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Science

New Company Raises Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Anti-Aging Research (technologyreview.com) 75

Posted by EditorDavid from the buy-or-cell dept.
MIT's Technology Review reports on "Silicon Valley's latest wild bet on living forever," the newly-formed Altos Labs which it describes as "an ambitious new anti-aging company...

"Altos is pursuing biological reprogramming technology, a way to rejuvenate cells in the lab that some scientists think could be extended to revitalize entire animal bodies, ultimately prolonging human life." The new company, incorporated in the US and in the UK earlier this year, will establish several institutes in places including the Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, UK and Japan, and is recruiting a large cadre of university scientists with lavish salaries and the promise that they can pursue unfettered blue-sky research on how cells age and how to reverse that process.

Some people briefed by the company have been told that its investors include Jeff Bezos...

Among the scientists said to be joining Altos are Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a Spanish biologist at the Salk Institute, in La Jolla, California, who has won notoriety for research mixing human and monkey embryos and who has predicted that human lifespans could be increased by 50 years. Salk declined to comment.
The article points out that a securities disclosure filed in California "indicates the company has raised at least $270 million, according to Will Gornall, a business school professor at the University of British Columbia who reviewed the document."
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New Company Raises Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Anti-Aging Research More

New Company Raises Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Anti-Aging Research

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  • Let the conspiracies begin.

  • Libella Gene Therapeutics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:11PM (#61767105) Homepage

    If you have a million bucks, you can step out of the US and get your telomeres lengthened right now:

    https://www.livescience.com/an... [livescience.com]

    And the military is already testing a pill.

    https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]

    We have got to put some age limits on politicians, or we are going to be dealing with a 110 year old Mitchell McConnell. This shit just ain't going to fly.

    • Re:Libella Gene Therapeutics (Score:4, Interesting)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:27PM (#61767153)

      The evidence that people age because their cells hit the Hayflick limit is non-existent or flimsy. Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ne... [doi.org]
      On the other hand, studies where the telomeres have been made longer by force, have shown that it may cause an increase in cancer incidence. Reference: https://www.jci.org/articles/v... [jci.org]

      The cells that need to replicate a lot -- such as certain immune cells and skin cells, don't need you to add telomere lengthening because they already have a telomere lengthening built-in.

    • At least politicians who have to be around in 200 years will care about climate change. But also, just don't vote for them if they're annoying.

      • At least politicians who have to be around in 200 years will care about climate change.
        But also, just don't vote for them if they're annoying.

        Then who will be left to vote for?

    • Junk science more likely to give you cancer as other replier shows.

      Meanwhile, you can stay in the USA and do science-backed thing that slows aging and promotes health:

      https://www.mdlinx.com/article... [mdlinx.com]

      That's right, good exercise. And you'll find other sources that show healthy eating and not being obese also lengthen life. Get off your ass and lengthen your life, eat good food in proper amounts, quit looking for a pill solution.

  • Aging is preventable (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:12PM (#61767107)

    We know that certain biological processes are the hallmark of aging, we just have to figure out how to slow those down or stop them. It's not impossible, just difficult. And it will take a long time, but why not work on it?

    • Aging is a side effect of being alive, you can't fully prevent the wear and tear happening in the human body just like you can't prevent it in a car (you can add some lube but that only gets you so far). BUT what you CAN do is repair all the damage.

      • It's not wear and tear. Lazy people would live longer than people who exercise if that was the case, and we know that's not true.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

          > Lazy people would live longer than people who exercise

          On the other extreme, professional athletes pretty much destroy their bodies - joints, ligaments etc, and I'm not even talking exclusively boxing and football. Gymnasts, cyclists etc. Those lazy people die because they don't exercise and end up with heart disease. But I bet any of the ones that aren't obese have pretty good joints.

          • Those lazy people die because they don't exercise and end up with heart disease. But I bet any of the ones that aren't obese have pretty good joints.

            How much exercising do you think quite a few athletes do after destroying a joint or two and living in constant never ending pain? Athletics that are heavy impact or hard on joints aren’t healthy at all, the permanent damage makes them equivalent to lazy and the heart disease is back on the menu or maybe the opiate addiction trying to deal with it never lets them get even that far.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 )
        Bullshit. If you keep replacing parts on a car as they wear out, it will last indefinitely. If you keep replacing parts on a human as they wear out, the human will live indefinitely. On a car most parts are made of steel, aluminum, or plastic. On a human, parts are made of cells. It's not that people can't figure out how to replace the damaged cells properly, it is that they haven't figured it out, yet. Your argument is akin to the old, if man were meant to fly, god would have given him wings.

        • If you keep replacing parts of a person, at which point do you kill the person you're trying to save and end up with a completely different one?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            The same question exists with the car. It's the old Ship of Theseus problem.

            But think of it this way: when you sleep your body tears down your skeletal tissue and replaces it with new tissue. Very little of the matter that composes you is the same matter that existed when you were born or even when you were twenty (assuming you're not extremely young). The Ship of Theseus problem already exists with people as our individual cells have lifecycles that are much shorter than our own lifespan. You are, literall

            • Every time I eat something even mildly spicy, I'm painfully aware that my body is doing chemical reactions.

            • But think of it this way: when you sleep your body tears down your skeletal tissue and replaces it with new tissue. Very little of the matter that composes you is the same matter that existed when you were born or even when you were twenty (assuming you're not extremely young). The Ship of Theseus problem already exists with people as our individual cells have lifecycles that are much shorter than our own lifespan. You are, literally, not the same person you were when you were young. Your memories deceive y

          • For humans it's clearly the brain. If the brain is intact, it's still the same person, even if you straight up transplant it to a new body or stick it in a robot body. The real question is how long can the brain be kept in a state worth living, because everything else can eventually be replaced with new or artificial versions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > (you can add some lube but that only gets you so far)

        You sound like my IT manager.

