Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I also find it at least a bit disturbing that WoW is so high on that list. Then again, if you have all the time in the world ...
Depending on the solution, normal dying might indeed be impossible. I remember a piece of dystopian fiction (I think it was an Outer Limits episode) where characters couldn't even kill themselves anymore because nanobots would instantly repair any damage.
Not that this scenario is extremely likely but there might be ramifications we can't think about yet. Immortality after all isn't a particularly well-trodden path.
Black Mirror's "White Christmas" covered a similar theme with uploaded consciousness, where the victim obviously couldn't self-terminate in any way.
I love thinking about this concept. I hope that over the next 20 years, they figure out how to extend life to 125 years, so that then in the following 20-40 years they can extend life indefinitely. Here's to hoping.
There's nothing wrong with your thinking. In my humble opinion it shows your personal desires without much concern for everyone else. I guess this is the rub I get from most people that extol the Silicon Valley dream of extending the lives*
*of those that will inevitably be able to pay for it.
Oh shush. You know, I've got a 93-year-old grandmother with a damned sharp wit who should not fucking need assisted living and should be able to remember what we were talking about five minutes ago. I've also got a 68-or-so uncle who came down with Parkinson's Disease almost instantly upon his retirement from a lifetime of practicing medicine.
That's not to mention the in-laws with fibromyalgia and the step-father with several "bad lifestyle" diseases.
If your argument in favor of aging and death is, "Indiscriminately inflicting extreme suffering to randomly-selected people for every moment of their lives really helps to freshen up the world", you should reconsider. The problems I mentioned are not unique and special things that happened like a car accident happens. They're just what happens to everyone from living long enough. The bit at the end where you go to sleep and never wake up is nothing; the problem is the decades of suffering followed by that.
Dragon Flys only live for 4 weeks, but its enough time to reproduce and that's all "mother nature" cares about, and hardly anyone would suggest that living 4 weeks is long enough; so we need to understand our lifespans are just as arbitrary.
So what? We humans care.
For whatever reason, hardcoded death was the more successful route for a species to take. (with some notable exceptions. I believe there are species of lobsters that won't die if you put them in the right environment, I believe a species of jellyfish as well, and then some microorganisms as well)
Purely biological success knows nothing of the societies we have built and the knowledge, ability to experience, and the complex contexts within which we all live our lives. Death really doesn't make sense for an individual, and no one is really itching for Humans V1.1 so the idea of letting evolution continue doesn't make much sense either.
If I could stop aging right now, I would be content with what I am capable of. Even if I die in 30 years from bus to head syndrome, I will have been fit and active for those years and that is a much better situation than slowly deteriorating to death.
That is the reality medicine has given us already, and anti-aging is only the focusing of a subset of general health issues that tend to cause problems as we age. It isn't the search for the imoral and exclusive elixr of life as some people seem to claim it is.
Then why are we spending so much energy trying to augment ourselves? Better exercise, better diets, better schools, less disease, etc.
I would say that almost everyone can name something about themselves that they wish evolution had optimized more. (And if not evolution, then direct intervention).
Perhaps the version was number a bad way to express that though!
On the other hand, humanity loses out on a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience with each death.
Imagine if Einstein were alive today, for instance. Or Richard Feynman. Or Carl Sagan.
It's also a damned shame that my grandfather, who is precisely nobody on the world stage, but still somebody, and currently in the hospital and I might get a text any minute saying he's dead, is on the brink of exiting the world, joining the hundred billion or so other humans who've ceased to exist for no good reason other than that the blind god Nature doesn't care about anything we care about. What Nature has ordained, she has ordained without reference to meaning or wisdom or the interests of those who live and die within her system, and we will be doing right when we remake her.
I'm sorry for your eventual loss but immortality does not appeal to me the way I guess it appeals to others. Cycles in nature don't seem like a disease to me that need curing. Alleviating the pain and suffering of aging is fine and that's what these guys seem to be doing.
Basically you are saying that it's better we die so that a new generation can come and then die for others come around just to die to make way for others.
Whats the purpose of that for the individual? Why is that by any metrics desirable for humans to die for other humans to come along to just die for yet others?
