Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner announce the financing of a startup , Altos Labs.
Yuri Milner is a Russian venture capital investor, known, among other things, for creating the Breakthrough Prize, an annual honor that awards three million dollars (much more than a Nobel Prize) to the winner of each of the three categories: mathematics, physics and life sciences.
Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is an American businessman and tycoon founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, the aerospace tourism company that recently reached space (in July thanks to the New Shepard rocket where Bezos himself and his brother were on board ).
Both have come together to finance a startup with a very ambitious goal: to reverse aging.
Do you want to live forever?
The startup Altos Labs has raised at least 270 million dollars (about 228 million euros) to analyze the potential of cell reprogramming technology to turn back our biological clock; first in animals and potentially humans.
Among the star signings of the company is Shinya Yamanaka , who was a pioneer in cell reprogramming research, which earned him the 2012 Nobel Prize for such research and two of the most internationally renowned Spanish biologists: Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte , Spanish biologist from the Salk Institute, in California (who gained much notoriety for the research that mixes human and monkey embryos and who has predicted that the life expectancy of humans could be increased by 50 years), and Manuel Serrano, from the Research Institute Biomedical of Barcelona. Also joining is Peter Walter from the University of California, who has investigated a molecule that affects memory, as well as cell reprogramming specialist Wolf Reik , formerly a member of the Babraham Insistute in the UK.
Altos Labs was founded earlier this year and is attracting scientists under salaries of a million dollars a year or more (more than 800,000 euros) and allows them to unleash their minds to investigate how cells age and how to reverse the process, according to the company’s report.
The new company will establish several institutes in places like the US Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, UK and Japan and, as we say, recruiting scientists with luxury salaries and the promise of unrestricted research.
Objective: understand rejuvenation
The scientific goal is to master the ability to perform cell reprogramming; understand how cells age and how to turn back the clock in that process.
Rejuvenation does not speak only of vanity. Aging also means more health risks and worse outcomes when it comes to disease. If we could slow down the aging process, stop it, or even reverse it, it would have incredibly beneficial effects on society.
Although Altos Labs has yet to make any official announcements, it is quite likely that, in addition to Bezos and Milner, the company will gain new investors from other wealthy and prominent Silicon Valley figures and venture capital firms.
