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However, sometime in 2021, a new plan emerged to accelerate research, turning the idea into a well-funded company now called Altos. These efforts took shape under the leadership of Richard Klausner, former director of the National Cancer Institute and now an entrepreneur. Klausner, who previously helped start companies such as Juno Therapeutics and cancer testing Grail, is known for making large and lucrative financial bets on new biotechnology.

According to the registration documents of Altos Labs in the UK, Klausner is the CEO of the new company. Klausner did not respond to attempts to contact him via email and telephone. Like Milner, he also lives in Los Altos Hills.

A number of startups are developing reprogramming technologies, including Life Biosciences, Turn Biotechnologies, AgeX Therapeutics and Shift Bioscience in the UK, although these efforts have yet to lead to any therapies tested in humans in clinical trials.

“Investors are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in reprogramming specifically aimed at rejuvenating parts or the entire human body,” says David Sinclair, a Harvard University researcher who reported last December that he was able to restore vision in mice using this technique. …

Sinclair describes this area as “nascent,” but believes it has a unique perspective. “What else can be done to change the age of the body?” He says. “In my laboratory, we test major organs and tissues such as skin, muscles and brain to see which ones can be rejuvenated.” Sinclair says he is not involved with Altos, but he spoke at the 2020 meeting and applied for the Milky Way award.

Science business

Altos has yet to make an official announcement, but it was registered in Delaware this year, and a securities disclosure filed in California in June indicates the company has raised at least $ 270 million, according to Will Gornall, a professor of business. – the school of the University of British Columbia, which reviewed the document. In addition to Bezos and Milner, the company may have additional high-tech investors and venture capitalists.

Other collaborators hired by Altos include Peter Walter, whose laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco has created a molecule that has a marked effect on memory. Also joining is Wolf Reik, a reprogramming specialist who recently stepped down as director of the Babraham Institute in the UK after the center said he was taking a job “with another research organization” now considered Altos. Walter and Rake declined to comment.

At least initially, Altos will fund researchers without expecting immediate results or revenue. According to one person, briefed by Klausner and Milner, the company’s initial result will be “great science.”

Altos lures university professors by offering star athletes salaries of $ 1 million a year or more, plus equity, and eliminating the hassle of applying for grants. One researcher who confirmed acceptance of a job offer from Altos, Manuel Serrano of the Institute for Biomedicine Research in Barcelona, ​​Spain, said the company would pay him five to ten times what he now makes.

“The philosophy of Altos Labs is to conduct research driven by curiosity. This is what I can and love to do, ”says Serrano, who plans to move to Cambridge, UK to join the Altos facility there. “In this case, through a private company, we have the freedom to be bold and explore. In this way, it will rejuvenate me. “

Any treatment for a serious aging disease could be worth billions, but Altos doesn’t expect to make money first. “Our goal is to understand rejuvenation,” says Serrano. “I would say that there is an idea of ​​earning income in the future, but this is not the immediate goal.”