Can the billion-dollar bet on biotech finally reverse aging?

Business Insider

Billionaires are backing top scientists racing to develop tech that could reverse aging. Cellular reprogramming promises to rejuvenate the body… but how does it work, and is it safe?

Transcript

00:00Imagine if you could turn back the clock to reverse aging, get rid of wrinkles, gray hair,

00:07or see 2020 again.

00:09Well, there's a handful of startups trying to do exactly that, and billionaires are pouring

00:14money into this, hoping the tech will be developed before it's too late for them.

00:18These tech billionaires, they like their lives a lot and they just don't want to give it

00:23up.

00:24So they're driving a lot of this.

00:26Scientists are trying to manipulate human cells to rejuvenate your body.

00:30It's a technique they're calling cellular reprogramming, and it could be reality in

00:35just a couple of years.

00:37I'm unapologetically afraid of dying.

00:39If you cure aging and people have the mortality of young adults, then they would live thousands

00:44of years.

00:45But how does this work?

00:47Should we worry about side effects?

00:49And how close are we really to cheating death?

00:52I'm Hilary Brick, and I'm a health correspondent here at Business Insider.

00:58Aging is this inevitable and progressive process of loss of viability and increase in vulnerability.

01:04So once you reach about age 30, your chance of dying doubles roughly every eight years.

01:08And you see that across populations, from poor countries to wealthy countries, it doesn't

01:12matter.

01:13That's very consistent across populations.

01:17But to understand aging, we need to think about how it all starts, because we start

01:22out in a much different, more flexible shape.

01:25Picture a fertilized egg, the single cell where we all begin.

01:31That cell could become anything.

01:33It's what we call a stem cell.

01:36Stem cells are versatile and can turn into any type of cell your body needs.

01:41And then as they develop, the stem cells become more specialized.

01:46Scientists might say they're differentiated cells, but really, it's kind of like they're

01:50getting job titles.

01:51Like a skin cell, or a brain cell, or a hair cell.

01:56Our stem cells are like our body's built-in rejuvenation system.

01:59They're constantly turning over, making new stuff for us, keeping our body going with

02:03new hair, new skin, fresh neurons.

02:06These stem cells are required for regenerating tissue, because our tissues in our cells die

02:12and have to be constantly replaced.

02:14That's why, you know, when you fall down and get a bruise, it quickly repairs itself.

02:20As we age, the number of these stem cells decreases and their efficiency declines.

02:25So our body has a harder time repairing and replacing tissues, and this leads to slower

02:30healing and more signs of aging all over.

02:33Aging is really an accumulation of changes.

02:37A lot of it is chemical damage, and eventually things start becoming dysfunctional.

02:44That build-up of damage over time as we age creates problems.

02:48Some scientists think of it kind of like a photocopier or something, like where the more

02:53copies you make, the more worn out it gets and the more little glitches and errors it

02:59has on it.

03:00This damage in our DNA is kind of like glitches in our human programming.

03:05Over time, the errors cause issues because our bodies use that code to make the proteins

03:11that sustain our whole life and fight infections and thrive as people.

03:16When the instructions for our cells are damaged, they stop working properly, which is part

03:20of what happens during aging.

03:22So when scientists talk about reprogramming, what do they mean?

03:27So this idea of reprogramming is, could we take cells that are fully differentiated,

03:34like the skin cell or muscle cell or whatever, and program them to go backwards to the stem

03:40cell that originally generated them?

03:43Or even, you know, make them somehow biologically younger.

03:49The idea of reprogramming your cells to slow down aging is not that new.

03:54In 2012, a Japanese scientist and former surgeon named Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize

04:01for his discovery.

04:04Yamanaka figured out that you can use four special genes to reset your cells back into

04:09stem cells, and that set of four genes are called the Yamanaka factors.

04:14They contain instructions that can reset a cell back to an undifferentiated state, making

04:19it like new again, essentially rewriting the cell's program and guiding it back to a

04:24more flexible, stem-like state.

04:27This was a big deal for aging science.

04:31These newly reset cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, can then turn into

04:36any type of cell you need, and could potentially be used to grow new tissues or organs, like

04:43younger skin or a new heart.

