Altos Labs Launches with $3B and a Focus on Reversing Disease and Aging
“It's clear from work by Shinya Yamanaka, and many others since his initial discoveries, that cells have the ability to rejuvenate, resetting their epigenetic clocks and erasing damage from a myriad of stressors. These insights, combined with major advances in a number of transformative technologies, inspired Altos to reimagine medical treatments where reversing disease for patients of any age is possible,” Hal Barron, M.D., incoming CEO of Altos Labs
With $3 billion in capital and a storied executive team led by Hal Barron, MD, until now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s president of R&D and chief scientific officer, Altos Labs has emerged from stealth mode, launching with the ambitious aim of reversing disease and aging processes that lead to injury, and disabilities through cellular rejuvenation programming.
When Barron is set to take up the CEO post when he leaves GlaxoSmithKline in August, the former Genetech executive will be joining Altos’ founder Rick Klauser, the one-time chief of the NIH’s National Cancer Institute and now an entrepreneur. Klausner, who previously helped start companies like Juno Therapeutics ( acquired by Celgene / Bristol-Myers Squibb for $9 billion ) and cancer-test company Grail ( acquired by Illumina for $8 billion ), is known for organizing large, and lucrative, financial bets on new biotechnologies.
The Altos’ star-studded scientific team also includes Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, whose discoveries of the Yamanaka transcription factors are the core science behind the company.
Yamanaka factors, discovered in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, are four gene-regulating proteins that serve, in essence, to return a cell to factory settings. In this case, “factory settings” means a state known as pluripotency that is enjoyed by embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent cells are those that can give rise to descendants capable of differentiating into a wide variety of specialized cells.
Involving the induction of Yamanaka factors in mice, experiments led by Altos’ Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte have shown how that can stop the progression of progeria, a mutation-induced syndrome that mimics rapid aging, can promote the healing of injured muscles, and can protect the liver against damage by paracetamol, a widely used painkiller.
The results of these experiments, while tantalizing, were also frightening. Depending on how much reprogramming occurred, some mice developed ugly embryonic tumors called teratomas, in which cells turn into weird mixtures of tissues. It has subsequently been discovered, though, that a partial reset avoiding this problem is possible by turning the relevant genes on only briefly.
Despite its nascent stage, Altos’ launch is an exceptional validation of the science behind it as well as the opportunities ahead. With a deep conviction in the potential of the iPSCs ( induced Pluripotent Stem Cells ), Rick Klausner, founder of Altos, has also invested in Good AI’s portfolio BitBio, which aims to create an industrial-scale stem cell manufacturing platform. Alongside luminary investors such as Robert Nelsen ( Arch Ventures Partners) and Yuri Milner, both early investors in Altos Labs, we are incredibly honored to play a part in transforming the future of medicine.