
Anti-Aging Startup Raises $116M With Bezos Backing - JoshTriplett
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/anti-aging-startup-backed-by-fidelity-bezos-raises-116-million
======
a13n
I'm not a billionaire and I'm not old, but I am so excited about anti-aging. I
know Hacker News is super negative, but who doesn't want to live longer?! Of
all the pain points humans experience, you'd think death lies pretty high on
the list. Why are people fighting this?

~~~
pointytrees
I sometimes talk about wanting to live forever and get weird stares. Are you
joking me?? I want to hike every trail in the world. I want to climb every
mountain. I want to play every video game. I want to beat the hardest raids in
every expansion of WoW. I want to learn multiple langauges. I want to spend
several years living in every biome. I want to learn all of the programming
languages. I want to go back to school for more degrees. I want to build
several businesses. I want to write computer games from scratch. I want to
travel to the stars. I want to live on the moon. I want to live on Mars. I
want to get a doctorate degree. Or two or three? Gah, not enough time.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Thankfully death comes along and sorts through the wants from the willing. It
has a nice way of making space for a newer generation of thinkers. Old
prejudices die, new thinkers arrive.

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.

~~~
ThomPete
This strikes me as an odd argument.

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?

~~~
mirekrusin
It's called life, evolution, it's been like that since day 1 but you sound
surprised?

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.

~~~
ThomPete
I think it's safe to say you are missing the point.

------
eagsalazar2
Humans should not be immortal like gods until they attain godlike control of
their impulse to consume and reproduce. If we get total liberation from
nature's constraints (already 90% there), without evolving a corresponding
ability to plan and resource long term, it will make the ecological disaster
we're already witnessing 1000X worse and we'll likely destroy ourselves
anyway.

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.

~~~
hohenheim
Not only it is taxing on planet earth I think there is more to it. Assume
people of middle ages lived 1000 years longer than they did, I doubt the
civilization on earth would have developed as far as it did.

To progress we need people to die and the new to born with radical ideas.

~~~
drcross
That's a fairly large assumption. Students need 24 years of education to get
to Phd level _before_ they reach the state of the art and push things forward.
If we lived longer with augmented brain power we would have more experts in
fields and thus more progress. My assertion isn't any less refutable than
yours.

------
Paul_S
I'm genuinely curious why the old men running the world haven't got this off
the ground yet.

~~~
komali2
In his AMA Bill Gates said if he could buy anything he would buy immortality.

~~~
nostromo
In one of his AMAs he said something a bit different:

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...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2tzjp7/hi_reddit_im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_third/co3q1lf/)

~~~
sjg007
Rich men have been seeking the holy grail for some time now.

------
reasonattlm
Some things to look at when thinking about the plausibility of senescent cell
clearance as a rejuvenation therapy.

1) 25% median life extension in mice:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16932](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...](http://insight.jci.org/articles/view/87732?key=a306472a4316d65a4eac)

3) The missing link in diabetic retinopathy:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf9440](http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf9440)

4) A factor in atherosclerosis development:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf6659](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.

~~~
danieltillett
You are right on the mechanism, wrong on the solution. The problem is that
senescent cells (aging) are an evolved response to prevent cancer - basically
aging is an anti-oncogenic system. Remove the senescent cells and you will die
of cancer at a young age.

Aging and cancer are tightly intertwined and you can't cure aging without
first curing cancer.

------
misiti3780
I just finished a book by Nick Lane where he discussed how he believes aging
is cause by mitochondrial free-radical leakage. His hypothesis (and he is a
smart guy) is that science will allow people to live longer, but probably not
much longer than 125.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20021368](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20021368)

~~~
trhway
>but probably not much longer than 125.

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.

~~~
drcross
As a layman it seems far easier to repair existing damage using nanomachine
than to replace organs.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not really. We have organ-growing capability, we don't have organ repair
capability. It's easier to repurpose the former than invent the latter.

------
meerkats1
I would love to get involved with a company like this, however I am only a
software engineer with no background in the biological sciences. Is there a
feasible path that does not involve going back to school for many years? I am
not afraid of learning new things or doing the hard work I'd need to do, I
just feel like that route would be highly inefficient. I would really like to
contribute towards meaningfully extending human lifespan, don't really care
about the salary.

~~~
JoshTriplett
In the short term, get the highest-paying software engineering job you can,
and donate a meaningful part of your income to charitable organizations
working on anti-aging research such as SENS. (Check if your employer matches
charitable donations, as well.) Much more efficient and effective than
rethinking your entire career just so you can add one person's worth of time
to such an effort.

(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/](https://www.fightaging.org/fund-research/)

~~~
reasonattlm
And much appreciated your help is!

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](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.

------
adrenalinelol
Anti-aging != immortality folks.

~~~
tim333
Just gotta hang around till they get uploading sorted.

------
optionalparens
Somehow this conjures up the image of this Metalocalypse episode which I think
sums it up perfectly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGvEtmR970](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?

------
0xmohit
Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.

------
bra-ket
it's strange that Craig Venter's Human Longevity project is not even
mentioned: [http://www.humanlongevity.com](http://www.humanlongevity.com)

------
Chinjut
I want desperately to live longer, or even to recapture youth, and yet, my
worry:

When finally science unlocks the secret of immortality, they'll just raise the
retirement age correspondingly.

~~~
farresito
The concept of retiring will disappear relatively soon. I don't even think we
will be working 8 or 10 hours every day. I think society will make a shift
when it comes to work.

~~~
Taek
People can't help themselves. I don't think we're very close to retiring, it's
just not in our social coding.

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.

------
ctack
Human life extension will be great for the individual and bad for society.
There will be lots of shitty ideas that will stick around for way too long.

------
WhitneyLand
How come none of the wealthy has tried the trick of getting blood transfusions
from young people?

That seemed to have a lot of hype behind it not too long ago.