04:45Typically, when researchers do cellular reprogramming in the lab, they use an inactivated virus

04:51to inject the Yamanaka factors.

04:53It's pretty much the same technique they use when you get a vaccine.

04:57So you essentially have a virus, and what this virus does is it has those four factors,

05:02and it transports them to the cells, and they have to be regulated, so you don't want

05:06too much of it, not too little, so you have to get it right.

05:10But at least in animal models, this is possible to do now.

05:14In 2006, Yamanaka showed this can be done in mice.

05:18Then in 2007, the next year, he started on human cells, first with skin, and his experiment

05:24was quite successful.

05:26What scientists and some startups are trying to do now is to partially reprogram some cells

05:30so they act younger, but don't go all the way back to being an embryonic stem cell again.

05:36It retains its identity.

05:37It remains a liver cell or a brain cell or a skin cell, but it's rejuvenated.

05:42And so that has a lot of potential, because if you can rejuvenate cells without them losing

05:46their identity, that's what you want.

05:49But even if these kinds of treatments become available, it wouldn't be like an 80-year-old

05:53can suddenly turn 20 again.

05:55Maybe it could be rewinding that receding hairline, ditching arthritis, regenerating

06:01heart muscle after a heart attack, or healing neurons in your retina so you can see better

06:05as you age.

06:06I personally would love it if they could regenerate cartilage in my joints, you know, at my age.

06:14That would be great.

06:15And also, while they're at it, they could also regenerate hair, you know, so that would

06:20be a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar discovery, if you could safely regenerate

06:25hair of all men, okay?

06:28There are even loftier goals, like curing Parkinson's, regrowing parts of the brain,

06:32or rejuvenating your entire body.

06:35If you have a young brain, it doesn't develop Alzheimer's or dementia anymore.

06:41So if you can turn your brain young, you will make you resilient to diseases.

06:46Maybe even it will treat and cure diseases, we don't know.

06:49So that is the promise of the field, is that if you make your organs younger, they'll

06:53be more resilient to diseases.

06:55Now most of these ideas are in the testing and research stage, and not available as treatments

06:59just yet.

07:00But some scientists are close.

07:02I chatted with Johnny Heward, who's restoring joint cartilage for elite athletes using their

07:06own stem cells.

07:07We take your bone marrow that contains stem cells and we re-inject that into your knee.

07:12He's also experimenting with one form of cellular reprogramming using so-called epigenetic drugs,

07:18which can change the way our genes behave, in some cases making them act younger again.

07:23We have used cells from old people.

07:27We took the cells, came in the lab, looked at their epigenetic expression was going down,

07:34use epigenetic drugs to bring this back up, and the cells look younger.

07:39So would you say that that's a form of cellular reprogramming then, what you're doing with

07:44those patients?

07:45Yes.

07:46It is a form of cellular reprogramming because what I did is I harvest stem cells from you,

07:51take drugs to regulate your epigenetic expression and make those cells younger.

07:57So I rejuvenate your cells.

07:58But so far, this treatment is just lab work.

08:01It would eventually require FDA approval to put the reprogrammed cells back into people's

08:05bodies.

08:06I'm not saying that this thing will never be approved three years from now, but it's

08:11not approved today.

08:12But the potential of this technology has sparked visionary ideas about the future.

08:17I imagine a future where children or babies, even before they're born, they're engineered

08:22not to age, or at least engineered to be resistant to diseases like Alzheimer's disease.

08:27If you cure aging and people have the mortality of young adults, then they would live thousands

08:32of years.

08:33You could still die, of course, but you wouldn't have this exponential increase in mortality.

08:38Recently, we've seen an explosion of research into this area, and money is flocking into

08:44cellular reprogramming and other longevity treatments.

08:49Jeff Bezos, for example, is an investor in Altos Labs.

08:53Altos is a pretty secretive startup based in California that has recruited some of the

08:57most elite aging scientists in the world.

09:00The company has at least $3 billion in funding.

09:03Another big-deal longevity scientist is Harvard professor David Sinclair.

09:08He's behind a bunch of different longevity companies, but he has experimented with cellular

09:13reprogramming already on mice and monkeys, and he's hoping to do people next.