        • > you can add some lube but that only gets you so far

          My great-great-grandmother used some lube and cells from her body continue to grow and divide, and live 140 years later, typing this.

  • They’ll never lack for funding (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:18PM (#61767121)

    All those middle-aged tech billionaires are scared of the one inexorable problem they haven’t been able to buy / bribe their way out of.

  • small time (Score:3)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:22PM (#61767133) Journal
    The one I'm watching is CalicoLabs [calicolabs.com]. Multi-billion dollar Alphabet venture with billions coming in from Abbvie as a major partner. Amongst other drugs, their work on ISRIB [ucsf.edu] is very intriguing. This drug shows promise of being able to safely reboot cells of all types throughout the body. It was very intriguing and unexpected that lost memories actually came back when the damaged brain cells were rebooted with ISRIB. This is the kind of research that may lead to actually improving life, not just making it longer.
  • Or else the world's population will balloon. You may have heard world population will soon level off but that prediction accounts for just a few years of life extension not 50, here's the meme https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]

    • I'd rather try to solve the problems of overpopulation than die.

    • It's easier to solve the food/calorie problem and not care about the population increase. There's plenty of uninhabited lands. I think the world population can double a few times and it won't be a problem. Have robots build housing complexes and build more clean energy plants (nuclear, solar, whatever). Food is ultimately an energy problem. With energy, you can desalinate and irrigate indoor farms.

  • I'd be happy with giving my dog (Score:4, Insightful)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @07:24PM (#61767141) Homepage Journal

    A few extra years first. 13 years on average with a dog is way too short.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by alantus ( 882150 )

      There is a cure for that already.
      It's called go-to-the-pet-store-and-buy-a-new-dog.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by t0qer ( 230538 )

        I'm on my 3rd dog.

        1st dog was a mutt from a lady in the mountains, living it what looked like a shipping container taped to a travel trailer. We got her as a pup, but you could tell the poor thing had a rough life growing up. She had a huge scar across her chest at 10 weeks old. When we got her home we had to bath her several times to get rid of the fleas and ticks. She eventually learned to listen, but never liked strangers and was super racist. She got bone cancer when she was 13. Smart, tall, fast d

      • Maybe you can pick up some empathy while you're there
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The best Idea I have heard for anti-aging is telomeres growth. But all aging is not just caused by that. There are other issues, such as DNA damage, which can also result in cancer as well as aging. Worse, the major reason for telomeres shortening is to control cancer.

    Basically, expecting any one treatment to make you young is foolish. The best we can probably hope for from a single treatment is delay aging, perhaps increasing human life expectancy from 78.7 at birth to 88. (Right now, if you make it t

    • The evidence that people age because their cells hit the Hayflick limit is non-existent or flimsy. Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ne... [doi.org]
      On the other hand, studies where the telomeres have been made longer by force, have shown that it may cause an increase in cancer incidence. Reference: https://www.jci.org/articles/v... [jci.org]

      The cells that need to replicate a lot -- such as certain immune cells and skin cells, don't need you to add telomere lengthening because they already have a telomere lengthening built

  • ... I'm way more worried about this sentence: "mixing human and monkey embryos" This is how we end up with Man Ape supervillains. Who let this guy outside a sanatarium?
  • If you ask me it's too early to do focused research to stop aging. We need that, but we need billions of dollars of research on basic biology first. If we focus on aging now we'll spend way too long and way too much barking up hundreds of unproductive trees. Take telomeres. We know a little about why lengthening them causes cancer but we know almost nothing about their interaction with RNA. What will RNA do in 500 different kinds of cells that have their telomeres lengthened? It's faster to just study all a

  • Because this is how you get meths.

    *(Actually the people funding this do want to become meths)

    **(But seriously nothing is going to come of this in our lifetimes, lucky for us. Hopefully we can end this sci-fi hyper-inequality before then.)

  • "If you forward this email to all your friends, Bill Gates will give you $1 million. IBM and Amazon say this is legit!"

    Where shall I send my money again?

  • Obligatory Blade Runner (Score:3)

    by DrFalkyn ( 102068 ) on Sunday September 05, 2021 @11:33PM (#61767657)

    Roy: I want more life, fucker.
    Tyrell: The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvment of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.
    Roy: Why not?
    Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies like rats leaving a sinking ship. Then the ship sinks.
    Roy: What about EMS recombination.
    Tyrell: We've already tried it. Ethyl methane sulfonate as an alkylating agent a potent mutagen It created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before he left the table.
    Roy: Then a repressive protein that blocks the operating cells.
    Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries the mutation and you've got a virus again. But, uh, this-- all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
    Roy: But not to last.
    Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy. Look at you. You're the prodigal son. You're quite a prize!

  • You can easily make humans live double the years they do now. Simply redefine the year to be half the duration. I mean, it is the same logic as DST - instead of changing work/office/school schedules we change the time, so why not change the year too?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Google (Score:3)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday September 06, 2021 @11:13AM (#61769061) Homepage

    Has been researching anti-aging for over seven years now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]

    Considering Alphabet's very deep pockets and no products or announcements so far, I don't have too much faith in this new company. I'm not saying Calico is doing nothing, they've been doing quite a lot of research: https://www.calicolabs.com/pub... [calicolabs.com]

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