But what is the purpose of that?
Questions about life's purpose are silly, just like asking "what's the purpose of Mount Blanc?" is silly.
Living longer wouldn't change the notion of "purpose" or anything around it anyway.
Good luck...
If if immortality didn't have negative consequences as severe as stunting an entire species, we'd probably see more species that were capable of immortal individuals. Such species do exist, but not in the Mammal kingdom as far as I'm aware.
But I also think it sets a good guideline. Death improves a species, because it leaves room for more children + more generations (for a given set of resources), which means more opportunity for improvements to evolutionary fitness.
edit: another commenter pointed out something I think is fairly profound. When a group of cells in your body decides to pursue immortality, it's usually cancer. And if you don't address it, it kills you, and them too. Science theoretically has a way to grant our individual cells immortality without causing cancer, but it'd have to be orchestrated carefully.
But in two to seven decades, when they have this problem, I doubt they will see it as a moral choice to kill (/refuse to save) people because a lot of them will be conservative.
Oh, I see. You mean we should be able to run on to 200 don't you? ;)
http://www.hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html (That site sucks to read, btw. White text on black background, ugh.)
And I don't mean to suggest that we should accept death or not pursue the escape of death, but most species (with some notable exceptions) who have enjoyed evolutionary success have death hardcoded into their genome.
Which suggests to me that over a sufficient timescale (probably dozens to thousands of generations), death is beneficial to a species. Death means that there are more resources available to younger generations, and means that you get more cycles of genetic optimization. That makes the species more successful as a whole.
Humans may find some way to get optimization cycles that don't involve death, but I hold the opinion that if we don't continuously pursue optimization cycles, we'll eventually be out-competed evolutionary by something that does. We have a huge head start, but in the fable, so did the dragon.
I think we're pretty safe. Evolution works really, really slowly. Even the earliest humans recorded optimized their lives much faster than evolution. That's our advantage - a brain that can do the iterations in abstract, many orders of magnitude faster than nature does in matter.
More over, human values are not the same as the objectives of evolution, nor should they be.
> but I hold the opinion that if we don't continuously pursue optimization cycles
We can undermine the optimization of evolution just fine, without ending death from aging--
I seem to recall that both of us wear corrective lenses, thus largely excluding the selective pressure for naturally better eyesight that we might otherwise be subjected to. :)
With that in mind, it's something of a false choice that you present: It's not like mankind is subject to the full force of evolutionary pressure with aging and completely free of it without.
Besides, I seem to recall the the rate for accidental death in adults suggests that we'd end up with a roughly 500 year life span even if we completely cured all aging related issues. A lot longer in human terms, but hardly anything for evolution.
Another perspective would be that the biggest threat to mankinds survival isn't anything evolution is well equip to protect us from-- us killing ourselves with phenomenal weapons and bad policy. Because our bad decisions could wipe our mankind worldwide evolution has no real chance to fabricate less problematic future humans. ... But perhaps humans acting in their own perpetually immortal interest might just behave a little more prudently.
But probably not human created stuff like raids and video games, because new ones will be made. Well languages maybe, because of consolidation.
Statistically speaking, anti-aging isn't going to be the defining factor in your mortality, if that's what you want to do with your extended lifetime.
"I f*cked up spectacularly" is an acceptable way to go. "I watched a lot of TV" is not. 80 years is not long enough to attempt all the spectacular things.
Part of the whole agelessness thing is that some of the mechanics of how our cells breakdown and begin to fail would need to be cured. At which point, our bones, and muscles, if cured of that deterioration, would lead to curing death, but it would also lead to the ability to maintain your health and body. As long as you continue to exercise, and eat well, you'd probably have a body similar to an average fit modern 40 year old I'd expect. Or somewhere between the crazy metabolism of 20 year olds, and the deterioration of 70 year olds.
I don't know any of the science though, so just speculating based on what I've read, and my opinions.
He has his reasons for wanting to kill leopards, but eventually humans are going to kill them all and that can't be right.
