in the longevity community – combined with a deep passion for advancing antiaging research – he is dedicating himself to promoting and providing strategic guidance in longevity entrepreneurship and education.
Article photographs courtesy of Petro Trush and Longevity Ukraine
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