Altos Labs is developing a drug that will help rejuvenate human cells.
The American billionaire and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has invested $ 3 billion in startup Altos Labs, which will create a drug designed to defeat aging and death.
p> The ambitious project plans to develop a biological technology for cell rejuvenation, their restoration and resistance to diseases, injuries and disabilities. This technology involves programming cellular rejuvenation in order to return adult somatic cells to the state of stem cells.
One of the first participants in the project was the former chief scientist of the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, MD Hal Barron. And the board of directors of Altos Labs includes Nobel Prize winners in chemistry Jennifer Doudna (2020, genetic engineering) and Frances Arnold (2018, application of enzymes). Hans Bishop, MD, and Rick Klausner, MD, became co-chairs of the board. Initially, Altos Labs will be based in the US in the San Francisco and San Diego Bay Areas, as well as in Cambridge, UK.
Scientific institutes created on the basis of Altos Labs will be engaged in research work, while the Medical Institute, based on research data, will develop drugs.
What is known about the problem of human aging?
Aging is not just about how we feel or how we look. It happens at the cellular level. For example, the skin cells of a newborn baby can divide 80 or 90 times, while the cells of an elderly person divide only 20 times.
Aging also occurs at the genetic level. Human genetic material changes over time — chemicals can be added to it that change which genes are turned on or off. These changes are called epigenetic, and they accumulate as we age.
Another kind of change occurs at the ends of our cell's DNA. The repetitive segments of DNA, called telomeres, act like the plastic end of a shoelace, preventing twisted strands of genetic material from breaking off at the ends or becoming knotted. But these telomeres shorten every time a cell divides.
Telomere wear and tear is associated with cell aging, and their shortening explains the fact that each cell can divide only a certain number of times. To keep alive and keep dividing, immune cells stop their telomeres from shortening when they reproduce. This is likely one of the contributing factors to their apparent immortality. Returning the cells to the state of stem cells will allow it to divide very many times, so the task of «the cure for death» help the cell produce telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens the telomeres of chromosomes.
Another point of view is that aging is simply a side effect of damage that accumulates over time from metabolism or exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Because cells accumulate genetic damage over time, they may have evolved not to persist in the body for too long, in case that damage eventually leads to a cancerous transformation of the cell.