Like you, I'm excited by the idea of living longer, but it's selfish. For the world it would be better if we lived even shorter. You'd have a faster churn of ideas. Think of ignorant people consuming ivory or rhino horn out of ignorance. This ignorant generation is going to wipe out these animals outside zoos and tiny protected reserves. Their children would likely be more educated and likely not follow the ignorant behaviour of their parents. But the parents(we) live too long.
I'm sure there is an analogue in my appetite for beef and the destruction of the Amazon or my desire to own and drive a fossil fuel driven vehicle.
I've felt this way since I was 20, and I haven't seen much.
Yea, there are typically trees, bushes, rocks and dirt on every trail. But, they're different. Even the same trail changes over time. Trees fall, views change. Sometimes you see a deer. Sometimes you find a crazy looking flower, or bug, or plant. Sometimes it's just exhilarating to hike quickly and elevate your heartrate in the crisp cold mountain air.
I know what you're saying though. I have been on a trail, where it was the first time on that trail, and I though, geez, same ol' same ol'. But, I quickly forgot that a few minutes later as I left the highway, and got deeper in the wilderness.
I love it. As I mentioned earlier, I work a full time. Sitting at a desk. So, these times on the trail are so refreshing.
That feels scarier to me.
Imagine you could chose to die on your 75th birthday, but in return keep your full 20-something health until then. I'd do it right away.
If it is possible to live healthy life past 75 - that would be even better.
Unfortunately none of that is possible to accomplish in the timeframe that would benefit us personally.
Ultimately all the human race will die. Over a short or a long span only learning will matter.
On the contrary, talking to my 82-year old professor who is sharper than most college kids but has constant health problems and I wish we could beat aging.
You're right, we shouldn't be afraid of different experiences, but that doesn't also mean that fighting aging is bad. We could apply your arguments to all medical care, but we don't because there's no point in needlessly suffering.
Tell people you want to cure cancer and you're a hero. Tell people you want to cure age-related decline and eventually death and you're a weirdo extremist.
It's like playing a game with all the cheats on. Sure, they let you "win" super easily, but because it was super easy, it stops being fun.
You could still just as easily get hit by a car when you are 90 and look 20. Or 1000 and look 20, assuming that's even possible. What's really interesting is if people could actually prolong their lifespan indefinitely but we have the same limited bodies. Then you'll see people trying really hard to say alive to comical effect.
I think Aronofsky's The Fountain is a really great outlook on death. It is a disease and like any disease we may as well try hard to defeat it. Doesn't mean it isn't very natural.
Hell, if age couldn't kill you, then you could chose your death, which is less random than a heart attack or stroke.
I tend to see human-lifespan rationalizations as simple fatalism. It's okay to think you'd get bored after a million years, but dooming every living human to die because you'd be bored is kind of insane if you think about it.
But you are very mortal and you are at most a few decades old. Your perspective would probably change drastically in your third century or millenia.
It makes conjecture like this as good as worthless because as mortals we do not have the ability to see it from another perspective.
I'd rather have that opportunity than not.
No, if we lived forever, we would have to make a lot more hard choices, because we would have so much more time to be exposed to them.
Aubrey De Grey calls it the "pro aging trance"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#Pro-aging_tranc...
Evolution is a constant processes of competition. When members of a species start living longer, the upgrading of their gene pool slows down. The older members maintain their old ideas and ways of life, and they soak up resources that crowd out the younger members.
The environment is constantly changing. Thanks to all the other organisms that are evolving, it's not enough to become the apex predator and then stagnate. Organisms are always finding a new way to take advantage of their environment, which includes the other organisms.
For this reason, I do not think that any single individual will ever be immortal, and probably not even a collective. That would require gaining control of the universe's resources in a way that guarantees they never lose it.
Decentralization is inherent to the functioning of the universe. The speed of light ensures that multiple decisions be made in parallel. Those that make the most self interested decisions will be competitive, and while that often means participating as a group, no biological group that I know of is entirely devoid of selfish behavior among its members.
Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition.
That's an incredibly good argument in favor of immortality. "Evolution" and "competition" are not gods. They do not have any moral authority over us. Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection.
That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.
