The article that I'll point out today is primarily intended to explain to a layperson the recent history of partial reprogramming as an approach to the treatment of aging and age-related disease. The article clearly exists because the leadership at Altos Labs wants to attain a higher profile in the public eye. Altos was created in 2022 or thereabouts and funded with the immense sum of $3 billion, a sizable fraction of all biotech investment in that year. Thus the usual reason for increased publicity, meaning the desire to raise further funding from investors, seems less likely.
It is perhaps the case that there is some pressure behind the scenes to show results, particularly now that Life Biosciences has commenced a first human trial of a very narrowly focused use of partial reprogramming for optic nerve injury or degeneration. Biotech is a slow business, however, in which fifteen years between initial research and clinical approval is entirely normal. Nonetheless, one might imagine that more knowledgeable types might look back at the history of the Ellison Medical Foundation and Calico Life Sciences and express some concern that perhaps large amounts are once again being spent to, as yet, no evident good. This is of course all speculation, but we shall see.
Longevity Science Is Overhyped. But This Research Really Could Change Humanity
When a woman gets pregnant, she has been carrying her egg cells since birth. The sperm that joins with the egg to form a zygote might have been just a few months in the making, but it inherits markers of age from the man who produced it. It only follows that the zygote would also show signs of age - and at first it does. But then a mysterious metamorphosis begins: the cells of the zygote begin to reverse that damage, shaking off the metaphorical (epigenetic) dust that the parents accumulated on their DNA. After two weeks, the cells of the embryo are back to a kind of ground zero of youth. Recreating this rejuvenation is one of the newest and most promising developments in longevity research.
Over the past 20 years, they have learned how to trigger rejuvenation in the lab, achieving a series of breakthroughs that have made that future feel tantalizingly close. Scientists have taken skin cells from 90-year-olds and restored them to youth in a petri dish. They have rejuvenated diseased mice, turning their gray hair back to black and strengthening their muscles. Rejuvenation sounds just as sci-fi as any of the ideas coming out of the longevity field, and yet there's widespread agreement among scientists that the research has extraordinary potential. The most vehement disagreements are not over whether cellular aging can be reversed, but how far scientists can push it. Will it work in humans? Will its use be limited to targeted interventions that cure specific diseases? Or could it ever be safe enough to enable full-body rejuvenation - to help humans look and feel younger, or to stop them from aging in the first place?
Some of the answers to those questions are likely to come from Altos Labs, a secretive biotech company. With $3 billion in investment at its founding in 2022, Altos is thought to have been the single largest biotech start-up launch. A would-be Manhattan Project for longevity science, Altos is responsible for one of the biggest migrations of academics to industry in recent years, luring marquee names in the field with million-dollar salaries and the promise of near-unlimited funding. Among its competitors, Altos has earned a reputation as a black box.
In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka identified four unusual genes that are active in early embryonic development. He introduced them into the skin cells of older mice in a petri dish and watched and waited. Over the course of two weeks, the skin cells transformed, becoming something close to embryonic stem cells. The original Yamanaka factors are now considered just one of many potential ways that scientists could trigger rejuvenation. Altos and a handful of other start-up biotech companies are competing to find the safest version. Altos is conducting research on rejuvenation in the kidney, the heart, and the liver, which are often the first organs to fail as we age. The hope is that in fixing whatever organ is aging first, scientists could give someone a longer, healthier life, with everything essentially winding down at the same time, making for a mercifully brief period of decline.
View the full article at FightAging
