The story

Vilon came out of Vladimir Khavinson's Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology in St Petersburg, where Khavinson and Vladimir Morozov first made Thymalin from calf thymus in the 1970s. Searching for the active core, the team built the dipeptide Lys-Glu. In 2000 Khavinson and Vladimir Anisimov showed that lifelong Vilon slowed biological ageing, reduced spontaneous tumours and lengthened life in mice. Later work in Moscow and St Petersburg showed it drives thymus cell growth and turns on SIRT1 in human stem cells.