I don't believe it's something you can escape. It largely boils down to the idea of infinite wants vs. finite resources. Bostrom and co. like to talk about how there's enough energy in the universe to power 10^XX human lifetimes, but I strongly don't believe that a human is going to be the ultimate lifeform. Already we can see that the average first-world human today uses substantially more energy than the average human 1000 years ago.
Unless we hit a ceiling on complexity (not currently in sight), there will always be people who want access to more energy. Since energy is finite, there will be competition between them for that energy. And that will more or less result in Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, at least as far as some individuals/groups/organisms/species will be better at getting access to individuals as others.
I guess the other alternative is that we hit an entirely egalitarian society, but I think that's exceedingly unlikely, as it would require everybody to agree 100% to limit their energy consumption to exactly what they've been allocated, and not to try to acquire more.
> That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.
I appreciate the criticism, and apologize for the sloppy metaphors. Evolution thus far though has very clearly favored death as the primary means of design. Few species have remained unchanged over the past XX million years, and even fewer are theoretically capable of immortality (barring some sort of medical intervention). Most organisms have aging hardcoded into their genome.
Once again, you sound atrocious at biology. Using terms like "ultimate lifeform" isn't even real biology, it's anime and video game "biology(tm)". Real-world evolution has no teleology built into it: there's no "ultimateness" to reach towards.
>Evolution thus far though has very clearly favored death as the primary means of design.
Evolution doesn't really favor anything, as such. Death happens because the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes even the most robust systems (and life is really robust, actually) break down eventually.
>I guess the other alternative is that we hit an entirely egalitarian society
So to be clear, you think an "egalitarian society" (your words) is even less likely than human immortality, despite the fact that relatively egalitarian human societies have been observed in, say, Sweden, while immortality has not.
Have you considered that you may be Ebeneezer Scrooge?
Besides, lifestyle needs to be addressed first. Reduce/eliminate risky behaviors, eat correctly (whatever that may be), and exercise regularly. Then perhaps look into supplements and treatments.
Churchill: I drink and smoke and I am 200 percent fit.
I think, like everyone else, you expect a reasonable lifespan and would fight to achieve that. From there, its just a matter of how much is enough.
Admittedly I am also of the school of 'be safe as long as it doesn't take too much mental stress'. I'll live as long as I live, given flu shots and careful driving. But I'm not going to obsess about it either.
Because nobody ever seems to go around funding peer-reviewed medical science done in well-controlled labs with large sample sizes to study how to fight aging.
This is not a problem that a startup company can solve. This is a problem for steady, difficult progress over decades. But people go for the sexy headline rather than the eventual working solution.
This seems like a thing that is being under-funded and under-researched, and more money, and particularly attention, being given to it is a good thing even if you don't think the particular method is likely to be effective.
[citation needed]
Imagine a cell in your body that thinks this way.
What would you call that cell ?
It starts with a "c" ...
Also, the cell you mean is not the one that refuses to die, but one that wants to aggressively reproduce.
i want to live forever
i don't really want everyone else doing the same
If we achieve this, but don't reduce input, longer life will just mean we live to see the crash. So in order to have long life how can we stop the growth, and ideally reduce, the human population without totalitarian approaches?
Before solving aging we need to solve achieving a genuinely sustainable number for the planet and its biosphere.
I'm not saying death doesn't suck or that I wouldn't like to save my loved ones from the suffering that comes with old age, of course as an individual I would. Still extending life is a terrible idea from an ecologist point of view. How about while we're at it we extend the life of and provide unlimited food and protection from predation to elk? That would go real well right? Right now we are no different than Elk in our ability to manage our own consumption.
To people who say "oh we'll figure it out" I say yeah maybe but we're already wrecking this earth as it is, why add fuel to the fire? And everyone will have to die someday anyway and it will still suck.
Since people will still die from various causes and diseases, it'll be less.
To progress we need people to die and the new to born with radical ideas.
A corollary to that: removing time constraints would allow people to engage with a much broader range of experiences in a very deep way, possibly enhancing creativity and cross-fertilization of ideas.
Life expectancy without aging is something like 550 years [1] - not my idea of immortality.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/33hs0d/requ...
