Izpisúa: "We are not looking for human beings to live another hundred years, but to slow down the deterioration of aging"

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Finding the elixir of eternal youth is an ambition as old as it is elusive for humanity.

Can the best brains in science come together for that

?

biotech company

.

Here a group of renowned scientists and Nobel Prize winners add their experience to

as a strategy with which to stop and reverse the deterioration of the organism throughout age.

One of those brains is the

, who is speaking for the first time since he left the Salk Institute to start a new stage in this organization.

Izpisúa is now the

(California), one of the scientific institutes that the biotechnology company has set up, currently in the San Francisco Bay area (United States) and in Cambridge (United Kingdom).

Despite what has been said about Altos, the researcher clarifies that

nor do they seek to make human beings live a hundred years longer.

Instead, they investigate how by rejuvenating cells and tissues, the disease processes and deterioration associated with aging can be stopped.

Today the journal

publishes an experiment by the group that Izpisúa directed at the Salk and which represents another step towards that goal.

The work, of which the Salk researcher

is also the co-lead author , has been carried out in collaboration with Genentech and the San Antonio Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM).

The study shows in mice how the administration of a

of cell reprogramming factors in healthy middle-aged animals is not associated with an increase in cancer or other health problems, and in addition

.

Izpisúa is confident that advances and translation to the clinic will arrive sooner thanks to the formula with which Altos intends to combine the best of academia and industry.

Yes, I have had offers before and no, at this point in my life it is not at all for a personal financial issue.

It was a

, and who has been the fundamental pillar of the laboratory at the Salk these three decades.

Basic science in recent years, and mainly due to technological advances, has progressed significantly.

And although we still do not know many of the mechanisms responsible for cell deterioration, it is also true that

and therapies for

.

If the pandemic has brought something good, it is that it has made us all reflect on our lives and how we can be better and help others.

It has made us think that the basic conceptual knowledge we have acquired so far, in an appropriate environment and

, they could be enough to try to

and help improve the disease of many people.

Absolutely.

Quite the contrary.

, the person who first contacted me for this initiative, who in addition to being one of the best scientists of our generation (he has headed for more than a decade the most resourceful funding agency in the world, the

) and is also one of the

that are reaching hospitals, he told me that the only essential requirement to join this initiative was the capacity for

.

Since then, together, we have tried to attract scientists from all over the world with that imaginative capacity that helps us to solve questions in a different way.

Although we are already opening paths towards the clinic with

scientific directions, we are aware that we still have a lot of fundamental science to describe and develop.

Altos '

is based on the integration of the

, scientific excellence,

and

to address the most challenging problems in biology, together with the

, such as the

and

on a shared mission to transform science into medicine.

I think there has been

about Altos.

Regarding Altos investors, we can only

as initial investors.

On the other hand, Altos is not an anti-aging company at all.

The idea behind our research is not to make the human being live 100 or 1,000 more years.

In fact,

since many times this increase in life span is linked to disability and loss of quality of life.

Altos Laboratories is created as a

with initial locations in Europe, the United States and activities in Japan with the goal of

through rejuvenation programs that improve the health of our tissues and organs in patients of any age in order to reverse and prevent diseases, injuries and dysfunctions that our body accumulates throughout life.

That's right, Altos is perhaps one of the biggest initiatives in the world of medicine and biotechnology.

A very high part of the budget of the financing agencies in the world of biomedicine, in Spain and throughout the world, is focused on the

, but to a lesser extent on the search for global solutions to the great problems of health that affect all humanity.

It is not a criticism, on the contrary, I believe that

from very different angles and perspectives.

However, one of the consequences of this financing model is that, in general, the

of these projects to the clinic is usually very

and difficult to crystallize both due to the fragmentation and diversity of the knowledge generated, and mainly due to the amount, very limited in general, of the resources dedicated to them.

Addressing health problems that affect millions of people requires a more comprehensive approach and higher funding. One of the great initial lines of research at Altos will focus on

of how cell reprogramming by certain molecules generates healthier cells and resistant to disease and induces the rejuvenation of our tissues.

Understand these phenomena in detail, in particular through the

, will help us develop potentially universal and generally applicable medical interventions to improve human health.

Apart from animal models, we already

, and although it is difficult to establish deadlines, the treatment of some diseases that are difficult to treat today may not be so far away.

A few years ago we discovered that by altering the dose, frequency and duration of molecules called

[after the Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka] we could program cells to increase their resilience and functionality

.

It was later,

, when, for the first time, carrying out

we observed that this treatment

and increased life expectancy in mice with premature aging disease.

This year our team has discovered that even in young mice, these factors can

.

After these initial observations, other scientists have used our methodology to improve the function of other tissues such as the heart, the brain or the optic nerve. The purpose of the current study was twofold, on the one hand to verify if the beneficial effects that we previously observed in with various diseases, also occurred in

and at

.

- and

- age in humans

.

We observed a reversal of the molecular fingerprints of aging both in mice treated for a few days late in life, and in those exposed to rejuvenating molecules for several months in their youth.

One of the

requirements to transfer the results from the laboratory to the human clinic is

and that is the other purpose that has led us to carry out this study.

In our current protocol, we

of Yamanaka factors and treat mice only

.

These two aspects are critical to prevent negative consequences.

We expressed the factors of Yamanaka during a prolonged period of their lives.

We did not observe any mice becoming ill or developing teratomas during these treatment periods.

We observe that the

, such as the transcriptome and the DNA methylation signature, were

in the mice that underwent the treatment.

Furthermore, we showed that the lipid composition and metabolites in the blood plasma of treated animals were similar to those of young mice.

Finally, we have also shown that after inducing

in organs such as the skin, the kidney, etc., there was a

in the treated mice compared to untreated siblings of the same age.

Absolutely.

From those powders come these muds, but in a positive sense.

The

a momentous step in the history of science and medicine.

Given that the greatest risk factor for any disease is aging, knowledge of the human genome and epigenome is helping us not only to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying disease and aging, but also provides us with a new perspective on the

.

The fundamental scientific knowledge generated in these two decades by thousands of researchers around the world, together with

and

is beginning to revolutionize the practice of medicine today.

At Altos we want to help by trying to program and rejuvenate cells and tissues in an effective and safe way to slow down and reverse the processes that underlie disease and aging.

Being able to advance our objectives will depend on a

, enthusiasm and, above all, humility, given the magnitude of the problem we want to solve.

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