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Meet Altos Labs, Silicon Valley’s latest wild bet on living forever


However, sometime in 2021, a new plan emerged to further accelerate research by turning the idea into a well-funded company, and that is now Altos. The effort took shape under the direction of Richard Klausner, once chief of the National Cancer Institute and now an entrepreneur. Klausner, who previously helped found similar companies, Juno Therapeutics and cancer testing company Stampis known for placing large and lucrative financial bets on new biotechnologies.

According to a UK incorporation application for Altos Labs, Klausner is the CEO of the new company. Klausner did not respond to attempts to reach him via email and phone. Like Milner, he lives in Los Altos Hills.

A number of startups in the UK, including Life Biosciences, Turn Biotechnologies, AgeX Therapeutics and Shift Bioscience, are pursuing reprogramming technology, but these efforts have yet to lead to any treatments being tested on humans in clinical trials.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars are being raised by investors specifically to invest in reprogramming aimed at rejuvenating parts or all of the human body,” said David Sinclair, a researcher at Harvard University, last December. reported Restoring vision to mice using the technique.

Sinclair describes the field as “nascent,” but feels it holds unique promise. “What else can you do that can reverse the age of the body?” says. “In my lab, we mark major organs and tissues, such as skin, muscle, and brain, to see which ones we can rejuvenate.” Sinclair said she wasn’t involved with Altos, but spoke at the 2020 meeting and applied for an award from the Milky Way.

a science job

Altos has yet to make an official announcement, but it was founded in Delaware this year, and a California securities announcement in June shows the company has raised at least $270 million, according to University of business school professor Will Gornall. British Columbia reviewing the document. In addition to Bezos and Milner, the company may have additional wealthy tech figures and venture capitalists as investors.

Other people recruited by Altos include Peter Walter, whose lab at the University of California, San Francisco is behind a molecule that has shown remarkable effects on memory. Also in attendance is Wolf Reik, a reprogramming expert who has recently stepped down from the post of the center as director of the Babraham Institute in the United Kingdom. said he was taking a job at “another research organization” now believed to be Altos. Walter and Reik declined to comment.

At least initially, Altos will fund researchers with no immediate prospects for products or revenues. According to a person briefed by Klausner and Milner, the company’s first output will be “big science.”

Altos attracts college professors by offering sports star salaries of $1 million or more per year, as well as freedom from the hassle of applying for equity and grants. Confirming that he had accepted a job offer from Altos, a researcher, Manuel Serrano of the Biomedicine Research Institute in Barcelona, ​​Spain, said the company would pay him five to 10 times what he now earns.

“Altos Labs’ philosophy is to do research with curiosity. That’s what I know to do and love to do,” says Serrano, who plans to move to Cambridge, England to join an Altos facility there. . That way it will rejuvenate me. ”

Any cure for a major aging disease could be worth billions, but Altos doesn’t count on making money in the first place. “The goal is to understand rejuvenation,” says Serrano. “I would say the idea of ​​generating revenue in the future is there, but that’s not the immediate goal.”



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