No one knows what these treatments will look like. Some think they will be genetic therapies added to people's genes, while others think it's possible to find chemical pills that do the job. David Sinclair, who runs an aging-research lab at Harvard University, is one of the proponents of the technology. At a California event, Sinclair predicted that one day it would be normal to go to a doctor and get a prescription for a medicine. We could live 200 years.
This type of claim raises a lot of doubts. Science is on uncertain ground according to critics. The doubters were silenced by the sound of investors. In addition to Altos, whose $3 billion ranked as possibly the single largest startup fundraising drive in biotech history, the cripto billionaire Brian Armstrong helped bring $105 million into his own company, NewLimit, whose mission he says is to extend human health span. The company said it wants to increase healthy human lifespan by ten years.
Despite the fact that scientists don't agree on causes of aging, huge expenditures are being made. There isn't a consensus on when in life aging starts. Some people think it begins at conception, while others think it begins after puberty.
“There is no reason we couldn’t live 200 years.”
David Sinclair, Harvard University
All the unknowns are part of the attraction of the phenomenon. The details of why reprogrammable works remain a mystery, but that also helps explain the rush to invest in the idea. If there is a fountain of youth in the genome, the first to find it will have a huge impact on medicine.
An embryologist and stem-cell specialist was asked to watch a recording of Klausner's lecture. He claimed that he had to hold his stomach while he watched so grandiosely. He was an evangelical about something which is very preliminary and shaky ground. Klausner was saying that he had drunk something.
Medieval rulers once financed the search for the philosopher's stone, a substance they believed could turn lead into gold, and cure all disease, in order to find a substance they believed could turn lead into gold. He wasn't completely negative. People at Altos know how to do science. He noted that even theoreticians made valuable discoveries.
The procedure discovered in 2006 by the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka is one of the techniques Altos is exploring. TheYamanaka factors that he and his students identified could cause ordinary cells to turn into potent stem cells just like those found in embryos. He won a prize for his discovery in the field of medicine.
“Is there any evidence for your $3 billion project?”
Martin Borch Jensen, Gordian Biotechnology
Yamanaka was able to reprogram cells from patients to make stem cells, which could be used to try to make transplantable tissues. What would happen if Yamanaka's factors were put into animals? A Spanish team did that in 2013). The mice had tumors called teratoma.