Right now, your average upper level executive knows they've got maybe 40-50 good years ahead of them before it's game over. In that light, the pervasive mindset of "make as much money as you can as fast as you can, all else be damned" makes some sense, as the cash required to keep them and their loved ones comfortable for life can be realistically obtained in a short time. When you're looking 400+ years in the future, though, that picture changes dramatically. Considering the bigger long-term perspective becomes much more personally, viscerally important.
When I read about projected consequences of climate change, most of the worst ones will be after I'm dead, and it quickly becomes abstract to me. I care, but not nearly as much as I would if I had a reasonable certainty of being stuck here in the middle of all that.
Q: What do you think about life-extending and immortality research?
A: It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer. It would be nice to live longer though I admit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2tzjp7/hi_reddit_im_b...
1) 25% median life extension in mice: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16932
2) Reverses aspects of lung tissue aging in mice, including loss of elasticity: http://insight.jci.org/articles/view/87732?key=a306472a4316d...
3) The missing link in diabetic retinopathy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf9440
4) A factor in atherosclerosis development: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf6659
Which really just scratches the surface of the enormously amount of research accumulated since the 1960s on the role of senescent cells in aging and age-related diseases. The lung tissue paper above is a particularly good read if you want to get a sense for the nuts and bolts of the issue. Senescent cells secrete signals that disrupt tissue structure and cellular behavior, and even at 1% of the population, that is enough to produce pathology. But on the other hand, 1% is small enough to clear without major disruption, so targeted destruction is a very plausible technology, and removing some fraction of these cells as a one-time treatment should be all upside. Repeat as needed.
Aging and cancer are tightly intertwined and you can't cure aging without first curing cancer.
His books are honestly life changing, i can recommend them or him enough.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Question-Evolution-Origins-Comp...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Power-Sex-Suicide-Mitochondria-Meanin...
enter new organs growth. Any organ, except for the brain, could be replaced by a new one, and thus there is no limit. Brain probably too can be updated in some ways, we just don't know how yet.
Not exactly! I just finished the same book and the exact quote is: I doubt we will ever find a way of living much beyond 120 by merely fine-tuning our physiology.
So he's a smart guy indeed! He says that there still may be ways to extend lifespan, but they have to be more radical compared to just fine-tuning physiology.
(That's not to say "don't work on the problem directly", and there are jobs in that effort for software engineers, but don't feel like you can't contribute unless you can directly work on the problem.)
I'm currently sponsoring a matching fund for new recurring supporters of SENS, starting in November: every new recurring donation gets matched for a year, up to $24k. See https://www.fightaging.org/fund-research/
I'm in much the same boat. I have great admiration for those who have pulled off the mid-life career switch into biotechnology. There's one of those folk at the Buck Institute working on senescent cells with Judith Campisi of UNITY, in fact, transitioned over from a former entrepreneurial business career. He quit that, went back to school, and there he is, being a scientist and advancing the state of the art: http://www.buckinstitute.org/content/kevin-perrott
But for me, the math works out such that the road of greatest efficiency is to channel money into research funding via organizations like the SENS Research Foundation that I know are going to make good use of it, and have a great track record of making good use of past donations.
meerkats1, I assure you: The "work to donate" mantra commonly touted for charities does not apply. There are plenty of organizations looking for top CS talent, and they're willing to pay real salaries. Get out there and ask friends for introductions, send emails to biotech people in your area, etc.
The good news for someone like you is that I've met a number of people with a lot of experience in the computer side of things but little to no biology knowledge. There are in fact a lot of projects that could benefit from a good programmer/data analyst even if they don't know much biology. A lot of bioinformaticians just pick up the biology they need to know about their project as they go. Grad school would also be another route. A lot of bioinformatics programs are catered to people lacking either the biology or computer side of things. A good student could get into one of these programs without needing to go back and do a separate undergraduate degree.
I hope that helps! It's too bad that you can't pm people through this site, or I'd have no problems answering any questions if you were interested in hearing more. That said, there are a number of friendly online communities, such as the bioinformatics subreddit.
