In 2019, a PhD student at the Babraham Institute near Cambridge discovered the unique ability of cells to reverse ageing. He was investigating what happens to old human skin cells when they are “reprogrammed” in a lab process used around the world to turn adult cells (heart, brain, muscle, and the like) into stem cells.
Diljeet Gill stopped the reprogramming midway and observed how the cells responded. The results were remarkable. The aged skin had become more youthful, and the cells were behaving like 25 years younger cells.
Gill informed his supervisor Wolf Riek. “That was the real wow moment for me, I fell off my chair three times,” Reik said, according to a Guardian report.
Reik resigned from his post at Babraham Institute and joined a UK institute being built by Altos Labs, a start-up backed by Silicon Valley billionaires with funding upwards of $3 bn (£2.2 bn). Altos is currently developing stem cell therapy and technology in collaboration with Nobel Prize-winning stem cell scientist Prof Shinya Yamanaka of Japan.
“This is a field whose time has come,” says Prof Dame Linda Partridge at University College London’s Institute of Healthy Ageing.
However, this is not the first time Silicon Valley has shown interest in solving the ageing problem. Google launched Calico in California with a $1-billion fund to map the ageing process and research into extending the healthy lifespan. The company is yet to launch any products.
Another Silicon Valley start-up, Unity Biotechnology, raised $116 million from investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Paypal co-founder Peter Theil in 2016.
Ageing is now seen as a code to be hacked and death as a problem to be solved. However, according to Prof Dame Linda Partridge at University College London’s Institute of Healthy Ageing, this is headed in the wrong direction.
"We should be trying to keep people healthier for longer before they drop off the perch. Stay healthy then drop dead, die in your sleep. I think that’s what most people want," she said.
When Bill Gates was asked about the trend around the Calico launch, he said, “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer.”
But Prof Janet Lord, director of the Institute for Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham, disagreed with the thought and said that, “We are living longer without living healthier. So, it’s as good a target as any.”
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