Thread by @antonioregalado

SCOOP: An insanely well-funded company called Altos Labs is going after "rejuvenation" technology.

Yamanaka factors. Epigenetic clocks. CRISPR.

Offering academics $1 million salaries and more.

Investor rumor mill: Milner, Bezos, ARCH. Musk?

technologyreview.com/2021/09/04/103…

Altos Labs is going bananas hiring professors. Here are some names we heard.

JC Belmonte, SALK (hu-monkey chimeras)
Wolf Reik, Babraham (reprogramming)
Steve Horvath, UCLA (biological clocks)
Peter Walter, UCSF (memory drugs)
Manuel Serrano, IRB Barcelona (reprogramming)

Is Altos Labs a company or a for-profit academic outfit? Sort of hard to say. Heard comparisons to Genentech, Calico, even DeepMind.

We heard it has plans to have institutes in:

Japan
Cambridge, UK
Bay Area
San Diego

maybe more...

Also, Shinya Yamanaka himself will chair the SAB.

Yamanaka won the Nobel in 2012 along with Gurdon for reprogramming.

Reprogramming is when you take a cell and rewind it to an embryonic state. It's how you make iPS cells. You can do it via cloning, like Dolly the sheep. Also it happens during the formation of the embryo. In short, fundamentally profound and reproducible. PROVEN FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

BUT...can you harness this phenomena to rejuvenate a whole animal? Like you or me? No one knows yet.

Watch our for huckster and hypesters. Plenty of them around longevity!

First attempt to apply Yamanaka reprogramming factors to whole animals, not just cells is this 2013 paper. Mice got some nasty tumors called teratomas. Like little monster deformed embryos inside them. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24025773/

Can we control this process? Maybe pulse the factors for a limited time. In 2016, researchers try transient yamanaka factors in progeria (old age syndrome) mice. Still get some tumors, but also claim some rejuventation. cell.com/fulltext/S0092…

emphasis on CLAIM. if it was so, we'd probably have seen a zillion papers with people trying to rejuvenate animals. but we havent.

We did see a paper from Harvard, last December. Claimed reprogramming restored sight to mice.

I basically mentally sorted this into the 'dont believe' pile. But it is a Nature, so...

nature.com/articles/s4158…

Many startups now working on some version of reprogramming.

Life Biosciences, Turn Biotechnologies, AgeX Therapeutics, Shift Bioscience and Youthereum Genetics

Someone told me that it's a mistake to equate reprogramming with rejuvenatation. Does a cell become 'younger' or just actually different. Like, what's important about an embryonic cell isn't its youth, but its identity.

Siri what is that movie with death, swedish

I want to give some credit to the depraved minds in our art department.

The origin of Altos Labs was a 2020 scientific meeting at Yuri and Julia Milner's mansion in Los Altos Hills.

It was called the "Creating a Vision For the Science of Aging and Epigenetic Reprogramming Conference" in Los Altos from October 6-8, 2020

The meeting was convened by Richard Klausner, former NCI director, but now an entrepreneur doing big stuff. Common technology tactic: put the most money behind the dream team, lock up talent, acquire competition, IP, all at once.

Yuri Milner appeared via video to make remarks

After this science meet, an organization called Milky Way Research Foundation, run by Klausner but funded by Milner i think, gave out a series of $1 mm a year, 3 year grants. The SAB of the foundation is said to include: Yamanaka, George Daley, Jennifer Doudna, David Baltimore

Winners of these 'apply by invitation' grants include
Helen Blau (Inaugural Awardee for Research on Rejuvenation)
Nadia Rosenthal and Tony Wyss Coray (“Multi-omic clocks of biological age and rates of
aging”)
many more i dont know about.

Then, sometime in 2021, they decided to start a bigger company to pursue all this. Klausner created it and is CEO. Milner and spouse put in money. Then, as Milner did with Breakthrough Prize, he may have brought in syndicate of 'old friends' (i.e. other billionaires) to join.

Here is our 2013 coverage of the inaugural Breakthrough Prizes. "Yuri Milner Wants to Give Everyone Who Matters Some Money"

Milner said he thinks scientists need better compensation/rewards. He decided to give it to them.

technologyreview.com/2013/02/21/841…

If you read my story, i felt handing out $3 million to people like Eric Lander who dont need it had aura of influence buying.

point of buying influence remains not clear to me. I guess if you give someone $3 million, they're going to take your calls and sit on your SABs. Literally, you have a hand on their arm and can twist.

In retrospect, I understand the the initial breakthrough Prizes--which had a big bias towards an idea called 'cancer stem cells'--were also selected under the direction of Klausner or someone similar.

There is something pretty interesting about Milner + Klausner. A little like Gates + Boris Nikolic? The super tech billionaire paired with the biology technocrat . Potent combo as biotechnology becomes engineerable.

On the other hand, Czar Nicholas + Rasputin.

This twitter account just alerted me to a very interesting video of Rick Klausner, Altos Labs CEO, talking about rejuvenation from June 2021. Video starts at the relevant question.

could be "the biggest revolution that humanity has ever experienced"

Gotta say I find Klausner's demeanor, way of speaking, hugely familiar. Like David Baltimore's voice with Eric Lander's intonation, and a dash of Tony Fauci. Wonder if he's from New York, too.