As long as you can get your foot in the door there's no requirement to go back to school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGvEtmR970
"We can't die." And of course, don't call it Anti-Aging, please, call it "Hamburger time."
- Nathan Explosion
I hope I live long enough to eat my words or see this startup fail. Is that not the only thing to say at the investor meetings?
When finally science unlocks the secret of immortality, they'll just raise the retirement age correspondingly.
Today, to live free of work, you need about $500,000. There are groups of people dedicated to achieving this (FIRE / Moustaches). Then you live somewhere cheap, make sound investments, and live off of $25k / yr. In the right places, less than 1/4 of that will go towards rent.
If our primary concern as a society was escaping work, we'd be better at it. Most of our modern economy goes towards making things better, not cheaper (phones, transportation, entertainment, etc.).
We're already at a point where as a society we have the tech to live off of 10 hour work weeks. But we'd have to focus our economy on making a low standard of living cheap, instead of focusing it on raising the standard of living.
That seemed to have a lot of hype behind it not too long ago.
Is there any proof for this?
1. There's a pharma / plasma company in Monterey named Ambrosia. [1]
2. Ambrosia is running a study titled "Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers" [2]
3. This study is patient funded, participants volunteered and pay $8k to recevie regular infusions of plasma from donors <25 years old.
4. Ambrosia didn't advertise or fundraise beyond seeking patients.
5. Ambrosia's CEO received a call from Jason Camm, an 'Angel Investor' at Thiel Capital who was interested in learning about what the company was doing.
6. Jason Camm isn't actually an investor, he's Peter Thiel's "Personal Health Director". His professional profile claims that he "Enables his clients to make radical breakthroughs in their immediate day-to-day health, cognitive functioning and physical performance -- all of which increase their prospects for Optimal Health and significant Lifespan Extension."
7. A year before the Inc. article, Thiel brought up parabiosis unprompted to a journalist but didn't think there was much of a business case for it, just a personal-health impact.
[1] - http://www.ambrosiatrial.com/
[2] - https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02803554?term=young+p...
All sourced from this Inc. article: http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.ht...
(Source: my girlfriend worked in a lab studying young blood.)
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unity-biotechnology-...
Which includes reference to the latest research they've published, on senescent cells in atherosclerosis pathology. This crowd likes timing their press and their research releases.
My comments:
------- The whispers of late have had it that UNITY Biotechnology was out raising a large round of venture funding, and their latest press release shows that this was indeed the case. The company, as you might recall, is arguably the more mainstream of the current batch of startups targeting the clearance of senescent cells as a rejuvenation therapy. The others include Oisin Biotechnologies, SIWA Therapeutics, and Everon Biosciences, all with different technical approaches to the challenge. UNITY Biotechnology is characterized by a set of high profile relationships with noted laboratories, venture groups, and big names in the field, and, based on the deals they are doing, appear to be focused on building a fairly standard drug development pipeline: repurposing of apoptosis-inducing drug candidates from the cancer research community to clear senescent cells, something that is being demonstrated with various drug classes by a range of research groups of late. Senescent cells are primed to apoptosis, so a nudge in that direction provided to all cells in the body will have little to no effect on normal cells, but tip a fair proportion of senescent cells into self-destruction. Thus the UNITY Biotechnology principals might be said to be following the standard playbook to build the profile of a hot new drug company chasing a hot new opportunity, and clearly they are doing it fairly well so far.
So this, I think, bodes very well for the next few years of rejuvenation research. It indicates that at least some of the biotechnology venture community understands the likely true size of the market for rejuvenation therapies, meaning every human being much over the age of 30. It also demonstrates that there is a lot of for-profit money out there for people with credible paths to therapies to treat the causes of aging. It remains frustrating, of course, that it is very challenging to raise sufficient non-profit funds to push existing research in progress to the point at which companies can launch. This is a problem throughout the medical research and development community, but it is especially pronounced when it comes to aging. The SENS view of damage repair, which has long incorporated senescent cell clearance, is an even tinier and harder sell within the aging research portfolio - but one has to hope that funding events like this will go some way to turn that around.