09:18For example, he conducted an experiment with two mice from the same litter, same DNA.

09:23They're like twins, except one is biologically older now because it's had its DNA manipulated

09:28to act older, mimicking the stress that a body goes through as it ages.

09:32Then, Sinclair's team says they used cellular reprogramming to restore the old mouse's organs

09:37back to a more youthful state.

09:39For example, they found that they could safely reverse age-related blindness and rejuvenate

09:44the kidneys and the muscle in the mouse.

09:47Sinclair started a private company called Life Biosciences.

09:50It's raised at least $175 million so far.

09:54They're gunning to get this technology into people's eyeballs and cure age-related blindness.

09:59He says the eye injection will be ready soon, maybe within a year or two, but it remains

10:04to be seen how quickly it can actually move from labs into clinics.

10:08And there are other people you may know of who are investing in cellular reprogramming, too.

10:13I really think what it's like is, um...

10:16Sam Altman, the billionaire behind Chat GPT, is also gunning for cellular reprogramming.

10:21He's poured $180 million into his longevity startup, RetroBiosciences.

10:27I interviewed the CEO of RetroBiosciences, and he told me they're trying a slightly different

10:33approach to cellular reprogramming.

10:35Take the cells out of someone's body, then reprogram them and pop them back in.

10:39He thinks it might be safer that way.

10:42The field is maturing because people and investors and rich folks think that there's

10:47going to be commercial outputs in it.

10:50That they'll be able to make money out of it.

10:52That means that we're going to be able to have a product from the field, which is what I want.

10:58People love to hear that aging is going to be solved and we're all going to live healthily

11:02for a very long time.

11:04But the reality is, biology is kind of complicated.

11:08Tweak a gene here, insert a new program there, and you'll likely kick off multiple other

11:12processes in the body, including some that could be harmful and may not be immediately

11:17obvious either.

11:18Mice have benefited from this kind of reprogramming.

11:23But to go from there to ask, you know, can we now start using this in humans?

11:31It's a long stretch.

11:32And the reason is that we would want to make sure that over decades, you know, it's not

11:39going to increase the risk of cancer.

11:40What's the point of living an extra 10 years if it's going to cause cancer, increase the

11:45risk of cancer before that?

11:47The point Ramakrishnan raises here is important.

11:50In the early days of using Yamanaka's reprogramming technique, scientists often saw that cells

11:55they created could form teratomas, which are a type of tumor.

11:58This happened because two of the four genes used in the reprogramming process are oncogenes.

12:04Oncogenes are genes that can divide indefinitely, and that poses a cancer risk.

12:08Always keep in mind that an immortal cell is a cancer cell.

12:11So the big danger of partial reprogramming and cellular rejuvenation and reprogramming

12:16itself is cancer.

12:18So we actually know from studies in mice that if you reprogram the cells a lot, in the mouse

12:22they become cancer.

12:24And obviously you don't want that.

12:25So there is this, this balance you have to achieve.

12:28You want to do it in a safe way that allows you to rejuvenate cells without turning them

12:32into cancer.

12:33There's also a chance that continuously expressing these Yamanaka factors could lead to liver

12:38failure or make your intestine shut down.

12:40And there may be other toxic effects we haven't even considered yet.

12:44I think for several years now we've seen like the Silicon Valley billionaires trying to

12:50go after the medical field and pretty limited success.

12:54One of the most stunning and memorable failures in recent memory was probably the blood testing

12:58company Theranos, which ended up basically being a total sham.

13:05These tech entrepreneurs, CEOs, business people, and billionaires have all been really successful

13:10in the world of computing, technology, and it seems like they're trying to take this

13:14very same technological approach to what are very complex, poorly understood biological

13:20problems.

13:21So it remains to be seen if you can reprogram a person like you would a computer.

13:26But it's an idea that's attracting a lot of money and a lot of scientists.

13:31I think it's wonderful that there is more activity, there's more interest, and there's

13:34more investment in the field.

13:35It's just so that there's more potential.

13:37Curing aging would be a monumental achievement and it would be a huge change in medicine,

13:45in healthcare, in society.

13:47I think that would be magnificent and a huge triumph of civilization.

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