Altos Labs’ Anti-Aging Biotech Project is now funded by Jeff Bezos

Aman Kumar

As you increase the number of rotations around the sun, fine lines, wrinkling of skins, grey hair, and creaking bones may begin to annoy you. Scientists are currently attempting to address one of biotechnology’s most pressing questions: how might biotechnology be used to make humans younger?

Altos Labs wants to convert adult cells to stem cells that can subsequently be converted into any kind of cell. If they are successful, the human lifespan may be extended by 50 years. And this is just the start. The longer one does study, the more years one may add to one’s age.

2020 Breakthrough Prize - Red Carpet — (Photo: Photo by Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize)
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 03: Julia Milner and Yuri Milner attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019, in Mountain View, California.

The world’s wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, is 57 years and seems to have recognized that he won’t have enough existence on this earth to squander his full $200 billion fortune. Rocket fuel & interstellar aspirations aren’t enough to clear his books. He co-founded a company with other billionaires, including Russian-Israeli Yuri Milner, aimed to combat the effects of aging. Instead of injecting botox, they’re pouring massive amounts of money into Altos Labs, where some of the world’s finest scientists are working to develop a recipe for everlasting youth.

Anti-aging science is a branch of science that deals with the prevention of aging.

It’s possible that the key to living longer isn’t so much a secret as a formula that tackles the most prevalent causes of death on a biological level. As scientists speak about “the speed of aging,” they’re talking about the pace of multi-organ system loss that accelerates as we grow older. According to the current study, the age of 150 is the most optimistic estimate for human life. The maximum recorded lifespan of a person on this planet is about 122 years. Reaching these ages necessitates physicians maintaining the human body’s peak young function: staying healthier over a longer period rather than just living longer. Death isn’t the only factor to consider. Other factors, such as quality of life, become more important when individuals lose them.

According to a new study performed by a group of Harvard researchers, physiological systems critical to our overall health begin to deteriorate between 35 to 40 years of age. Around this period, we start to lose part of our resistance to illness and physical harm. The same research discovered that blood plays a significant role in this equation. Scientists were able to revitalize three germ layer tissues using mice models after swapping older blood plasma with a combination of saline and albumin in a published study in the journal Aging.

How Altos Labs intends to combat aging:

The name Altos Labs comes from Russian investor and computer tycoon Yuri Milner’s Palo Alto home, where the business was originally conceived following a two-day meeting. Altos Labs is researching how biotechnology may be utilized to help people live longer lives. A significant number of university experts will be hired to study how cells age as well as how to slow down the aging process. Reprogramming would include injecting proteins into a cell that tell it to return to something like a stem-cell-like state.

Scientist Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize for this approach in 2012 after demonstrating it in mice. The business, which is based in the United States and the United Kingdom, intends to extend its research by establishing institutions in the Bay Area, San Diego, Cambridge, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Investing in anti-aging research is nothing new for Jeff Bezos. In 2018, the Amazon founder also invested in such a large industry.

Altos Labs, a very ambitious anti-aging firm that is researching methods to extend human life, is receiving funding from Jeff Bezos as well as other billionaires. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to invest in an anti-aging research firm that focuses upon reprogramming human cells following his retirement and space voyage.

As per MIT Tech Review, Altos Labs, a research-based business established in the first half of 2021, reportedly claimed Jeff Bezos as one of its investors. According to the article, the business is committed to figuring out how to slow down the aging process. It has been recruiting scientists with yearly salaries of $1 million for this reason. Altos Labs’ primary goal is to extend the human lifespan by 50 years. Many more years may be added with further study.

How can we stay healthy as much as possible?

The Mediterranean diet is indeed the Holy Grail in preventive medicine in the age of evidence-based medicine, owing to the harmonious balance of numerous components having antioxidant as well as anti-inflammatory characteristics that overwhelm every single vitamin or food item. Sardinia, a hilly Italian island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, has the world’s largest number of male centenarians.

A typical Mediterranean diet includes olive oils, seafood, nuts, legumes, vegetables, and fruits along with a glass of red wine. That’s how the people of Southern Italy, Greece, and Crete ate in the 1960s, when chronic illness rates are among the least on the planet and life expectancy was among the greatest, despite inadequate medical care.

Wrapping up

Everyone is concerned with preserving life, but renewal is a personal matter. It’s not the first instance when immortality has piqued the interest of the wealthy. Calico Labs (also known as California Life Company) was established by the co-founder of Google, Larry Page in 2013 to attempt to figure out what causes aging and what can be done about it. Calico started its quest of recruiting the crème de la crème of the scientific world and providing them with large budgets to reverse aging, armed with that cause plus $1.5 billion in the purse. It’s been questioned if the Google spinoff has made any progress in the eight years since it was founded.

After a certain age, the mortality rate flattens off, notwithstanding population increase and improvements in health care. Experts have discussed the potential limitations to what has been known as the highest recorded age at death, given continuing study into aging, the possibilities for further scientific and medical breakthroughs, and the very limited number of individuals who have verifiably reached the age of 110 or beyond. While some scientists believe that illness and fundamental cell degradation contribute to something like a finite limit on human longevity, others contend that there is no such limit.