From the perspective of being an investor in Oisin Biotechnologies, I have to say that this large and very visible flag planted out there by the UNITY team is very welcome. The Oisin team should be able to write their own ticket for their next round of fundraising, given that the gene therapy technology they are working on has every appearance of being a superior option in comparison to the use of apoptosis-inducing drugs: more powerful, more configurable, and more adaptable. When you are competing in a new marketplace, there is no such thing as too much validation. The existence of well-regarded, well-funded competitors is just about the best sort of validation possible. Well funded competitors who put out peer-reviewed studies on a regular basis to show that the high-level approach you and they are both taking works really well is just icing on the cake. Everyone should have it so easy. So let the games commence! Competition always drives faster progress. Whether or not I had skin in this game, it would still be exciting news. The development of rejuvenation therapies is a game in which we all win together, when new treatments come to the clinic, or we all lose together, because that doesn't happen fast enough. We can and should all of us be cheering on all of the competitors in this race. The quality and availability of the outcome is all that really matters in the long term. Money comes and goes, but life and health is something to be taken much more seriously.
Now with all of that said, one interesting item to ponder in connection to this round of funding for UNITY is the degree to which it reflects the prospects for cancer therapies rather than the prospects for rejuvenation in the eyes of the funding organizations. In other words, am I being overly optimistic in reading this as a greater understanding of the potential for rejuvenation research in the eyes of the venture community? It might be the case that the portions of the venture community involved here understand the market for working cancer drugs pretty well, and consider that worth investing in, with the possibility of human rejuvenation as an added bonus, but not one that is valued appropriately in their minds. Consider that UNITY Biotechnology has partnered with a noted cancer therapeutics company, and that the use of drugs to inducing apoptosis is a fairly well established approach to building cancer treatments. That is in fact why there even exists a range of apoptosis-inducing drugs and drug candidates for those interested in building senescent cell clearance therapies to pick through. Further, the presence of large numbers of senescent cells does in fact drive cancer, and modulating their effects (or removing them) to temper cancer progress is a topic under exploration in the cancer research community. So a wager on a new vision, or a wager on the present market? It is something to think about. -------
Despite there being no evidence of any effect.
Like the planet need humans to live longer???
Excuse me? What planet are you living on? I thought I was already living on the dystopian-social-scifi planet.
All due respect to Mr Carlin, the guy was insightful and funny, but a solution he did not provide.
He made a lot of money out of pointing out what was wrong with the setup, a solution to the shithole we're in was not part of his schtick.
I love the man and will point people at his skit on 'save the whales' but nothing he's done or said changes shit.
He would be the first to admit that btw.
We're royally fucked.
We're the exact opposite of royally fucked. We've been dealt the greatest hand imaginable. Improvements in the human condition are accelerating by the decade.
Make humans live forever and suddenly everything matters. Interplanetary colonization for the preservation of the species alone is not enough, but to preserve themselves it becomes essential.
Why develop Type 2 civilization power generation technology if you would never live long enough to see the transition? Make people live longer and you increase the likelihood the long term becomes relevant to them.
Create a class of longer living humans and you double down on the problem we have today.
Half the number of the species on top of the food chain, then I'll take you seriously.
Where we differ is on the feeling that comes from that lacking. A dead person feels nothing and by your definition is not losing anything since they can't feel it.
this is all very true and I agree, however as humans we can sense impending events and a since death is an indisputable fact the feeling of this eventual loss can begin to haunt one before it actually sets in. So technically we can argue that a billionaire begins to feel the cost of losing it when she becomes a billionaire. (since she knows she will die and lose it).
I think it is very natural to preemptively feel sorrow for some of the opportunities you will give up when you die.
I would say that death is the great equaliser.
Then later, when technology is robust enough - meaningfully invest into actual anti-aging efforts.
Unfortunately the time for meaningful anti-aging research may come in ~100 years when we all would be already long dead.
But yeah, I'd take it too.
Which, more importantly, means 930 or so more years to figure out the next solution after that. See also "longevity escape velocity", for how we can incrementally get to 1000 in the first place.