~~~
seizethecheese
Peter Thiel is doing this.

~~~
echelon
Really? Is there a citation for this? Is it something he's continuing to do?

~~~
mikeyouse
He obviously doesn't talk about it because it's super weird and vampire like,
but Inc. did an interesting story about it last spring. I don't know that
there's proof that he's doing it per se, but strong evidence in that
direction. The evidence:

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/](http://www.ambrosiatrial.com/)

[2] -
[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02803554?term=young+p...](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02803554?term=young+plasma&rank=2)

All sourced from this Inc. article: [http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-
thiel-young-blood.ht...](http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-
blood.html)

------
pjmorris
How would significant, artificial, life extension change reasoning about
inheritance? Life imprisonment? Assisted suicide?

------
keyle
Unrelated but the Bloomberg web design lately has been fantastic.

------
reasonattlm
Press release from UNITY Biotechnology:

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unity-
biotechnology-...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unity-
biotechnology-announces-116-million-series-b-financing-300352831.html)

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. \-------

------
sjg007
Or cancer causing startup?

------
ucaetano
Funny how as billionaires get older, they start backing anti-aging and life-
extension initiatives.

~~~
M_Grey
Billionaires are not immune to the terrifying realities of life and death,
they're just more likely to delude themselves into thinking that like so many
rules, they can beat that too. The result is, on the bright side, that
sometimes they do some real good by funding research. The downside is that
often they blow that money on extremely expensive snake oil.

~~~
rezashirazian
And that when you're a billionaire you have much more to lose when you die.

~~~
komali2
I don't understand this belief, can you expand on it? The way I see it, you
don't "lose" anything when you die, because a "loss" implies the lack of
ability to use something you once were able to use, and the feeling that comes
from that lacking. When someone dies they'll never again be able to use stuff,
so there is no loss.

~~~
rezashirazian
I think we agree up to "a 'loss' implies the lack of ability to use something
you once were able to use". Since a dead person is unable to do anything,
being a billionaire or not leads to the same conclusion.

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).

~~~
solipsism
You think, when billionaires think about death, that they're bemoaning the
loss of their money? That's a very strange thing to believe, and I'm very sure
it's wrong.

~~~
dwaltrip
Perhaps think of it as lost opportunity, instead. More money often provides
for more opportunity.

I think it is very natural to preemptively feel sorrow for some of the
opportunities you will give up when you die.

------
Pica_soO
I actually found the martian anti-age drug from Spin very well designed. If
you would take it, you would be sterile afterwards and it would reduce your
ability to aggressively compete with other society members, thus allowing for
a longer live, while making room for others.

------
LargeCompanies
Is Elizabeth Holmes a co-founder?

------
dbg31415
Oh yay, now we can look forward to immortal rich folks. And the abolition of
the retirement age.

~~~
Practicality
I am pretty sure the way it works is that everyone will get the immortality
when it is available, but the poor folks get 1,000 years of debt.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
In all seriousness, the price for eternal youth will be the cost of production
and shipping.

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.

~~~
jacquesm
Just like the cost of all medication is just production and shipping?

~~~
yazaddaruvala
My doctors in the US, were hesitant to give me an MRI for my knee because of
costs (~$1000 per MRI). Something about the insurance company needing some
prerequisites. Fair enough. My knee really wasn't that bad, and I lived my
life. 3 months later I was in India for other reasons. I walked into a clinic,
spent $96, two days later I had the results of my MRI. I was handed a CD with
the raw image files they collected (MRI specific file format). I had
"printouts" of those images. I even had a note in english for a layperson like
myself to understand. Later, I took those MRI files to my doctors in the US.
They confirmed all the findings, and suggested the same things as the doctors
in India and I went along my way. Unprovoked the Ortho looking at my knee and
the MRI even exclaimed, "thats the best $100 MRI I've ever seen".

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.

------
notyourwork
Jeff Bezos surely has a diverse set of investments. A clock in a mountain,
space travel, anti-aging. Is he trying to create a bionic space conquering
society? His mountain clock being +0 and everything else in the galaxy
dependent upon it as basis for time.

~~~
ucaetano
No, he's just afraid of dying.

~~~
melling
“We don’t expect people to be living to 150 years, even in the wildest version
of success,” he said. “But we do expect people to live free of a variety of
chronic diseases.”"

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.

~~~
Animats
_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._

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...](http://www.sciencealert.com/biologists-discover-key-mechanism-
triggering-human-ageing)

------
pen2l
There was this interesting article which talks about some scientists
suggesting an upper age limit: [http://www.nature.com/news/human-age-limit-
claim-sparks-deba...](http://www.nature.com/news/human-age-limit-claim-sparks-
debate-1.20750)

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](http://tpx.sagepub.com/content/37/1/47)

2-
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24472560](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24472560)

3- [https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2012/Physi...](https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2012/PhysicalActivityLifeExpectancy)

4-
[http://www.journalsleep.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=27780](http://www.journalsleep.org/viewabstract.aspx?pid=27780)

~~~
Brakenshire
As far as I understand, this is just looking at demographic data, so probably
if you do everything like exercise and diet right, and you have good genes,
115 is about the limit. It's basically saying that lifespan isn't going to
continually drift upwards about that level with marginal improvements in
living standards.

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.

~~~
ekianjo
> if you do everything like exercise and diet right, and you have good genes

and if you are female. Don't forget that females have a much higher survival
rate over time than men.

