A little confusing. Cure aging in 20 years but you’re not a longevity company?
Altos Labs recently exited stealth mode to announce $3 billion in funding, reportedly from investors including Jeff Bezos, and a team full of Nobel Prize winners and pioneering scientists. However, the secretive company’s representatives insist that “Altos is not an anti-aging or longevity company”. Despite this, a key member of their scientific leadership recently publicly stated that he is convinced that, using the same technologies they are working with at Altos, we will be able to prevent aging within twenty years.
The scientist making these bold statements is Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a Spanish biologist who has spent years pioneering innovations in developmental biology, regenerative medicine and aging research at the Salk Institute.
In 2006, a study showed that it was possible to reprogram cells using just four master genes. These four reprogramming factors are often called the Yamanaka factors after one of their discoverers, Shinya Yamanaka, who also happens to be part of the Altos Labs team.
In 2016, Belmonte and his team of researchers at the Salk Institute demonstrated that the cells and organs of a living animal could be rejuvenated using cellular reprogramming.
In January of 2022 it was announced that Belmonte would be leaving the Salk Institute to become the director of Altos Labs’ San Diego Institute of Science. Altos Labs says that they are “focused on cellular rejuvenation programming to restore cell health and resilience, with the goal of reversing disease to transform medicine.”
Recently Belmonte published new research in the journal Nature Aging, and showed that intermittently activating the Yamanaka Factors led “to rejuvenating effects in different tissues, such as the kidney and skin.”
Belmonte is already planning similar work on monkeys, and believes it could translate to humans as well. He spoke about this to the Spanish newspaper El País.
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