Biotech company aims to transform medicine via cellular rejuvenation programming

Altos Labs Launches 

Altos Labs™ (Altos™) has launched as a new biotechnology company dedicated to unraveling the deep biology of cellular rejuvenation programming. The new company regards its mission as restoring cell health and resilience to reverse disease, injury and disabilities. Altos founders  envision it as “a community of leading scientists, clinicians and leaders from both academia and industry working together towards this common mission.” 

Altos is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and in Cambridge, UK, with some collaborations in Japan. Activity will be organized across the Institutes of Science and the Institute of Medicine. The Altos Institutes of Science will delve into deep scientific questions and integrate the findings into one collaborative research effort. Investigators will pursue the many aspects of cell health and programming. The Altos Institute of Medicine will distill knowledge generated about cell health and programming to develop transformative medicines. Altos is designed to integrate the best features of academia and industry -- from academia the freedom to pursue the most challenging problems in biology, and from industry the focus on a shared mission, ability to foster deep collaborations, and the passion and commitment to transform science into medicines.

The company is starting with $3 billion fully committed from renowned company builders and investors. The board of directors and advisors include Nobel Laureates and scientific leaders.

The Altos executive team will include Hal Barron, MD (incoming CEO), Rick Klausner, MD (Chief Scientist and Founder), Hans Bishop (President and Founder) and Ann Lee-Karlon, PhD (Chief Operating Officer). Hal Barron is currently President of R&D and Chief Scientific Officer at GSK and will join Altos as CEO and Board co-chair effective August 1. Klausner was former director of the National Cancer Institute and entrepreneur, Bishop was former CEO of GRAIL and Juno Therapeutics and Lee-Karlon was former Senior Vice President at Genentech. 

The three Altos Institutes of Science will be led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, PhD, Wolf Reik, MD, and Peter Walter, PhD. Thore Graepel, PhD, will serve as global head of computational science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Prior to joining Altos, Izpisua Belmonte was professor and chair at the Salk Institute, Reik was director of the Babraham Institute and is an honorary professor at the University of Cambridge, and Walter was professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Graepel previously served as research lead at Google DeepMind and professor at University College London.  

Across all aspects of Altos will be a commitment to computational science, machine learning and artificial intelligence with activities led by Thore Graepel, PhD. Graepel was most recently research lead at Google DeepMind and chair of Machine Learning at University College London and is one of the foremost minds on how to build more intelligent systems and agents that learn from experience.

The Altos Board of Directors and advisors include Nobel Laureates and scientific leaders. The Board will be co-chaired by Rick Klausner, Hans Bishop and Hal Barron (current director and incoming co-chair) and includes the following directors: Frances Arnold, PhD (Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology and Nobel Laureate), Hal Barron, MD (Chief Scientific Officer and President, R&D, of GSK), Jennifer Doudna (Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair and Professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, President of the Innovative Genomics Institute, and Nobel Laureate), Maria Leptin, PhD (President of the European Research Council), Robert Nelsen (Co-founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners), Rajiv Shah, MD (President of the Rockefeller Foundation) and David Baltimore, PhD (President Emeritus and Judge Shirley Hufstedler Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology and Nobel Laureate), as lead independent director. Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD (Director of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University and Nobel Laureate), will serve as senior scientific advisor to Altos without remuneration, overseeing research activities in Japan.

According to Hal Barron, "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 myriad 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."

Rick Klausner added, "Remarkable work over the last few years in beginning to quantify cellular health and the mechanisms behind that, coupled with the ability to effectively and safely reprogram cells and tissues via rejuvenation pathways, opens this new vista into the medicine of the future. Altos begins with many of the leading scientists who are creating this new science. Together, we are building a company where many of the world's best scientists can collaborate internally and externally and develop their research with the speed, mission and focus of private enterprise. Our success will depend upon a culture of intense collaboration, enthusiasm and openness."

Frances Arnold believes that "Altos offers a whole new research and development model targeted to the oldest of human problems, slowing and even ultimately reversing the effects of disease. This remarkable team is poised to discover secrets of cellular health and transform the way we think about disease. Now more than ever is the time to restructure our approach to health by understanding, slowing, and even reversing the processes that lead to illness and death."

"As a geneticist and developmental biologist, I find great promise in the emerging recognition that the metabolic control of cell health contributes decisively to the ability of an organism to tolerate major systemic insults from congenital and infectious disease to stress and aging," said Maria Leptin, Board member and ERC president. 

Shinya Yamanaka explained, ‘The possibility of rejuvenation programming has only recently become a scientific reality and has the potential to enable us to approach human disease in an entirely new way. I am glad that I will help scientists in Japan to work in this exciting field."

David Baltimore concluded, “The goal of Altos will be to reverse the ravages of disease and aging that lead to disability and death, reinvigorating and extending the quality of life. Altos will provide an unparalleled environment for collaborative discovery and has already attracted a most impressive group of investigators to the daunting task of reversing ill health and taking medicine in a new direction."