Last year, a meeting at a luxurious estate in California resulted in a new biotech company
that could possibly lead the charge to defeat the aging process.
And this company is recruiting some of the biggest names in the field of longevity by promising unlimited, blue-sky research.
This is really exciting!
In today’s video, we’re going to be taking an approach to the News that’s a little bit different,
in that we’re only going to covering a single topic, cellular reprogramming.
We’re going to be talking about a couple of companies that have recently made news in this field.
One is Calico Life Sciences, and the other is a brand new company, called Altos Labs.
Picture this: In October of last year, a group of scientists and researchers that read like the
Who’s Who in longevity research, gathered at a $100M estate in the hills above Palo Alto, California.
Yuri Milner, a Russian-Israeli billionaire, had drawn these researchers together
to discuss possible ways to reverse the effects of aging in human beings.
Now, Milner, in addition to having made billions in investments in Facebook
and a company called Digital Skys Technology, is also a physicist,
and he’s been involved in longevity research for years.
He created a non-profit called The Milky Way Research Foundation,
which has awarded several grants called Breakthrough Prizes to a variety of scientists.
These prizes consist of a $1M grant spread out over 3 years,
and several have been awarded to longevity researchers.
This isn’t the first time that billionaires have gotten involved in longevity research,
something that Bill Fallon, the head of the Life Extension Foundation, has been trying to cultivate for years.
He’s been making presentations expounding on the fact that extremely wealthy individuals
have passed away needlessly, because they wouldn’t fund any longevity research,
something that might have extended their lives.
But in 2013, Larry Page, the founder of Google, started up Calico Life Sciences,
a longevity research and development company that is a subsidiary of Alphabet,
the parent company of Google.
When that happened, it took the longevity community by storm. Calico was hiring elite scientists in longevity
and providing them with generous budgets,
so it looked like Calico would have access to unlimited research funding.
However, since then, questions have been raised regarding just how much progress Calico has made.
The Google spinout began as a lab who’s focus was on cellular reprogramming,
which is a technique where somatic cells, which are differentiated cells,
can be reverted back into undifferentiated cells that are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs.
This is achieved using the Yamanaka Factors, a group of 4 protein transcription factors.
However, iSPCs, the product of cellular reprogramming, have been known to acquire oncogenic mutations,
forming tumors called teratomas.
Well, in May of this year, Calico published their first pre-print on the topic of cellular reprogramming.
The paper was about a study they did using “transient” reprogramming,
a technique in which the factors are only introduced for a brief, transient period of time,
stopping short of going all the way back to iSPCs.
Calico found that transient reprogramming restored youthful gene expression in adipogenic cells
and in mesenchymal stem cells, but that it also temporarily suppressed somatic cell identity programs.
However, since some Yamanaka factors are more oncogenic than others,
Calico also tried different combinations of subsets of the factors
and found that these suppressed cellular identity considerably less than the full array of Yamanaka factors.
They also found that a different transient reprogramming approach inspired by amphibian regeneration
restored youthful gene expression in aged muscle cells.
So, while transient reprogramming appears to hold great promise, it’s not yet risk-free.
OK, let’s return to the group of researchers and scientists meeting at Milner’s estate in Palo Alto.
Milner had established the Milky Way Research Foundation and was funding research
through his Breakthrough Prizes because he believed that this was the best way to make a difference.
However, during this meeting, Richard Klausner, head of the National Cancer Institure
convinced Milner that using his riches to fund a new biotech company
was likely to produce superior results to a strictly philanthropic approach.
So, a new biotech company called Altos Labs was born out of this meeting.
And guess who they attracted as a co-founder of the company?
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin.
Bezos stepped down from Amazon in July, went into space a few weeks later,
and then co-founded Altos Labs with Milner in September.
And this might be the most exciting development in longevity science, well, ever.
Because it looks like they’re pulling out all the stops.
