There has been research on aging and longevity in bits and pieces, but of late, the world’s billionaires are pouring in money and deploying talent to extend human life.
Sam Altman of OpenAI is taking moonshot on reprogramming human body. He runs a side project called Retro Biosciences. His startup has an investment of $180 million. It has a goal of extending human life by 10 healthy years. He has teamed up with Betts-LaCroix who promotes hard science and deep biology through his non-profit organization called Health Extension Foundation.
Life extension may seem to be a quirky project but it is a part of Altman’s futuristic world view.
Is Silicon Valley over-reaching by trying to fix everything? Or is it that spirit of rugged and toughened fend-for-yourself attitude that motivates Altman to take both fusion energy and human longevity into his stride.
The live-longer time frame suggested by him is plausible.
Open AI’s headquarters are in San Francisco. Retro Biosciences is located 30 miles south of it. It is closer to Meta, Apple and Stanford than the golden city. Its ethos is ‘more pirate than navy.’ It has a warehouse like office desks are perched on a platform. The employees can peek through narrow windows up there. The ambiance stimulates people to move fast and break things. The labs at Retro are converted shipping containers with high end ventilation.
The whole project is divided into three buckets.
1. Autophagy. Our cells are being recycled to keep them healthy. This has the potential to become a quick fix for aging. Theoretically, the recycling can be tweaked with a pill. Rapamycin and Metformin (for kidney transplants and diabetes respectively) are existing medications closest to a pill approach. They can boost longevity. It has yet no direct drug that specifically addreses this cellular housekeeping.
2. Cellular reprogramming. This is a trendy idea. Old cells can be reprogrammed to a slightly younger state. Japanese stem cell researcher and Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka’s research talks of Yamanaka Factors that can do this reprogramming, but experimentally it is difficult to accomplish this. Actually, it is remodeling of cells — this can cause cancer and there could be other health issues. Betts-Lacroix advises a gradual approach. Extract cells from ears or knee joints. Reprogramme them partially to de-age. Put them back into people when they are safe enough for treatment. One can avoid a person to start with — just do cell extraction to do programming. If that helps hearing loss or joint mobility, Retro can venture further –try something more advanced.
3.Plasma therapy. No doubt, this sounds like a Dracula-like concept since it promises rejuvenation. Mice have been used for experimentation. Their blood plasma is diluted with Saline. (It is better than young blood transfusion). In aged mice it improves may age-related issues — reduction in inflammation, improvement of liver and muscle health and improvement in the formation of brain cells.
Some research at Retro suggests that the technique can work in non-rodents too.
The life extension mission is a gargantuan mission. Both co-founders meet once a week. They are the Board now. In this longevity race, other competitors of Altman are Bezos (Amazon), Thiel and other billionaires. Bezo’s lab is San Diego. Thiel wants his body to be cryogenically preserved when he dies. It can be brought back to life later. He also believes that we can escape the velocity of death someday soon. German billionaire Angermayer is developing pills for improving aging. The pills include those that can keep ovaries younger so as to prolong the fertility window. Betts-LaCroix believes Retro is taking a moral call, rather than developing just a business model.