Normal small-molecule drugs are trivial to reverse-engineer, biologics are trickier but the means of manufacturing them is self-replicating, and Shenzhen is good at reverse-engineering other technologies if we're to believe what we read in the media
Most likely treatment would be some sort of specialized therapy where your DNA is painstakingly copied (with some process that is somehow better than the biological one) and then all the cells in your body are periodically repaired.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging
If it turns out to be a compound for eternal youth, then it can be reverse engineered by labs in China or India (or anywhere). There is no sufficient patent, IP law, moral high ground about R&D expenses. The world will be supplied at the cost of production and shipping.
In this case, the total costs of production/shipping were higher than they would have been in the US. But that is because I had to ship myself (i.e. ~$2000 round trip). However, I built it into my vacation, so the MRI essentially cost me the ~$100 for "production". I've had single dinners which are more expensive.
Taking pictures of your body is relatively innocent. Medication is a little more tricky. You need to be able to trust the source. However, if layperson B can trust the source of the Heroin they consistently buy on Silk Road, I have no doubts that the trust issues for medication will be solved far before we have compound "eternal youth".
For what its worth, we just happen to have insurance so we tend to think everyone buys drugs legally like we do. Do some research about what people without options actually do. Did you watch the "Dallas Buyers Club"? Where do you think poor diabetics get Insulin, or Metaformin? Even today, Metaformin being an "anti-aging" drug, is even imported from China and sold without prescription.
If you're still not convinced: Think about the risk reward calculation for a second. Importing illegal drugs, risk (aside from eating bad pills): 50 years in prison. Reward: You're now eternally young. Endure a really poor 50 years, then a long long time from now, watch the universe slowly end as you eat at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, fondly looking back at the last bajillion years.
Hence, the 1,000 years of debt.
A lot of people will take the deal anyway.
For example: Is it illegal to buy lab equipment? No. Is it illegal to make medical compounds in your home? No. Is it illegal to violate patent or copyright law with zero intent to distribute and monetize? No.
For a couple 10s or 100s of millions of dollars I could buy the infrastructure to build the compound in my garage. Depending on the legality, potentially use it to feed friends and family as gifts. Sell the infrastructure.
All of a sudden the compound's cost is determined by your ability to buy and sell on craigslist.
Meanwhile, why go through all the trouble? Just go on Yelp, find a reputable seller in Brazil, China, or India (somewhere it is not illegal to buy). Spend $5000 on a vacation, and another couple thousand on the compound. At most (for the poorest people) its a couple years (10 maybe) of debt.
Sorry, didn't mean to respond overly seriously to a lighthearted comment! Just wanted to get that in there.
Whether a vastly extended lifespan falls under just technology, and thus ends up as something everyone can have, or something else that is actually limited to the rich is something we don't yet know.
For example, if the key to a longer life is technology plus retiring as early as possible to limit stress, poor people aren't going to live longer.
I'm not saying that the poor will ever equal the rich contemporaneously. They won't. What they will do is equal the rich of say, ten years ago (perpetually moving forward). That is the nature of progress.
You didn't read the article, just posting the typical "anti-aging" comment, right?
The idea is to be relatively healthy in your old age, not necessarily extend your life by much beyond what the human body can currently live, if it remains free of disease.
In many cases, we spend a fortune in health care costs in the last few years of people's lives. If we can keep more people relatively healthy until they go in their sleep, for example, we'll all be happier and insurance costs should fall.
That's a futile approach. What's needed is to suppress the biological changes that come with aging. Aging is a timeout, not a wearout. This is clear because there are diseases which accelerate aging, and the same steps happen, but faster.[1]
[1] http://www.sciencealert.com/biologists-discover-key-mechanis...
There are lots of disagreements and debate about the science of extending the life span, so there is probably not going to be much fruitful results in the near future. For the short term, you could extend your life by: 1) having a low calorie diet, 2) avoiding foods with high glycemic index, 3) exercise, 4) good sleep
1- http://tpx.sagepub.com/content/37/1/47
2- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24472560
3- https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/Physi...
I don't see that we can get anything from that data which gives you clear answers about the potential for direct medical or pharmaceutical interventions to extend life.
and if you are female. Don't forget that females have a much higher survival rate over time than men.