I mean, consider. Jeff Bezos is 57 and Yuri Milner is 59.
It’s been said that young people want to be rich and rich people want to be young.
Which is an experience that both Bezos and Milner may be starting to feel.
In the future, the expression that youth is wasted on the young may no longer be true.
Altos Labs filed for corporation in both the US and in the UK,
and they’re planning on establishing institutes somewhere in the Bay area,
down around San Diego, I’m guessing in La Jolla,
in Great Britain and in Japan.
Securities disclosures filed in California have indicated that Altos Labs has raised at least $270 million.
And they’re using that money to attract some of the biggest names in longevity research.
They’ve recruited Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at
the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.
I reported on him in the September version of Longevity News
for his work in cellular reprogramming of muscle stem cells, called satellite cells.
They recruited Steve Horvath, who’s responsible for the Horvath Clock,
one of the most accurate epigenetic clock for measuring biological age.
They recruited Richard Klausner, who has left the National Cancer Institute to become the
CEO of Altos Labs.
They even recruited Shinya Yamanaka, who will be acting as an unpaid head of Altos’ scientific advisory board.
Yamanaka, who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of the Yamanaka factors,
also considered proposals for Milner’s Breakthrough Prize, along with Jennifer Doudna,
who shared a Breakthrough Prize in 2015
and later a Nobel in 2020 for her co-discovery of CRISPR genome editing.
These are some heavy-hitters that Altos has brought aboard.
They’re enticing college prof with salaries of $1M per year or more, plus ownership in the company.
They’re also offering independence from the burden of applying for subsidies and grants,
the bane of most researcher’s existence.
Manuel Serrano, of the Institute of Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona,
has acknowledged accepting a job offer from Altos at 5 to 10 times his current salary.
He was one of the first to genetically modify mice to generate Yamanaka factors in 2013.
Altos Labs has stated that their primary area of research is going to be in cellular reprogramming,
using the Yamanaka factors to re-set cells to induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.
David Sinclair says “There are hundreds of millions of dollars being raised by investors to invest in
reprogramming, specifically aimed at rejuvenating parts or all of the human body.”
Last December, Sinclair reported that his lab was able to restore sight in mice using this same technique.
Sinclair describes the field as brand new but feels that it hold unique promise.
“What else can you do that can reverse the age of the body?” he says.
“In my lab we are ticking off the major organs and tissues, for instance skin, muscle and brain —
to see which we can rejuvenate.”
Now, Sinclair claims that he’s not involved with Altos Labs,
but he did speak at Milner’s 2020 meeting and, according to TechnologyReview,
he has applied for a Milky Way Research award.
Altos Labs will also be working with Steve Horvath to explore related technology that can measure the
biological age of a cell, or a human. The Horvath clock measures the epigenetic patterns on genes.
The epigenome is responsible for turn genes on or off, and patterns in the epigenome
become more disorganized as people age.
Since it’s almost impossible to conduct a study that actually demonstrated life extension,
simply because it could take decades,
improving biomarkers, such as the epigenome, is the next best thing.
Cellular reprogramming really meshes well with these aging clocks that measure the epigenetic patterns
because reprogramming works by remodeling these patterns back to an immature or naive state.
This means that Altos will be working at the cutting edge of both rejuvenating and measuring cellular age.
And here’s the thing. Altos Labs has begun by financing researchers with
“no imminent expectation of goods or income.”
I guess both Bezos and Milner figure they have enough, and they want to give something back.
They’re probably also hoping to accelerate results in the field, since they’re both almost 60.
They’re offering scientists unrestricted blue-sky research and say that the company’s initial output
will be “outstanding science”.
Manuel Serrano said that “The philosophy of Alto Labs is to do curiosity-driven research.
We have the freedom to be bold and to explore.”
And that wraps up another edition of Longevity News.
If you’d like to watch other videos in this series, check out this playlist.
That’s it for me, I’m outta here.
See next time.